I am somebody

In Jimmy Olsen # 148 (April, 1972), published 50 years ago today, it’s the cover that sends the strongest message. This issue is the last of Jack Kirby’s revisioning of Superman’s previously foppish, carrot head schoolboy. Jimmy and the Newsboys are in army green, in a cage being lifted away by an unseen force and not even Superman looks like he can save them. Prisoners in the Fourth World version of the Hanoi Hilton¹, powerless Sixties youth drafted into a war they don’t believe in, Carmine Infantino’s unseen hand yanking away Kirby’s creative dreams.

Over the Jimmy run (#133 to # 148, except for a #140 reprint), Jack Kirby used the title, his first at National/DC after leaving Marvel, to escape his own self-imposed strictures of telling the Big Story (in New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle). It allowed him to run the full gamut of counter-cultural symbolism, to farce, to boy’s own adventure, to loneliness and the human condition. His Jimmy Olsen comics have been overlooked and derided by many fans because they simply haven’t looked closely enough at the content (before writing these commentaries I would have included myself in their number).

Apart from the Fourth World introduction of Darkseid in # 134, Jimmy Olsen has been a wild free-for-all with the only real constant being the relationship between Superman and Jimmy. It’s hard to remember now but in 1970 Jimmy was a sychophant, a dependent dweeb, a teenager continually bailed out by Uncle Supes.

Kirby made Jimmy independent, he separated Jimmy from Superman, he made Jimmy a counter-cultural Youth symbol for his readers and gave the big red S the role of the State. The conflict between the two characters was generational, it was the fight his readers were having with their parents (perhaps in the case of Jimmy, the fight his readers’ older brothers and sisters were having, Jimmy Olsen always seemed aimed at younger readers).

The King addressed the origin of generational conflict, Vietnam. His character Angry Charlie (# 145) bursts out of a prison door and grabs youth wearing army of the street while their friends can do nothing to stop him. The cover of # 148 echoes the cover of # 145. While all the news in the early part of 1972 was about President Nixon’s efforts to end the war, the battles in Vietnam that year leading up to ‘peace’ were some of the biggest of the War.

The villain of the issue # 148 is Victor Volcanum who bears some physical resemblance to Ho Chi Minh, receding hair, moustache and goatee-like beard. Volcanum is a wholly unconvincing villain and Superman, Jimmy and the Newsboys deal with him in summary fashion. Superman frees them from the cage on the cover, ‘…liberty and justice for all!!’, they battle Volcanum’s robots and finally stop his spinning killer gondola, bringing with them a sleeping Angry Charlie. Almost devoid of Fourth World references, the last panel sees Jimmy, Superman and the boys return to Metropolis for a bath.

Jack Kirby dropped Jimmy Olsen due to the pressures of his other titles. His three Fourth World comics would soon be joined by Kamandi, the last boy on earth. At the time he wasn’t aware that National/DC publisher was about to end the Fourth World, citing low sales. His farewell to Jimmy Olsen follows his greatest achievement on the title, ‘A Superman in Supertown’ (# 147). Issue # 148 reads like a coda to all that is gone before. All the cultural and personal forces that drove his stories are ending, the counter-culture, the War, his own Fourth World carte blanche.

Jimmy’s immediate future is in stories like ‘Attack of the locust creatures’ as his independent persona, his Kirby Sunday punch is absorbed back into the mid -70s DC mush like counter-cultural kids attending business school. Just for a moment though, Kirby made Jimmy somebody. Kirby’s Jimmy was someone you could see yourself in, he was part of a world where younger voices mattered, where there was a new way to express who you were. Kirby took us, his character and himself to a better place. No one can take that away.

¹The Hanoi Hilton was the nickname captured American soldiers gave to Hỏa Lò Prison prison in Hanoi where they were held for years in terrible conditions.

