Kirby plays for keeps

 

The unforgettable fire of Jack Kirby and his Fourth World  booms back in his fight to the finish between father and son, Darkseid and Orion, in ‘Armagetto’, New Gods # 6 (Baxter reprint series), published 40 years ago today, 9 August, 1984.₁ The Kirby series is resurrected after a long period away but still bursts with the same, insurgent, big picture confidence as it lands punches like an Olympic comics champion, still burning with ‘ultimate ferocity’.₂

Much has changed since we last saw the Kirby New Gods, both for characters and creator, in New Gods # 11 (November, 1972). America’s creative, revolutionary, transformative Sixties have vanished. Sunk low by Watergate, inflation, two oil crises, economic recession, a botched hostage rescue, the culture is gripped by failure. Kirby has left comics, working in animation  after his 1975 to 1978₃ return to Marvel where his former readers turned pros, undermined him.₄

Like a heavyweight boxer, down for the count in the 14^th round, America and Kirby are never out of it. The regenerative power of both country and man to remake themselves lives and breathes life into the fight for survival, ’tigers in the night’.₅ Reagan’s ‘it's morning again in America’ unleashes a new wave of pride and prosperity for those lucky enough to benefit from it. Reagan is running for a second term, slap bang in the middle of the 1981-87 greed is good share market bull market and during the  July to August 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (no Commies). The Games are the showpiece centrepiece of American political, military, physical, confidence and exceptionalism.

Into this world, Kirby comes flying, back with the Real Thing, a primal, physical and mental struggle against the Evil Empire, son versus father. The shadow boxing of the previous 12 years is finished. Orion ‘pulls up his guts’₆ and goes in for the kill. Kirby’s opening pages of Armagetto are all big picture moments, double-page spreads, victory follows dominant victory…..until Orion has to be rescued by children.

The voices of marginalised people are always heard in Kirby’s comics. The youthful Newsboy Legion, the counter-cultural Forever People, the Black Racer, Big Barda. Kirby is interested in crossing the boundaries that separate us, discovering how difference can unite not divide as we face the challenges of our age. Like the mechanization/computerization he explores in Armagetto, a tool for the ‘….great, monumental cobra…’ Darkseid who is ‘…eager to swallow us….into his push button paradise.’₇

Darkseid is never a one dimensional villain in Kirby’s world. Jarringly, he needs things like we do, he is lonely, he needs friends. Unlike us he doesn’t make friends naturally, with vulnerability, he reforms past enemies, oozing them back into existence like  reanimated corpses, grotesque slow motion twists and turns of death played backwards in time. His first friend is the one who betrayed him, Desaad. Darkseid knows he is evil, so he can trust him.

Orion also needs a companion. Lightray, Richie Cunningham with super-powers, the idealistic, brainier, wordy, flower-child to Orion’s tunnel-visioned, realist, dog-soldier, Vietnam vet. As the last time we saw them, Orion takes time to see the wisdom in the ‘fool ’Lightray’s arguments. For the ‘amateur warrior’ has appeared to talk Orion out of his death mission: ‘’The confrontation between father and son is wrong! It bodes ill for you and Darkseid!’

This time it is Lightray who is humbled. Orion tells him that he isn’t here on Apokolips to kill his father but to rescue his mother: ‘When I was given to New Genesis in my youth as a lifelong war hostage…there was one on all Apokolips who fought Darkseid’s deal. That’s why I’ve returned. To fight for her. My mother Tigra is still alive….and Darkseid’s prisoner.’ It wouldn’t be a Kirby Fourth World comic without a revelation.

Suddenly the reader’s expectations are confounded. Armagetto becomes a story not about revenge but about rescue. Not about a son and a father but about a son and a mother. A child saving the one who gave him life not a victory over a parent who brings death. Kirby’s characters and stories are never simply about physical action, as good as he is at showing it, they’re about the people within those perfect, idealised, forms: ‘Darkseid, Highfather, and the rest of the cast have always been sincere expressions of my feelings, reactions to all the things I knew were out there in the night….’₈

Kirby warms us up for the fight as Darkseid resurrects multiple villains from the past, Steppenwolf, Kalibak, Mantis but these ‘animated…shells without identity’ are no match for the Mother’s Son. The prophesised  fight between father and son is on! Yet it is not a classic 15 rounds, it is a dance of deceit and cowardice by the Lord of Apokolips who fakes defeat and has his son murdered by anonymous others.₉ Orion’s bullet-ridden body drifts in space, crucifixion pose.

