The New Gods

As a DC fan, of course I'm reading Final Crisis. A big part of the problem, though, has been that I feel like I'm missing a lot. As I considered this, I came to the conclusion that maybe I just didn't have a good enough background with Jack Kirby's New Gods.

Now, bear in mind that ultimately Paul Dini and Bruce Timm are responsible with my entering comics. I was in college with Batman: The Animated Series was running, and I fell immediately in love with it. Much moreso than with the Tim Burton movies that inspired it. Later, when it was introduced, I watched the Superman series as well... and I believe it was this series that introduced me to Darkseid, and by extension the New Gods. I don't recall an explanation of the Anti-Life Equation, and still know, I suppose, surprisingly little about New Genesis.

So, with the aid of instocktrades.com I purchased the first volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus. This should hopefully allow me to experience the work from the beginning, as though I were buying all of Kirby's books off the rack.

Just last night I read through over half of the volume, but I'm not sure what my impressions really are. I mean, it's weird and wonderful. Starting with a bang, elements of Kirby's mythos appear rather quickly. But most of what I've read is establishing material, setting up the conflict between New Genesis and Apokolips, and the secret nature of the war between these two worlds carried out on our own.

I'm hoping that it will give me a keener insight into Final Crisis. I'll try to post more thoughts about the book itself here after I've finished it.