Kirby's Life Equation: New Gods, no limits

At a time when God was dying, Jack Kirby gave us New Gods.

Three days before Christmas 1970, Kirby’s kinetic creativity exploded in the pages of New Gods # 1, 50 years ago today, 22 December, 1970. At the time, America and the Western World, the Christian West, was in ferment with theologians, philosophers, atheists proclaiming the Death of God by which they meant the death of the theist God, God as a separate being who would intervene in human affairs. God, who was inside and outside the Universe, immanent and transcendent, had been given His (second wave feminist theologians hadn’t quite achieved widespread use of female terms for God) marching orders.

The Death of God wasn’t just a subject confined to the coteries of religious institutions. It was front cover news in popular culture (Time Magazine, 8 April 1966) right around the time Kirby was creating the Fourth World but not giving it to Marvel.

The ideas of German theologians Rudolf Bultmann, the Bible’s demythologiser who distinguished between history and heilsgeschichte (‘holy history’) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘’God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along without Him….”, (Letters and Papers from Prison, London, 1959,pg. 95) formed during World War II, reflecting the experience of Christians at a time of great crisis, were beginning to filter down to the wider Western populace, both sacred and secular, as the insurgent Sixties challenged, threw out and remade the culture. It became less and less possible to believe in a theist God when the evil of the Nazi death camps or racism or sexism or the war in Vietnam seemed to draw no response from an omnipotent God.

Into this context stepped Jacob Kurtzberg, Jewish champion of the Outsider Art, filled with the stories of the Torah, Kirby makes his biggest Fourth World statement yet with New Gods # 1, a cosmological epic in 23 pages introducing Darkseid scion Orion, New Genesis, Lightray, Metron, Highfather (the Fourth World’s Moses), Kalibak, and the central conflict of the whole Fourth World, the pursuit of the Anti-Life equation. Whew! The New Gods have arrived in stunning, mind-expanding, world-building fashion! ‘An Epic for Our Times!’

On the face of it, Kirby seems merely to be telling a familiar story, another series of God beings with a dualist dynamic. It’s an irony of our times that in 2020, with Christian belief in the Western World much lower than in 1970*, that a largely secular audience is still hugely attracted to stories about Gods, superhumans. Even when our God practice has fallen by the wayside, the conventional many given way to the intentional few, our imagination is still engaged, our desire to be told conventional God stories is still strong, in the sense of another reality beyond this one about people with cosmic power.

Kirby’s story is not so straightforward as it first appears. He wants to tell a story about the moment he is in: “I feel that whatever story there is to this ‘gods’ business, the ‘new’ gods or the ‘old’ gods, I feel that there is a story to them. I feel that there was an actual replacement of the ‘old’ gods by new ones which are relevant to what we see and hear….This is a whole new interpretation and cannot be told with shields and swords; it must be done with what we know and deal with what we worry about.” (Comic and Crypt interview with Kirby on 31 January, 1971, published November, 1971).

And what do we know and deal with and worry about? The 'Life Equation’. When Highfather seeks counsel he turns to the Source (Wall) and the moving hand writes words which prophesy the future war with Apokolips. Orion calls the eternal advice ‘irrevocable’ but Highfather corrects his stepson’s still developing theology, ‘’But it does not decide. The right of choice is ours! That is the Life Equation!” Free Will is at the centre of New Genesis’ world, not (pre) Destiny. The Divine can advise but does not interfere. We make the difference by doing good or evil to each other. The Source is more like Lutheran Protestant theologian Paul Tillich’s (1886 – 1965) ‘Ground of All Being’, not a theist, separate, outside force who created the Universe but the Universe itself.

And what of the Anti-Life Equation? Kirby gives an answer which ties straight into the times. Metron says, “The Anti-Life Equation was undiscovered until these days! It means the outside control of all living thought.” Kirby doesn’t settle for a simple explanation of evil. He defines it like a totalitarian State, an Orwellian, Fascist, all encompassing effort to get people to think and act in only one way, controlled by an outside force, sort of like a certain kind of politics in 2020.