Orion’s eyes are as ‘black as coal’’₁₀. He has failed in his quest. Darkseid has won. Or has he? Orion has transcended his own hate, his own pain, his own desire for revenge. He has sacrificed everything so that that the Lifegiver might be free. Orion has rejected Darkseid’s will as ‘….he seeps into our hatreds and prejudices, and nurtures our biases until they become time bombs – primed and ready to activate the worst in us.’₁₁ He has walked ‘ til you run and don’t look back’ ₁₂and discovered the love within himself, ‘for here I am.’ ₁₃ Darkseid will live on in doubt, Orion will live forever in the certainty of redemption.

‘Ice, your only rivers run cold

These city lights, they shine as silver and gold
Dug from the night, your eyes as black as coal

Walk on by, walk on through
Walk 'til you run and don't look back
For here I am’

Unforgettable Fire by U2 recorded between May and August 1984

Footnotes

₁I’m aware of the 1976 New Gods revival by Conway et al and Kirby’s own New Godsesque ending in Captain Victor for Pacific (1981). My focus in these commentaries is the continuation of Kirby’s official New Gods story with DC characters in the order the reader of the time would have read them. So New Gods # 6 (Baxter reprint series), Hunger Dogs, Road to Armagetto (most recently published in the deluxe second volume of Absolute Jack Kirby and for the first time in colour).

₂A reference to Orion’s utterance in the closing moments of New Gods # 11 (November, 1972. See my commentary).

₃Old Gods, New Gods, pg. 130.

₄In his comments on a blog by Daniel Best, Steve Bissette, who often visited  the Marvel offices in the late Seventies, observed  the mocking treatment of Kirby’s work by younger Marvel staff.

₅From Kirby’s endpaper comments in New Gods # 6 (Baxter series).

₆Ibid.

₇Ibid.

₈ Ibid.

₉Just before Darkseid has Orion killed, there is a moment when Orion stands over his father and indicates his intention to deal with him. My interpretation of this moment is that Orion would not have killed Darkseid if he had had the chance based on what Orion has said previously to Lightray when Lightray challenged him to not fight his father. Orion’s mission is to rescue his mother. During the fight with Darkseid, he even says if his mother can be freed, he will never return to Apokolips. There is no mention anywhere in the fight that he intends to kill Darkseid.

₁₀From the lyrics to Unforgettable Fire by U2 recorded between May and August 1984. U2 were channelling the atomic bombing of Japan when they wrote this song.

₁₁From Kirby’s endpaper comments in New Gods # 6 (Baxter series).

₁₂ Unforgettable Fire, op.cit.

₁₃ Ibid.

Research this issue -

Comics:

-According to Jack Kirby (Michael Hill, Lulu, 2021)

-Comics Journal # 134, February 1990 (Jack Kirby interview by Gary Groth)

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website

- Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

- Old Gods, New Gods (Jack Kirby Collector # 80: TwoMorrows)

Popular culture:

-Chronicle of the 20^th Century, Editor in Chief John Ross, Viking, 1999.

-Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson Murders (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, W.W. Norton, 1994)

-The Games People Play (Eric Berne, Penguin, 1964)

-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007)

-The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History (Penguin Random House, 2017)

-Uncovering the Sixties (Abe Peck, Pantheon, 1985) 

-Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War (Max Hastings, William Collins, 2019)

Michael Mead is a 58-year-old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult. 

As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50^th (or 40^th) anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he published a contextual commentary. This is his 47th of a projected 50 Fourth World commentaries. He will also do commentaries on  the graphic novel Hunger Dogs (1985), the Absolute Jack Kirby volume two story, ‘Road to Armagetto’ and a final commentary/overview of the Fourth World. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack Kirby, American Gladiator vs Snowman the Impersonator

The story of money exploiting talent, product trampling art, is as old as human nature. The storyteller creates the concept, the stories, the characters, the spirit, drawn from ancient traditions. The snowman brings the platform, the channel to the masses, convinces power to give them fame and fortune. In too many cases the snowman cannot deal with the storyteller’s abilities, cannot be satisfied with their own efforts and must steal the storyteller’s soul to feed a never ending need for undeserved recognition. This is the story of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee but also the journey of Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker¹ and Dan Carr and John Ferraro.

