Has it really been only fifteen months since I last wrote about Jack Kirby’s Fourth World? Somehow it feels like a lot longer. Which is a little odd, since I’m pretty sure the time between the release of New Gods #11 in August, 1972, and that of Mister Miracle #18 in November, 1973, practically flew by for my younger self, back in the day. And as we all know, time progressed at a much slower pace fifty years ago than it does today. So what gives?
I’m not sure, but it may have to do with the fact that in August, 2022, after having blogged about Kirby’s Fourth World comics at least a couple of times per month ever since my first such post two years earlier, I wrote my final blog posts about Forever People and New Gods, conducted my postmortem on the whole Fourth World project… and called it a day. I then moved on to thinking, and writing, about other fifty-year-old comic book-related matters, allowing Jack Kirby’s unfinished opus to quickly recede in my mental rear-view mirror.
Which I suspect is rather different than what my younger self experienced fifty years earlier, when I simply couldn’t let the epic conflict between the god-planets of New Genesis and Apokolips go that easily. I mean, Darkseid was still out there, searching ever more urgently for the Anti-Life Equation which, once found and applied, would give him mastery over the whole universe. DC Comics couldn’t just let that situation go on indefinitely, could they? Surely they’d have to bring that storyline to a conclusion sometime, and I couldn’t think of any good reason why that sometime wouldn’t be soon. And so I continued to haunt the spinner racks, as well as to scan the letters pages, house ads, and “Direct Currents” coming-attractions columns in DC’s books, hoping against hope for the metaphorical equivalent of the sudden flash of light and thunderous noise that would herald the return of the New Gods via that wondrous mode of transportation called the Boom Tube.
What I didn’t do, however, was continue to read the one vestigial remnant of the Fourth World that remained following the Great Purge of summer, 1972 — i.e., the bi-monthly Mister Miracle comic. As I’ve written elsewhere, I’d been disappointed when the series’ ninth issue, featuring the monumental “Himon!” — the tale of how young Scott Free, the secret son of Highfather of New Genesis, had escaped from Apokolips to journey to Earth (where he would eventually become Mister Miracle) — was followed by an issue #10 that had nothing to do with the New Genesis-Apokolips war at all. I’d been slightly mollified by the arrival of Mister Miracle #11, which featured the return of Apokoliptican villain Doctor Bedlam, and which thereby gave me some modest hope that, even after the previous month’s abrupt termination of Forever People and New Gods, the Fourth World 
saga might continue in a truncated form. But then MM #12 showed up, and a quick flip through its pages as I stood at the spinner rack yielded no glimpse of anything related to New Genesis or Apokolips, other than the mere presence within the story of Scott Free and his fellow refugees from the latter world, Big Barda and her Female Furies. Henceforth, it seemed, Mister Miracle’s adversaries would be limited to Earth-bound menaces such as Mystivac, King Komodo, and Madame Evil Eyes, with the cosmic scope of his previous adventures being wiped away as though it had never existed in the first place. Yes, Scott and Barda were still appealing characters, and the artwork by Kirby and inker Mike Royer remained pleasing to the eye, but that wasn’t enough — at least, it wasn’t for me. I decided that I couldn’t bear to follow Mister Miracle in this drastically diminished state, and I stopped buying the book.
But I still continued to give the new issues a look when they showed up every two months, taking in the covers and flipping through the pages, because you never know, right? And so I managed not to miss Mister Miracle #18 when it showed up in November, 1973, with an eye-popping cover that not only featured most if not all of the series’ main Apokoliptican baddies, but also three New Genesis characters who’d never appeared in Mister Miracle before this. All this, plus that giant purple shadow which could only belong to You Know Who. Did my sixteen-year-old self intuit that this sudden and unexpected resurgence of the Fourth World mythos likely signified the termination of the series? Perhaps, though I don’t actually remember. Either way, I couldn’t wait to get this issue home and read it.
Of course, not having actually read Mister Miracle in a year meant that my knowledge of the title’s status quo was rather out of date; for example, I was mostly unfamiliar with the young Black man shown at right on the issue’s opening splash page. This was Shilo Norman, who’d been introduced in issue #15 as someone needing Scott and Barda’s protection from some criminals who were trying to kill him, and who’d stuck around following the resolution of that situation to become Scott’s protégé in the art of escapology. (Comics readers who hung on for another few decades would eventually see Shilo take up the mantle of Mister Miracle himself — though he’d never permanently replace Scott in the role.)
The order is given, and the grenades are fired directly into the pit where Scott, Barda, and a hefty amount of nitroglycerin yet remain…
The Prussian-inspired Virman Vundabar had launched his first assault on Mister Miracle back in issue #5; he’d then returned to play a supporting role in #8.
For longtime DC readers, Scott Free and Big Barda have been a couple for so long that it’s a little startling to realize how long their creator, Jack Kirby, kept them in the Just Good Friends stage of romantic relationship development (Barda had first come on the scene in issue #4). Would he have moved things along more quickly if his original plans for the Mister Miracle series hadn’t been thwarted? Or, conversely, would he have continued to leave things as they were if the book hadn’t been cancelled out from under him? We’ll probably never know.
I’m guessing virtually no one reading this needs an introduction to Granny Goodness; but for anybody who has happened to wander in really late, she’s the mistress of the Apokolips “orphanage” where both Scott and Barda spent their formative years. Having made her debut in MM #2, she’d gone on to appear in four subsequent issues prior to this one. More than simply Mister Miracle’s single greatest arch-foe, she has to be considered one of the most important of Kirby’s Apokolips villains overall, with only Desaad and (maybe) Kalibak being in the same class. (Darkseid, naturally, is in a heavyweight category all his own.)
