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Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus Volume 1 – In the 1970s, Jack Kirby left Marvel and went to DC, where he launched the Fourth World series of stories, introducing Darkseid and the New Gods. Seemingly every issue he’d introduce some sort of new super-powered creature. Unfortunately, he’s also drawn into the Superman world, and he draws the lame Jimmy Olson comic title, which Supes comes into, and brings with him the regular Superman artist to keep things sane. I’ll never understand Jimmy Olsen’s appeal, and how biker gangs will suddenly want to appoint him their leader and follow his every command (?!?!). Happily, however, there are a few two-page spreads, including one right at the start of the book! There are great hippy communes, like that of the Outsiders and the Hairies, and Superman himself even starts spouting hippy lingo, like “I can’t play your scene. It’s for real, brother! Only it stands for peace – something you should dig — but fast!” There are crazy races, fantastic vehicles, weird subplots about clones and genetic manipulation, evil media moguls, strange para-demons, a green kryptonite-laden Jimmy Olson clone giant (?!?!), mini-soldier clones, pink gorillas, the city of New Genesis and the evil world of Apokalips, Metron’s goofy Moebius Chair, four-armed monsters, a “group-dream” console, the nefarious televangelist Glorious Godfrey, and so many other treats. Then there’s the weird world of Mister Miracle, actually a mysterious orphan called Scott Free, who has the compulsive need to use his reflexes to escape from sure death in a series of deadly traps he pointlessly sets up one after another, in private and never for an audience. Some circus performer. But there’s no time for that, since he’s always escaping some attack by demons from Apokalips, Earth gangsters, etc. Then there’s the Forever People, who can combine their powers to create Infinity Man, and who drift around saving people and fending off demons from Apokalips, Earth gangsters, etc. There’s a confrontation between Orion and Darkseid, which is interesting, and so is the introduction of the Don Rickles (?!?!) and Dark Racer (a black man on skis) characters.
There are some lines of really bad dialogue too: “Nothing can be hidden from one such as I, Scott Free! Your telephone number is known to me!” and “Hold it right there! Unless you wish to extend your stay here, you will desist from any mayhem.” Weird.
This volume has a not-good introduction by someone who starts off by saying that he never met Jack (?!?!), but the afterword is by Mark Evanier, who apprenticed with Kirby, it is a much better statement.
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Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus Volume 2 – I love reading Jack Kirby! And while the plot lines and dialogue of his Fourth World do often come off as half-baked and immature, his artwork and visuals are full of so much inspiration, character and imagery that it can never be less than an endearing experience for a restful Sunday afternoon (or anywhere else, for that matter). The books that make up this omnibus come from four monthly comics: Forever People, The New Gods, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olson and Mister Miracle, several titles which Kirby drew for a couple of years; the items in this collection mainly appeared in 1972. The story lines of these four titles are meant to somehow connect a bit under the “Fourth World” banner, even if it is only with common characters that share a common root – the evil world of Apocalips, the good world of New Genesis. All of the action takes place on Earth, though, as for some reason this is the chosen battlefield of Darkseid, Lord of Apocalips, and his minions (he has some sort of endame in mind – who knows what that is, though). At the start of the collection, we get the Forever People trying to save civilians trapped in Desadd’s amusement park of horrors (The Forever People are tortured there themselves, until they are released by Sonny Sumo, the anti-life guy, who’s also a seasoned gladiator!! It’s Jack Kirby, so we can’t have too many gladiators…).
It is also these early stories that we have our sole appearances of Darkseid, where we see him wander among the mortals, where we see him… smile… creepily. Meanwhile, the New Gods go investigate Inter-Gang, a group of gangsters involved with the Apocalips crowd. Oops!! They involve a gang of mortals again, tag-alongs I guess (after a while they just sorta… go home… bye, guys!). Nice. With Jimmy Olsen, Kirby combines Don Rickles with his lookalike superhero Goody Rickels for some zany antics; hard to believe that insult comedians really talked that way! Para-demons, some nonsense about explosions, and maybe the collection’s simplest stories. Orion takes on the creepy fish men, the Deep-Six, killing or otherwise defeating them, dodging the leviathan while rescuing a mortal family, and zooming off with Lightspeed into the galaxy on an incredible space buggy to hit infinity. Jimmy Olsen and Superman explore the vampire aliens of Transylvane, actually a secret planet of mini-people hidden away in a cemetery by an Earth-born mad scientist (?!?!?… this probably says more about the average reader of this title than it does about Jack’s tastes…); this one is pretty cool, as it has sexy vampire bit victims… and hey – it’s vampires! Battles, clues, mist, monsters, gargoyles, strange mini-planets, gangsters, proto-Miller stuff… it’s all there! One of the tales is of a crazy band of musicians from Apocalips that sort of goes nuts, they investigate the Loch Trevor monster (Loch Ness?), there are sexy secret agents, weird little mini-soldiers, as well as the just-plain-horrible Newsboy Legion (groooooan!!!).