 Research this article:

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:

-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)

-Time Magazine, January 17, 1972, January 24, 1972, January 31, 1972, February 7, 1972, February 14, 1972

-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 38^th of a projected 48 Fourth World commentaries (more than three quarters of the way there!). Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

 

 

Scars that heal sorrow

‘No, I can't forget this evening

Or your face as you were leaving
But I guess that's just the way the story goes
You always smile but in your eyes your sorrow shows
Yes, it shows…’

(Without You by Nilsson, February 1972)¹

Fortunate or damned? The opening words to New Gods # 8 (May, 1972) published 50 years ago today, 17 February, 1972 describe both Jack Kirby’s Fourth World and part of what he must have felt himself. At the apex of his art, Kirby had every reason to feel confident, fulfilled, yet only two months later, his creative world collapsed when publisher Carmine Infantino pulled the plug on the King’s new mythology for a new age.²

Kirby has spent so long at Marvel smiling without letting the sorrow show, Jolly Jack with no tears. So much time fighting ‘the wrath of the gods’ when ‘the chips are down’ at Timely in the 40s over Captain America, National in the 50s with Jack Schiff³ and finally watching a much lesser creative talent in Stan Lee drink in reflected glory like an alcoholic, one accolade was too many, 100 was never enough.⁴

Surely Kirby deserved more, surely he deserved to be fortunate, not damned, a man who ‘…chose the fire and the fury to become more than what they are…” In New Gods # 8 Kirby plays multiple characters as he channels his past, present and future, in the lead character and human, detective Daniel ‘Terrible’ Turpin and in the two young Gods, Orion and Lightray, in the battle against Orion’s half-brother Kalibak.

Turpin is the voice of age, the veteran Kirby proving he can still fire some shots, in the fight against the Apokoliptian King Kong Kalibak, who is ‘bringing the war home’ to Metropolis. It is his fight, no one else’s. Turpin rejects his younger protégé’ Matt Kiernan’s background role for him, ‘...but no thanks! That’s not the way I’d like t’see the book closed on Daniel Turpin….it’s my baby.’

According to Richard Kyle⁵, Kirby was concerned with regaining face at National/DC after feeling he had not received proper credit at Marvel. From the late 60s he was also up against the first wave of fans turned professional as National/DC and Marvel elevated Young Gods to replace older artists.⁶ As stogie stand-in, bowler-hatted Turpin, Kirby infuses the character with his determination, his courage, his belief in his own talent and his place at the table: “…and we’ll get the others too. This town—belongs—to us!”

Kirby’s dramas of the mind also play out in the fortunate Lightray and the damned Orion. The sequences involving the two characters are like a companion piece to New Gods # 5 where Kirby explored the idea of presenting one face to the world while hiding your true face, being forced to be someone you are not to survive and then discovering ugly truths about yourself.⁷ Jolly Jack in Bullpen Bulletins, Angry Jack to professionals he trusted.⁸

The distance between the two characters is like the two halves of Kirby’s experience, the death and terror he witnessed as a scout during World War Two, the hope of post-war peacetime and domestic life. Orion: “And so it is, with the romantic young, Lightray. Part fantasy, part truth—all comedy!” Lightray: “Not to them, Orion. It’s reality to them.’ Orion as crunchy, Archie Bunker curmudgeon, Lightray as kind, counter-cultural Youth. Both from the same creative voice, Kirby speaking to himself and readers at the same time.

Until now, Orion’s personal journey has been solitary. He has kept his own pain about his difference and only shared it with his opponents, such as Slig. His tremendous battle with Kalibak, aided by Lightray, is a fight of equals, a fight of brothers although they do not know it. In the signature moment of revelation, Orion shows his true face, for the second time in the Fourth World and it is a moment of recognition and defeat for Kalibak.

The relationship between Orion and Lightray changes after the battle when Lightray sees Orion’s face. Orion is angry, ashamed as Lightray sums up how things have gone: “Don’t hide the real issue, Lightray. You saw my true face!” Lightray defuses a moment that could have ended in conflict as he hands Orion his helmet: “I saw scars—both new and old—taken in the causes of New Genesis.”  Orion responds: “You’re a good friend, Lightray.”

