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That all sounds terrible and hope he and his family are coping as well as can be hoped.

Let's see how things are when the issue lands at Taylor Towers.

Amazon Prime

Hippolyta, one time Amazon Queen and daughter of Ares and now Sceneshifter for IP, is stranded in an alternate reality Brazil where she must deliver mysterious parcels in the jungle to stop the collapse of reality.

BRILLIANT!

On that point, aside from The Hunger Dogs, there's another "ending" Kirby did for The New Gods buried in the last few issues of Captain Victory (I think #10-#12 are the ones to grab) where it's revealed that the lead has family ties to some thinly disguised versions of the New Gods.

It's not exactly the epic wrap up the series deserved but it does provide a touch of Kirby greatness, and if you're a fan the issues are well worth getting

Captain Victory is one of the few latter Kirby works I don't own so didn't know this. That's interesting and I guess I'm going to have to check this out now!

See, this is a series (which I've only read very small bits of) that is my main evidence for the fact that Stan Lee defintely DID bring something to the table in his early Marvel days. I just find Kirby's dialogue a chore to read, it gets in the way of some fantastically weird and colourful ideas, and that puts me off trying to read the whole Fourth World thing. But there's no denying the staggering heights of his imagiantion, both in terms of plots and character but of course his art, too.

I can agree that the New Gods is better comics than e.g. Fantastic Four or Thor, but I'd reach for those books more quickly for a fun time.

Oh that's interesting. For me while it has the same bombast as Stan's - which I do find a chore to read - I think in context it really works. Another example of folks getting different things from the same content.

[Number 93 - Fourth World]

Number 93 - Fourth World

Keywords: Classic, lauded, Imagination, Superheroes, No Stan Lee

Creators:
Writer - Jack Kirby
Art - Jack Kirby
Colours - Various - largely unknown alas

Publisher: DC Comics

No. issues: 56 + Hunger Dogs OGN
Date of Publication: 1970-3 (Hunger Dogs OGN 1985)

Last read: 2016

A while back after entry 115 I popped a post about how there would be no Stan, Jack and Steve Marvel comics on the list. My reasons, in part, are that while they are of massive historical significance they are what they are, comics aimed at young kids, awash with melodrama and hyperbolic dialogue and frankly churned out as part of the 'factory' system of the time. If we're honest the same could be said of
 

Copyright - DC Comics

so why does this one so comfortably make the list? Well the short answer is by the sheer force of Jack Kirby's inexhaustible imagination and energy. We'll get to the longer version as we go through this entry. First a little background.

In the late 60s Jack Kirby was getting increasingly unhappy with working at Marvel. He'd shown initial concepts and ideas that would become the basis for the Fourth World to Stan Lee, who of course was impressed. However Stan wanted to wrap them into ongoing continuity and stories to continue to build on the world the Marvel Bullpen were creating so successfully. Kirby had other ideas and so tucked them away. He later showed them to Carmine Infantino who was a big figure at DC at the time and Infantino offered Kirby the free hand he wanted, the open canvas on which to paint the glories of his creative genius, unfiltered. Kirby jumped at the chance and to the shock of the rest of the comics landscape jumped ship from Marvel to DC, ending an era of unprecedented creative brilliance in the mainstream US comics scene. Unprecedented that is up to that point.

That promised creative freedom and unshackled from Stan 'The Man' Lee, Kirby would start a period that for me surpassed the work he did at Marvel in the 60s. And it started in the most curious of places. DC keen to get Kirby working as quickly as possible handed him the then failing title Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen while discussions and preparation went on to unleash his grand plan. He took over with issue 133 and turned the book on its head. In that first issue setting up some of the core concepts that would form the basis of what would become known as The Fourth World. In the next issue 134 he introduced the bedrock of that concept and a villain that is a major figure in DC to this day Darkseid and he never looked back, staying on Jimmy Olsen and using it in ways like never before on his bimonthly run that lasted until he left after issue 148.


Copyright - DC Comics

Even in these early days the cracks that would break this now lauded series started to appear. Amazing though Kirby's work was, it felt a little too out there for the 70s audience. DC editorial was already getting a little edgy and felt the way that Kirby depicted Superman was a little too different and had Al Plastino or Murphy Anderson draw both Superman and Jimmy Olson's faces in more comfortable styles.

Kirby was undaunted and by February of 1971 The Fourth World saga was released in earnest as New Gods and Forever People both launched with Mister Miracle coming the month after. All these series ran bimonthly - even Jack Kirby could keep up a monthly pace on 4 titles! New Gods and Forever People lasting 11 issues, Mister Miracle lasting a bit longer making it to 18.

