The Coming Of The Supermen!

Neal Adams was one of the greatest artists in the history of the comic book medium. But as a writer he was average on his best day. The Coming of the Supermen showcases the great, the good, and the blah that comes with an Adams written project. Now admittedly some of my confusion might be that I don't read the DC Universe with any regularity and so the changes made to the status of characters might be a little more confusing because of that, but not this much.

Adams has one trick with his writing, he wants to present the reader with a conundrum and then explain it. Sadly, the explanations are often bewildering. The approach reminds me of Silver Age DC covers which often grabbed the reader's attention with some absurdity on the cover which demanded a explanation inside. Adams seems to take this approach. The story begins with the arrival of three different looking "Supermen". And we are to wonder how that happened. 

 

We quickly learn that it involves Jack Kirby's Fourth World creations. The Supermen are battling Kalibak and his Parademons. The focus seems to be to capture a boy and his dog. Superman, both as Clark Kent and as the "Man of Tomorrow" takes the boy named Rafi in. Then it turns out that Lex Luthor is involved. 

The blood of these Supermen is seen as resource and Luthor is eager to harvest a tiny bit of it. Superman puts an end to that. And then Darkseid shows up. I'm not crazy about how Adams portrays Darkseid, as he seems enraged most of the time and not cold and calculating with little regard for anyone else. This is what made him scary. It's not that he can fire off an Infinity Beam out of his eyes to obliterate you that is the scariest part, it's that your existence or nonexistence means nothing to him. 

With Darkseid comes pretty much the whole gang from New Genesis and Apokolips. Orion plays a big role in the story and both Mister Miracle and Big Barda are on hand for some key moments. Metron is around but seems quite different from how I normally see him. In addition to Kalibak, both Granny Goodness and Steppenwolf are around, though I don't think the latter is every fully namechecked in the story. It's always fun to see the Fourth World gang, and Adams draws them well. He even makes a classic Kirby faux pax and renders Orion's mask wrong on one page. 

If you were to ask me what this saga is about, I'd be hard pressed to answer. It has something to do with New Krypton and creating a red sun so that Darkseid can gain a foothold. This series was published in 2016 and so anything in the continuity then is likely not the status quo today, so it matters little in regard. It's fun to see Darkseid and Luthor matching wits and each one trying to backstab the other. 

I found the finale clever, but a bit bloodless. In the end, it's hard to care too deeply about a story which is rather confusing though drawn with vigor and power. It proves what I knew already -- Adams was not a very good writer, but he was a damn good artist. That is unless I'm missing something. If so, please tell and I'll tackle this one again. 

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Jack Kirby's Super Powers!

 
Among the many reasons DC saw fit to bring Jack Kirby back one final time in the mid 80's was not only to finally complete his epic "Fourth World" saga but to do so in such a way as to leave the characters available for future storytelling. Some of that new storytelling happened simultaneously with the development of Kirby's finale and some immediately after. And it weirdly blended the "Fourth World" with the classic Super Friends format to create something which is to my mind still surprisingly entertaining.

The Super Powers was an attempt by DC and Kenner to make the DC heroes successful as a toy line akin to the then wildly successful Star Wars and G.I.Joe toys among many others. To that end Jack Kirby gets to do what he'd sort of wanted to do with the Fourth World heroes so long ago, write a story another artist would draw, though Kirby supplied the action-filled covers. The artist chosen was Adrian Gonzales who is inked variously by Pablo Marcos, Alan Kupperberg, and himself. Joey Cavaleri gives Kirby a scripting hand in this series.

It's typical Bronze Age artwork, sturdy and straightforward which tries to evoke that Kirby mojo, but alas falls short. The story is an oddball one which has a hidden Darkseid (Gonzales does not actually draw any of the classic Fourth World characters in any way that they can be immediately identified) who sends his four "Emissaries of Doom" (four rather bland Apokolyptian warriors sad to say) to go attack the Earth by using four super-villains (Lex Luthor, Joker, Penguin, Brainiac) to battle the Justice League across the world, all of which is ruse to hide the proper invasion of Earth led by Darkseid himself in the fifth and final issue which is vigorously drawn by "King" Kirby himself.

