the saddest comic book I have ever read
Feb. 9th, 2009 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashI just read the saddest comic book I've ever read.
I've been picking up the hardbound reprints of Kirby's "Fourth World" comics over the past few months. The originals are about as old as I am; Jack Kirby did these for DC in the early seventies. Interwoven comics, all telling facets of one huge, constantly-changing story. These volumes reproduce that by printing the comics in the order they were published, rather than dividing them into separate collections of each series - an issue of, ooh, The Forever People is followed by that month's issue of Mister Miracle, then next month's New Gods. It's an unending torrent of inspiration and insanity from one of the hands that shaped what we know as "superhero comics". Each volume is a thrill ride of intense colors, lurid dialogue, and breathless action.
Until the fourth one. Which opens with its usual cycle of one title following another - until Mister Miracle #11 is followed by #12, and #13, and... the whole tapestry is reduced to a single thread. To less than that; the interplanetary war between super-gods gives way to generic superheroing. There's even a kid sidekick brought in. The inventiveness changes from a raging torrent to a leaky faucet, reluctantly dripping just enough to write a few issues that feel like marking time. Then... it stops.
Twelve years later, an aging Kirby returned to make a concluding "graphic novel" plagued by its own production difficulties. The coda speaks to some of the themes of the whole work. But it's a rushed attempt to bring a close to what would have been a vast and sprawling tale. Interestingly enough, his focus on Darkseid as he finishes off the war with New Genesis makes him unexpectedly sympathetic; the world is changing around him, as his quest for the Anti-Life Equation* is dismissed by a new generation of megalomaniacs who use strange new machines he just doesn't understand. It's a regretful, abrupt end to a wild ride.
* which, despite some claims that Kirby never told us what it was, is pretty explicitly spelt out in an issue of The Forever People as "the secret of compelling perfect obedience"
I've been picking up the hardbound reprints of Kirby's "Fourth World" comics over the past few months. The originals are about as old as I am; Jack Kirby did these for DC in the early seventies. Interwoven comics, all telling facets of one huge, constantly-changing story. These volumes reproduce that by printing the comics in the order they were published, rather than dividing them into separate collections of each series - an issue of, ooh, The Forever People is followed by that month's issue of Mister Miracle, then next month's New Gods. It's an unending torrent of inspiration and insanity from one of the hands that shaped what we know as "superhero comics". Each volume is a thrill ride of intense colors, lurid dialogue, and breathless action.
Until the fourth one. Which opens with its usual cycle of one title following another - until Mister Miracle #11 is followed by #12, and #13, and... the whole tapestry is reduced to a single thread. To less than that; the interplanetary war between super-gods gives way to generic superheroing. There's even a kid sidekick brought in. The inventiveness changes from a raging torrent to a leaky faucet, reluctantly dripping just enough to write a few issues that feel like marking time. Then... it stops.
Twelve years later, an aging Kirby returned to make a concluding "graphic novel" plagued by its own production difficulties. The coda speaks to some of the themes of the whole work. But it's a rushed attempt to bring a close to what would have been a vast and sprawling tale. Interestingly enough, his focus on Darkseid as he finishes off the war with New Genesis makes him unexpectedly sympathetic; the world is changing around him, as his quest for the Anti-Life Equation* is dismissed by a new generation of megalomaniacs who use strange new machines he just doesn't understand. It's a regretful, abrupt end to a wild ride.
* which, despite some claims that Kirby never told us what it was, is pretty explicitly spelt out in an issue of The Forever People as "the secret of compelling perfect obedience"
I was there, my friend, there when the Fourth World died....
Date: 2009-02-10 03:30 am (UTC)If you get a chance, try to lay hands on Walt Simonson's ORION series from the early 2000s. Simonson groks the New Gods like no other writer besides Jack himself. I think that only the first six issues have been collected into a TPB, but it's worth hunting the rest down as floppies. It's EPIC.
And, yes. I think the reason so many people don't quite get what Jack intended is because The Forever People was the "uncool" Fourth World book. It's a bunch of dorky, corny space hippies who don't have the anything close to the compelling, dramatic, operatic motivations of Orion or Scott Free.
But that's why it's the book where Kirby explains what the war is about. For the "cool" characters, it's personal -- the Forever People put themselves on the front lines out of principle.
Oh, and if you want sad? Imagine being 8 years old in 1972, and picking up Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #149 -- and instead of finding out what happened to Jimmy and the Newsboys in the volcano lair of Doctor Vulcanus, you get some Kurt Schaffenberger-illustrated fluff about Jimmy causing trouble with some ray gun he's found, or something to that effect.
Re: I was there, my friend, there when the Fourth World died....
Date: 2009-02-10 04:20 pm (UTC)I keep thinking of drawing the Forever People, as it so happens. There's something about their craziness that attracts me the way the destructive force and the unwilling combatant doesn't.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 04:05 am (UTC)... I LIKE superhero comics, and even -I- think this is a shame.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-13 12:11 am (UTC)When you start wanting to have nuanced characters, things have to slow down.
The "Hunger Dogs" graphic novel that closes the Fourth World is really strange because it's full of Kirby - but at a much slower pace. One expression stretches over several panels into a change of expression; there are no captions that tell half the story. It just doesn't feel like Jack.