Jack Kirby, who has new and old scars, taken in the cause of his art and life, in his pursuit of Teilhard de Jardin Noo Genesis/New Genesis⁹, the trip to the outer limits of imagination and beyond uses the reconciliation, the vulnerability, of his characters to help heal himself. He trusts another to let his sorrow show and becomes stronger for it. We will always be fortunate that he did.

¹‘Without You’ by Nilsson, topped Billboard’s charts in the week New Gods # 8 came out.

²See Jack Kirby Collector #80, pg. 114.

³As outlined in Jack Kirby Collector # 80, ‘Old Gods, New Gods’, April, 2021, pg. 26.

⁴Stan Lee was a brilliant marketer but the evidence in Michael Hill’s book shows that his creative, story contributions, were minimal. My thoughts are there would have been no Marvel without Lee but no stories without Kirby and the other artists.

⁵Graphic Story World editor Richard Kyle theorised that Kirby was conveying the theme of saving face in the Fourth World. Kirby felt he hadn’t received proper credit at Marvel and success at National/DC would regain face with the public. Jack Kirby Collector # 80, pg. 90.

⁶National/DC had begun replacing older writers and artists as early as 1968 after a failed writers’ attempt at forming a union to get greater employee benefits. See Comic Book Artist # 5, Summer 1999, pgs. 12-17.

⁷See my commentary on New Gods # 5, ‘Ugliness reveals its true face in beauty’

⁸Gil Kane’s remembrances from his 1986 UK Comic Art Convention interview, as referenced in Jack Kirby Collector # 80, pg.28.

⁹In his book, The Phenomenon of Man (published in English in 1959), Teilhard de Chardin explored a new consciousness, a ‘noosphere’, a new sphere, where the evolution of thought, the noosphere would be a new birth, a ‘noogenesis’, New Genesis. Kirby is on the human, everlasting journey of thought, freedom, creativity that we all add to with each breath and expand noogenesis.

Research this article:

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:

-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)

-Time Magazine, January 17, 1972, January 24, 1972, January 31, 1972, February 7, 1972, February 14, 1972

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

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

-Without You, single by Harry Nilsson, 1972

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 37^th of a projected 48 Fourth World commentaries (more than three quarters of the way there!). Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

 

 

 

Kirby's public dreams bring forth the hero within

By February 1972, Kirby’s time is up and he doesn’t know it. In just over two months, he will be led away in chains, like his counter-cultural Forever People, when publisher Carmine Infantino pulls the plug on the Fourth World.¹ Forever People # 8 (May, 1972), published 50 years ago today, 1 February, 1972, is like a fin de siècle moment, not only for the King but for what remains of the Movement. The early promise of a new mythology, the ‘public dreams’ of the greatest creator in comics and the yearning of Youth for a new society, meet defeat at roughly the same time.

Kirby and the kids had created new myths to survive hostile environments and separate themselves from the past. Kirby’s Fourth World was a response to the stifling, limited, personality cult of commercial Marvel Comics. Kirby wanted to be totally free to create his own material and receive full credit for it. He wanted the artistic and commercial rewards that should be his. His vision was a world of New Gods because he believed the world needed new symbols, new myths for the modern age.²

Time Magazine article on Joseph Campbell and 'The Need For New Myths', 17 January, 1972

Like Joseph Campell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, Kirby saw that the culture around him was ‘…going through an agony of reorientation,’³, the old myths, social, religious, cultural, were simply not sustaining or feeding the people. Kirby’s comics tell us so much about what he believed was important, they express his attitude ‘…toward life, death and the universe.’⁴ As with all mythology his words and pictures bring with them ‘a veiled explanation of the truth.’⁵

Kirby’s comics fulfil Campbell’s four functions of myth. They awaken a ‘…sense of awe, gratitude and ever rapture rather than fear…’,⁶ they offer readers ‘…a comprehensive, understandable image of the world around (them), roughly in accord with the best scientific knowledge of the time…’,⁷ his comics ‘….support the social order through rites and rituals that will impress and mould the young…’⁸ and finally, ‘…guide the individual, stage by stage, through the inevitable psychological crises of a useful life..’⁹

Kirby’s strongest connection in the Fourth World is with counter-cultural youth, the Sixties ‘chosen people’, expressed in its purest form in the Forever People. New Genesis’ supertowners actively build a world of friends, they are non-violent, they are kind and courageous, they reject utterly the warlike culture of those who seek power.