Dan Carr

Jack Kirby

In the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, American Gladiators (Parts One and Two), currently showing, two friends in 1970s Eerie, Pennsylvania decide to turn the idea of the creative, muscular, working class, intellectual, writer, iron worker and Native American, Apache Dan Carr, Jack Kirby with a blowtorch, into a mass market film or TV show, American Gladiators. The other friend, Elvis impersonator John Ferraro, who allegedly marries into money, brings the hustle, the desire for fame, the snowman showman needed to unlock the Hollywood doors that the hulking, iron worker superhero Carr, cannot.

John Ferraro

Stan Lee

The two of them dream about making it big. Carr, who created the idea of American Gladiators with events he ran with his iron worker pals circa 1970, imagines a comfortable future for him and his family. He signs a legal agreement which he believes shows he is at he very least co-creator of the property and deserves his fair share of any financial gains. Ferraro hustles for years and then sells the TV show, American Gladiators which makes millions of dollars and kills in the ratings. Carr, however, barely sees a cent and learns that Ferraro is saying he, not Carr, is the sole creator. Like his stage role Ferraro impersonates Carr, he and Lee pretend to be people they are not, with abilities they don’t have and claim all the credit.

The original 1989 Gladiators

The 1960s Marvel Bullpen

The American Gladiator’s show features a slew of characters with superhero names,  Atlas, Beast, Bronco, Crush, Cyclone, Sabre, Thunder, Viper, Nitro, Malibu. A bullpen of gladiator artists with a high school morality cover story, each happy, each loving each other and so glad to be here, watched by a  supercharged audience which marvels at the sensational sights on display. The gladiators who create life with their characters receive a relative pittance for their work, no royalties and when they’re unable to work, are replaced immediately by desperate wannabes, waiting in the cubicle next door. Funky Flashman’s ‘happy slaves, singing for the family’.²

Funky Flashman's (Stan Lee's) happy slaves

The American Gladiators story is Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s story writ large. Lee/Ferraro takes Kirby/Carr’s art, he takes his voice, he takes his money and he takes his soul. Both Kirby and Carr deal with incredibly strong anger, in Carr’s case almost murderously so, as the ESPN 30 for 30 show finally tracks him down and talks with him. Carr tells the story of how he is only stopped from doing the killing deed when Ferraro’s snowman eyes pick up the danger and Ferraro cuts Carr a little financial slack. Carr and Kirby’s rage is bodily. Carr’s art comes directly from his brainy brawn, Kirby’s art from the creative mind and artist’s arm. Kirby’s reaction to the end of the Fourth World in 1972 was that it was like losing a family member.³

Thunder in 1989

Ferraro’s bullpen react to their exploitation much as their Marvel Comics writer and artists counterparts have done. Some are still mesmerised by the Lee-like myth, grateful, others are ambivalent, some descend Wood-like into substance abuse (alcohol), or fade into obscurity like Bill Finger⁴ at least one is physically crippled and lived a life of intense pain because of an accident allegedly caused by the safety in the gladiator ring allegedly not being good enough. He died in 2021.⁵

Billy (Thunder) Smith 2021

While Ferraro, like Marvel/Disney/Lee eventually gives Carr/Kirby co-creator credit and some money, the evidence on display including the living witnesses, shows the massive creative imbalance between the two. Kirby created the characters, plotted, wrote, drew the comics stories and provided dialogue notes. Lee’s role was at best a sub-editor. Uncharitable commentators might call him a typist.

High priest Miracle vs human cash register

Carr came up with the American Gladiators concept. He created the original characters. He tested the stories real time on the Eerie fields. It has taken him years to finally get some of his due as unlike the Kirby/Lee story when the two were alive, he now has a legal agreement with Ferraro which presumably gives him the kind of money and recognition he deserves, to Ferraro’s credit. Yet it is decades removed from the late 1980s/early 1990s Good Times.

Our creative superheroes are always in the Fight. They are up against the power and might of great corporations, against an uncritical public that swallows anything their snowman tells them.  Kirby, Wood, Finger, Elvis, others, are no longer here but their story must still be told. We’re still in a war and the American Gladiator is still raging against Snowman the Impersonator.

Footnotes

¹In Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 film, Elvis, Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker is played by Tom Hanks. In the film, Parker refers to himself as ‘Snowman’ and Elvis’ performance to the fans as ‘letting it snow. It turns out the Colonel Tom Parker is not his real name, he impersonated him. Paker’s real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. He entered the United States illegally when he was 20 years old and the film notes he discouraged Elvis from touring overseas (Elvis never did) because he was afraid that he Parker, would not be able to return to the US.

