Won't Get Fooled Again?

Jack Kirby’s revolution wasn’t just about creating a new world for himself at National/DC, it was also about exposing the false paradise of Marvel. Liberated from the fold, Kirby, like a comics version of Abbie Hoffman, quit the Movement¹, he dropped out of ringmaster Stan Lee’s faux counter-cultural circus and stopped running. In Mister Miracle # 6 (February, 1972), published 50 years ago today, 11 November, 1971, Kirby takes his fighting to the streets in a barely disguised personal attack on Stan Lee and what Kirby thinks he represents, commerce over creativity, dogma over art.

Kirby’s attack on Lee as Funky Flashman (with a negative nod to Roy Thomas as Houseroy) is visceral right from the splash page get go. Kirby’s narrator characterises Funky (Lee) as ‘…the driven little man who dreams of having it all—the opportunistic spoiler without character or values, who preys on all things like a cannibal!’ Kirby’s stories are not just pencil and ink, they are his creative flesh. He gives part of his own body when he makes comics. Lee cannibalises Kirby’s work by falsely claiming that he, Lee, equally co-created the characters and the content. It’s like Lee is ripping off Kirby’s arms and legs. There is a violence behind Funky’s flash (as his treatment of poor Houseroy shows).

This post war, post Marvel exit attack, the vehemence of it, is not simply because of Kirby’s experience of the ‘transparent second-rater’, the mockingbird copier Lee, it is the final explosion of more than 30 years of hoping for something, hoping something will be better, that promises will be kept, only to find that you were fooled again. Disputes over ownership and recompense for Captain America in the 1940s, cast out of National/DC in the late 50s during the Jack Schiff lawsuit², now disrespected at Marvel in the 60s. ‘This has got to stop! I won’t stand for others being harmed on my account! It’s time I stopped running! It’s time I stood my ground,’ Kirby’s avatar Scott Free speaks his truth.

Part of standing your ground is undermining the ground of others. Lee, for all his shortcomings as a creative, as a writer, was a brilliant marketer. There would be no Marvel without Lee, just as there would be no characters or stories without Kirby, Ditko, Wood et al. The rollicking House of Ideas myth that Lee created was a piece of huckster magic. It engaged readers of all ages, it was fueled by amazing artist-driven and artist-written stories, it became a pop-culture phenomenon and obliterated National/DC from the creative landscape, even if it took until the early 1970s to eclipse them in sales³. To Kirby though, it was a house built on sand.

After a meeting with Mister Miracle, who has engaged him to monetise his miracle show on the road, a ringmaster for a wizard, much as Kirby needed Lee to market his stories, Funky takes Scott Free’s motherbox and inadvertently draws to him the Four Women of the Apokolips who have been after Big Barda, Mad Harriet, Stompa, the lascivious Lashina in bondage gear no less and Dessaad’s sister, Burnadeth, no surprises about what she wants to do.

Funky survives their attentions by throwing Houseroy into the line of fire and Kirby, as if predicting Lee’s departure from writing for Marvel only a few months later in early 1972,  has Funky walking off into a new future behind a chaotic ‘sunset’, his Mockingbird/Marvel estate in ruins: ‘There it goes. –Everything—up in flames! The Mockingbird estate—its happy memories. Mint juleps. Cotillions. Happy slaves singing for the family.’

Behind the bullpen bulletin bumpf, the zappy, clappy patter, lay much unhappiness as Kirby, Ditko, Wood et al largely created the comics but received no proper reward, no proper public acknowledgement, no royalties, no ownership and nowhere near the level of creative freedom they desired, ‘happy’ slaves. Like Pete Townsend’s experience with a commune near his West London home⁴, Kirby doesn’t want to get fooled again and he doesn’t want us to be either.

The Who sang: ‘And the parting on the left, is now parting on the right and the beards have all grown longer overnight.’ Peter Doggett says the song was a ‘scream against those who were telling the Who, and the kids, how to feel and what to do.’ The Who’s role was not to provide false hope but to reflect the negativity felt by ‘the kids about the fight for power which is being waged in their name, but not on their terms.’⁵

Bullpen bulletin from April 1967

We want to believe that Lee and Kirby were always fast friends, that the Bullpen was a wild, raucous pot-pourri of creative extravaganza. That all elements of the Revolution were free but if we had known at the time how the creative people were being exploited, how happy would we have been? Suffocating in a seemingly escape-proof glass bowl yet their struggles were still unseen, behind the ringmaster’s curtain.

Kirby’s satire of Lee is vicious at times and naturally unbalanced, you could well argue that he should have risen above it. Kirby’s purpose though is not simply revenge, it’s getting his due. Like Townsend, he wants his art to triumph over commerce.  He wants us to see the real division of labour, the real balance of creativity. Creativity is earned with spirit and talent, not bought with showmanship. Kirby/Scott Free’s eyes are those of a high priest, Funky’s/Lee's orbs ping with dollar signs.

With the Fourth World, as writer, artist, editor, given his head by Infantino, Kirby is the freest in his career, despite the corporate ownership of his characters. His comics at their best, like Townsend’s songs on Who’s Next, ‘…achieve a liberation of creativity, openness, awareness and spirituality.’ ⁶ Kirby wanted to break down the barriers between artist and audience, he wanted us to see ourselves in his characters, care about things beyond the surface action.

For a time Kirby’s revolution carries all before it, his Fourth World comics in late 1971/early 1972 are the apex of his National/DC achievements, ‘smiling and grinning at the change all around.’ Yet just as Lee is exiting Marvel as a writer and becoming publisher, Carmine Infantino tells Kirby that the Fourth World is being cancelled⁷. The Revolution betrays its believers. ‘Yeah, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’

Even Scott Free couldn’t escape that trap.

‘We'll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

Yeah
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss’

(Won’t Get Fooled Again, released as a single on 25 June, 1971 from the album, Who’s Next, released on 14 August, 1971)

¹Yippie founder Abbie Hoffman dropped out’ of the Movement to End the War in Vietnam, writing a 1971 essay, ‘I Quit the Movement’, complaining that he had been exploited by those who saw him as a supplier of money and energy. Doggett pg. 448.

²As outlined in Jack Kirby Collector # 80, ‘Old Gods, New Gods’, April, 2021, pg. 26.

³Marvel overtook National/DC in overall sales in 1972. Thanks to Bob Beerbohm for the information:).

⁴Townsend like Dylan was feeling the pressure to be a spokesperson for a counter-cultural movement when his mission, like Dylan was to be an artist first. He had an uneasy experience with a commune near his West London home that coloured his opinions and took this personal experience with him when he wrote ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ Doggett pg. 442-43

⁵Ibid.

⁶Doggett, pg. 441.

⁷ Stan Lee stops writing comics and becomes Marvel's publisher in March 1972, the same month Carmine Infantino tells Kirby the New Gods and The Forever People will be canceled and that Mister Miracle 'must shift away from the New Gods oeuvre.' Stuf' Said pg. 112.

Research this article:

Comics:

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

-Jack Kirby Collector # 5, May 1995 and # 8, January 1996

-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 29th of a projected 48 Fourth World commentaries. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!