Italian Renaissance cosplayer Kanto had first bedeviled Mister Miracle in issue #7, and had appeared in #8 as well.
Virman really wants to shoot Scott Free in the face, but he doesn’t dare go against Granny; nor, for that matter, does Kanto, despite his assertions of independence. Ultimately, both New Gods accede to their better’s wishes, and half-escort, half-drag the weakened Mister Miracle to the fate Granny has planned for him — the “bomb-clock“:
As part of the “de-Fourth-Worlding” of Mister Miracle, Kirby had phased out Scott’s Mother Box after issue #11, replacing her with circuitry hidden inside his cowl which performed the same functions.
Doctor Bedlam had first attempted to take Scott out in issues #3 and #4; as previously mentioned, he’d also had the distinction of being the last Apokoliptican villein to appear in Mister Miracle (in #11), prior to this issue’s return of the whole gang.
Say, that fightin’ fury in red sure looks familiar, don’t you think? (Yes, I know that Orion has already appeared on MM #18’s cover, so there’s little to no room for doubt regarding who’s just crashed into our story. Please just humor me, OK?)
This was an exhilarating moment in 1973; after all, we readers had never seen Mister Miracle and his supporting cast sharing a panel with Orion, Lightray, and/or Highfather prior to this. (Metron was an exception, as he’d turned up in several previous issues — though only in flashback sequences, set on Apokolips, that preceded the events of Mister Miracle #1.) Fifty years later, it still packs a “wow”, though my present-day self is much more aware of the questions it raises; to wit, Scott certainly seems to be already familiar with Highfather — so when, exactly, did they meet? And how did their first conversation as reunited father and son go — you know, the one about how Highfather traded Scott to Darkseid for Orion as part of a peace-making pact way back when, condemning him to grow up on Apokolips under Granny Goodness’ tender loving care? Yeah, that conversation. Alas, we’d never learn the answers to those questions — at least, not from Jack Kirby.
The other thing that bothers me just a bit about this scene is that after seventeen issues of getting clear of fiendishly clever death-traps on his own, our hero, the “Super Escape Artist”, needed help from his dad to survive this final one of his series; the story implies pretty clearly that Scott and his friends would have been toast if not for the very timely arrival of these literal dei ex machina.
This may be a good time to note the guests whom the Source apparently didn’t see fit to invite to Scott and Barda’s wedding — Bernadeth, Lashina, Stompa, and Mad Harriet, aka the Female Furies. Barda’s band of frenemies from Apokolips had relocated to Earth following the events of issues #6 through #8, and had participated in several subsequent adventures, but hadn’t been seen on panel since #14. Considering that the only other female that’s present for her Big Day is the loathsome Granny Goodness, you’d imagine that Barda might appreciate the presence of a few other women, whether as formal bridesmaids or no. But, of course, there’s only so much that even Jack Kirby can squeeze into 20 pages.
In the last panel of page 19, Kirby gives us one last reminder that the real ending of the Fourth World saga — the “Last Battle” between Orion and his sire — is yet to come… though, in 1973, he probably had little (if any) hope of ever getting to deliver that ending to his readers.
Was my sixteen-year-old self slightly disappointed that, after hyping his appearance on this issue’s cover, Kirby only brought Darkseid on stage for less than a whole page at the tail end of the story? Perhaps, but only slightly. Other than that minor quibble, I felt that ending the issue — and the series — on the ominous note of the great villain’s chilling laughter was entirely appropriate. And today, fifty years later, as I retrospectively bear witness while the King of Comics bids what he likely believes to be his final farewell to his beloved Fourth World, I find this finale even more affecting. “But — life at best is bittersweet!” Indeed.
Of course, as things turned out, Mister Miracle #18 wasn’t the last dance for Jack Kirby and the Fourth World. Ultimately, he’d have not just one opportunity to continue/conclude his epic, but two.
Cover to Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers #10 (Apr., 1983). Art by Jack Kirby and Mike Thibodeaux.
Granted, the first such opportunity was actually an unofficial, “stealth” extension of his mythos; indeed, it was so stealthy that your humble blogger completely missed it, back in 1982 and 1983. This continuation appeared in Kirby’s Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, a pioneering creator-owned series released by an independent publisher, Pacific Comics, at the dawn of the “direct market” era. I had bought the first six issues of the book, but had dropped it right before Kirby began a multi-issue arc that culminated in the three-part origin story of the series’ titular leading man, and, along the way, revealed the outcome of the New Genesis-Apokolips war.
Naturally, since this wasn’t a DC comic, Kirby was unable to use those specific names, or any other still held as intellectual property by DC; instead, he generally avoided using any names at all (two notable exceptions to this rule were the Darkseid figure, renamed Blackmass, and the Apokolips analogue, here called Hellikost). But attentive readers who were familiar with Kirby’s Fourth World work could pick up the gist: Apokolips (or Hellikost) had won their war with New Genesis, which had been destroyed; Darkseid/Blackmass had somehow lost his physical form, but still existed as a shadowy “Voice”; and an unseen (and presumably dead) Orion had at some time managed to father a son of his own, the future Captain Victory, who was raised on Hellikost before ultimately escaping a la Scott Free.
In his indispensable Old Gods & New: A Companion to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World (TwoMorrows, 2021), John Morrow speculates that Kirby may have been motivated to return to his mythos by a recent storyline in DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes in which Darkseid returned to menace the universe ten centuries in the future. It does indeed seem quite plausible that Kirby felt that it was one thing to leave the resolution of the New Genesis-Apokolips conflict as an untold story, but that if DC was going to do a version of the Fourth World’s future without his input, he should respond in some way. What he didn’t know at the time, of course, was that the new corporate leadership at DC, headed by president and publisher Jenette Kahn, was about to offer him the chance to craft an “official” conclusion to his unfinished epic, just a little over a decade following what had appeared to be the Fourth World’s final gasp in Mister Miracle #18.