The Sixties, that short 1965 to 1973 period brought to popular consciousness many ways to see truth, it threw out the monocultural, (mono) theist, patriarchal, hetero-normative, narrow, stifling view and opened the doors to an undiscovered country of popular thought, a new consciousness, a Teilhard de Chardin type ‘noosphere’, a new sphere, where the evolution of thought of the noosphere would be a new birth, a ‘noogenesis’, New Genesis.

The Life Equation, what we all engage with in our lives, isn’t an unchanging theist God, it is the human, everlasting journey of thought, freedom, creativity that we all add to with each breath and expand noogenesis. Modern Christians see this as an expression of the Divine, Christianity is not set, it is dynamic, tending non-theist, it evolves with the times.

Beyond all its theological, philosophical content, New Gods # 1 is just so damn exciting! It feels so alive, so here. The momentum that builds carries you forward so powerfully it becomes difficult not to exclaim out loud. It is impossible to take in all the concepts, the implications, the sweep of the story in one reading. Marv Wolfman in the endpiece writes, “…you watch raw energy strained to its utmost. The imagination of Jack Kirby has no boundaries, no limits…nothing is too incredible to be conceived. A wise man once said that when man eventually reaches the far end of the universe, he will undoubtedly find the name Jack Kirby signed on the lower right-hand corner.”

From New Gods to the God of comics, our ever-expanding universe of knowledge and the stars keeps us looking ‘just over yonder’ to where Kirby takes us. It is a journey that will never end, a Christmas gift that keeps on giving.

* (Pew research tells us that belief in God stood at 97 per cent in the US in 1966 but had fallen to 63 per cent in 2014, the US is an outlier amongst Western countries, in other countries belief is much lower).

Research this article: 

 

Comics:

-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)

Popular culture:

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

 

Theology:

-A History of Christianity (Diarmid McCulloch, Penguin, 2010)

-From the Big Bang to God (Lloyd Geering, Steele Roberts, 2013)

- Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrick Bonhoeffer, London, 1959)

-Time Magazine, 8 April, 1966, ‘Toward a Hidden God’ pgs 82-87)

-Tomorrow’s God (Lloyd Geering, Bridget Williams Books, 1994)

-Wrestling with God: the Story of My Life (Lloyd Geering, Bridget Williams Books, 2006)

 

Michael Mead is a 54 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. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Forever in aging children

 

When I was young, I thought hippies would never die. They seemed like eternal children, protected from the mortality that comes for all of us. The Age of Aquarius somehow broke the rules, tossed out the past, created a New Eden and with it, Forever People, ‘they belong to the sunrise…they’re from a place that men have sought but never found….’

On the cover of Forever People # 1, published 50 years ago today, 1 December, 1970 (cover dated Feb – Mar 1970), Superman, like the younger me, is drawn to Big Bear, Mark Moonrider, Vykin the Black, Serifan because he wants to find people like him ‘this is my only chance to find my own kind! You must tell me how to reach Supertown!’

In the story, Superman appears worn down, like the 1970 Don Draper at the end of the AMC TV drama Madmen, exhausted from the mechanistic mayhem of competitive capitalism, ad-man turned hippie. Superman wants time off, to be with his own people, sit in the sun and forget about all his superhero obligations for a while.

Superman feels alone, apart from others, even from himself, quoting Heinlein to convey his feelings: ‘Despite his powers he is in a minority of one in a teeming world of billions. A stranger in a strange land. What does Superman mean for you down there?…for the first time in many years – I feel that I’m alone --  alone.’ For me as a reader it’s akin to watching your friends fall away from the collecting world, leaving you in a wilderness of one, carrying on by yourself and hoping to find someone that shares your passion.

Superman wants what we all want: peace. The kind of peace that comes from finding yourself in another, your own Supertown community. When you meet a friend who instantly gets you, no need to be understood or to understand, no explanations or justifications. ‘Rise mother box, unite us as one….make us the door for him to enter….let your circuits carry the word, let it grow loud until it reaches the winds of infinity.’

