Category: Jack Kirby

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The Death of the New Gods


By Jim Starlin, Matt Banning, Art Thibert & Mark McKenna (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-871-3

When Jack Kirby returned to the home of Superman in 1970 he brought with him one of the most powerful concepts in comicbook history. The epic grandeur of his Fourth World saga grafted a whole new mythology over the existing DC universe and blew the developing minds of a generation of readers.

Starting in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, where he revived the 1940s kid-team The Newsboy Legion, introduced large-scale cloning in the form of The Project and hinted that the city’s gangsters had extraterrestrial connections, Kirby then moved on to the Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle; an interlinked triptych of projected finite length titles that together formed an epic mosaic.

Those three groundbreaking titles introduced two rival races of gods, dark and light, risen from the ashes of a previous Armageddon to battle forever …and then their conflict spread to Earth…

Kirby’s concepts, as always, fired and inspired his contemporaries and successors. The gods of Apokolips and New Genesis became a crucial keystone of DC continuity and integral foundation of that entire fictional universe, surviving the numerous revisions and retcons which periodically bedevil long-lived comics fans.

Many major talents dabbled with the concept over the years and a host of titles have come and gone starring Kirby’s creations. Recently, however as part of yet another attention-grabbing crossover Crisis publishing event, it was decided to kill them all off.

This compendium from 2007 collects the 8 issue miniseries that ostensibly finished Kirby’s wildest imagining – but of course this is comics and nobody dies forever…

The tale begins after a number of events around the planet, wherein denizens of Apokolips and New Genesis were found dead with gaping holes in their chests.

In ‘So Begins… the End’ Daily Planet reporter Jimmy Olsen investigates the bloody murder of paraplegic war veteran Willie Walker, unaware that the case is connected to the recent death of New God Lightray. In fact Walker was the host of the Black Racer, physical embodiment of Death for all Fourth World Deities.

Meanwhile God of Inquiry Metron has detected something subtly wrong with Reality and Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips and privy to secret data, makes fresh, bold plans… As Scott (Mister Miracle) Free and his beloved wife Big Barda play hero on Earth, in the Supertown floating above New Genesis the war god Orion makes a grisly discovery – another mighty warrior with his chest ripped open. On Earth Scott turns his back for a second and Barda too dies…

In ‘Celestial Genocide’ the New Gods take stock and realise that a vast number of superbeings have been cut down without a hint of a struggle and that the death toll is rising exponentially. Back on Earth, the Justice League begins to investigate the death of one of their own. Scott and Superman bring Barda’s body to New Genesis, where Orion is pressing for an attack on Darkseid, the obvious culprit for the deaths.

After conferring with Metron, Superman and Scott follow Orion to Apokolips, whilst the leader of New Genesis Takion goes with the aged Himon to examine the Cosmic Source Wall – a colossal barrier that separates the universe from the creation force that birthed reality…

‘Armageddon Tarantella’ sees the trio of heroes as they battle their way through the Darkseid’s forces, only to realise that the god-killer has been decimating Apokoliptians with equal ease… and the pace of deicide is increasing…

‘Bearing Witness’ follows Superman, Orion and Scott as they pursue the notion that the killer is someone they know, but each successive suspect turns up dead. Chaos and panic are building and whilst the gentle gods of New Genesis seem frightened but fatalistically resigned, the terrors of Apokolips are determined to fight and kill before they eventually succumb…

In the interim Metron has used his time-spanning capabilities to discover the brains if not the hands behind the slaughter, subsequently learning the true history of the Gods and meeting the source of all the horrors…

In ‘Mistakes’ Apokolips heavies Kalibak and Mantis lead an invasion of New Genesis with only Superman and Orion to face them, after which the war-god makes the ultimate sacrifice to draw out the mysterious and seemingly unstoppable killer in the sixth chapter ‘Sacrifice’…

The end draws close in ‘Seraphic Reunification’ as with only a handful of New Gods remaining Superman and Scott Free face the killer only to discover he has been an impostor all along. Whilst they are occupied in cataclysmic combat Darkseid finally makes his move attacking the mastermind behind the plot, determined to wrest ultimate power from the God-killer in ‘The End’…

Jim Starlin is the “go-to guy” for both cosmic storylines and major character deaths (see The Death of Captain Marvel or Batman: A Death in the Family for examples) and his introduction explains how and why he was pressured into writing the end to Jack Kirby’s ultimate comics achievement; and for my money nobody else alive could have done the job justice. It ain’t Kirby, but at least the deed was done with understanding and respect for what The King stood for.

A spectacular murder mystery, full of metaphysical flourishes and human depth with eye-popping action and even a few left-field surprises along the way, The Death of the New Gods is a fitting end to The Fourth World… at least until some editor decides that the concept is too valuable to leave alone…

This volume, which is strictly for fans of superhero tales and au fait with the minutiae of the original series (which absolutely ought to be read first…) also contains a stunning cover gallery by Starlin & Matt Banning and includes the variant cover by Ryan Sook.

© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps


By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry & Mike Royer (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-922-2

There’s a magnificent abundance of Jack Kirby collections around these days (‘though still not all of it, so I’m not completely happy yet) and this slim hardback compendium re-presents possibly his boldest and most heartfelt creation after the comics landmark that was his Fourth World Cycle.

Famed for his larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived though poverty, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He had seen Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. He always looked to the future and he knew human nature intimately. In OMAC: One Man Army Corps, he let his darkest assumptions and prognostications have free rein, and his “World That’s Coming” was far too close to the World we’re now in…

In 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably tanking at DC, Kirby tentatively considered a return to Marvel, but ever the consummate professional he scrupulously carried out every detail of his draconian DC contract. When The Demon was cancelled he needed to find another title to maintain his Herculean (Jack was legally expected to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week) commitments and returned to an idea he had shelved in 1968.

That was to re-interpret Captain America into a distant future where all Kirby’s direst prognostications and fears could be made manifest. In 1974 he returned to those re-imaginings and produced a nightmare scenario that demanded not a hero but a warrior.

Dubbing his Day-After-Tomorrow dystopia “The World That’s Coming”, Kirby let his mind run free – and scared – to produce a frighteningly close appreciation of our now, where science and wealth have outstripped compassion and reason, and humanity teeters on the brink of self-inflicted global destruction.

OMAC #1 launched in September-October 1974 and introduced the Global Peace Agency, a world-wide Doomwatch police force who created a super-soldier to crisis-manage the constant threats to a species with hair-trigger fingers on nuclear stockpiles, chemical weapons of mass destruction and made-to-measure biological horrors.

Base human nature was the true threat behind this series, and that was first demonstrated by the decent young man Buddy Blank, who whilst working at Pseudo-People Inc., discovers that the euphemistically entitled Build-A-Friend division hides a far darker secret than merely pliant girls that come in kit-form.

Luckily Buddy had been singled out by the GPA and genius Professor Myron Forest for eternal linkage to the sentient satellite Brother Eye, his atoms reconstructed until he became a living God of War, and the new-born human weapon easily destroys his ruthless employers before their murderous plans can be fully realised. ‘Buddy Blank and Brother Eye’ was followed by a truly prophetic tale, wherein impossibly wealthy criminal Mister Big purchased an entire city simply to assassinate Professor Forest in ‘The Era of the Super-Rich!’

Kirby’s tried and trusted approach was always to pepper high concepts throughout blazing action, and #3 was the most spectacular yet. OMAC fought ‘One Hundred Thousand Foes!’ to get to the murderous Marshal Kafka; terrorist leader of a Rogue-State with a private army, WMDs and a solid belief that the United Nations couldn’t touch him. Sound familiar…?

That incredible clash concluded in #4’s ‘Busting of a Conqueror!’ and by #5 Kirby had moved on to other new crimes for a new world. The definition of a criminal tends to blur when you can buy anything – even justice – but rich old people cherry-picking young men and women for brain-implantation is (hopefully) always going to be a no-no. Still, you can sell or plunder some organs even now…

Busting the ‘New Bodies for Old!!’ racket took two issues, and after the One Man Army Corps smashed ‘The Body Bank!’ he embarked on his final adventure. Water shortage was the theme of the last tale, but as our hero trudged across a dry and desolate lake bottom amidst the dead and dying marine life he was horrified to discover the disaster was the work of one man. ‘The Ocean Stealers!’ (issue #7) introduced Doctor Skuba, a scientific madman who had mastered the very atomic manipulation techniques that had turned feeble Buddy Blank into an unstoppable war machine.

Joe Kubert drew the cover to OMAC #8 ‘Human Genius Vs Thinking Machine’; an epic episode that saw Brother Eye apparently destroyed as Skuba and Buddy Blank died in an incredible explosion.

But that final panel is a hasty, last-minute addition by unknown editorial hands, for the saga was never actually finished. Kirby, his contract completed, had promptly returned to Marvel and new challenges such as Black Panther, Captain America, 2001, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man and especially The Eternals.

Hormone treatments, Virtual Reality, medical computers, satellite surveillance, genetic tampering and all the other hard-science predictions in OMAC pale into insignificance against Kirby’s terrifyingly accurate social observations in this bombastic and tragically incomplete masterpiece. OMAC is Jack Kirby’s Edwin Drood, an unfinished symphony of such power and prophecy that it informs not just the entire modern DC universe and inspires ever more incisive and intriguing tales from the King’s artistic inheritors but still presages more truly scary developments in our own mundane and inescapable reality…

As always in these wondrously economical collections it should be noted that the book is also stuffed with un-inked Kirby pencilled pages and roughs, and Mark Evanier’s fascinating, informative introduction is a fact-fan’s delight. And as ever, Jack Kirby’s words and pictures are an unparalleled, hearts-and-minds grabbing delight no comics lover could resist.

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations and still wins new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human: and just plain Great.

© 1974, 1975, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.