Interestingly, that opportunity seems to have come about at least in part as a by-product of a 1982 deal between DC and Kenner Toys. Having determined that the new “Super Powers” line would include action figures and accessories based on Darkseid and his ilk, DC invited Kirby to tweak his original character designs, and thus earn additional income from his creations. A cynical person might question how much this decision was motivated by generosity towards the aging creator versus the chance to score PR points against DC’s rival, Marvel Comics, which was embroiled in a very public controversy over the return of Kirby’s original artwork at the time; still, no one who cared about seeing comics artists and writers treated more fairly by the corporations who profited so hugely from their creations could argue with the results.
Cover to Super Powers (1984 series) #5 (Nov., 1984). Art by Jack Kirby and Greg Theakston.
The “Super Powers” toy line was promoted via an animated TV show, which in its turn spawned three successive Super Powers comic book miniseries featuring the familiar heroes of the Justice League of America mixing it up with the hordes of Apokolips as well as with old-school DC villains like Lex Luthor and the Joker. Kirby was credited as the plotter on all five issues of the first of these (which reached stands in 1984), and drew the covers as well; he also scripted and pencilled the fifth and final issue. For the second, six-issue miniseries, which came out in 1985, Kirby pencilled the covers as well as the stories, but doesn’t appear to have been involved in the writing; the third, four-issue miniseries, released in 1986, featured no direct contribution by Kirby at all.
These miniseries — or the basic idea of them, anyway — would have seemed like a dream come true to my younger self, had they come out in 1972 or 1973. Jack Kirby writes and draws the Justice League in battle against Darkseid and his minions? Sounds like comic-book heaven. But by the time of their actual release, Kirby’s creative powers had regrettably deteriorated; also, from my perspective as a seasoned adult fan, it didn’t help matters that these titles were clearly aimed at a younger audience who might only know these characters from toys and cartoons. While I still enjoyed seeing Kirby’s takes on classic DC heroes he’d never drawn before in comics, such as Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman, I couldn’t help but think of how much better these books might have been had DC green-lit such a project a mere decade earlier.
Cover to New Gods (1984 series) #6 (Nov., 1984). Art by Jack Kirby and D. Bruce Berry.
Concurrent with the release of the first Super Powers miniseries, DC also brought out a 6-issue reprint edition of the original New Gods series. That latter project’s final issue — which, incidentally, went on sale in August, 1984, just two weeks before the release of Super Powers #5 — included a new story written and pencilled by Kirby, which the publisher promoted on the book’s cover as being “Jack Kirby’s All-New Conclusion to the Immortal Saga of the… New Gods“… but which wasn’t that, really.
By most accounts — the most thorough of which is probably the one included in Morrow’s Old Gods & New — the 48-page tale that ran in New Gods (1984 series) #6 should have been the final chapter in the epic. But DC evidently had problems with Kirby’s original story proposal, with the result that “Even Gods Must Die!” ended up merely providing a lead-in to the “real” conclusion: the 64-page “The Hunger Dogs”, which was released in March, 1985 as DC Graphic Novel #4.
Cover to DC Graphic Novel #4 (1985). Art by Jack Kirby and Greg Theakston.
Neither New Gods #6 nor DC Graphic Novel #4 appear to have been a huge commercial success, and I think it would be fair to say that relatively few comics fans found them to be completely satisfactory on aesthetic grounds, either. In my view, however, there are several reasons why things could hardly have turned out any other way than they did. One is that DC’s notion that Jack Kirby could bring his massive, sprawling narrative to an appropriately satisfying ending within a hundred or so pages was deeply flawed from the beginning. Another is the various creative limitations placed on the project by DC, who didn’t want Kirby to kill off any of the main characters associated with the Fourth World, even in the special, non-mainstream continuity in which not only “Even Gods Must Die!” and “The Hunger Dogs”, but also the several Super Powers miniseries, took place.* But, in the end, it must be said that it just wasn’t possible for the Jack Kirby of the early 1980s to complete what the Jack Kirby of the early 1970s had begun; besides the clear decline in his artistic and authorial skills, Kirby simply wasn’t as invested in the Fourth World as he had been a decade and more before. He also had different interests and concerns now than he’d had then — which may help account for the fact that Scott Free, who seemed to be so important to the mythos in earlier stories, doesn’t appear in either of the two new books, or in the Super Powers issues plotted and/or drawn by Kirby. (Neither, for that matter, do the Forever People, whom Kirby had exiled to the idyllic planet of Adonn at the conclusion of their eleventh and final issue.)
Still, regardless of those issues, I’m glad that “The Hunger Dogs” and the other material exists. For one thing, even late-period, age-diminished Jack Kirby had something to offer that one couldn’t find anywhere else; for another, those stories allowed the creator to have some form of closure in regards to what had probably been the most ambitious and personal sustained effort of his career (they also allowed him to gain additional income from that effort, which couldn’t have hurt). But I’m also glad that, at least at the admittedly rarefied level of fannish continuity concern, they don’t really “count”. We never will have a real, true “ending” to the Fourth World narrative, and that’s fine. Jack Kirby’s concepts and characters have inspired generations of creators at DC Comics, and almost certainly will continue to do so. The Fourth World continues to generate good, and sometimes even great, comic book stories; that’s an important and powerful legacy for Kirby’s great unfinished symphony, all on its own.
Back in November, 1973, my younger self would likely have been gratified to learn that fifty years later, characters like Scott, Barda, Darkseid, Orion, and the rest have been so thoroughly integrated into the DC Universe that it’s hardly imaginable without them. At the time, however, I had to wonder whether we’d ever see any of them again. After all, the dialogue delivered by the folks departing for New Genesis on Mister Miracle #18’s last page sure doesn’t seem to indicate that any of them expect to return to Earth for a while, if ever — most especially, the book’s titular star: “On Earth — Mister Miracle is gone!”
