Open your eyes: something bad really is going to happen

 At the very time DC readers were perceiving the relative sophistication of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World stories, Jimmy Olsen went in the opposite direction. Kirby began his world-building tenure at National with Jimmy Olsen # 133 (August, 1970). It was a literal smack in the face to everything we had known before, Jimmy’s character, his relationship with Superman.

Kirby’s first effort resonated with counter-cultural symbolism, it reflected the revolutionary times and the revolution in Kirby’s own creative life as he freed himself from supercilious Stan’s strictures at Marvel. By Jimmy Olsen # 138 (June 1971), published 50 years ago today, April 13th 1971, the parents have taken over the party and Jimmy as defiant, confrontational youth is replaced by an after-the-fact freckled pout face.

Jimmy Olsen was always aimed younger readers, the other Fourth World titles deal with much bigger subjects and themes, different audiences, different sets of  characters, the New Gods (the adults), Forever People (the youth) and Mister Miracle (the individual). Kirby’s tremendous efforts on the other three titles appear to not have left enough in the tank to challenge the reader in the same way.

Readers Ed Newsom and Karl Merris comment on the earlier Jimmy Olsen issues in the letter column for Jimmy Olsen # 138. 

They see Kirby’s sensitive treatment of hippy Hairies, they understand the Biblical allusions with Genesis/New Genesis as the beginning and the Apocalyptical/Apokolips as the end, from Revelation the final book of the Bible, the end of everything. 

If there is one redeeming feature about Jimmy Olsen # 138 that lifts it above a straightforward and admittedly rewarding fight between Superman and the DNAlien (s), it is Kirby’s continuing interest in the apocalypse, what he calls the ‘holacaust’, the ‘disaster’ and how it informs his work and reflects the times.

As Jacob Kurtzberg, a Jewish man, he fought the Nazis in World War II. It was literally life and death, for him, for his buddies, for his people, for the freedom of the Western allies against fascism and the fight to stop the Shoah/Holacaust against European Jews. To say Kirby must have felt the urgency of the fight would be an understatement. Either win or lose everything. There were no other choices. 

As the clock ticks down on the destruction of the Project’s atomic reactor which would result in a massive explosion, killing everybody and destroying Metropolis, you can’t help but lift your head outside the pages of the comic book and see corresponding levels of apocalyptic desperation in the Cold War world of 1971 and ask, like Marvin Gaye, ‘….what’s going on?’¹

In the weeks leading up to the publication of Jimmy Olsen # 138, the left-wing Weather Underground planted a bomb at the US Capitol which resulted in an explosion, Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty for 22 murders at My Lai, Charles Manson was sentenced to death, a toxic Vietnam war seemed to have no end in sight despite President Nixon’s promise to bring 100,000 troops home by Christmas, the inescapable fear for any male youth turning 18 was ever-present that they could be drafted to fight. 

A March 1971 Supreme Court decision took away the ‘just war’ defence for conscientious objectors.² You couldn’t be just against one war, you had to be against them all to avoid a Vietnam tour. A lot of older brothers of Jimmy Olsen readers would have had the very real fear that They Are Coming For Me.

Time Magazine, 22 March, 1971, pg. 52

The apocalypse can be personal, it can come from things you cannot control or it can be self-inflicted. The loss of freedom, loss of property in fire, flood, earthquake, a divorce, the loss of a loved one, the private and public feelings of isolation and disconnectedness as the COVID-19 pandemic stopped everything we knew, changed our safe assumptions about the world and how it worked. So many warnings and then Something Bad Really Did Happen.

Kirby’s comic book countdown to Doom is avoided by a super saviour’s saving grace. In a world like the one we live in, we’ve really got “…to find a way to bring some lovin’ here today…”³Whether it’s the impending apocalypse of environmental or viral/bacterial destruction or a more personal doom, the Apocalypse is a warning to change our ways. You only have so much time. There is a countdown, ‘evil never rests.’ Kirby’s call is always to open your eyes and see the world and yourself differently, don’t let others control you, don’t let big outside forces decide what you think, determine your future. Be your own Revelation. Never the End.

¹Marvin Gaye’s single, ‘What’s Going On’ was at number # 2 in the Billboard top 100 in the week of Jimmy Olsen # 138’s publication.

²In the third week of March, 1971, the US Supreme Court ruled eight to one that conscientious objection is an all-or-nothing proposition. It does not exempt those, however sincere, who object to some wars but not others.’ Time Magazine, 22 March, 1971, pg. 52.

³Lyrics from Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’.

Research this article:                                           

Comics:

-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).

Popular culture:

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

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

-Time Magazine, 22 March, 1971

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

Michael Mead is a 54-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 will publish a contextual commentary. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!