The Mister Miracle stories are an enigma; while Scott Free has the least powers – he’s an escape artist constantly testing out ridiculously elaborate escapes from things like a rocket chair, buzz saw along the groin area, trapped in a vase and plummeting from a 50 storey height, many others – his past, his character, his funky costume and his alliance with the beautiful Big Barda somehow make him the most interesting of the characters in the book. Here we see him taking on an evil torturer who puts him into a spiked iron maiden, and climbing up the halls of death, escaping from a wicked human centrifuge, a cannon, a treadmill of death, and all sorts of other crazy stuff; there are also two stories of his youth, when Granny Goodness and the slave pits of Apocalips were his world. At his country estate he has by his side Big Barda, inspired by Lainie Kazan according to the endnotes, and a wicked ally for blasting armies of interlopers, squads of assassins, or taking baths in the middle of a book. Nice, very nice.
Incidentally, here are some images of Lainie Kazan, Kirby’s inspiration for Big Barda:
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The blending of the four series in staggered format may make it difficult to follow at times, but it also shows us how they unfolded for fans at the time.
Here are some of Volume 2′s awesome visuals!!
Help!
Big Barda is not pleased!!
Big Barda is STILL not pleased!
Nice use of the word "cyclopean"
This pic is so great, and I love the text! “Looks kinda pretty though — passion-red flams against undulating cyclopean black smoke! A marvel of contrast!” This guy wrote such great stuff on top of drawing all those amazing plateaux?!?! Stunning…
This guy is weird... and he agrees!!
Classic dialogue:
- Mister Dubbilex!! You’re weird!!
- It seems you’re correct, Miss Dean!
Who cares that SUPERMAN is also in the frame…
It's Happyland!!
Darkseid, the creepy uncle
Darkseid laughs!!
Primordial earth
Darkseid's pupils
Don Rickles, Jack Kirby-style
Enter the arena
Promethean depths
The mini-planet Transylvane
Leviathan!
Hit the galaxy!!!
This image has been praised as one of the best Jack Kirby illustrations ever – I agree!!
22nd century rock
Rocket chair!!
full frontal nudity
How did they get away with this in 1972????
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Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus Volume 3 – The story of Kirby’s Fourth World continues in Volume 3. This one is great, as it has plenty of those 2-page spreads that we all love so much (see below). The stories are okay – there are fewer Superman or Jimmy Olsen tales now (and the one that remains, showing Olsen converted into a long-haired Kirby-esque berserker caveman, is actually very good). In the tale, the Forever People get split up and transported back in time, each to a different era (the eve of Lincoln’s assassination, ancient Rome, the conquistadors in South America, mini-tales of New Genesis and Apokalips warriors. Then there’s the Pact, a classic tale of a young All Father, and the swapping of a young Orion and a baby Scott Free between All Father and Darkseid. Crazy stuff! Then there’s Mister Miracle’s attack with Big Barda on Apokalips, tales of a teen-aged Scott Free fighting para-demons, then purple chair-eating monsters that befriend Jimmy Olsen and his stupid team of idiot reporters. Superman’s adventure in Super Town is, of course, super-weird, as is the discovery of the anti-life equation by a conceited billionaire called Bates, with his weird cult creatures (that look like Dr Satan from Rob Zombie’s “House of 1,000 Corpses”). Then there’s the tale of detective Turpin, who battles fist-to-fist with a warrior of Apokalips, the berserker Kalibak, until he’s a battered pulp. One of the better stories brings in Big Barda’s troupe of female pirates, the Harpies, fantastic (see one of the two-page spreads below for more info). Mister Miracle’s battle inside his brain with The Lump is quite trippy too, especially his method of defeating the monster. Then there’s the Forever People’s encounter with Deadman (and a nice episode of Beautiful Dreamer changing into a new dress – sexxee!), fighting a reanimated Frankenstein’s creature. Kirby invents a new civilisation, the Bugs of New Genesis, and how one of them escapes and goes to Earth. Another tale tells of Himon, who trains Scott Free and other urchins in Apokalips, it’s an odd tale – Himon cannot be destroyed, he escapes every execution. Nutty. The Forever People and Deadman face the Scavengers, including the man who ordered Deadman’s death (a revenge tale). Finally, there’s another battle with Mantis.