So you can probably imagine how pleasantly surprised I was a mere two months later to learn that the Fourth World characters weren’t gone for good — even if Jack Kirby was no longer involved in charting their futures — courtesy of the arrival in spinner racks of the new issue of Brave and the Bold, whose cover heralded the first-ever team-up between Batman and… Mister Miracle?
More to come in January, 2024…
*The first issue of the second Super Powers mini identifies itself as a sequel to “The Hunger Dogs” via a footnote on its opening page.
I remember being dissatisfied with this one, as I was with most of these tail-end Mister Miracle issues. They were fun but something definitely went out of Kirby’s work after the Fourth World collapsed. Plus I’d only started reading them late — after moving here from the UK I didn’t start buying comics until about two years before this one — so I never really appreciated them until later.
Had no idea about Captain Victory, not that it would have overcome my lack of interest in the series. I did enjoy the ending of the 1980s Fourth World revival with Orion deciding “screw this final battle, I’ll just leave you to rot.” I agree it’s probably not what Kirby had in mind originally (assuming he’d thought that far ahead).
I’m inclined to think DC’s slipping Kirby the extra cash was more about him than scoring points. While I wasn’t hugely into fandom I didn’t hear much talk about it at the time which makes me think the payments weren’t that publicized. And it was (or so I’ve read) an idea by Paul Levitz who arranged for Siegel and Shuster to get a good deal more from DC than the official settlement. So it would be in character.
I had continued to buy Mister Miracle, more as a completist than for any enjoyment the series gave me. When I got my monthly haul of comics I would sit down and arrange the pile in the order that I wanted to read them – and by this stage Mister Miracle was usually at or near the bottom of the heap. I had been disappointed by the lack of coherence of the preceding issues and it felt like Kirby was dialling it in. I cant remember my reaction to the story at the time but I remember being in two minds about the cancellation of the series. On the one hand, I hadn’t been enjoying it much and my completist mentality meant that I couldn’t allow myself to stop buying it so I was glad that the decision was taken out of my hands by the cancellation. On the other hand, this was another DC comic series that I had followed that was being cancelled. We had recently lost Teen Titans and a host of reprint titles that had only stuck around for a few issues. It all fed in to my growing sense of dissatisfaction with DC.
I didn’t buy the Super Powers series, the reprint New Gods series, the Captain Victory series or the Hunger Dogs graphic novel so this is where my journey with Kirby and the Fourth World ended.
Now, 50 years later it brings to mind TS Eliot’s words “This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but with a whimper”.
“But I did spoil it. though. It had deep sentimaent but little joy. But life at best is bittersweet.”
I had missed most of Kirby’s Fourth World, except for MM# 11. However. that ending made me see that there might be levels to Darkseid that Thanos and Galactus did not match.
Darkseid is Scott Free’s arch foe (and in some sense, opposite number) but he is also Scott free’s adoptive father. He attends his adopted son’s wedding both as his adversary and as someone who is proud of him.
Izaya, a warrior who loved and lost a woman because of his profession, gave up their son to secure peace, That warrior raised his archfoe’s son with hard earned compassion and love.
This is a great, a Biblical, story.
Kirby told two stories, essnetially, the war of the Gods and the rise and fall and rise of Man obver about 50 years with many publishers. It begins with Mercury and Tuk, Cave Boy and stretches into Thor, The Inhumans, New Gods, Kamandi. the Eternals , Devilk Dinosaur and CPT Victory.
What you can say in the end with this story is that there is both “deep sentament” and “great joy.”
I always found it strange that Bob Haney, who usually ignored Batman’s Team Mates back stories in B&B, actually captured the essense of Mr. Miracle and The Demon in their 1973-’74 B%B appearances.
I have the same thought about his Flash/DP team-up — Haney’s spot on in his handling of the Doom Patrol.
“He attends his adopted son’s wedding both as his adversary and as someone who is proud of him.” There’s the moment in the Himon story where Darkseid tells Scott to stay and let Darkseid finish molding him — this would wreck Darkseid’s plan to renew the war with New Genesis but I think he’s really impressed by the courage Scott shows
Darkseid is, without a doubt, ruthless, treacherous and manipulative, a brutal tyrant, but he does also have (at least by the standards of a literal hellhole like Apokolips) a certain individual sense of honor.
The same can also be said for Kanto who, having previously been outwitted by Scott Free, now regards him as a worthy opponent, hence the reluctance he demonstrates in this story towards the idea of killing Mister Miracle.
I also like how Kirby shows that, underneath all her bluster & bravado, Granny Goodness is utterly cowed by Darkseid, that despite her supposed rank in the end she’s just another slave to the ruler of Apokolips.
Also, interesting how Highfather fills the role of Himon here, unexpectedly attempting to appeal to Granny goodness of all people, trying to tell her that she can stand up to Darkseid if she really wants to, but she needs to find the strength in herself, only for the argument to sadly fall on deaf ears.
There’s a lot of layers and subtlety to Kirby’s Fourth World that reveals itself on successive re-examinations.
There’s a great bit in one of the later incarnations of Mr. Miracle where Scott tells Granny he’s not angry at her — he knows she’s only following orders and is incapable of doing otherwise. She gets PO’d and starts to argue back, to the point Darkseid intervenes and sends Scott home (“Another minute and you’d have been arguing in favor of free will.”). It wasn’t a great run IIRC but that bit stood out.
Did you ever see Oliver Stone;s Nixon (1995)?
