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!