Feel the pain, heal the wound, live again

‘I can think of younger days when living for my life

Was everything a man could want to do
I could never see tomorrow
But I was never told about the sorrows

And, how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.’

(How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, Bee Gees, 1971)¹

Sonny Sumo sees the wounds that no else sees because he has lived the life of a Samurai warrior, he has seen the signs, he knows what to look for, he sees past the surface and deep into the body, mind, soul.  His ritual of ‘wound rejection’ is not just about physical healing, it is about transcending the emotional damage to the spirit. 

Aided by the Motherbox, Sonny is the man to mend the broken hearts of the Forever People, to restore the youthful hippie avatars to life, to lift the non-violent visitors from New Genesis from sorrow to winning with kindness, in Forever People # 5 (November, 1971), published 50 years ago today, 3 August, 1971.

Stuck in Desaad’s ‘Happyland’ since last issue, they writhe in tailored torment, each torture designed by Desaad to drive at the particular pain of Mark Moonrider, Big Bear, Beautiful Dreamer, Serifan and Vykin the Black. Desaad loves pain, like Charles Manson he gets off on watching the vulnerable suffer.² The intensity of his enjoyment of fear is akin to an orgasm and it distorts his face in half-human pleasure.

Desaad, like the believer in Helter Skelter and his inspiration, the leader of the Process/The Church of the Final Judgement, Robert de Grimstone (Robert Moore), surgically dismantles his target’s personalities. He looks for weak points, for people who are down or believe the best in others. Desaad and his twisted real-world counterparts deliver them the worst. Like all bullies their inability  to deal with their own pain inspires them to inflict it on others through fear:

“Fear is beneficial…Fear is the catalyst of action. It is the energiser, the weapon built into the game in the beginning, enabling a being to create an effect upon himself, to spur himself on to new heights and to brush aside the bitterness of failure.”³

Desaad

Charles Manson

Robert de Grimstone/Robert Moore

The threat posed by someone genuinely happy fills Desaad with fear because he has long since stopped believing in it. ‘Happyland’ is his response, false façade and the reality he embraces inside, both in himself and in his torture chambers. Happiness is a Big Lie and his job is to undermine each of the Forever People by taking away their greatest strength, so they admit it.

Mark Moonrider struggles to escape his glass cage, the leader of the Forever People exposed as a skeleton, no flesh on his bones, no substance to his leadership as the theme park cruisers literally see through him. Sonny Sumo sees through the Looking Glass and smashes the perceptions of those watching to reveal the true self.

Big Bear, the strongest of the Forever People is made weak by constant hammering shots to the body. Sumo rips off the fourth world wall and the audience sees the real person behind it. 

Beautiful Dreamer, the serene beauty who brought peace to all, is made afraid of all by the monsters in her constant nightmares. Sonny and Motherbox give her sight and her smile returns.

Serifan the child, the youngest, most vulnerable of the Forever People must constantly kick a lever or his friend Vykin the Black will die and Serifan will be alone and responsible. Motherbox frees the enslaved black Vykin from his bonds and both are again, free.

Broken hearts mended, sorrow lifted, wounds healed and a successful battle with Desaad’s ‘faithful’. Kirby then comes with the revelation: Sonny Sumo knows the anti-life equation! ‘The very opposite of living….absolute control over you…without independent will.’  That makes him Darkseid’s target and the Forever People join forces with him to stop the Master of Apokolips and just live their way.

The issue closes with a stunning, self-aware remark from Darkseid who almost evokes sympathy from the reader. Responding to seeing Sumo has the anti-life equation and to the Forever People’s remarks, he says  ‘…I must admit they have a point. We must be what we are. And of course – that’s the pity of it. It’s the very core of our conflict. To fulfil ourselves, we must kill them!’ Darkseid’s evil and the Forever People’s goodness seems pre-destined. 

Darkseid is a broken man who will never be mended. The Forever People will see tomorrow, marked by pain and wound but believing always, in each other, living again.

¹The Bee Gees song, ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’  from the album ‘Trafalgar’ was their first US number #1 hit, making the mark in the same week as Forever People # 5 was published.

²Charles Manson rarely participated in his followers’ activities. He was a voyeur who liked to direct orgies, drug-taking, violence and then watch. Manson organised the Tate-La Bianca murders in August 1969 but was not present. His followers killed for him.

³As quoted in Bugliosi, pg. 612, from a special issue of The Process magazine. Bugliosi interviewed Manson after his conviction on June 14, 1971 and asked him directly about the connection to the Process/Church of the Final Judgement. It followed an earlier conversation during the Tate-LaBianca trial where Manson denied knowing de Grimston/Moore. Two of deGrimston’s followers visited Bugliosi and assured him Manson and de Grimston had never met. They had earlier visited Manson in jail. The Process’1967 HQ in San Francisco, was only two blocks from where Manson lived after leaving jail in the same year (pg. 611). The Process and Manson’s beliefs were similar and Bugliosi concluded Manson heavily borrowed’  from de Grimston. This is the same conclusion reached by the recent Sons of Sam Netflix series on David Berkowitz et al who were influenced by the Process.

 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)

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

Michael Mead is a 55-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. This is his 21st Fourth World 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!