To Stone, to many people, Nixon’s “the Big Bad” but Stone also shows that Nixon (for all his faults) had many good points (he was faithful to his wife and was unafraid to talk to people who disagreed with him).
One of the inspirations for Darkseid was Richard Nixon, Darkseid, like Stone’s portrait of Nixon, has level to him.
The interesting thing is that Kirby absolutely hated Nixon, yet even though Nixon was one of the inspirations for Darkseid, Kirby still couldn’t make him pure evil, and instead (consciously or not) invested him with a certain dignity & sadness, to the point where there are moments when you don’t hate the lord of Apokolips so much as pity him, because he’s clearly an unhappy, disturbed individual.
Although Arnold Drake tended to diminish Haney’s role, Haney was a DP co-creator. Further, although that story was done for George Kashdan (for whom Haney mostly worked at that point), He had worked for Boltinoff more than had for, say, Julie Schwartz and might have more respect for the IP.
I don’t remember exactly when I stopped reading Mister Miracle, but I suspect it was around the time DC cancelled the last of the main Fourth World books. I know I wasn’t reading it at the time this one came out, because I know I’ve never read anywhere about Scott and Barda’s so-called wedding before and have no recollection of the character of Shiloh Norman.
The wedding was a tad…”anticlimactic,” wasn’t it? I mean, Darkseid showed up like a wedding guest who just can’t stand the fact that the ceremony wasn’t about “me, Me, ME” and drank all the free booze and ate all the free food, but the ceremony itself was a little underwhelming. I could also talk about how fast Scott and Barda went from confessing their love for one another to the altar, but Kirby knew he was writing the last issue of the book, so I’ll let that go. I didn’t get all the stuff about the Source-approved guest list for the wedding and why most of the folks Scott and Barda cared about weren’t there, but it was a last minute elopement, after all.
I confess my favorite part of the story was at the end with Darkseid’s appearance. His delight at spoiling things and that maniacal laughter was just too perfect.
I’ve never heard of Captain Victory, but there is a small chance I have the Hunger Dogs graphic novel tucked away somewhere. Not so much because it exists as a wrap-up to the overall Fourth World Saga, but because I was a huge fan of DC’s prestige format graphic novels and am pretty sure I bought all of them. I have no memory of it though, so that’s another one I have to dig up and read again.
You know, fifty years ago, being roughly ten years before I started reading the fan press and caring about the “inside baseball” of comics, I doubt I attributed much fanfare to Jack’s arrival at DC. I knew it was a big deal and that the Distinguished Competition has scored major points in luring Jack away from Marvel, but for good or ill, I treated the comics themselves as what they were…comic books. Fantasy stories told in four color splendor from one of my favorite creators…and that’s probably just what Jack intended them to be. Thanks, Alan!
My girlfriend has commented on more than one occasion that often the movies that become true classics, that endure for years & decades to come, are initially not very successful, and in the short term are regarded as failures. She was thinking of movies such as Blade Runner, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Big Lebowski and Office Space. You could even include Citizen Kane, which William Randolph Hearst did everything in his power to sabotage. All of them in the long-run have been reassessed as critically-acclaimed cult classics.
Heck, that’s the story of Star Trek, which barely clung in for three years during its original television run, but which the fans ultimately rescued from oblivion, and which more than half a century later is now an enormous cultural phenomenon with numerous incarnations.
I feel like the same thing can often be said about American comic books. A number of the stories & series that were initially seen as failures are now recognized for the highly influential, indeed brilliant, works that they are. Jack Kirby’s Fourth World is clearly at the head of the list. I’d also include Don McGregor’s Black Panther and Killraven, Rich Buckler’s Deathlok and Nick Cuti & Joe Staton’s E-Man also come to mind. More recently Aztec by Grant Morrison & Mark Millar seems to have fallen into that category.
Sometimes it unfortunately takes some time for the truly great works of art to be recognized & appreciated.
Having recently read Killraven, can’t say I agree about that one. Or on Aztek. But it’s true, some classics only become recognized with time.
TBH, I haven’t read half of the OG New Gods books. I’m not the biggest fan of Kirby’s work from then on besides Devil Dinosaur and Eternals. Completist me even skipped every single issue of Captain America he did. My intro was the revivals of New Gods and Mister Miracle and I did love the concepts there if not some of the most terrible character names I’ve ever read.
The prisoner exchange with Orion and Scott has always gotten shortchanged. Did either ruler actually raise the two men? Orion’s feelings about his birth father are well documented and make sense. He’s raised in paradise so of course he’d love it and fight Darkseid more passionately thana most. Scott? He was consigned to Hell. Maybe the only time Tom King has ignoring decades of previous characterization for a character was when he wrote Scott as having a negative relationship with his birth father. Intellectually I could see adult Scott understanding the necessity of the swap but emotionally never forgiving Izaya.
In The Pact Darkseid has Granny handle Scott while Izaya reaches out personally to Orion. In the Englehart run IIRC Scott tells Darkseid that his big mistake was not raising Scott personally the way Highfather raised Orion.
One of the many, many things I hated about the New 52 Wonder Woman’s handling of New Gods was Izaya treats Orion with contempt, as a tool rather than a person.
I don’t remember much about Highfather in the Azarello/Chiang WW, but there’s no way that the Orion in that book was Jack Kirby’s. Utter travesty, IMHO.
Really nice art throughout the whole run, though. 🙂
Total agreement on Orion. It read like Azzarello read a bunch of “firebrand feminist meets sexist frat boy” stories from the 1970s and thought that would be a great idea for rebooting Orion.
I loved Azzarello & Chiang’s Wonder Woman run… except for how the New Gods were used.