In a Vanity Fair article, ‘What Evis Gets Right and Wrong About The Real Col Tom Parker’, writer Alanna Nash who interviewed Parker multiple times quotes Parker talking about Elvis and saying, ““I have to be honest. He was the success I always wanted.” Vanity Fair, 30 June, 2022.

²See my Jack Kirby Fourth World commentary on Mister Miracle # 6,  ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again?’

³In April 1972, Kirby has just been told about the end of his own Fourth World empire, forsaken by National/DC publisher Carmine Infantino. In the words of Mark Evanier, the King, ‘…was grey and his voice had the solemn tremor of someone struggling to remain strong while announcing that a loved one had died.’ See Jack Kirby Collector # 80, pg. 114.

⁴Wally Wood suffered from a medical condition that left him with migraines. He was also mistreated and denied full creative credit for his contribution to Daredevil by Stan Lee. Wood drank heavily prior to a stroke in 1978. Comics Journal writer Bhob Stewart noted he looked a decade older than he was. See The Comics Journal # 70, ‘Memories of Wally Wood, There Are Good Guys and Bad Guys’ pgs 50 -67.

Bill Finger died in 1974 and official credit for his creative role in Batman only came posthumously. Bob Kane took Finger’s credit due to his shaky sense of personal and professional worth but also for business reasons, echoing the establishment of Stan Lee as sole creator of Marvel’s characters prior to the sale of Marvel by Martin Goodman to Perfect Film and Chemical in 1968. From The Comics Journal Jerry Robinson interview:

GROTH: In an essay about Finger, Schwartz wrote,

“Unfortunately, Bob was unable to give Bill the credit he deserved, not only because of his own shaky sense of personal and professional worth, but because of the legal tie-up his shrewd and protective father arranged at a time when DC was in delicate negotiations with McClure Syndicate they could not afford to have anyone rocking the boat. This legal tie-up gave Bob unique rights to Batman even though it was Bill who supplied the heart and soul of the idea that somehow also managed to turn Bob’s amateurish and distorted drawing into an advantage.’’

⁵William ‘Billy’ Smith, who played Thunder, died in August 2021. In 1992, Smith was playing the game “Hang Tough,” where he battled another gladiator while hanging from gymnastic rings. He fell onto safety mats that he alleges were not properly blown up because the show’s inflation machine had broke and leaf blowers had been ineffectually used in “a last ditch effort. He suffered seven herniated disks in his back as a result.

“Today, I’m in a lot of pain and I will be forever,” Smith says in the series. At the time he was interviewed, he required a specialized walker. “I have a lot of regrets … I would do most of my life over again.”

Smith also says he became addicted to pain medications to cope with the show’s toll.

See the New York Post article

Research this issue -

TV

-ESPN 30 for 30 American Gladiators Parts One and Two

Film

-Elvis (2022) by Baz Luhrmann

Comics

-Mister Miracle # 6, February 1972 (published 11 Novemver, 1971)

-Occasional Murmurrings, 11 November, 2021

-The Comics Journal # 70, January 1982

Media, 

-New York Post, May 30, 2023

-Vanity Fair, 30 June, 2022

Last boy, lost boy, never alone

 

Kamandi # 1 (November, 1972), was published 50 years ago today, 29 August, 1972. National/DC lost the Planet of the Apes film adaptation rights to Marvel and in its place, Jack Kirby created Kamandi which both evokes the film and also provides something wholly original. 

It''s difficult to look at the cover and and not see it as a metaphorical comment on our own world, our own times, the Last Boy on Earth, paddles away from a once great democracy destroyed by unstoppable currents, freedom swamped. After the Great Disaster, "...a natural disaster linked with radiation. The people in the bunkers lived out their lives and died dreaming of a day or return--the radiation would be gone--and the world they left would be waiting."

The importance of actively preserving what is best about ourselves together, not becoming complacent and watching our differences destroy us. 

Kamandi is an ingenue whose eyes are forcibly opened but who perseveres in what he believes: "He realizes now that the world known to the people of the bunkers has undergone radical changes--or no longer exists--. There are vast differences between the things Kamand's been taught--and what he now sees."

The Last Boy on Earth doesn't want to be alone. "Man is down but he is not out. Kamandi can keep going now...he has the purpose to live...."I'm not alone. I'm not alone." Kamandi does not have all the answers by himself. He needs others.