The idea of Supertown not only functions as a place where all those lucky enough to be super can be together but also as a metaphorical boomtube for the reader, when we were young enough to believe in a place where superheroes could be real and it was possible for us to be taken there.

The boomtube is a gateway to all kinds of other worlds, for Superman to what he will eventually discover is New Genesis, for both reader and superhero, a step into the infinite world of the imagination, of what’s possible, not just what is. ‘The only way to find Supertown….is to find those kids!’ It’s as if Kirby is calling out to your child self and saying you, only you, can help Superman find himself. As you turn the pages, you create your own journey, if Superman can find forever people, why can’t you? We identify with Big Bear, Mark Moonrider, Vykin the Black, Serifan and we become them.

Kirby’s genius is not just his creation of lasting characters, of superhero worlds and universes, of memorable villains, of iconic visuals, his talent extends to connecting with the childhood world in ways that seemed only to speak to you, because he could find you and take you to Supertown and come back with your Beautiful Dreamer. ‘Listen to the night – you may hear sounds heard by few men…’. 

The impact of his comics stays with his aging children everywhere.

‘People hurry by so quickly

Don't they hear the melodies
In the chiming and the clicking
And the laughing harmonies

Songs, to aging children come
(Songs, to aging children come)
Aging children, I am one (I am one)

(From Songs to Aging Children Come, on Joni Mitchell’s 1969 album, Clouds)

Research this article: 

-The indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

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

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

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website.   

 

Michael Mead is a 54 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. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

Chris Claremont's birthday gift to me

Happy 70th birthday, Chris Claremont!:). From 1980 to about 1988, Uncanny X-Men was my favourite superhero comic, in large part due to Chris Claremont. In retrospect he was prone to overwrite sometimes, like an 80s Don McGregor (whose soaring, yearning, illustrated novel prose, I now appreciate on Jungle Action) but the extended emoting, the exploration of the interior lives of the characters was exactly what I needed as a teenager. 

I needed models of people to say what they felt, so I could. When I reread those X-Men from that period, they take me back not just to the 80s but to the younger version of me. It's nostalgic and uncomfortable at the same time but those X-Men helped me imagine a future for myself that was better than the place I was in. Thank you, Chris:). 

Found in the 4th World: a place for you, a place for us

Jack Kirby’s fascination with the hairy hippies he saw all around him in 1970 can’t be contained in the pages of his comics in Jimmy Olsen # 135 (cover-dated January 1971, published 50 years ago today, Tuesday 24 November, 1970). It extends to a special text piece in the issue, ‘The Hairies – Super-Race or Man’s Second Chance.’

Like a New God, he creates them as perfect Adams and Eves, cloned best bits, without Original Sin, innocent and free, “…they are their own experience and follow it where it leads them. Their minds are fresh and new, clean slates unmarked by rigid hardening, conflicting indoctrinations….they fear nothing, they hate nothing, worship nothing but their own compatibility with the rest of Creation.”

Hippy hairy outsiders are like children, in the words of a contemporary writer, the counter-culture “…rediscovered a childlike quality that it supremely treasures, to which it gives its ultimate sign of reverence, vulnerability and innocence.”* And from Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song Woodstock, “….we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden…..” (of Eden), before hate, before hierarchy, away from the competitive Apokolipitical Anti-Life of parental capitalism.

Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon album debuted in April 1970, featuring 'Woodstock'

Views like this were met with cynical dismissal at the time from the Establishment, parents, civic leaders who had a different understanding of human nature and remembered their own youthful innocence before it was swept away by the inevitable compromises of middle age. Yet the idealism, the hopes, the desire for something different, to be left alone when you are different to others, to see the best in them and be Good are universal, present in all religions, all secular philosophies. They are also at the heart of comics fandom.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in full flight in 1970, from Johnny Rogan's book, Crosby Stills Nash & Young while Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and the nephews curse Gladstone Gander's luck, again! 

