comics
Thirteen years after his death, Jack Kirby is still considered “The King” by many comic fans. The artist co-created most of Marvel’s enduring super-heroes, including Captain America, the Fantastic Four, The Hulk, the X-Men and Iron Man, and then jumped shipped to the company’s “distinguished competition,” DC Comics, in the ’70s. There, Kirby had near-complete autonomy and went about creating his own corner of the universe, a gonzo cosmic odyssey known as the Fourth World. Sales for the series involved the Kirby-created “Mister Miracle,” “Forever People,” and “New Gods,” plus the Superman spinoff title for sidekick Jimmy Olsen—were lacking, and eventually Kirby moved back to Marvel, never completing his DC epic. But his work was groundbreaking, way ahead of its time. Now DC is collecting the entire Fourth World saga in chronological order just as its central characters make a much-talked-about return to the comics page in the current weekly series “Countdown.”
It’s easy to see why readers at the time didn’t get the Fourth World stuff—it’s trippy to the max. Acid tabs should have been included with every purchase. The first issue included in the omnibus features journalist Olsen venturing to a hidden place called the Wild Area in search of a story. There he runs up against a gang of metal-masked bikers, a tree-based village for societal dropouts, a gigantic dragon-looking tank named the Mountain of Judgment, and a spacy secret society called The Hairys. And everybody, including guest-star Superman, talks like a Beat poet. It just gets weirder from there.
But there was a method to Kirby’s madness, and in his Fourth World he created a rich new mythology and a pantheon of gods as exciting as anything the Greeks or Aztecs came up with. The kindly gods of New Genesis, ruled over by the bearded Highfather, locked forever in combat with the beastly deviants of Apokolips, led by the fearsome Darkseid. The cast included the light-bringer Lightray; the warrior Orion; the sadistic torturer De’saad; the escape artist Mr. Miracle. Kirby was trading on and manipulating some of the most iconic figures in storytelling history while telling some of the most far-out tales of his time.
The impact of these stories is only now being seen, as the impressionable minds of ’70s readers have turned into the warped minds of 21st-century comic creators. For proof, check out the lovely foreword by Grant Morrison, today’s leading purveyor of whacked-out adventures that will eventually inspire the next generation.