As always, Kirby’s work can be read purely for the adventure, for the fantastic worlds, for the action but there is a deeper heart behind his work which 'the harder he presses, the brighter he glows.'

Let them burn their eyes, watch me move

The Vietnam draft is over¹, the last US troops have left the fight², Jack Kirby seems to be on the verge of returning to Marvel³, is the Fourth World finished as well and is everything lost? In New Gods # 11 (November, 1972), published 50 years ago today, 17 August, 1972, the battle between the righteous anger of New Genesis and the chaotic rage of Apokolips seems to have only one winner, death is coming for both, death is coming for everything.

The Fourth World’s last 1970s entry was for readers at the time the last Fourth World comic, a blow even more savage if they’d had no access to the fan press and simply picked up the comic off the newsstand for there was no mention of The End in letter columns. Somehow  Kirby won’t end with an ending, he wants to go out in full flight, his creative drive is organic, last moment, one fevered final combination of word, picture, spirit, drawn from infinite combinations.

Not for him, long, tendentious plans, ordered steps, cold examination. His comics burst forth from his imagination like hot lava, incinerating the lesser-rans in his wake. Kirby is the Brando of comics, the comics Godfather⁴, no scripts, no lines, no practice, what I feel now, here, in this moment, on these pages, that is my story. I’m that good.

The story of the fight between Orion and Kalibak, who we learn are half-brothers, is a dress rehearsal for the fight to come, son vs father, Orion vs Darkseid. Against the real-world background of the proxy Cold War between the ‘good guys’, the US/South Vietnam and the ‘bad guys’, Russia/China/North Vietnam, Orion is the warrior foot soldier, the unbreakable, unstoppable force for the good Empire, Kalibak, the caveman, insidious, grim-jawed engine of destruction, for the bad.

Commissioner Kiernan, like the contemporaneous United Nations Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim⁵, urges both sides to seek peace but is out of luck with the Apokoliptian bruiser. Against the reader desire to see Orion and Kalibak rip each other to pieces, is a feeling of hope that they may not. That the peace that at least New Genesis preaches may be real, may be here, in the world outside the pages.

The tension between winning through violence and prevailing through peace is personified in the two characters, the tunnel-visioned, ‘witless’ Orion and the brainer, quieter, ‘wordy’ Lightray. They represent the two halves of Sixties youth, the solider on the ground in Vietnam, the protestor on the streets at home. 

As Darkseid’s touching devotion to his son Orion and subsequent revelations play out about his other son Kalibak, the Black Racer, black power on skiis⁶, returns to play his part in the ultimate drama. The broken black man, symbol of years of subjugation and racism, who rises up like off his crutches to become ‘death on the wing,’ to become an equal and in charge of his own destiny.

Kirby gathers all the players together on his comics stage. Lightray is his warm-up act, Kalibak deals to the ‘callow little killer’ like the novice he is, a professional murderer literally wiping the floor with an idealistic amateur. The main act is always going to be Orion vs Kalibak. Orion is surprised by Kalibak’s extra power as he brings the house down on the formerly invincible resident of New Genesis, ‘You’ll never rise again when I bury you under tons of rubble.’ It feels like an end of Empire moment, like the helicopters falling off the side of US naval ships in 1975, as Orion suffers from the souped-up demon, power ‘given Kalibak by an ally.’

It turns out that this ally is a traitor to Darkseid. His right hand of evil, Desaad. He who lives to engineer the sufferings of others and watch them writhe in pain for Desaad’s own orgasmic pleasure. Desadd, after the Marquis, is like an anonymous keyboard warrior troll, assuming multiple identities in his quest to feed off unhappiness and feel justified by disintegration, distress. Desaad is one of Kirby’s most evil characters because his kind is so visible then and now, because the very emotions he consumes are feelings he does not have himself. Desaad has no sadness, no pain, no hope, only the grasping derision of those who take refuge in the amorality of the damned and then feel superior.

Darkseid makes short work of his former disciple and then it is Kaliabk’s turn to be surprised by the resurrected Orion. ‘Orion, you’re still alive!’ ‘…still alive you bearded carrion! And still intent on ending our rivalry!’  The battle reaches a crescendo and at its zenith is when the Angel of Death appears. Black Racer chooses his target, will it be Orion, will it be Kalibak? The blacked-out impact of the ‘fierce wind’ of the Racer in the last cliffhanger panel before you turn the page for a moment leads the reader to think it is Orion but in relief we learn it is Kalibak.

