Discovering Jack Kirby

Recently, I ordered a stack of reading copies of bronze-age Marvel books off eBay. The books were cheap, and I've discovered over the past year that I seem to really enjoy the sensibilities of that era of comics. I'm also (finally) discovering how awesome the work of Jack Kirby is.

I know, I'm late to the Kirby party. I started reading comics in 2000, and have read mostly current stuff, occasionally venturing as far back as the 1980's. But when DC began publishing Final Crisis, and so many elements of Kirby's Fourth World seemed important, I bought the first two volumes of the Fourth World Omnibus to take a look at the source. Those two volumes astonished me for how quickly and easily they read, especially for books that contained such massive cosmic sagas.

But this stack of books from eBay contained some big surprises. Several of the books offered re-printings of older Marvel stories. I found myself devouring an issue of Marvel Double Feature, or Marvel's Greatest Comics for the Captain America and Fantastic Four stories they contained. As a rule, I tend more towards writers than artists, but Kirby's work is very strong and very distinctive. The Fantastic Four story (one of the original Lee/Kirby... number 87 to be specific) took on a life of it's own. I couldn't stop turning the pages, and for the first time I think I began to understand why the title was as successful as it was.

But the book that surprised me the most was an issue of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where I expected a quick movie tie-in, I found instead a completely different take on a licensed book. Instead, Kirby (writing and drawing) painted a dystopian future where human-kind had destroyed their environment, and submerged themselves in fictions to escape the horror they had made of their home. And in this setting, a man from the year 2040 encounters the Monolith from the original story, which sends his life shooting off in a very different direction. This wasn't the story I was expecting to read when I opened the pages, but now it's something I want more of.

With HeroesCon drawing near, I don't imagine I'll have enough of a budget to purchase an early Fantastic Four issue, but something like 2001? Maybe. I plan to keep my eyes open, that's for sure.

Darkseid in '08!

With all the wonderful economic and geo-political news today, I think that we all agree that the time has come for a change. Neither the Republicans or Democrats truly have the well being of the US citizens at heart. The third party candidates mean well, but have largely proven incapable of garnering enough attention to have a serious chance. I think it's time for a Fourth Party!

A Fourth World Party!

I'd like to declare that Darkseid is my candidate in these perilous times! Amidst rising inflation and unemployment, as well as the devestation being wrought on the stock market, I say that the only valid choice is no choice at all! In times such as these, Free Will is part of the problem, and Darkseid's platform of Anti-Life is the only answer. Free will just leads to dissatisfaction with things beyond the ability of the average person to change! Surrendering it to Darkseid is the first step to change!

And the best part of all? A vote for Darkseid is a personal victory, regardless of what happens on November 4th! You don't even have to leave your home! Embrace the anti-life equation, and make Darkseid your candidate today!

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.

Saturday Morning Cartoons and Comics

As a child of the late 70's/early 80's I tend to think that I was treated to some of the best, most interesting Saturday Morning Cartoons in existence. I grew up enthralled by the Super-Friends, Scooby Doo, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Pac-Man. But one of the cartoons that stuck with me the longest (ironically, the one that I almost never managed to watch because at the weighty age of five, you don't really understand the concept of a 'schedule') was Thundarr the Barbarian.

For the uninitiated, Thundarr was an attempt to steal some of the popularity of Conan the Barbarian, mixing it with a little bit of post-apocalyptic road-warrior and a dash of Star Wars. Set two thousand years after the fall of man, we're introduced to a savage world full of super-science and sorcery. The titular Thundarr was Conan-lite with what amounts to a lightsaber. He had two sidekicks... Ariel the token woman and sorceress, and Ookla the comic relief/wookiee-wannabe.

After watching an episode recorded via DVR last night, I stumbled across a familiar name in the credits.

Jack Kirby

While he didn't design the main characters according to the Wikipedia article, it sounds like he designed almost everything else. Until I gained a real love of comics (about 7 years ago or so) I'd never heard of Kirby, despite the fact that I knew precisely who Stan Lee was, and could recognize him on sight. Now I find myself wondering is there anything that Jack Kirby hasn't influenced? The fact that he was involved with Thundarr doesn't surprise me a lick in hindsight, but it was a surprise to see his name there.

Edit 2/12/08

In what seems to be a badly timed case of foot-in-mouth, the creator of Thundarr the Barbarian (among many other characters in the fields of both comics and animation), a giant by the name of Steve Gerber, just passed away. I started seeing the news last night beore going to bed. Here's Mark Evanier's posting about it, as he knows far more about this pioneer of the imagination than I do.

From what little I've read about him last night and this morning, the world is a sadder, grayer place without him.