Let them burn their eyes, watch me move

The Vietnam draft is over¹, the last US troops have left the fight², Jack Kirby seems to be on the verge of returning to Marvel³, is the Fourth World finished as well and is everything lost? In New Gods # 11 (November, 1972), published 50 years ago today, 17 August, 1972, the battle between the righteous anger of New Genesis and the chaotic rage of Apokolips seems to have only one winner, death is coming for both, death is coming for everything.

The Fourth World’s last 1970s entry was for readers at the time the last Fourth World comic, a blow even more savage if they’d had no access to the fan press and simply picked up the comic off the newsstand for there was no mention of The End in letter columns. Somehow  Kirby won’t end with an ending, he wants to go out in full flight, his creative drive is organic, last moment, one fevered final combination of word, picture, spirit, drawn from infinite combinations.

Not for him, long, tendentious plans, ordered steps, cold examination. His comics burst forth from his imagination like hot lava, incinerating the lesser-rans in his wake. Kirby is the Brando of comics, the comics Godfather⁴, no scripts, no lines, no practice, what I feel now, here, in this moment, on these pages, that is my story. I’m that good.

The story of the fight between Orion and Kalibak, who we learn are half-brothers, is a dress rehearsal for the fight to come, son vs father, Orion vs Darkseid. Against the real-world background of the proxy Cold War between the ‘good guys’, the US/South Vietnam and the ‘bad guys’, Russia/China/North Vietnam, Orion is the warrior foot soldier, the unbreakable, unstoppable force for the good Empire, Kalibak, the caveman, insidious, grim-jawed engine of destruction, for the bad.

Commissioner Kiernan, like the contemporaneous United Nations Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim⁵, urges both sides to seek peace but is out of luck with the Apokoliptian bruiser. Against the reader desire to see Orion and Kalibak rip each other to pieces, is a feeling of hope that they may not. That the peace that at least New Genesis preaches may be real, may be here, in the world outside the pages.

The tension between winning through violence and prevailing through peace is personified in the two characters, the tunnel-visioned, ‘witless’ Orion and the brainer, quieter, ‘wordy’ Lightray. They represent the two halves of Sixties youth, the solider on the ground in Vietnam, the protestor on the streets at home. 

As Darkseid’s touching devotion to his son Orion and subsequent revelations play out about his other son Kalibak, the Black Racer, black power on skiis⁶, returns to play his part in the ultimate drama. The broken black man, symbol of years of subjugation and racism, who rises up like off his crutches to become ‘death on the wing,’ to become an equal and in charge of his own destiny.

Kirby gathers all the players together on his comics stage. Lightray is his warm-up act, Kalibak deals to the ‘callow little killer’ like the novice he is, a professional murderer literally wiping the floor with an idealistic amateur. The main act is always going to be Orion vs Kalibak. Orion is surprised by Kalibak’s extra power as he brings the house down on the formerly invincible resident of New Genesis, ‘You’ll never rise again when I bury you under tons of rubble.’ It feels like an end of Empire moment, like the helicopters falling off the side of US naval ships in 1975, as Orion suffers from the souped-up demon, power ‘given Kalibak by an ally.’

It turns out that this ally is a traitor to Darkseid. His right hand of evil, Desaad. He who lives to engineer the sufferings of others and watch them writhe in pain for Desaad’s own orgasmic pleasure. Desadd, after the Marquis, is like an anonymous keyboard warrior troll, assuming multiple identities in his quest to feed off unhappiness and feel justified by disintegration, distress. Desaad is one of Kirby’s most evil characters because his kind is so visible then and now, because the very emotions he consumes are feelings he does not have himself. Desaad has no sadness, no pain, no hope, only the grasping derision of those who take refuge in the amorality of the damned and then feel superior.