The limited time these series last unearth's one problem with these fantastic comics, the world just wasn't ready for them. At least the target audience of young readers immersed in the Lee Kirby world of Marvel and the burgeoning comics shifting to an older audience being heralded by the likes of Denny O'Niell and Neil Adams on Batman. Popular opinion has it that these just didn't gell with the kids of the time. Even in those early days however amongst the developing adult comic fans they were acknowledged as the classics they would more widely be seen as in years to come. Kirby at DC certainly didn't find the audience DC expected and like so much later Kirby these didn't last long, nor get to any sort of satisfying conclusion for many years - even arguably when Kirby did give us a conclusion years later.

The Fourth World is an explosion of creative brilliance, but it burns bright, sets up so much later work, but feels a little chaotic as it stands. Such a shame. Though fair to say as with so much of Kirby's work, who knows if he actually knew himself where this was going. He seemed to just push this stuff out there and it would lead where it would lead. It's not clear he had a distinct, defined plan as you where all this was going.


Copyright - DC Comics

There are a thousand amazing, mind blowing ideas across the comics Kirby produced as part of the Fourth World. Boiled down to core though it concerned a new generation of Gods, the New Gods of the title of its major series. Born out of a thinly veiled Ragnarok (and if the ideas had stayed at Marvel my understanding is this would have been a literal Ragnarok.) two worlds of competing powers arise. New Genesis led by the Highfather a force for good and Apokolips, ruled by Darkseid forever in search of The Anti-Life Equation that will allow him to enslave Earth and ultimately DCs multiverse.

Within that in the classic within a classic issue 7 of New Gods 'The Pact' we learn that in a failed attempt to broker peace between these two worlds Darkseid and Highfather swap children. Orion, Darkseid's son, is given over to the Highfather who raises the child of a true darkforce to be a warrior for good. Scott Free, the 'real'' name of Mister Miracle is Highfather's son, is given to Darkseid who simply throws him into Granny Goodness' 'Terror Orphanage' a dank prison by any other name. In that simple summary I hope to give an impression of the scale of all this. Kirby is literally creating a new pantheon with tales as epic and twisted as Greek, Norse or any of the classical pantheons. He's also dealing with ideas of nature vs nurture. He grasps so much more, has so many more massive ideas as well, but I hope this gives you a sense of the ambition and liberated, colossal imagination Kirby unleashes into these stories.


Copyright - DC Comics

The Forever People fits alongside these stories, filling out the worlds and adventures across these two conflicting sides of these new pantheons. It follows the adventures of five 'flower power heroes' from New Genesis as they oppose Darkseid on Earth. They work with an incredible power called Infinity-Man - kinda brother of Darkseid - who is summoned when the task at hand seems unsolvable.

This provides a good example of how Kirby, however wildly creative, might have been out of step with the readers he was aiming his stories at. In the early 70s when these stories first came out flower power and the 'hippy generation' was last decades news. The world had started to move on, there's a big question mark over how relevant these characters, their ethics and drivers would have felt to a generation that was already moving on to the next thing, just as Kirby was catching the wilting waves of the late 60s. Doesn't devalue the quality of the tales and has no impact as a reader looking back from the future as I did, without the same perspective of the changes in the zeitgeist of the time. It does however give some evidence of why the audience of the day might have bounced off these stories and not engaged with them in the way future generations have.

That said these are fantastic tales. As said Kirby just throws out so many ideas and concepts that are still important within DC to this day. Beyond Apokolips and New Genesis, their Mother Boxes and Boom Tubes there are a host of characters that are still central to much that goes within the DCU. Darkseid remains one of DC most important and prominent villains but a host of the characters that made their deputies in the 2 years that these stories ran still appear time and again. They are often central to 'major' DC events. The characters are regularly revisited and used in their own ongoing titles and in other stories across the DC Universe.

The cascade of creativity, with character and concepts exploding out of these comics might not have hit with the target audience of the day, but they certainly did in the minds and hearts of some many of the creators that followed in Kirby's shadow. They are still major parts of DC to this day. The impact of the Fourth World, if not immediate, shouldn't be underestimated.