I got into hippie music about the same time as I started reading comics, as a young child in the early 1970s. We sang Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi as five-year old new entrants at school and I went home to read about Duckburg’s greatest loser, Donald Duck. I liked the high harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the soaring notes and the lifting vision of what and who it was possible to be in this world. Choosing to be a hippy in 1970 was a bit like being a comics fan in the same or any era, it puts you on the outside. People don’t understand you and some are even hostile.

Kirby continues about the Hairies: “That is their challenge – to find a way of living with what is around them without the mindless, merciless, prerogative of inflicting destruction. Of course, this makes the Hairies perfect targets for all of us! We’ve got to kill them! Wipe them out!! They are not like us!”

If you retain the innocence of your youth in some way, if you still like superheroes, if you are quiet and gentle, if you want to live in harmony, you will attract conflict, judgement. Anything outside the norm, your hair, sexuality, philosophy, paper pamphlet habits gets you whomped on, laughed at during high school. So where do you go to be accepted, to a place where people “…exert no pressures on their fellows. They strive to give to each other what they can – and that can be quite a bit….each Hairie considers the other a most valuable and miraculous organism…”?

Comics fandom is the Woodstock of outsider culture. It has a long history of bringing together all those who don’t fit in, of treating people well who have been cast out by society, the shy, the sensitive, the artistic, the autistic. No community is perfect and it would be easy to point to people and groups in fandom who aren’t like this but overall in its relative powerlessness, in its unknownness, in its stubborn belief that there is a place for you if you like comics no matter who you are, fandom provides a Hairy Hippy Haven.

The famous-in-comics image from the 1969 Comic Art Convention in New York

Kirby’s 4^th World comics continue to be about far more than a battle between good and evil with great-looking machinery. He connects with youth culture in a way that his former Marvel counterparts at the time could only dream about. His heart, his hope, his hippy idealism resonate strongly, 50 years later.

‘Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who I am
But you know life is for learning.’

(from the lyrics to Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell, 1969).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRjQCvfcXn0

* Charles A Reich, from his book The Greening of America, as quoted in Time Magazine, November 2, 1970, pg. 13

Research this article: 

-Time Magazine, November 2, 1970, 'Fuzzy Welcome to Cons. Ill, pg. 12-13

-The indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

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

-Crosby Stills Nash & Young (Johnny Rogan, Omnibus Press, 1996)

-Sense of Wonder - My Life in Comics Fandom - the Whole Story (Bill Schelly, North Atlantic Books, 2018)

-The Golden Age of Comics Fandom (Bill Schelly, Hamster Press, 2003)

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website.   

 

Michael Mead is a 54 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. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

Part two of Spiro's interview with me on comics and and Mike Kaluta

My friend Spiro interviews me about comics and Mike Kaluta

Make War No More: Sgt Rock Burma mini-epic

One of my favourite Sgt Rock mini-epics is when Rock visits the CBI (China Burma India) theatre of war in OAAW # 256 - 259 (April to August 1973). I feel that the new locale elevates the level of Kanigher's writing (and brings with it, beautiful, evocative Russ Heath art). 

Issue # 259 reads like an anti-war tale, Rock expresses attitudes most unlike a WWII US army sergeant, because he understands what the men on a hospital ship have been through, they don't want to fight anymore (Rock is picked up out to the sea by the hospital ship, whose surviving soldiers want to save people not kill them). 

Rock doesn't judge their pacifist attitudes, he knows they've earned the right to make their own decisions. It's a really powerful piece of writing. I don't know if Kanigher could have written this story in the social climate of 1963 but in 1973, with a different set of social, anti-war attitudes voiced by anti-Vietnam 60s youth influencing the way many comic readers would have seen things, perhaps the time was right for this type of story. 

I should say it ends traditionally enough but overall the story still has a deeper impact than most. Just a great issue of OAAW:). 

Replacement revolution: right on to the dark side, our way is clear and fast: Jimmy Olsen # 134

Jack Kirby flippa-dippa’s the world on its head in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen # 134 (cover dated December 1970, publication date 13 October 1970, 50 years ago today). Jimmy’s revolutionary army takes over in a way the real-world youth culture of the time could not. Superman, symbol of the corrupt power of the parent State is ‘out of the way’, not merely run over as in Jimmy Olsen # 133 but crucified and led away by hippy biker legionnaires.