They combine the latest technology with a reverence for the spiritual authority of the Source, they respect age and difference and help each other manage the awesome power of their potential with the size of the challenge they face, not just against Darkseid but in their inevitably fraught transition to adulthood, a passage which seems to always be controlled by their elders.

Mark Moonrider, Vykin, Big Bear, Beautiful Dreamer, Serifan stand against the anti-life, the morally and creatively bankrupt adult Establishment just like their hippie counterparts. They seek to defeat Darkseid and Desaad as the two disguised cultists pursue the anti-life equation which they believe is present in the mind of Billion Dollar Bates, a kind of malevolent capitalist Howard Hughes presiding over a shadowy satanic Sect, perhaps a nod to the Manson/de Grimstone/Process cults of the time¹⁰and the increasing horror focus of popular culture.¹¹

Like the insane followers of Charles Manson creepy-crawling their way into the mansion of former occupant and major record producer Terry Melcher (who had declined to sign Manson to his record label) , the Sect storms the luxurious, gated, citadel of the privileged Billion Dollar Bates. The hooded, Red Skull-masked, hell-worshippers easily overpower Bates’ guards and then summon Bates himself, satanists summoning the Devil. 

Meanwhile Bates easily overcomes the Forever People after their encounter with Bates’ sentries as they are powerless  before his hypnotic gaze. Bates and the Sect then move to sacrifice the Forever People as part of a plan to rule the world but the Forever People prevail and rob Darkseid and Desaad of their anti-life prize in the bargain.

The progress of the plot is replete with Kirby’s characteristic revelations, the unveiling of truth. The King is always looking to expose the power behind the throne. His greatest villainous creation, Darkseid never settles for tactical evil, his eyes are always on the strategic prize, ‘Greatness does not come from killing the young. I’m willing to wait until they are grown.’

His power, like the power of the US government in 1972, is such that despite the challenge, the disruption to his goals, he can afford to wait it out and watch the youthful energy fade away, as they are absorbed into the State like their Flower Power real world counterparts: ‘You’re fading, Mark Moonrider…-- fading like ghosts.’ ‘Mark it’s true! W-we’re  “phasing out.” There is a desperation, an incomprehension that comes with the realisation that simply being Good sometimes isn’t enough against Evil. The Forever People’s voices are like a lament for the vanished Sixties.

Even this final revelation isn’t enough to quash the spirt of the Forever People. Their eyes are on a different prize. They know they have not been defeated. Their time is not quite up. They believe their world of friends will prevail against anti-life. Like all generations before them, they draw on the power of their own mythology, they dream out loud about what is possible, they call forth the inspiration of the past, they act forever, for good.

¹See Jack Kirby Collector # 80, pg. 114.

²See my commentary on New Gods # 1, ‘Kirby’s Life Equation: New Gods, No Limits.

³Time Magazine, 17 January, 1972, 'The Need For New Myths' pgs 50-51.

⁴Ibid.

⁵Ibid.

⁶Ibid.

⁷Ibid.

⁸Ibid.

⁹Ibid.

¹⁰See my commentary on Forever People # 5, ‘Feel the pain, heal the wound, live again.’

¹¹See Jack Kirby Collector # 80 pg. 110. Horror and mystery comics were selling well in 1972. Affadavit fraud created the misconception that Kirby's 4th World titles were selling poorly. So Infantino had Kirby conjure up The Demon and asked for Deadman to become a character in the New Gods. Comics, always late on the uptake, had followed the horror trend that film had set in 1968 with the abolition of the Hays Code. Film moved from censorship to the ratings system we know today. See NPR article.

Research this article:

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:

-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)

-Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 Years On, NPR, 8 August, 2008

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

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

-Time Magazine, January 17, 1972, January 24, 1972, January 31, 1972

-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 36^th 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!