Copyright - DC Comics

That impact might not be as seismic as the early world Kirby produced with others such as Stan Lee and Steve Ditko over at Marvel. So the question of why these comics make the list when those even more influential ones don't still needs to be fully explored. As said at the outset these comics have plenty of the problems of those 60s Marvel fan favourites, well at least problems as I see them. They are churned out at great pace in a factory system. Kirby's art can be let down with some poor inking in some instances (looking at you Vince Colleta). Editorial direction and interference does creep in to help mould the wider DC story. The dialogue can at times be melodramatic and flowery in the extreme. The tales take place in a much wider superhero tapestry, one that never ends and while there is a sense that The Fourth World saga was going somewhere and had a destination we never really see, or comprehend where and what that end might be. Certainly we never get there - though Hunger Dogs one of Kirby's final works in the mainstream, an original graphic novel in 1985, does attempt to wrap things up apparently... it's not really satisfying. We don't know if this was the ending Kirby had planned as he set out, or indeed if he had an ending at all as he went along. These stories do have a vitality and energy which suggests it was all rather done by the seat of Kirby's pants. Folks who worked with him at the time do add to the evidence there was no mapped out ending planned. It would have arrived when it arrived and Kirby felt done. Not at some pre prepared point, so these tales feel like products of a never ending superhero universe just like his earlier Marvel work.

What makes The Fourth World stand out, well a couple of main things. Firstly while there was editorial involvement and these are part of the wider DCU (as we know it now) these tales feel like Kirby unfiltered, Kirby without Stan Lee's handbrake holding him back. A little unfair on Stan Lee I guess who was a creative juggernaut in his own right. Just sometimes those to juggernauts might not have charged forward with precise unity and one pulled back the other. Kirby his craft even further developed from his experience at Marvel for the first time ready and able to let go full tilt and produce the comics he'd always wanted to. Almost unfiltered. The joy and incomparable imagination and energy of this rips across each and every comic and page. The massive force of Kirby's imagination is enough to carry me through these stories with gleeful joy.

That creative powerhouse is also put to very good use in the Fourth World as well though. It's targeted to (almost) perfection (almost as - well hints for what's ahead - there is one more comic series of his still to come, which I think is even better.). That target allows him to use the melodramatic dialogue, the hyperreality and nonsense majesty that held Stan and Jack's grounded Marvel work back. It turns those weaknesses into a real strength.

See these are the New Gods, tales of the next pantheon that slams into Earth's orbit after the classic worlds of the Greek, Norse and other Gods. While Thor at Marvel might have played with this it did so in the shackled world of Marvel superheroes, It never really stretched itself to its full potential. Here Kirby really is using the hyperreality of a superhero universe to create new Gods. In doing so the melodrama, the dialogue, the stories dialled up to 11 and beyond make perfect sense.

These tales feel just like the tales of Olympus, or Asgard. They are as over the top, ridiculous and yet as prophetic and important as thus classical fantasies. That grand playground makes Kirby's work, both writing and art make absolute sense. Overblown as it is, it needs to be overblown for this to work. For these shells to carry Kirby's boundless imagination needed to operate in a world that only Kirby could manifest in a superhero universe. Even the human characters introduced here, such fantastically irascible Dan Turpin, feel like characters from Greek myth, just as they should. Side note - turns out Dan Turpin was created by Kirby on a much earlier Golden Age run at DC not for New Gods as I'd always thought. Who knew.

The Fourth World tells the tales of New Gods with the same power, energy and excitement as the tales of the old gods. Only Kirby alone, unfiltered, could manage this and that is why these stories tower head and shoulders above the 'lesser' work he did with Stan Lee at Marvel.


Copyright - DC Comics

So The Fourth World saga didn't get an ending. Perhaps that's fitting as tales this creative, this powerful, with this much scope and imagination maybe shouldn't be shackled in what we expected from story. These are too big for a traditional beginning, middle and end. Maybe ideas as primal as these, told this perfectly, should explode in a way that seems unending. Regardless, we should be very grateful that we have what we do get in these 56 comics. We're lucky to live in a universe where Jack Kirby was able to give us our new Gods.

Where to find it

I dream of owning the original comics that contain these stories and while they aren't that hard to track down and not yet as expensive as Kirby's 60s Marvel work they are still getting a bit pricey. I was lucky enough to get these in the four hardcover editions that came out around 2007. These are starting to get a bit pricey in the aftermarket.

Luckily these are comics that DC regularly return to and they are available in a few ways. Digitally they aren't hard to track down at all via Kindle and the like.

If you like big omnibus then DC's latest edition while be right up your alley. I believe this volume has everything (and more) in it.

If that's a bit much for your reading lap DC has also released each of the four titles, so New God, Jimmy Olsen, Forever People and Mister Miracle in separate paperback editions. I've randomly linked to Forever People but the rest seem to be there.

If those don't take your fancy just wait a couple of years and I'm sure they'll be out in some new format or other. These are never off the shelves long.

Learn more

Where to start with this one. There's a lot out there. These are revered, much talked about comics. Okay for the Obligatory Wikipedia page I've gone with the general Fourth World page which covers these comics and subsequent use of the world and title. Many other useful entries are linked to from there.

