Dreams of hope fulfilled

‘Old man look at my life

I'm a lot like you were
Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were

Love lost, such a cost
Give me things that don't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you’

Old Man by Neil Young, 1972¹

‘I’m a dreamer. A visionary….I dream! I roam the universe…’ Jack Kirby’s Fourth World farewell issue of Mister Miracle, # 9 (August, 1972), published 50 years ago today, 11 May, 1972, is about the power of the imagination to create hope and release from suffering, to see beauty in darkness, transformation from decay, new life from death. In his just-in-time masterpiece, ‘Himon’, Kirby tells the tale of Scott Free’s escape from Apokolips as Carmine Infantino’s forces gather for a final end to the King’s world.

Kirby had planned to tell the story of Scott Free’s mentor, his deliverer at a later stage but like the ‘Armagetto’ sign at Darkseid’s evil factory, the writing was on the wall a month earlier², when Infantino told Jack the dream was over. So Kirby brought forward ‘Himon’, like a final stand at An Loc or Kontum³, before he was overrun.

Himon stands against Darkseid’s shadow and for the ‘lowlies’, the outcasts, the weak, those who seek to create a space of beauty and expression in a world of destruction. In Himon’s strength, perseverance, compassion, courage, vision, imagination, we see Kirby. Mister Miracle # 9 is as much about Scott Free’s own journey out of himself, from the abuse he suffered as a child, to become someone new, as it is Kirby’s commentary on his own career, what drives him, what he faced, how he overcame overwhelming odds and even when all was lost, how he kept pitching.

Darkseid’s minion ‘Wonderful Willik’, one of those insidious names given to ‘protectors’ of oppressive regimes, chases Himon on Apokolips because Darkseid fears him. Their first confrontation is inconclusive but it establishes Himon as a force, ‘Now the flames test you! Step in!’ If Himon is a saviour, he is no painty-waist. Like the hand of God, Himon reaches through a wall and beckons a young, bald, brainwashed Scott Free and takes him to join the other misfits Himon has rescued, along the way revealing his face which bears a certain resemblance to you-know-who.

Sitting around a table, Himon, like an indulgent father helps prepare Kreetin, Zep, Bravo, Weldun, Auralie to escape. These are the misfits, the comics geeks, the outliers, the artistic, the idealistic, the enthusiastic, the autistic, the brainy and in Kreetin, the misanthropic, the people that haven’t made it in the outside world and need some extra help, confidence to be themselves. They are comic reader stand-ins and together their qualities also represent the many parts of Scott Free.

Scott Free, the narcissistic little bully boy, the skinhead assassin, contemptuous of wisdom, weakness, beauty, others, grudgingly acknowledging the practical help Himon gives, while pouring contempt on his spirit. Yet his journey of transformation, in body, soul, mind, begins here amongst the lowlies, particularly through the silent Auralie, an Apokolips abuse victim like all the others, who still manages to ‘create visions that dance…Auralie’s thoughts are beautiful. She creates beauty. Imagine, -- doing this on a world like Apokolips!’

Kirby is not just talking to Scott, to Auralie, to the reader here, he is talking to himself. In the world of commercial comics, with its harsh, capitalist dictums, where others continually took credit for his work, took his proper financial rewards⁴, trampled on his Art, Kirby still creates, he takes a moment in chaos and bleakness to celebrate the work of a child, ‘You’re free to dance here…you won’t be punished—we’d like to watch you.’ With this issue, he gives a gift he knows is going to be taken away.

Himon is up against a culture of death, personified by Big Barda, a regime that is threatened by love, which shuts down beauty, which denies hope, closes off ‘other roads.’ Himon sacrifices himself to save the others, a saviour, he gives himself over to the mob, is betrayed by Kreetin/Judas and then put to death….but they cannot kill him.

Himon always escapes/resurrects and as he stands next to the Apokolpitian pharisees, they do not recognise him. Foreshadowing Scott Free’s story, Himon seems to agree with the cynical aside by one of the mob but his meaning is quite different: ‘…I’m not sure that thing is….Himon…that replicas can be made---faithful to every atom in our form.’ ‘You make a valid point, friend.’ Hope cannot be killed. It lives on in others.