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Marvel Visionaries Jack Kirby – Great collection of old Jack Kirby stories, starting in 1941, with an issue of Red Raven Comics that cost 10 cents. The art is not that great, trippy monster machine/space god stuff that Kirby did in the 1970s, but it does show strange tales of gods, in this case a mature tale of the Greek gods, showing Zeus pledging Mercury to go to earth during World War II and confuse men by breaking down their ability to communicate, i.e. intercepting the orders that generals send to their soldiers and rendering them ineffective, interfering in the plans of Rudolph Hendler’s German armies (Hendler/Hitler is actually Pluto/Satan in disguise). Then there’s the origin of Captain America, who was recruited/created to stop spies and saboteurs hindering America’s war effort. There are short tales from The Yellow Claw, The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman, before there’s the classic tale of Captain America’s rescue from a block of ice in the Arctic circle (funny how the Avengers just happened to stumble upon it during one of their routine patrols of the Arctic Ocean). An issue of The Fantastic Four is more surreal, as Reed Richards discovers some sort of anti-matter universe and explores it with The Thing (actually an imposter disguised as the thing… crazy). Then there’s a trio of great Thor stories, centering around the High Evolutionary and the knights of Wundagore and all the nutty new-men and super-beasts. Here Jane Foster leaves the picture – when Odin turns her into a goddess and she can’t take it any more, she turns her back on Thor who, conveniently, discovers that young Sif has grown up into a beautiful young goddess. There’s another Fantastic Four tale, showing a fight between the FF and the Inhumans, it’s not very exciting, nor is Captain America #200, showing the end of a conspiracy during America’s bicentennial year to turn all Americans into brainless slaves cowering in fear. Some social commentary as the Falcon muses the irony of a black man, the descendant of slaves, saving the country.
The real trippy artwork begins with The Eternals, which shows the coming of the Centennials, seven giant beings hanging out at an Aztec temple. The final tale is a strange “What If” tale: What If The Original Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four. My edition, which I got from the library, had about 60 pages ripped out of it. Gosh!
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Recently I got a great Captain America comic book omnibus from the library. It collects about 25 old Captain America comic, mostly drawn by Jack Kirby, in one edition. It’s pretty good, and has a lot of the Sharon Carter storyline in it. One of the issues published in late 1968, where Cap fights the Trapster, I actually owned as a kid!
Here’s a particularly amusing sequence. I think the writer screwed up…
Only one of us is going to walk out of here -- under his own steam --
-- and it won't be ME!
One of the title splashes is awesome. SHIELD had the best SCUBA gear, man!
In the jaws of...AIM!
Who’s that nasty villain-looking person. Could it be… Mao Zedong?
Let the proceedings begin
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Jack Kirby’s The Demon, by Jack Kirby – It’s easy to love all things Jack Kirby, who created insanely trippy characters and adventures. The Demon is one of them, of course, and while the storyline is usually not so great (it hardly ever is with comics), the art is stunning, and the twisted demonic creations continuously mind-blowing. We are also treated to 11 funky two-page spreads of wild Kirby art throughout the 15 issues collected here, which was the entire run.
The Demon tells the tale of Jason Blood (cool name), who is the human form of Merlin’s pet demon Etrigan from the times of Camelot (there’s an “origins” story at the beginning of the first book that recounts all this). Jason Blood has lived through the ages, becoming an independently-wealthy “demonologist” when we meet him in the early Seventies, where he lives in a groovy bachelor pad crammed with priceless occult and historical artifacts (such as swords, ancient tomes, swords and, er, a little item called the philosopher’s stone!!!). Wow!
He’s also got funky friends – a Sikh mind reader/UN delegate, and a goofy advertising executive. Nice. Unfortunately the story slips around a bit too much to make sense, at times hopping from a central European kingdom right over to central Gotham City (yes, this is a DC title). Villains drift in and out, and battles are usually fairly short and decided on random factors (with The Demon always winning, of course). Merlin drifts into the book just as inexplicably as he drifts out. So… what’s his role again? This edition also includes a nice foreword by Mark Evanier, who apprenticed with Kirby and who eventually wrote the book on Kirby (literally), and I also found a couple of pretty funky single-panel drawings (shown below).
Some of the bizarre foes that The Demon/Etrigan/Jason Blood face are Morgaine Le Fey (both in the times of Camelot and twice in modern times, with her modern right-hand man/traitor Warly), Master-eye cultists who can force modern men to regress to their past selves (all the way back to neanderthal times, etc), a dragon that looks suspiciously like Fing Fang Foom, the witch Ugly Meg, the cute little white Kamara fear-monster, the Iron Duke of Trollsac, an evil Ent, Somnambula the Dream Beast, the Howler, the “Judge” of old Salem, the Hell-imp Klarion with his kitty doll Teekl (one of The Demon’s better foes, he even turns up twice), the Phantom (which rips off The Phantom Of The Opera, but sort of turns it on its head as well) and his mad lover Galatea the actress/witch, the demon Asmodon, the evil Baron Von Evilstein (he’s evil) and his faithful servant Igor (in this adventure he’s allied with a rampaging Frankenstein monster of sorts), Gargora, and a whole bunch of other unnamed geeks and creatures.