Here, on his last Fourth World page as far as he knew then, Kirby does not farewell the reader, there is no editorial, no aside, no easy resolution of the story. He leaves you right in the middle of the greater epic, with a prophecy that when Orion fights Darkseid, ‘the war will end’. Orion has answered the diplomat Kiernan’s question, one which the reader after eight long years of a war they could have been called up to fight in Vietnam⁷, must have been asking themselves, ‘How will we end this war?’

Kirby’s final message to the reader isn’t one of defeat, of death, it is one of defiance. It isn’t over, there is more, there is hope, the War will end. Kirby’s story still burns ‘with the ultimate ferocity’ in his own mind, in his own heart. Fifty years later we continue to talk about what could have been. For Kirby there was no end, only a new beginning.

‘And if it's bad
Don't let it get you down, you can take it
And if it hurts
Don't let them see you cry, you can make it

Hold your head up
Hold your head up
Hold your head up
Hold your head up

And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don't let it change a thing that you're doing’

Hold Your Head Up by Argent (number # 8 in the Billboard Top 100, in the week New Gods # 11 hit the stands).

¹See Politico, this day in politics, 28 June, 1972 . ‘Early on, Nixon saw ending the draft as an effective political means to undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement. He believed that youths from affluent homes would lose interest in protesting the war once their own chance of having to fight there was gone. 

²The Third Battalion of the 21^st Infantry, the last America ground combat unit in South Vietnam, left the country on 11 August, 1972. See Chronicle of the 20^th Century, Editor in Chief John Ross, Viking, 1999. Pg.1049.

³The September, 1972, issue of Rockets Blast Comic Collector # 94, announced that Kirby was leaving DC and going back to Marvel. RBCC said the agreement had been made on 23 August, 1972, just days after the 18-21 August, 1972 San Diego Comic Convention where Kirby would have had ‘ample opportunity’ to meet then Marvel editor in chief, Roy Thomas. As referenced in Jack Kirby Collector # 80, ‘Old Gods and New’, pg. 120.

⁴The Godfather film, starring Marlon Brando, premiered on 14 March, 1972. Brando was infamous for not learning his lines. See The Offer, episode seven, Paramount+.

⁵See the United Nations Archives and Management Section, Secretary-General’s consultations and offers of good offices, Vietnam on the UN website.

⁶See my commentary on New Gods # 3 (July, 1971), ‘Black Power goes skiing’.

⁷US President Lyndon Johnson committed the first US ground troops to Vietnam on 8 March, 1965. During that year, the US military drafted 230,991 young men under the ‘peacetime draft’ with the legal basis provided by the Selective Training and Service Act, 1940. The US never formally declared war on North Vietnam. On 1 December, 1969, the first draft lottery since 1942 began but college deferments were kept intact. President Nixon announced no new draftees would not have to go to Vietnam on 28 June, 1972. Nixon ended the draft itself on 1 January, 1973 but by then the Vietnam War was almost over. See Resistance and Revolution, the anti-Vietnam Movement at the University of Michigan, 1965-72.

Research this issue -

Comics:

-According to Jack Kirby (Michael Hill, Lulu, 2021)

-Comics Journal # 134, February 1990 (Jack Kirby interview by Gary Groth)

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website

-The indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

-The equally indispensable Old Gods, New Gods (Jack Kirby Collector # 80: TwoMorrows)

Popular culture:

-Chronicle of the 20^th Century, Editor in Chief John Ross, Viking, 1999.

-Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson Murders (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, W.W. Norton, 1994)

- Politico, this day in politics, 28 June, 1972

- Resistance and Revolution,The Anti-Vietnam Movement at the University of Michigan, 1965-72 website

The Games People Play (Eric Berne, Penguin, 1964)

-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007)

-The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History (Penguin Random House, 2017)

-Uncovering the Sixties (Abe Peck, Pantheon, 1985) 

-Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War (Max Hastings, William Collins, 2019)

Michael Mead is a 56-year-old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult. 

As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he published a contextual commentary. This is his 46th of 46 Fourth World commentaries (the last one….for now…) He may also do commentaries on the 1984 New Gods # 6, the graphic novel Hunger Dogs, the Absolute Jack Kirby volume two story and a final commentary/overview of the Fourth World. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!