It's solid superhero action, but it doesn't have any of the philosophical depth of the original series. Aside from some hints about the extras-special nature of Superman, this seems mostly to be a rockem' sockem' adventure, diverting but little else.

But there's more after a look at some action-filled Kirby covers.

The next year, after the appearance of "The Hunger Dogs" graphic novel, the storyline properly continues in the second series of Super Powers books, this time a six-issue limited. Jack is tapped not only to write, but draw this series, his final full-blown professional work. And while this is not Kirby at the peak of his powers, it is nonetheless better than most other comics of its time. Kirby supported Greg Theakston is tapped to finish the art.

The story begins with the revolting Hunger Dogs having driven Darkseid from power on Apokolips. This leaves the despot having to take his things and find a new place to conquer. He chooses Earth and rounds up his henchmen the resurrected and slightly altered Desaad, Kalibak, Mantis, Steppenwolf, and assorted Para-Demons to help with that end. The plan is to send five "Seeds of Doom" to Earth, each powered by some part of Darkseid's "Omega Effect" and allow the weird seeds to send their roots down into the core of the Earth, eventually tapping that power and demolishing the planet as we know it making a proper Apokoliptian landscape for Darkseid's purposes. But there's a secret.

The Justice League gathers and in a fantastic shout-out to classic DC super-team dynamics break up into teams of two and three to battle the"Seeds" across the globe. But in another clever allusion to the seventh issue of Forever People, the "Seeds of Doom" powered by the Omega Effect send our heroes through time where they have to confront a nicely wide assortment of threats and villains from many sources. It's a nicely drawn, rich, and classic superhero adventure with a few surprises, some great Kirby action and a pretty neat finale.

Now it must be said, that despite his direct involvement with this series, this again is a story which lacks the depth of the original Fourth World material. The Darkseid here, while properly evil lacks the subtlety of characterization which makes him so calmly malignant in the original series. He's more the cliche cackling villain here, he is full of anger more often than the cold disdain for others which gave him such a frosty menace before in Kirby's treatments. The henchmen too are just classic baddies, but they might be forgiven since they are literally mere shadows of their former selves.

Again, Kirby does some interesting things with Superman, and it makes me wish he'd been able to do more with the classic hero. Clearly, he had insights into the character which were colorful and interesting.

A final word after a very handsome cover gallery.

All in all, Super Powers is an above-average story told in a DCU which at the time was undergoing its infamous "Crisis". So, it's easy to understand why this yarn got lost among all that transforming hubbub, but every Kirby fan needs to check these stories out, and any Fourth World fan owes it to themselves to see the "King's" last fling with these wild evocative characters before he once and for all time left the building.

 NOTE: This is a Revised Dojo Classic Post. 

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A Beautiful Dream!

One of the most enigmatic creations in Jack Kirby's Fourth World was Beautiful Dreamer. She is a member of the Forever People, that gaggle of hippie-like ragtags from New Genesis (which they called "Supertown") who came to Earth to help defend it from the predations of Darkseid and his minions from Apokolips. He seeks the Anti-Life Equation and it's suggested in this poster page that Beautiful Dreamer is key to that search. But to my knowledge that special nature is never quite revealed, at least by Kirby in his original truncated opus. Too bad, but ain't grand to look at in the enhanced blacklight version above and the original version below. 

 

It was a beautiful dream indeed. It's my beloved late wife's birthday. She was a most beautiful dreamer too. She understood instinctively that we all "hold the key to the victory in the strangest war every fought" and that's to maintain our freedom and our sense of self in a world that relentlessly wants to rob us of both. The Dojo resumes regular business tomorrow. 

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The Fourth World Of July - Modern Miracles!

