Return To The Source

It's the month of my birth.

Do you know what else happened during the month I was born?

DC Comics published Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #133.

Yes, know they published a whole load of other stuff that month too. But, this comic is significant for several reasons. Can you see at the top, above the title? It says 'Kirby Is Here!'

Jack Kirby took over writing and drawing Jimmy Olsen with issue 133. Now, for those who don't know, Jack Kirby is one of the most significant comics creators in the history of the art form, arguably the single most significant.
He created Captain America (with Joe Simon), The Fantastic Four, the Hulk and the X-Men (with Stan Lee) amongst many others. As such, Kirby was the cornerstone of Marvel Comics.

Unfortunately, Marvel at the time didn't hold Kirby in the same regard  and after years of being shafted by the management, Kirby decided enough was enough, and he went work for the Distinguished Competition; DC Comics.

The new deal was that Kirby would create a stable of three, brand new titles and would also take over an ongoing series, already being published by DC. He could choose whichever title he liked. He could have chose anything; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern...

Kirby chose Jimmy Olsen.

Why? There's two versions of the story; One version, is that he said; "Gimme your lowest selling book and I'll make it the highest!" (It was and he did)
The other version is that Kirby, being a working-class grafter, knew the value of steady job and wasn't willing to rob another working comics pro of their livelihood. Jimmy Olsen was the only book which, at the time, had no writer or artist attached.

Anyway, Kirby had big plans and even bigger ideas. It was to be his Magnum Opus; The Fourth World.

I had run into many of Kirby's Fourth World characters down the years. They turn up all over the place. Alan Moore's seminal run on Swamp Thing had a few pop in. Grant Morrison's JLA had a couple on the team and his Final Crisis had the entire pantheon centre stage. They even have a brief cameo in Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

The characters had always intrigued me and when I learned that I shared a birthday with Jimmy Olsen #133, I thought it was about time I got to grips with the original text.

So, a few weeks ago I treated myself to an early birthday present and bought, Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume One. Having now finished reading it, I can safely say that my head is no longer the same shape as when I started.

Whoa.

The collection reproduces the first few issues of The New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle and Kirby's run on Jimmy Olsen in their order of publication. Kirby writes and pencils the whole thing (inks by Vince Colletta) and it's no less than an attempt at a myth for the twentieth century.

Literally, New Gods.

The art is Cosmic Primitivism. The language is Atomic Age Testament. The ideas being generated are relentless and, at times, surprisingly contemporary. In the first few pages of Jimmy Olsen #133 we are introduced to Morgan Edge, a corrupt media mogul and few pages later we see Habitat, an eco-community made of trees and the home of a genetically engineered counter culture called the Hairies. Jimmy himself ends the issue as the leader of a biker gang.

Forever People #1 is like Ken Kesey's version of the X-Men. Teenage New Gods, with names like Big Bear and Beautiful Dreamer, take a road trip to Earth.

The New Gods #1 focuses on the New God, Orion, Who heads from his home, the utopia of New Genesis, to the dystopian Apokolips and then on to Earth on the command of a disembodied hand, scrawling on the Source Wall, the barrier between creation and the infinite.

Mister Miracle #1 is the marginally more straight-forward super-heroics of Scott Free, the World's Greatest Escape Artist. Although, Scott has in his possession a device called 'Mother Box'; a sentient computer, similar to those owned by the Forever People and Orion of the New Gods.

I haven't even mentioned Darkseid yet.

To put all of this in some kind of perspective, Superman turns up now and again, although unlike in other comics, where he is the benevolent, potent demi-god. In the Fourth World books, Superman is our identification figure. He is, by comparison, a mere mortal.

Grant Morrison, in his introduction, calls Kirby; 'the William Blake of the twentieth century'. That's not hyperbole. Kirby had the same outsider thought processes as Blake. A true visionary.

So, I was born at the start of the Fourth World and I am, at last, returning to the original texts to bask in their mind-boggling glory.

I have already invested in Volume Two...