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Jack Kirby, The Demon, two-page spread
Here are some cool single shots from The Demon:
Galatea, the crazed actress witch from Jack Kirby's The Demon
Jack Kirby's The Demon
Jack Kirby's Morgaine Le Fey appears to be getting kinky with The Demon
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The Eternals, by Jack Kirby – The Eternals is probably one of Jack Kirby’s best creations, and in many weird ways it presages the more sophisticated recent comic book era (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman) through its modern/mature storytelling, the kind that that Jack had always strived for but had never really been able to achieve through his disjointed Forth World series, and not even his trippier superhero fantasies – which were always ruled by some sort of superhero doctrine or another (the only recognisable Marvel superhero that appears in The Eternals is a sort-of version of The Thing).
Kirby also even sort of predicts Rick Riordan and his Percy Jackson series by tying the Olympean gods into our own modern world though real interfaces; awesome!
Of course the art it amazing. It’s the reason we read this, but unlike other stories this one is also entirely readable!
There’s incredibly fast-moving drama. There’s the saga of the three races (Human, Eternal, Deviant) over all the ages of man going back to the Flood, the motives of the sinister/mysterious/omni-potent god-like Celestials, the sleaze of the Deviants, the coolness of the Eternals, their intersection with the Greek legends, the war between the Eternals and the Deviants, the interaction with humans (SHIELD agents, the KGB, moles in the Kremlin, etc), the cold war situation with Soviet Russia, and all the other nonsense. Awesome!
Of course, there are plenty of strange dalliances along the way – witness the silliness with the illusion-weaving Sprite – but all is well. Hey, it’s Jack Kirby!!!
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Jack Kirby’s Captain America – It’s stunning to get all these issues in a pack like this, especially considering that I once owned issue 197 of this series of Captain America 193-200 (and none of the ones before and after). It fills in some of the gaps, but is only partially fulfilling…
In the story the villains are not very apparent, very threatening, or altogether in danger of defeating Cap and his gang. The premise is scary – a mindwave device is created that drives its victims to riot (is this a reason why there were so many people movements in the 1960s?). Certainly, the “madbomb” rationalises why so many people would revolt. By 1976 the message was sinking in, and there was no taking of chances before Gerald Ford’s big outgoing-presidential party-going (Gerald Ford’s wife was, after all, Betty Ford).
In the story, Cap gets hit by the madbomb hate-riot ray, he resists it, The Falcon (Sam “Snap” Wilson) and his girl Leila also get hit, and it’s all about a lot of crazy race rivalry. Oops! But that’s how it was in 1976.
The Madbomb story sometimes leverages off of its “a riot in every population centre, but this doesn’t last forever either, and after some time Cap and Falcon find the underground lair of our fair nasties, they jump into the fray, get invovled in gladiator battles (hey, why not – it’s Marvel, it’s Jack Kirby!!!). The end is not so great, as Steve meets a guy who wants to kill his alter ego (i.e. the real Steve Rogers).
The art and colouring are really very good. The story is discontinues beyond 200, and the dialogue is from time to time very crappy, but hey – it wouldn’t be a proper comic without it!!!
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Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur – Love Devil Dinosaur! There were only nine issues of the thing, but awesome they were!! Love to love this stuff!!! Jack Kirby was behind it all, drawing the images and writing the text. He took a step away from the ambitious stuff, such as the Fourth World, the New Gods, the Celestials, the Eternals, Apocolips and all that, and just went back to a dumb: unspeaking burnt-red dinosaur and his monkey companion Moon Boy (supposedly “the first human” as it says on the cover, but we soon learn otherwise) carving vast swaths of crazy narrative. Devil and Moon Boy fight other dinosaurs, other monsters, and defend the people of the valley from the hill tribes. It’s a wild journey.
Moon Boy is a bit of coward, and he admits it; yet, he’s accepted the rejection of his people (more than once) for the sake of his new friend, a dinosaur, with whom he will gladly travel space and time. Great! Moon Boy is often endangered, and yet somehow he always just managed to survive long enough for Devil Dinosaur to come rescue him. Awesome! Together they fight dinosaurs, fearsome cavemen, giant spiders, killer ants, crazy giants, freaky alien conquerors (a bizarre reprint of The Eternals/Celestials), time-travelling pits (allowing Devil Dinosaur to wreak havoc in 1976) and a strange “garden” of “Eden” with a “tree” of “knowledge”. Interesting how Kirby re-invents the Judeo-Christian creation story.
Probably the war with the aliens, with Eev, with the “tree” of knowledge, were the best parts – one story begets a thousand legends (anything Eternals will do the same – witness Thor 290-300). Bravo!!
Introducing... Devil Dinosaur!!!
Devil Dinosaur!
Devil Dinosaur!!
Devil Dinosaur!!!
Devil Dinosaur!!!!
Devil Dinosaur!!!!!
Alien life forms commence!
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