This particular iteration of Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads I avoided on the stands and since it was very quickly a hit I knew a trade would sooner or later present itself. It has done so and now I can say that I am far removed from the tastes of modern comic readers. To say that these are not the same heroes created by Jack "King" Kirby is putting it mildly. This is the very essence of what has become the norm for modern comics telling I guess  -- stories in which very little happens. There's lots and lots and lots of talking but the visuals are generally quite static and designed to focus attention on the faces or the body language. There is a decent humor in this one, especially a peace treaty meeting led by Kalibak of all things, but mostly there's irony.

There 's tons and tons of irony and social commentary as we see Scott and Barda deal with the deaths of friends and loved ones and confront the responsibilities of waging war on New Genesis and keeping up their upper-middle class family lifestyle here on Earth. This is a story about self-discovery and that's fine, but after a bit it gets tiresome.

Scott Free is a god with worries and frets about his personal mortality, and he's hardly the kind of fellow one would imagine filling out the costume of Mister Miracle. Orion and Lightray come in for some extremely rough handling -- one cold and villainous and the other a feckless toady. (I didn't detect the Forever People but Funky Flashman and Metron are both on hand.)The bold and earthy forthright bravery of the original Fourth World stories is supplanted here by an attempt to make the heroes more like us instead of inspiring us to be more like them. Sad that really.

Here the covers.

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The Fourth World Of July!

I well remember the late Christopher Lee said that he read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings annually. I was struck by such dedication to a single and clearly influential piece of literature. Then it occurred to me that I almost do the same thing with another piece of classic fantasy literature -- Jack Kirby's Fourth World. While I haven't read it every year, I do manage to read it at least every other year. But now in this time, a time when my country confronts both outrages and absurdities on a daily basis, when threats to the very fabric of civil society are under attack, I find solace in the wisdom in Kirby's epic. His tale drew its inspiration from evils put down by a new world order, but evils which never ever expire. Now they wriggle and writhe and threaten to rear up again, in new clothes and in new places and Kirby's sage insights are a heady balm to help buttress the spirit and focus the mind to confront the lunacy which seeks to make itself the new normal.

The new forces against liberty are lead by the man who now alas holds the highest office in the land. He is a proper villain, a lazy lout, a liar and a coward who uses his forked tongue to weaken the world order which has been established since the end of the last great war. He is stunted emotionally and intellectually and is driven by a host of passions, many of which he has no control over, which make him think himself the hero of the drama, but sadly that's far from the case. He is a man who requires constant reinforcement to his fragile ego and gains that added vigor by attacking anyone who stands up to him and who he sees as lesser. He is a man in all probability controlled by a foreign power, either unwittingly or otherwise -- a traitor to the land he purports to lead. History will not speak highly of his tenure and the truth will find its way forward despite all efforts to mutate "truth" into a commodity and not an absolute virtue.

That villain is aided by a cadre of greedy folks who have for years argued for principles they clearly never believed in. Principles of liberty and personal choice which ring hollow now that the power resides in the hands of a broken man who doesn't adhere to them but still uses phrases which make mockeries of our those cherished values. All that matters to this mob is money and power and hurting the weakest members of the society is seen as a boon to this new breed.

Those who stand up to this villain and his lackeys are often hamstrung by their own passions which reveal a lack of clarity. They too seek power and are likely motivated by greed and for the moment mouth the homilies which will gather a resistant force. One hopes that among these resistors are some who have escaped the general grasping for power and truly have the needs of the greater good in mind.

There is a small light glimmering still in the structures of government and order which in wisdom were established long ago. Those norms of behavior which limited the darker aspects of human nature are slowly being swept away but still there are legal and political structures which stand for the moment as a bulwark against the assault of the villain and his cronies.

Struggle seems inevitable. A fight is coming, a battle in the streets which will harm everyone connected to it. Hopefully that fight can be contained to non-violent methods, political means which will prove the true tenor of the nation and oust the villain from his perch. At times it seems that the power and loathsome desires of the villain are winning the day, but always there is the long game in which right will ultimately assert itself. But it will not come by means of fire and fury, but by the ballot box, a tool which for now still presents itself as a remedy.