Darkseid makes short work of his former disciple and then it is Kaliabk’s turn to be surprised by the resurrected Orion. ‘Orion, you’re still alive!’ ‘…still alive you bearded carrion! And still intent on ending our rivalry!’  The battle reaches a crescendo and at its zenith is when the Angel of Death appears. Black Racer chooses his target, will it be Orion, will it be Kalibak? The blacked-out impact of the ‘fierce wind’ of the Racer in the last cliffhanger panel before you turn the page for a moment leads the reader to think it is Orion but in relief we learn it is Kalibak.

Here, on his last Fourth World page as far as he knew then, Kirby does not farewell the reader, there is no editorial, no aside, no easy resolution of the story. He leaves you right in the middle of the greater epic, with a prophecy that when Orion fights Darkseid, ‘the war will end’. Orion has answered the diplomat Kiernan’s question, one which the reader after eight long years of a war they could have been called up to fight in Vietnam⁷, must have been asking themselves, ‘How will we end this war?’

Kirby’s final message to the reader isn’t one of defeat, of death, it is one of defiance. It isn’t over, there is more, there is hope, the War will end. Kirby’s story still burns ‘with the ultimate ferocity’ in his own mind, in his own heart. Fifty years later we continue to talk about what could have been. For Kirby there was no end, only a new beginning.

‘And if it's bad
Don't let it get you down, you can take it
And if it hurts
Don't let them see you cry, you can make it

Hold your head up
Hold your head up
Hold your head up
Hold your head up

And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don't let it change a thing that you're doing’

Hold Your Head Up by Argent (number # 8 in the Billboard Top 100, in the week New Gods # 11 hit the stands).

¹See Politico, this day in politics, 28 June, 1972 . ‘Early on, Nixon saw ending the draft as an effective political means to undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement. He believed that youths from affluent homes would lose interest in protesting the war once their own chance of having to fight there was gone. 

²The Third Battalion of the 21^st Infantry, the last America ground combat unit in South Vietnam, left the country on 11 August, 1972. See Chronicle of the 20^th Century, Editor in Chief John Ross, Viking, 1999. Pg.1049.

³The September, 1972, issue of Rockets Blast Comic Collector # 94, announced that Kirby was leaving DC and going back to Marvel. RBCC said the agreement had been made on 23 August, 1972, just days after the 18-21 August, 1972 San Diego Comic Convention where Kirby would have had ‘ample opportunity’ to meet then Marvel editor in chief, Roy Thomas. As referenced in Jack Kirby Collector # 80, ‘Old Gods and New’, pg. 120.

⁴The Godfather film, starring Marlon Brando, premiered on 14 March, 1972. Brando was infamous for not learning his lines. See The Offer, episode seven, Paramount+.

⁵See the United Nations Archives and Management Section, Secretary-General’s consultations and offers of good offices, Vietnam on the UN website.

⁶See my commentary on New Gods # 3 (July, 1971), ‘Black Power goes skiing’.

⁷US President Lyndon Johnson committed the first US ground troops to Vietnam on 8 March, 1965. During that year, the US military drafted 230,991 young men under the ‘peacetime draft’ with the legal basis provided by the Selective Training and Service Act, 1940. The US never formally declared war on North Vietnam. On 1 December, 1969, the first draft lottery since 1942 began but college deferments were kept intact. President Nixon announced no new draftees would not have to go to Vietnam on 28 June, 1972. Nixon ended the draft itself on 1 January, 1973 but by then the Vietnam War was almost over. See Resistance and Revolution, the anti-Vietnam Movement at the University of Michigan, 1965-72.

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:

-Chronicle of the 20^th Century, Editor in Chief John Ross, Viking, 1999.

-Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson Murders (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, W.W. Norton, 1994)

- Politico, this day in politics, 28 June, 1972

- Resistance and Revolution,The Anti-Vietnam Movement at the University of Michigan, 1965-72 website

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 56-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 published a contextual commentary. This is his 46th of 46 Fourth World commentaries (the last one….for now…) 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!