Give me a reason to believe, forever

Every picture tells a story. Jack Kirby’s multi-level Fourth World epic continues to crack open the American dream and make our heads explode in Forever People # 6 (January, 1972), published 50 years ago today, 5 October, 1971. Kirby’s surface tale of Mark Moonrider, Vykin, Big Bear, Beautiful Dreamer and Serifan fighting Darkseid and his Omega effect, a battle between innocent hippie avatars and overpowering strategic evil is exciting enough but it’s the picture behind the story that endures.

Kirby’s tale continues his exposé of the two Americas he began in Forever People # 4, between the State that wants its youth to just play a game of pretend you don’t see what is really happening and accept the lies that we told your parents and the counter-culture kids who want to blow it all up by firing ‘…a few well-placed shots (that) will start a chain of disruption that can’t be stopped.’

Happyland’s destruction is like Muhammad Ali’s 1974 victory over George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle¹, the Movement absorbed blow after blow, endured and then applied the final little touches as a previously dominant opponent collapsed under their own weight, punched out and out of gas, defeated more by themselves, by their own anxiety and the weight of unsustainable beliefs  than by the blows of an underrated adversary.

As Forever People # 6 hit the stands, the news was full of the ‘bitter lessons of Attica’, a prison riot in which 35 people died², most of them Black, the sham ‘democratic’ election of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu who was the only candidate, the failure of Vietnamisation and the sinking morale of a reduced force of US soldiers who no longer believed they were ‘fighting for democracy.’³ Time Magazine said Attica, was like ‘…Kent State, Jackson State, My Lai and other traumatic events that have shaken the American conscience and incited the searing controversy over the application of force.’⁴

Kirby’s characters play out the conflict between what society said it stood for and what it actually did. One on side is Glorious Godfrey and his Justifiers, dressed like a medieval King with his faceless Crusaders, he is the evil chameleon Messiah, alternately angelic-faced destroyer and cynical manipulator, someone who teaches his followers a belief in anti-life, that  makes‘…all justifiable. Belief in you, Glorious Godfrey, makes us “Justifiers”’, echoing Bugliosi’s description of Charles Manson: ‘He taught his followers a completely amoral philosophy, which provided complete justification for their acts. If everything is right, then nothing can be wrong’.⁵

The most unnerving part of Godfrey’s philosophy is his knowledge of the human condition. Asked about his secret to get his minions doing what he wants, is it the helmet, the uniforms, the creed, Godfrey gives an answer straight out of the fascist playbook: ‘Earthmen are given all these things at birth. I merely justify their readiness to use them. That’s why they love me.’ We’re just looking for the Leader to give us permission to act out our selfish instincts.

Matched against the worst of us, is the best of us. The Forever People and Sonny Sumo use the anti-life equation against Desaad’s warriors and then destroy Happyland, Kingdom of the Damned. When what is said cannot be reconciled with what is done, it must be destroyed to be reborn.

The image of the back of the Humpty Dumpty Nixon lookalike character’s head being blown off is like a Sixties metaphor. We simply cannot go on like this. This madness must stop. 1971 was the year of the Pentagon papers that lifted the lid on the lies told to the American people by successive Democratic and Republican administrations about Vietnam, the same year Nixon installed the tapes system in the White House⁶ that led to his downfall three years later, ‘…death rushes through a thousand collapsing circuits—Happyland’s façade begins to crumble.’

As in past issues, the Forever People can deal with Apokolips’ thugs but they cannot prevail against Darkseid’s power. His Omega effect is truly terrifying and he erases all but one of the Forever People from the Earth. The scenes of Vykin, Sonny Sumo, Big Bear, Beautiful Dreamer and Mark Moonrider (off camera) getting wiped out really set my childhood heart pounding. 

Darkseid leaves the youngest, Serifan alive, because he has dealt with the threat. His evil is strategic, he has long term goals for which he must conserve his energy. He has no time for the short-term tactical mayhem proposed by his lesser subordinates.

As the youngest, Serifan is a substitute for the younger, child reader. The weakest, the one whose greatest fear is being alone because he needs his other, older, friends to help him.

Even so, in a crisis, Serifan shows his resourcefulness and manages to escape to the sanctuary of the Super-Cycle, a boy and his living toy are all that is left to stand up to gathering evil: ‘I’m Serifan. And we two are all that is left of our unit. Just we two!’

When all looks lost, we know it’s not over. We still have reason to believe.

‘If I listened long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing that you lied
Straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe.’

(Reason to Believe by Rod Stewart from his 1971 album, Every Picture Tells A Story. The album was number # 1 on the US Billboard top 200 charts in the week Forever People # 6 was released. The single from the album , Maggie May/Reason to Believe, was number # 1 on the US Billboard top 100 in the same week).

¹Ali beat Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo)  on October 30^th, 1974 for the heavyweight championship, absorbing many blows, rope-a-dope style before unleashing a flurry of punches in the eighth round. After a hard right to Foreman’s face, Ali declined to send Foreman to the floor with another punch, instead opting to watch him spin semi-balletically to the canvas in a final piece of artistic triumph over Foreman’s brawn. On arrival in Zaire, Ali had cultivated a strong relationship with the local people while Foreman with his German Shepherd dog and garish clothing was perceived as Belgian type colonial oppressor. See the classic, 1996 documentary film, When We Were Kings.

²Time Magazine, September 27, 1971, pgs. 12-13

³Hastings pgs. 505-517

⁴Time Magazine, pg. 13

⁵ Bugliosi, pg.629

⁶The Nixon administration installed the tapes system in February, 1971 in the Oval Office, including in Nixon’s desk.

Comics:

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

-Jack Kirby Collector # 5, May 1995

-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:

-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, September 27, 1971

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

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

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 26th of a projected 48 Fourth World commentaries (I’m more than halfway!:). Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!