I have a lot of ambivalence about that run, which for a while was the *only* DC comic I was buying regularly (not a fan of the “New 52”, as I suppose everyone knows by now). As already noted, the art was great, and I thought that the creators’ take on the Greek gods was very original and intriguing. But, in addition to how badly Azzarello missed the mark on the New Gods, there was that business about how the Amazons procreated by seducing sailors and then, once impregnated, slaughtered their unfortunate mates. (Oh, and all male children were sold into slavery.) I wasn’t the least bit sorry to see that particular retcon swept into the trash bin.
I felt about it much as I did the white pantsuit era (though she doesn’t wear that outfit as often as the phrase suggests) — it would have been really good for a new character (except for the New Gods stuff). A woman discovers she’s a daughter of the gods, gets involved in Olympian affairs … but for WW it detached her from the ordinary people she usually helps.
Speaking of the New Gods, I don’t know why anyone thinks Steppenwolf is worth using — he’s about the most boring, colorless members of the Apokalips clan. Yet he keeps cropping up (the JLA movie, for instance).
By the way, I have my own thoughts concerning The Hunger Dogs, but they’re much too long to share here. Perhaps in a post on my own blog? But, suffice to say, after a certain amount of consideration on the matter, I did find The Hunger Dogs to be an unconventional yet ultimately satisfying conclusion to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.
Here’s one vote for you to write that blog post, Ben! 😉
Here’s another vote, Ben. Maybe even an article for BACK ISSUE?
It’s remarkable that DC allowed Kirby to reveal in the last panel that the title was being cancelled, as he had with at least one other of his comics, and that a new one would follow. The King had arrived at DC from Marvel, but by this time the bloom had worn off. So glad he had a good run on Kamandi, at least. I still scratch my head when I think of Kirby ending up in the back pages of Our Fighting Forces. The only more obscure place he could have gone to at DC would have been in the romance titles. I can see why he came back to Marvel in ’76. I assume this came some months after Carmine Infantino was ousted. Perhaps Jenette Kahn made it plain that she would do Kirby no special favours either.
Jenette Kahn became DC’s publisher in 1976. Kirby had already returned to Marvel a year earlier, in 1975.
The timing is really unfortunate. Kahn was one of the first to have recognized the potential of the Fourth World, and to give the go-ahead for it to be revived. But by the time Kahn was at DC, Kirby was back at Marvel, so he wasn’t available to return to the New Gods, and instead we got… Gerry Conway, who was just too young & inexperienced to really pull off a successful continuation of such a sophisticated, personal project.
There’s a lot I liked about Conway’s run. Too superheroish in approach, but it’s one of the only times Metron had a personality other than “quest for knowledge, therefore ruthless”
The Impression I get of Kahn and Joe Orlando (possibly with the influemce of Paul Levitz) is that they tried to be fair to Kirby (getting him into the Kenner deal) but were at the mercy of what they thought would sell in the 1985 comics market.
It appears that Goodman ands Lee were not that interested in the New Gods concept when Kirby pitched it as a sort of “development deal” in 1967,
Fourth World was always a few years ahead,
We went into this recently on another thread, John, but I’ll note it here, also: while it’s been speculated that Kirby actually presented some of the Fourth World concepts to Goodman and/or Lee, there’s no evidence he ever did so. At least, none I’ve ever seen.
Pretty sure I read in the Evanier book (or maybe it was Sean Howe’s?) that Kirby quite willfully kept his Fourth World designs away from from Marvel eyes because he didn’t want Marvel to take any ownership of them as they had with all his other designs and ideas from the ten years (or so) prior. He was tired of giving away his ideas for essentially nothing.
Evanier says the same about Omac: Kirby conceived him as a futuristic take on Captain America but decided not to let Marvel have it.
Everything I’ve read indicates that by the late 1960s Jack Kirby was totally uninterested in giving any new characters & concepts to Marvel Comics, and he was holding them in reserve for… something, for any sort of hopefully-better offer.
There’s even evidence that Roz Kirby encouraged her husband not to send in some of his artwork for Ff and Thor to Marvel because she felt it was just too high-quality to be given to a company who she saw as not appreciating her husband.
I incorrectly thought Kirby had returned to Marvel in 1976, whereas his first published work upon returning was Captain America #192, cover dated December, 1975.
Furthermore, Kirby’s DC work spilled into 1976 with his final stories (at the time) being drawn in Kamandi #39 and Kobra #1, both cover dated March, 1976 (even though they were likely drawn in 1975).
Sorry to nit pick but it was actually CA # 193 January 1976 (but came out in October 1975). (#192, if I remember correctly had a John Romita cover and Frank Robbins art.) You can find this on the Grand Comics Database. Jack started drawing covers for Marvel that came out beginning in August 1975. The reason there was an overlap in the Marvel and DC work was that Jack was very fast and was about 6 months ahead on Kamandi and other work so this is why some of his DC work was still coming out in 1976, even though he was officially back with Marvel in Fall 1975.
I did. Comics.org says Kirby drew 18 pages of Cap #192, cover dated December, 1975. It also said that Stan Lee’s soap box the prior month had the headline, “The King is back!”
This was typed in by someone, so there is the possibility of human error.
That’s not quite right, Chris A. If you check the full entry at https://www.comics.org/issue/29310/ , only one panel of the 18-page story is tentatively attributed there to Kirby as writer and penciller — a last-panel preview of the following issue. The rest of the 18-page story was by Marv Wolfman, Frank Robbins, and D. Bruce Berry.
Kirby left DC when he did because that was when his contract was up. I get the feeling he had already grown disenchanted with DC within his first year there and probably would have left earlier if he could. Jenette Kahn had nothing to do with it– in fact, if she had replaced Infantino earlier, Kirby might have stayed with DC. Heck, had she been in power when Kirby arrived, the Fourth World may have never been cancelled.