The two covers are two moments in the same scene

There is no listening, no hearing, Jimmy and the surrounding culture are past caring, only judgement remains from all sides, only our voice counts and the rest of you must face ‘The Mountain of Judgement.’ You’re not one of us.

 The corporate re-draw of Superman’s head functions artistically making him other, separate

If this sounds familiar in 2020, it’s because it is. More and more the stark separation of views, the polarisation of opinion, the fear of being replaced that we see in our culture now, mirrors that of 1970. Kirby was reflecting his times, like the youth revolutionaries and freaks, he was blowing up the symbols of the old world.

It was time for the outsiders to run things and the establishment squares to be forced out, they are the dissenters, not us. Jimmy and the contemporaneous youth protest movement “….have high ideals and great fears….they see their elders trapped by materialism and competition, and prisoners of outdated social forms…They feel they must remake America in its own image…”*

It’s always an attractive and seductive thought to think You Are Right. When Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion ride the Zoomway to meet the Mountain of Judgement it’s exciting. So much time waiting for your chance, waiting for others to get out of your way and now it’s your time. Go for it!

Jimmy’s travels in the Whiz Wagon are turbulent. They are drawn into a black and white Kirbyesque kaleidoscope of confusion in the artist’s first use of collage in the Fourth World. Part black and white psychedelic Fillmore West light show and part death skull, it feels like an image of the times. So many perspectives, things breaking apart and reforming in unexpected ways. Dazzling and deadly.

Enter the Mountain of Judgement. No Moses on a hill with chaos-controlling commandments. Rather a modern mountain, a missile-carrying machine, like the Military-Industrial Complex on wheels but with an idol’s face. Baal breathing destruction on Jimmy and the boys, intent on crushing their youth insurgency under its monstrous tank tracks. 

At this point Kirby turns the tables again and simultaneously reveals the giant machine is full of Hairy hippy friends who along with a revived Superman foil a bomb plot using the Whiz Wagon, and shows the face of who has betrayed them: Morgan Edge. Jimmy and the Legion reconcile with Superman and the issue ends with a savage one panel portent, the first appearance of one of DC’s greatest villains, Darkseid.

The effect of this lesson in humility is that it causes Jimmy and the Newsboys to see the good in Superman and Superman sees Jimmy as an equal. The reader’s expectation is also subverted, we’re so ready for the fight, so energised to be justified and then it turns out that our assumptions about the Other aren’t right, that the future is together, despite our differences. Judgement is the idol. ‘Judge not, lest you be judged’ (Matthew 7:1). A comics parable for the modern age.

Kirby’s Fourth World is now gathering pace. Towards the end of the issue there is an ad for Forever People # 1, New Gods # 1, Mister Miracle # 1. On the ground floor, for a comics revolution😊.

*from the Presidential Commission on the causes of campus disruption, as quoted in Time magazine, October 5, 1970, pg. 14.

Research this article: 

-Time Magazine, October 5, 1970, Ón Campus: Blame Enough For All, pg 14-15

-The indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

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

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website.   

 

Michael Mead is a 54 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. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

Ideology overwhelms art: Dave Sim's Cerebus

In Cerebus # 265 (April 2001) Dave Sim wrote a notorious misogynist essay.

 

I always thought the irony of Sim's dull gender rhetoric was that it came from the emotion-driven divorce from Deni Loubert. 

Sim made the mistake of putting his inner angst on paper and his ideological focus trampled his artistic expression. I stopped reading Cerebus first because Sim overloaded on text at the expense of drawn art and story (Sim is a much better comics artist than prose writer) and second because of his misogyny.

We all suffer in relationship break-ups. It doesn't mean that the other party, in this case a woman or women, is bad. It just means that it didn't work out. Be angry yes, go through the grief cycle. But don't hate and turn inward. 

Cerebus became boring because Sim couldn't let go of personal issues. I hope with age, he has let go of enough of the past to enjoy the present and see women differently.