The outcome of all this is by no means assured. The villain is dangerous and deadly, but also such a buffoon that one hoped he would be laughed out of power. That might still happen when inevitably the darkness descends and the virtues which make this nation great are once again ascendant in the face of that evil. We live in dark days, not hopeless days by any means and for now the nation stands. But the embers of a deadly fire are being stoked in the seats of power and only a thorough cleansing wind can sweep them away. The Fourth World saga shows how the evil takes root but it also shows how heroes arise in the face of that threat. We must be those heroes. And on this Fourth of July, a day dedicated to the establishment of freedom it's a perfect time to read and remind ourselves of what Jack "King" Kirby said so eloquently in his Fourth World books -- we are the ones who stand against the night to come, we are the ones live in the light and we are the ones who must resist the dark side.

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Into The Darkseid!

The Darkseid Special #1 wraps up DC's spate of extra over-sized comics celebrating the centennial of the great Jack "King" Kirby. In this yarn by Mark Evanier and Paul Levitz with artwork by Scott Kolins we spend some high quality time on Apokolips with Darkseid and some rebels who find a way to undermine the great and powerful leader of that land.

We follow the exploits of three young escapees from Darkseid's army who are living lives in the shadows of Apokolips, perpetually on the run and always mindful that the day they are living is in all likelihood their last. We see Darkseid, truly annoyed that these rebels have been footloose for three years and as you'd expect some of his agents pay the price of his displeasure. He sends the Female Furies after the rebels and things really begin to come to a head. I won't say if Darkseid wins or loses, but by the story's end there's humility to go all around.

Loved this one as Evanier found a way to get into the soul-destroying aspects of Apokolips, the truly scary part of life in a fear-mongering dictatorship bent on the celebration of one single all-consuming ego. Darkseid is maybe that rare villain who knows he's bad to the bone, but who thinks life is actually better for everyone that way. That's hubris, but what do you expect from such a one.

For added benefit this one features a little story starring OMAC who breaks up with Brother Eye in the most excitable way possible. Paul Levitz and Phil Hester are the dynamic team which gives us another look at the almighty One Man Army Corp.

The reprints in this one are a mixed bag, a back up from The Forever People and a vintage 50's Kirby story from Tales of the Unexpected.

This one is very pretty and highly recommended.

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Born To Be Wild!

You say the name "Steppenwolf" and I immediately flash on the band by that name  (borrowed from Herman Hesse's novel ) and  the album cover below featured in countless ads in scores if not hundreds of vintage comic books.

I hear the energetically morose voice of John Kay as he somberly oozes the lyrics of "The Pusher" and "Magic Carpet Ride", and "Born to Be Wild".

But I'm a Jack Kirby fan, a devotee of the Fourth World and so I also think of Darkseid's devious uncle featured on the cover of New Gods #7. This malicious Steppenwolf was one among many pawns in the back plots of the young son of Apokolips and he played a crucial part in breaking the peace by attacking Izaya the Highfather and killing his wife Avia.

The rage which spilled forth led Izaya to battle and ultimately slay Steppenwolf the leader of the Dog Cavalry of Apokolips (the perfect name for such a one as it means describes the wild dogs of the Asian steppes). And that act set the stage for Darkseid's rise to power and the initiation of "The Pact" which resulted in the exchange of Scott Free son of Izaya and Orion son of Darkseid as hostages to the peace. It was a peace broken when Scott Free lived up to the name he'd gotten from Granny Goodness and slipped away to Earth to become Mister Miracle.

Later, illogically, Steppenwolf was revived and revised to be part of the "Super Powers" toy universe.

And now we hear that Steppenwolf will be among the very first of the to wage war against the Justice League in the Silver Age superteam's very first major motion picture ever. I for one cannot wait! As John Kay would thrum, this one "was born to be wild".

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