As I often seem to do when faced with such a wealth of opinion and views on a comic on my list I've fallen back to coverage from some of my favourite comics YouTube channels. So Strange Brain Parts has a typically brilliant summary video - which is really all you need to know.

Cartoonist Kayfabe has deep dives into a couple of individual issues. I've linked to Tom Scioli joining Ed and Jim to talk New Gods #7. If you search their channel you'll find more.

Near Mint Condition goes through that BUMPER omnibus if you fancy knowing more about that (apparently some editions have a miss printing so watch out for that.

But seriously for this one a quick Google (or other search engine) search will return MANY reviews, discussions, and takes on this one. Fill ya boots.

What is all this?

Conscious that this is becoming a long thread and if you're wondering what the heck you've just read and can't be arsed (quite sensibly) to search back to find out I'll link to my opening posts that try to explain all this.

What this all came from

And of course a nerd won't do a list like this without setting 'Rules' / guidelines

Some thoughts on what will not be on the list.

Noam Chimpsky was fun, but I don't think I need any more talking ape stories, it's been done to death (by him and others). I'd rather see Niemand doing new stuff.

Too many intelligent ape stories... too many... TOO ... MANY... nope sorry not sure I understand that.

THERE CAN NEVER BE TOO MANY TALKING APE STORIES...

...ever...

Still to read Top 10

My favorite Top 10 is the spin-off, Smax. I'm not sure if it would work as a standalone, though - only because I was introduced to the characters and their relationship through reading Top 10. (After Moore leaves, so does the joy.)

I'm not getting into this now as my current obsessions are getting all thing Daniel Clowes, and Jason, getting more Kyle Baker and picking up some interesting looking manga that have been suggested here (just missed out on a complete set of Goodbye Punpun which some reason after ... someone... recommended it here sound SO good, though I may end up with Solanin first as that sounds fantastic!

All this and still chipping away at Giant Days Library editions AND have one more volume of Showa to go...

sigh as I said in my last listing TOOOO many good comics!

Usagi is top five for me at worst. Possibly number one. The sole bad thing about it is the publisher leaps, which means we haven't had an omni HC since it went to IDW. (It's now back at DH, and Sakai has at least hinted at more chunky HC collections. Although I hope they match the form factor of my existing ones, along with doing another print run of those editions that's not signed/limited, so everyone can own them. Because they're bloody lovely.)

I'll be getting into this more in my entry but I only finally got into Usagi after he moved to IDW and they started to release the Colour editions - seemed like a good point to jump on, however much I wasn't sure about the colouring, but since the ongoing was in colour, thought what the heck. Since then I get everything as it comes out have picked up all the IDW ongoing and the first four Saga soft covers and plan to get the rest at some point but haven't even started reading them yet.

I have a long way to go and who knows if I start picking up the original comics which I keep thinking about doing!

Agree with Top 10, superb. Also have time for a lot of other Moore - Swamp Thing, Miracleman, V for Vendetta, Halo Jones, LOEG, Superman all get a reread now and then. Haven't looked at Tom Strong, Lost Girls, Promethea, Neonomicon or Providence. Or his prose works.

Still to read Top 10 but lots of folks here seems to be rating it. I do now own Tom Strong and very much looking forward to reading it, but very much doubt I will in time for this countdown.

.... Which makes me wonder if Usagi Yojimbo will be on this list, and where it will be placed now we know it's ranked.

I've already, rather obliquely ... well very obliquely...mentioned that Usagi Yojimbo will be appearing in this list. In a way that no one here has any reason to have spotted. Suffice to say I've only read a very small proportion of the Usagi Yojimbo I now own BUT its so good it will be appearing. Where... well you'll have to wait a wee bit to find out. I do wondered how much higher it might have been had I read more of what I now own?

Also has the news that Zarjaz is coming back! Did we know that?

[Ghost World]

Ghost World so it kinda goes without saying its not as good as the comic - which I've similarly just finished. Now this might feel a bit redundant but I kinda think its important... or at least says more about comics that are important.

I'm don't watch loads of comic films as I know more often than not I won't find them as good as the comics. But I'm on quite the Daniel Clowes bender at the moment and he co-wrote the movie so I was very interested to see how it came out.

And pretty good. Not great, but fair from bad. What it can't do is what the comic does and Clowes is smart enough (by far) to know this and so makes it pretty different. In doing that though while keeping the essense of the comic in there  no surprise his own comic- it expose a lot of what mvies can't do which comics can.

