New Gods

1st Issue Special #13 (April, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In late January, 1975, DC Comics premiered a new ongoing title called 1st Issue Special with an initial installment starring “Atlas”, the latest creation of writer/artist Jack Kirby.  Almost exactly one year later, DC released the thirteenth — and as it turned out, the last — issue of that same title.  This time, the cover feature was “Return of the New Gods”, featuring some of the earliest creations Kirby had produced for the publisher upon his arrival there in 1970.

There was one major difference this time, however; Jack Kirby himself wasn’t involved, having left DC to return to its greatest rival, Marvel Comics, some months earlier (although his final contracted work for the former company had only appeared a few weeks before this, in Kamandi #40).  But if anyone at Kirby’s former employer found this fact to be at all ironic, they kept it to themselves.  Not only was the “King of Comics” not creatively or editorially included as part of this stab at reviving his “Fourth World” characters and concepts — his name didn’t even appear anywhere within its pages.  Read More

Mister Miracle #18 (Feb.-Mar., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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. Read More

Marvel Feature #12 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I wrote in my post about Daredevil #105 a few weeks ago, back in 1973 my younger self hadn’t been paying much attention to what Jim Starlin had been up to lately in the pages of Captain Marvel — at least, not until elements of his burgeoning interplanetary epic of Thanos, the mad Titan, cropped up in the middle of an ongoing storyline of the Man Without Fear, of all places.  After that brief taste of Starlin’s concepts (and artwork), I was determined to pick up the next issue of Captain Marvel to learn more.  But before I even had that chance, Marvel Comics released yet another Thanosian tie-in — this one drawn (and most likely co-plotted) cover-to-cover by Jim Starlin himself.  Read More

New Gods #11 (Oct.-Nov., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As was related in our post about Forever People #11 at the beginning of this month, Jack Kirby is reputed to have already begun work both on that comic and on New Gods #11 when he received word from DC Comics that those two issues would be the last for both titles.  The official word was that the two series were being “temporarily suspended”; but Kirby seems to have known that this was truly the end for both of his cherished creations, at least for the foreseeable future.

While we’ll probably never know just how far the writer-artist had already gotten in plotting, drawing, or scripting either comic, there can be no doubt that he made whatever adjustments were necessary to be able to provide the readers of both Forever People and New Gods with not just one last adventure of the series’ titular heroes, but with an ending for each.  In the case of Forever People, Kirby quite literally took his characters off the field, transporting them across the cosmos to an idyllic planet far from the battlefront between the warring god-worlds of New Genesis and Apokolips.  Read More

Forever People #11 (Oct.-Nov., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I previously covered back in June in my post about the first issue of The Demon, sometime in the first half of 1972 DC Comics requested writer-artist-editor Jack Kirby to come up with a couple of new series concepts to complement the three titles already on his schedule.  The results were pitches for what ultimately became The Demon and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth — and DC liked them a lot.  Indeed, from Kirby’s perspective, they may have liked them a little too much. Read More

New Gods #9 (Jun.-Jul., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In its design, the cover of New Gods #9 mirrors that of Forever People #9, the other Jack Kirby comic published by DC in April, 1972.  Both covers feature a dominant image that excludes the comic’s titular stars, who are shunted off to a narrow. left-side border; both utilize a considerable amount of black in their color schemes, as well.  This striking similarity seems unlikely to have been a coincidence.

In his indispensable book Old Gods & New: A Companion to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World (TwoMorrows, 2021), author John Morrow posits that, in both cases, the intent was to boost sales by making the books look less like superhero comics and more like something in the horror-mystery genre, which was then a successful niche for DC.  Morrow suggests that this was part of a move by the company’s publisher, Carmine Infantino, to take a heavier hand in setting the course for these two titles, both ostensibly under the editorial control of Kirby.  (Another known indicator of that heavier hand was Infantino’s directing Kirby to include Deadman as a guest star in issues #9 and #10 of Forever People, regardless of Kirby’s disinterest in the character.)  Read More

Jimmy Olsen #147 (March, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As the year 1972 began, Jack Kirby had only two issues left to go in his Jimmy Olsen run.  According to Mark Evanier (one of Kirby’s two assistants at the time), the writer-artist-editor hadn’t been enjoying the assignment all that much, and it’s probably safe to assume that he wasn’t sorry to see the end of it.  Nevertheless, before making his exit from the “Superman family” of DC Comics titles, Kirby would take the opportunity to deliver on an implicit promise regarding the Man of Steel which he’d made his readers at the end of Forever People #1, published a little over a year previously…  Read More

New Gods #7 (Feb.-Mar., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Today’s post is one I’ve been looking forward to — with some trepidation as well as considerable anticipation — since I first began producing this blog, six and a half years ago.  That’s because its subject, DC Comics’ New Gods #7, is without question my single favorite comic book of all time.

Please note that I’m not saying that I think it’s the “best”, or “greatest” comic book of all time.  That would be a foolish thing to do, frankly, considering how many comic books have been published over the last century that I’ve never personally read.  I’m not even claiming that it’s the best or greatest comic book in my own collection (though I figure I could argue a strong case for it on that score, if the need ever somehow arose) — simply that, of all the thousands of comics I have read in the last 56 1/2 years, it’s the one I love the most.  And since love is entirely subjective and personal, I’m not required to justify why I favor it above all others, as I might if I were to declare that New Gods #7 is the indisputable worldwide GOAT, or whatever.

That said, I’m still eager — yes, and also anxious — to share this comic book with you, faithful readers, in the hope of having you understand, to whatever degree possible, just why I love it so much.  Read More

New Gods #6 (Dec.-Jan., 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Over the six years that I’ve been producing this blog, I’ve found the fifty-year-old comic books I write about here — all of which I bought off the stands when they first came out — generally fall into one of three categories.  First, there are those comics that I liked, or even loved, when I originally read them, but which don’t hold up all that well today; though I can usually still find things to enjoy about these books, it’s by considering them either through the rosy lens of nostalgia, or at something of an ironic distance — sometimes both.  Second, there are those comics which, allowing for the inevitable changes in popular tastes and prevailing styles that have occurred over the last half-century, still hold up quite well indeed; such books continue to provide an entertainment experience that can be recommended to other readers with few if any reservations.

And then there’s the third, as well as the smallest, category: the comic books that I didn’t enjoy as much when I first bought and read them as I do today.  The comic books that I needed to grow into to fully appreciate.  Read More

New Gods #5 (Oct.-Nov., 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

With this post, we’re taking a short break from Giant-Size Marvel Month to pay a brief visit to the DC Universe — more specifically, to that section of it known as Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.  When last we looked in on the New Gods, our hero Orion had assumed the earthly disguise of “O’Ryan” just in time for he and his ally, P.I. Dave Lincoln, to go into action against Inter-Gang — the human criminal organization allied with the forces of Apokolips — and their plan to take out Earthly communications technology for thousands of miles.  While the duo were able to thwart Inter-gang’s immediate plot with the secret aid — or at least the presence — of the mysterious Black Racer, the organization itself was hardly slowed down — as Orion would learn as early as the next issue.

In New Gods #4’s “O’Ryan Gang and the Deep Six”, the war between Apokolips and New Genesis enters a deadly new phase, as for the first time — or at least the first we readers have been privy to — a denizen of the latter god-world falls to enemy forces upon our own Earth.  Pulled from harbor waters by police officers, he is recognized by Orion:  Read More