I have avoided commenting on comics I actually missed 50 years earlier with one exception so far, New Gods 11. This is another where I am willing to make an exception. I stopped buying Mr. Miracle after #10, but no specific recollection as to why, and fairly certain I never saw MM 18 on the stands or at least missed it. However about 10 years later at a comics convention I saw MM 18 in a discount bin and I bought it and enjoyed it. It should be noted that I had not been reading much from DC through the 70s so was completely unaware of the “Return of the New Gods” or that Darkseid had turned up in a Secret Society of Supervillains series. I did read the story of Darkseid’s return in JLA 184-185 because of George Perez, and I did read the Great Darkness saga in Legion of Super-Heroes and was impressed with Levitz and Giffen had handled Darkseid…not an easy task. My great surprise was how much I enjoyed MM 18, and Alan, your review today shows me that this story although a bit rushed and crowded because of the circumstances (the end of the series), still holds up. It shows the Kirby’s imagination by reminding us of all the great characters he created for this series alone (and what a mistake it was for Infantino to tell Kirby to stop connecting MM to the Fourth World…
.terrible advice) It also demonstrates that even though I could be as much of a critic of Kirby’s dialogue occasionally as anyone, there are some really some good moments and excellent dialogue here. Three in particular: 1) Scott and Barda declaring their love for each other, very nice and very touching and really well done; 2) Oberon’s sad farewell to Scott which is also very sweet and touching and shows what a well developed character he turned out to be; and finally of course 3) Darkseid and his dialogue…just absolutely perfect…”I AM the Storm!” That just sends chills up my spine. And when he says…”Life at best, is bittersweet!” that is pretty on the nose and does seem like Kirby is talking about the cancellation of MM. Amazing that Darkseid is only in 5 panels (yes I counted) but dominates the story. It does seem like such a shame that Kirby never got the chance to explore all these characters further when he most immersed in them. It also seems that few other really understood how to write Darkseid. Grant Morrison, Walt Simonson, Levitz and Giffen…perhaps..not sure who else but if anyone has suggestions would be interested to hear them… One question for Alan and others: what was Scott Free’s actual mission on Earth? He just appears in MM 1 and it almost seems like he and Barda (and Orion and the others) suddenly leave because the series is cancelled. There is no real explanation of why they left Earth. And (Gulp!) Darkseid is on Earth at the end of the story! Shouldn’t we be worried about that? That can’t be a good thing! Oh well….
I liked what Steve Gerber did with Darkseid when he took over the revived Mr. Miracle strip from Englehart in early 1978: made him an avatar of Camus’s the absurd. He made Scott Free an avatar of deciding what your purpose is going to be,
It;s not Kirby’s story exactly, but it fits the existing parts and is interesting in itself.
It might fit better given The Hunder Dogs, where Darkseid’s quest for power overwhelms his intent and becomes and end it itself (and, thus, absurd). Or where Metron’s obcessive nature finally finds a worthy outlet in finding a home for Super Town.
Darkseid’s been on Earth before. Frequently.
2)I don’t think Scott had a mission — he struck me as a conscientious objector opting out of the cosmic war. Perhaps if Kirby hadn’t had to wrap things up we’d have learned what happened between Scott leaving Apokalips and his meeting with Scott Brown in #1.
3)Simonson’s Orion is definitely the best anyone’s done with them besides Kirby himself.
4)Rereading the Great Darkness after becoming more familiar with New Gods it’s still terrific but it struck me that Darkseid isn’t really about spreading darkness as much as spreading order — anti-life is the embodiment of lawful evil/fascism/blind obedience. But I concede “Great Ordering” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Maybe less “conscientious objector” and more Joyce’s “Non serviam?”
His father traded him for a peace he would not benefit from, his foster father abandoned him and outsourced his torment. He found his own way, guided by Himon, a Trickster -God and wise fool.
That works too.
I’ve never seen Scott Free as a conscientious objector, per se, but otherwise I agree with frasersherman. Scott had no mission on Earth, unless it was (to paraphrase his own words at the end of MM #9) “to find himself”.
As uneven as some of the lesser Fourth World stories could be, they were operatic and inspiring. What DC writers have done more recently with vast and mighty concepts like the Source Wall is embarrassing.
I did buy a number of Captain Victory comics in the 1980s, but was never drawn into the story. Maybe Kirby had lost some off his fastball by then. My dad, if I recall correctly, liked them more than I did, but he always loved Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers type space stories. The Pacific comics, like most indies, were more expensive, and I had a very limited budget and there were lots of good indie books to pick from in those days.
Too bad Kirby wound up back at Marvel so quickly. Alas! If only “Dingbats of Danger Street” had taken off!
🤣 “The Dingbats of Danger Street” – what a concept!
Believe it or not, writer Tom King has brought the Dingbats back, in the current DC miniseries “Danger Street”. (I haven’t read it, so I can’t tell you if it’s any good or not.)
I have read Danger Street and King handles the Dingbats, as well as The Warlord, the Creeper and whoever else he has crammed in there better than you’d expect, but not enough to make it a “must read” or an instant classic. His Mister Miracle was much better, and I confess I’m not sure I understood all of that.
Hated his Mr. Miracle. Very much “I will use these characters’ names but I have no interest in them otherwise” though I have friends who disagree.
I’m with Don on King’s MM, fraser — but that’s what makes a horse race, as they say. 😉
Yeah, the dots that Morrow and Cooke connect from Captain Victory to the New Gods is very interesting in Old Gods & New and I think they make a compelling case that what we find there is closest to the ending that Kirby intended — here’s some of the evidence:
> Jack Kirby ended New Gods #11 with a potential conflict with the insect people of New Genesis brewing; Capt Victory begins with a legion of insect people invading Earth, led by the energy-wielding Lightning Lady (shades of Mantis, perhaps).