There two bits of the adaptation that make it much weaker than the comic. Firstly the episodic nature of the comic allows the story to feel dislodged in time. It feels compact and timeless all at once. You aren't aware of how much time has past. Its displaced moments in an undefined period of time. The events don't seem driven my any sense of connnected plot. It all comes together as you go on but these isolated vignettes don't feel like they have any planned dstination, don't reveal a single driven story. It can be read as - stuff that happens.

This feels so true to the theme of that sense of listless drifting as the character try to define themselves and their lives outside the 'safe' confines of school. Where sharp cynicism is all you need to define your identity. It makes Enid and Rebecca's story feel so true and more powerful.

The movie haivng a singular plot drives a specific story forward. Its a fine story but feels so much more constructed in the movies. The confines of a medium that has to appeal to a wider audience, defines by a much larger pool of creators by necessity dilute the brilliant intent and invention of the comic. It just feels less honest. If you didn't know the comic I'm not sure that would feel a problem but in comparison its so there.

Then the ending. SPOILERS of course. But the move feels so much more bleak. I could read it as almost saying Enid ended her life, getting on the bus so soon after 'Norman' moved on. I saw a very clear reading of Norman having left this world and therefore Enid could well have done the same. Its  not clear, its left for interuptation of course but in the film it feels so much bleaker. Which admittedly doesn't feel true to the rest of the film.

In the comic however, while full of pathos, the same ending is able to be delivered with a curious hope. Enid has moved on. As she reflects on Rebecca as she sees her for the 'last' time so has she. She's just moving on to escape herself, her past, her final words about Rebecca showing she's learning to move past her childish teenage cynicism but needs to do that away from the past that she has so struggled to let go. In the comic its made to work, in the movie it just doesn't.

There's more but those are the two I really pulled out. None of this makes Ghost World a bad movie its a fine movies and if I hadn't read the comic I might have enjoyed it all the more. It struggles in comparison however and so I struggled to enjoy the movie as much as I otherwise might.

Comics are just a brilliant unique medium that offer so much more than movies (or different things I prefer then to be fair). So its a great movies from that perspective!

[Dredd]

I mean I gues you could say the tag line is either the above, or one of:

Complete Rogue Trooper story insaide!

Epic Sci-fi thrills!

No real tag line this week... which feels weird. What is also weird is there are two examples of art from talents I really like not at all on top of their game.

First of those is in Dredd with R M Guero, whose work I really like seeming a bit... off. Nothing horrible just not as good as I'd expect. The story is very interesting, but is setting things up. Looking forward to seeing how Moon develops.

Full Tilt Boogie has another great if steadly paced episode. This one just keeps bubbling along really nicely.

Thistlebone has a brilliantly brutal ending you'd expect and that final panel might be as revealing a panel as we've had?

Indigo Prime is so playfully superb. Its getting a meta as meta can be but in such a delightful way.

Rogue Trooper is my other artistic disappointment as I love Paul Marshall's art but this was far from his best work. Some panels has loose anatomy to my eyey and it just lacked his normal punch. Not headed by a colour job that just looked like the kinda early 90s colour work when folks were still trying to work out how to make the most of computer colouring. The story felt almost trite in covering well trodden ground as well.

Proteus Vex was just a brilliant return on the other hand.

Some good news on the returning thrills front too with Azimuth in Thrills of the future and the promise of more Thistlebone for the X-Mas Prog (I think one off by the sound?

We also all but it confirmed that Regened is gone for the foresable as someone asks after Joko in the letters and is told he's had to go back to Quaxxann.

What comes in next Prog I think its Aquila making a welcome (and I think final) return with Brink on its heals?

I mean I doubt what I have to say will change anyones mind but I have put some thought into what it is that really works for me about Niemand's work on Dredd as for me it really stands out as excellent.

The fact that there are particular traits that I find really enjoyable do mean of course that if that's not what you go to Dredd for then I can see how it would defo rub you the wrong way.

Oh interesting as a massive fan of the Niemand droid I'm a little surprised by this take. I've not got the collection, but its a testament to how good I think Niemand Dredd is that I've considered getting the hardcover collection and I very rarely double dip.

For an alternative view on Niemand Dredd look out for a thread near here in a very few weeks...

Well you could knock me sideways.

With a shifty stick?

Ha!

Well you could knock me sideways. I got an email this morning telling me Shift 2.8 has been dispatched. I mean I'll wait to see what actually lands but could this be coming back from the dead?

If so some comms would have been nice - but guess that would have spoiled the surprise. Has a lot of work to do with the 3 remaining issues of my current sub to make me even vaguely think about resubscribing but heck who knows.