Fourth World Fridays: Kirby Would Call This an Epilogue.

OK, so here's the deal. I've gotten into trouble in the past for my comments on Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, and their inimitable contributions to the comics medium. I don't deny for a second that these are two towering titans of the industry and the artform, that no one has impacted the genre of superheroes the way they did, and that their respective mark on pop culture is indelible. They're like Elvis: it doesn't even matter how good they are, they're there and you have to deal with them. Their offhand ideas and cocktail-napkin jottings have become canon. You have to consciously choose not to imitate them if you're working anywhere near their area. Their way of doing superheroes is THE way of doing superheroes.

Which is already getting into my problems with them: seeing as how I've never been much of a superhero fan, compared to most other comics readers, I sometimes get frustrated by the fact that this one genre tends to entirely dominate comics. And the reason that genre dominates comics is because of, yes, Stan and Jack. It's not like they set out to destroy every other genre of comics or anything (well, Stan played a less-than-noble part in the whole Comics Code fracas of the mid-50s, but let's not get into that here.) It's just that, partly through sheer talent and partly through luck, they caught an unstoppable wave that elevated a fun genre into something that it was never meant to be: the bedrock of a medium. When less visionary but more sophisticated hands began to work in comics in the decades that followed, they found a nicely paved and bulldozed patch of land on Comics Island, prepared for them by Stan and Jack, labelled "Superheroes"...but most of the rest of the island had been allowed to sink into the sea. And as a result, the medium has become a ramshackle city built, teeteringly, on the houses directly below, up and up and up, but rarely outwards--and down at the bottom, there's ol' Stan and Jack, holding the whole thing up. And as good as the stuff they did was, it can't possibly hold that much weight--which is why Comics Island has a disconcerting habit of collapsing every so often, forcing us to build up from the rubble.


So when I and others cast a critical eye on the Fantastic Four, Thor, the 60s Captain America, and all the rest, a lot of people can't help but start screaming, "Ohmigod ohmigod, get away from the foundations!!!! Just don't touch 'em and we'll be fine!!!" When, to me, this is more of a neccessary process of kicking the beams, finding them wanting, and gently suggesting we should start migrating to less developed patches of land.

The long and the short of it is that the churl, on rereading those old comics with neither an overt familiarity with the conventions of the superhero nor any particular fondness for the genre, might be compelled to point out that, say, Kirby's anatomy was often kinda dodgy, Lee's prose sometimes obnoxiously florid, and the whole enterprise given to a strange mixture of pomposity and goofiness that can grate as easily as it charms. Said churl--oh, what a scamp he is!--might also bring up the point that these lapses can't simply be forgiven as simply an improvement on what came before. Yes, superheroes were a fairly uninspiring genre before Stan & Jack, full of static compositions and formulaic storytelling, and the two of them expanded the possibilities of the genre immensely. But it's important to look at the full context here: the Silver Age Marvel stuff was following on the heels of much of Will Eisner's best work, Carl Barks' superlative Disney Duck stories, and EC's lavishly drawn and narratively sophisticated multi-genre works, any one of which is almost certain to be more appealling to the average modern reader. To act as if these two guys invented comics is to limit the medium terribly.

However! He cried, as the mob coalesced around him, this theoretical churl will not go unchallenged on this blog, no sir! No, no, I will, at the end of the day, defend the Kirby/Lee Marvel epics along with anyone else--their raw power and amazing creativity is unquestionable, and comics are richer for having produced them. Shut up, you stupid churl! Ha ha! Man, I hate that guy.

Seriously though, I hold Kirby books in high esteem, and recognize their value, as I said way back at the top. I just don't, y'know, choose to read them very often. That's my cross to bear.

But there is one Kirby epic that I not only will reread, but have now bought in several different formats to obsessively pore over in detail. That epic?

THE FOURTH WORLD.

I used to be a real Stan Lee-basher, one of those guys who would go on and on at length about how Kirby did everything and Lee just rode his coattails. Of course, the real world is never so simple, and I'm now forced to admit that Stan contributed a significant amount, even if I still believe that Kirby was the true visionary. I mean, if nothing else, Lee deserves credit for being the man who finally snagged some credit for the hardworking, and until then, nameless, creative talent behind the scenes, turning them into celebrities and opening the door for some at-long-last respect for funnybook makers everywhere. The fact that Stan happened to be one of those funnybook men, and that he dined out on his newfound celebrity more than anyone, in no way diminishes his accomplishment.

Still, it was Kirby whose genius ultimately won me over, and I think it's Kirby alone who captured that bizarre spark of wonder that others seem to find so readily in their joint work. Because, simply put, I love the Fourth World. I love it. I adore it. When I grow up, I want to marry it. I want to french kiss it and have its babies.

Is it often silly? Sure. Is the dialogue often stagey? You bet! Does it feature Vince Colletta's substandard inks for the first few issues of the run? Obviously. Does it smack of a 50-year-old trying to speak to The Youth Of The Day across an abyssal generation gap? To ask is to know. Did he make the damn thing up as he went along? It's entirely possible.

Doesn't matter. Unlike the Marvel Masterworks, I can completely overlook all flaws in The Fourth World saga. Because when it's on, man, there's just something that leaps across 4 decades of radical shifts in comics storytelling and just downloads a pure jolt of Jungian madness into your forebrain.

I recently purchased the Fourth World Omnibus, Volume one, a gorgeous full-colour hardcover edition reprinting the first 14 issues of the saga, in the order they were published (I think--anyway, it's the order they were meant to be read). I own some of these in individual form, as well as a Jimmy Olsen collection and that unfortunate black and white paperback collection of the New Gods, but this is how these stories were meant to be read--literally, in fact, since Kirby (in one of his many astounding leaps of prescience) foresaw the day when comics would be collected and sold as book-form collections.

The foreword to that black-and-white collection, which also happens to be a neat encapsulation of the history of the project, can be read at Mark Evanier's blog. Reading it, it becomes obvious that Kirby really did see the future of the comics industry. It's too bad that he was so far ahead of his time that he never managed to profit substantially from his innovations.

So, for this reason, I've decided to take an in-depth look at the Fourth World, issue by issue. In honour of the King, I give you: Fourth World Fridays. Every friday, I'll be reviewing one issue from this collection (and eventually, the next, and the next), poring over it as much as possible. No doubt this will be a bit schizophrenic, as I swing from mockery to admiration, trying to figure out just what was going through the guy's head. But at the end of the day, this is a story that rewards careful examination.

Next friday, we begin with Jimmy Olsen #133, Kirby's first salvo at DC, and a pretty good encapsulation of the project as a whole. GO! GO! GO!