> Kirby Collector #80, Page 141: “Jack began a story arc that ran through Captain Victory #7–12 (August 1982–August 1983), wherein he directly presented his own resolution for the unfinished Fourth World saga. In it, Captain Victory conveyed that a “giant planet that blazes with unrestrained energies—a place of Ultimates” named Hellikost (clearly Apokolips) had “smashed for all time, a powerful sister planet” (New Genesis) in its conquest of the cosmos. There was an Ultimate War, “a final struggle in which frenzied gods vanished with their leaders in the flames of hate!… Hate so strong that it was able to salvage and give ‘half-life’ to the ‘thoughts and voice’ of its greatest disciple—!”.
> This disciple is Blackmass, who is obviously Darkseid. The shadow he casts is clearly Darkseid’s.
> Captain Victory is implied to be Orion’s son. Blackmass says he’s like his father, a “feisty, rebellious, arrogant warrior who delighted in tearing up my dreams!”
> Captain Victory rides an Astro Harness similar to Orion’s that’s built upon “a design known to my father”.
> Captain Victory also had a sentient AI companion named Turai (or perhaps… Taaru?) as a child.
> When telling his life’s story, Captain Victory becomes enraged and his face twists into a bestial visage — he raises his hand to it and it becomes smooth and handsome again. Sound familiar?
> Kirby Collector #80, Page 142: “Consider Argus Flane [who looks like Highfather with an eyepatch]… in Greek mythology, Argus was a son of Zeus — and “Flane” means to idly walk by or saunter away. Since Scott Free was the son of Highfather, who walked away from Apokolips, these parallels can’t be a coincidence. I believe Flane was a grizzled, tired Scott Free, reduced to amusing himself by setting harder and harder traps for the “Mekkanos” that were constantly trying to kill him. (In the later prequel story to Hunger Dogs in New Gods reprint #6, Kirby showed Apokolips overrun by “Mekkanoids”…)”
With that, the ending of New Gods as represented in Capt. Victory would have been:
> Apokolips destroyed New Genesis in a final war, achieving victory over its sister planet.
> Orion managed to forge a presumably peaceful life that included a wife and child before he died. It’s not clear whether he perished killing his father, or the two continued their stand-off to the end.
> Darkseid survived after trying to penetrate the Source Wall, but only in disembodied form, still ruling Apokolips indirectly, with his same crew of lackeys (or their descendants) doing his dirty work.
> Orion’s son somehow ended up on Apokolips (mimicking “The Pact”), being raised and abused in much the same way Scott Free had been as a child.
> The Forever People’s communal Mother Box evolved into a giant sentient computer on Apokolips, before helping Orion’s son escape and destroying the planet, using the Anti-Life Equation.
> Mister Miracle (represented by Captain Victory’s mentor Argus Flane) escaped the destruction of New Genesis and survived to old age (Big Barda presumably perished), and was able to train Orion’s son, thereby continuing the legacy set forth when Jack’s Thor mythology gave way to the Fourth World. Thus, Kirby set up the promise of yet another new generation of gods taking over from the old.
Interesting. Partly because it suggests that the ending we got in the 1980s — Orion goes off with his woman without the final battle — was part of Kirby’s original concept.
Just a short comment – man, this must be the best inking Royer ever did on Kirby – looks like Sinnott in some places, and are the pencils a bit tighter and more … refined/focused/just plain better than other instances during this period? Except for one panel that sticks out – to me anyway – Jack looks here to be still near his peak. What a terrible, shameful waste of this massive talent. To quote Harlan, it is to weep …
I’m a new fan to Kirby’s Fourth World, only having got into comics a couple years ago. So I just wanted to say how great it is to stumble across a very recent discussion of all this! How nice to know there are still fans out there who have stuff to say for these older books!
My thoughts on the MM wedding are limited, but the first time I read it I thought it was very silly. I hadn’t at the time delved into learning about any comics writers or behind the scenes stuff, so it was very much out of nowhere. The New Genesis crowd shows up, and you’d think there’d be more of an emotional meeting but instead it’s kind of light hearted in way, at least compared to the drama I’d come to expect after The Pact and Himon. So the gangs all there and it’s like oh hey wedding time! And Darkseid crashes the party, then they all skeedaddle, and everyone has a nice little chuckle. Idk, the concept of the issue makes me laugh, but as much as I would’ve loved a big dramatic send off, I also like that it is what it is. It sets everyone up to continue having their adventures. So yeah at the time I read it I was like okay cool what’s next, then a bit confused that the answer was… Not much.
But as a fan in the 2020s I had the luxury of looking it up. Since then I have read the New Gods #6 update and Hunger Dogs (which I have some beef with but I’ll set that aside for now). I also own Old Gods & New and digital versions of other New Gods-related Kirby Collectors. So I guess you could say I really learned a lot since my initial read! I now know many of the infamous stories behind these titles.
So it’s very interesting to hear someone’s take on it from way back then when these comics were hitting the stores. And even more interesting to know that people reading in the 70s and 80s had more or less the same initial feelings as I did in 2022. One of the reasons I like collecting floppies instead of TPBs is because they’ve got the good ol’ letters column. I miss that now! I want to read along with other fans and nod my head in agreement (or side eye with skepticism when I disagree). Yeah, so to bring things back around, just wanted to say I’m glad to have happened upon this blog and see everyone’s discussion.
We’re happy to have you, Kate!
Minor typo: “Captain Vicory”
an addendum 2 years alter – a great loss -, having New Gods/4th World strangled when barely out of its crib but we did get one lovely issue drawn by Marshall Rogers, before he too became a tremendous loss to the field