In a stunning page and reveal, Himon meets the intriguing Metron who knows the whole story about what will happen to Scott. In a Michelangelo moment, the two reach out to each other, God to man, creator Himon to reader Metron: ‘The wonders I build are born in your brain. The roads I travel are opened by your massive perceptions.’ ‘Alas. The heart and brain of the visionary are eternally grounded here. I fostered Darkseid’s power. I must be there at its end!’ Himon/Kirby will stick it out to the end, create to the last moment because they believe in Scott/the reader: ‘…I can teach him to escape Apokolips. But I can’t give him the resolve. Only Scott can renounce what he was here.’

Scott’s escape moves quicker now. Brought before Wonderful Willik’s merciless court, he learns the lowlies are dead, murdered. Scott has grown his hair, expressed his individuality, in defiance of the regime. He stands with Barda and yet they still waver between duty and escape. Their minds are made up by the cruel, tortuous, death of the innocent, Auralie, little Auralie, contemptuously, coldly, killed before dinner.

Willik meets a satisfying end and there follows the most moving sequence in the issue. Himon/Kirby pours out his spirit to Scott/Barda/the reader about who he is, about the power of love and hope to triumph over death and the dreaming we must do to make it happen.

‘The Source. It lives. It burns. When we reach out and touch it – the core of us is magnified. And we tower as tall as Darkseid….yes Scott. Darkseid fears you too. Because you, too, can dream of things beyond Darkseid. What is the dream released inside Scott Free?’ In a final confrontation, Scott answers, ‘Let me be Scott Free—and find myself!’

Scott’s journey that he began in issue # 1 is complete. He has entered the dream of the old man and  had the vision as a young man⁵ that will sustain him for the rest of his life, to turn the pain he felt as a child into something transformative, serenity in the face of death, ‘…embodied in the voice of a woman.’ He has torn out the shrapnel from Darkseid’s richochets, ‘hit by his flying lead’, ‘seen the line between good and bad’, and stands, unbowed.

As always with Mister Miracle, the larger story of the New Genesis vs Apokolips battle, the visceral plot twists, the huge moments, are eclipsed by the personal. Scott Free’s story is our story. Scott Free remembers the wounds, he carries the scars the ricochets put there. He wears them proudly because they are not the signs of a victim but evidence of a miracle. Of someone who went through so much pain, who dared to dream and came out, healed.

‘Old man take a look at my life

I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
The whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
And you can tell that's true.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I'm all alone at last
Rolling home to you

Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were
Old man look at my life
I'm a lot like you were.’

 

¹Old Man by Neil Young from Harvest, charted as high as number # 4 in Canada and number # 31 on the Billboard top 100. In the week that Mister Miracle # 9 came out, the song was up 12 places on Billboard to # 47. Harvest was the number # 2 album in the Billboard top 200.

²Carmine Infantino told Kirby that the Fourth World was finished, in April, 1972. See Jack Kirby Collector #80, pg. 114.

³In May 1972, as North Vietnamese victories began to mount, South Vietnamese forces still held out at An Loc just north of Saigon and Kontom in the Central Highlands. See The Vietnam War, pg. 270.

⁴In May 1972, under pressure to repay the loan from Marvel’s Martin Goodman that enabled his California move, Kirby signed an agreement to relinquish claim to the copyright of Captain America # 1-10. See Jack Kirby Collector # 75, pg. 113.

⁵See the Hebrew Testament (Old Testament), Joel 2:28: ‘And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.’

 Research this issue -

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)

-Old Man, by Neil Young, from the Album ‘Harvest’, 1972

-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)

-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 42nd of a projected 46 Fourth World commentaries (only four to go!). He may also do commentaries on the 1984 New Gods # 6, the graphic novel Hunger Dogs, the Absolute Jack Kirby volume two story and a final commentary/overview of the Fourth World. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake!