The Forever People #10--"The Scavengers!"

"DON'T LOOK SO SURPRISED, YOU RAT! YOU CAN'T KILL A DEADMAN!"

“Among their strange experiences on the planet Earth, four young adventurers from New Genesis have stumbled into the most bizarre involvement yet! Fate has put a restless Deadman in their path!!” Um, four young adventurers? Is Beautiful Dreamer ever going to be taken seriously? Anyway, we’re on the second-last issue of The Forever People, and sad to say, Kirby’s still sidetracked with reinventing Deadman. The wheels were beginning to come off the whole enterprise at this point, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still enjoyment to be had.

We open on a really bizarre (and typically Kirby-ish) robbery as a daredevil hanging from a trapeze suspended from a supersonic plane drops onto a high-tech “pollution-free engine”. He activates the drivers’ ejection seat by remote control, takes over the steering by himself, and drives the car away to be stripped. And that, children, is why we’re still driving gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting vehicles almost 40 years later. You can blame…The Scavengers.

Yes, The Scavengers, a high-tech operation that steals things for top buyers. As the toad-like director explains, “This is a super-age--of super-tools--used to serve the super-seller! And “The Scavengers” are a super-firm, geared to peddle super-merchandise!” Well, that makes super-sense! Thanks, super-ugly-face!

This continues the tradition of the characters in the Fourth World often reacting quite cavalierly to the New Gods. It does make a certain amount of sense—this is the DC Universe, after all, and these folks regularly see Superman and Wonder Woman zipping past—but it doesn’t explain why they’re not consistant about it, with characters occasionally going “Oh my god! You’re stronger than ten men! It’s not possible!” and so on. Either be blasé towards superhumans, or don’t be, average bystanders! Pick a reaction!

Anyway, continuing in their M.O., Toad-face is giving a guy in a fez an assignment to steal the “pyramid of Gazi”, by which I assume he means “Giza”. Apparently they have a super-rich backer who wants an authentic pyramid on his estate.

Yes. That’s right. He wants the scavengers to swipe one of the Great Pyramids and put it on his own land. Because, after one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks vanishes, no one will ever suspect the guy who suddenly has a pyramid in his backyard. It’s probably a good thing for all concerned that this plan appears to come to nothing and isn’t mentioned again.

Meanwhile, the logical gaffes keep on coming, as the Scavengers have been observing the Forever People, and now have footage of their latest exploits. Shot from “in hiding” in their basement. Yes, supposedly there was a villain crouching in their small basement, with a camera, able to get a perfect view of their activities, and none of the FPs noticed. Yeesh.

And what were they up to? Using New Genesisian technology to make a new body for Deadman. Remember the “Follower” Mr. Miracle employed way back when? That’s what the gang have dredged up, a Follower in the shape of Deadman’s traditional acrobat getup. (By the way, if I was a spirit forced to wander the world, and I had a chance to get my body back, I’m pretty sure I would ask for a version without creepy makeup and a flamboyant leotard, especially if I’d been forced to wear it throughout eternity up until then anyway.) We also learn that the Followers are actually biological instead of technological, and can be grown from “anything organic”. The toad-faced guy shows a particular interest in the Follower’s form, as he appears to recognize Boston Brand, and in the final panel of this sequence we see that he has a hook for a hand. Uh-oh.

Remember how Serifan was all being a sexist jerk in the last issue? And how Beautiful Dreamer seemed to be slowly increasing in height and musculature? Both of those things reach absurd proportions on this splash page:



OK, to be fair, she’s revealed to be standing on a box in the next panel, but she still looks as though she could crush Big Barda between her thighs. Despite this, she remains completely passive towards Serifan’s condescending dickishness, and his demand that she to drop what she’s doing and meet up with the other FPs. The person she does stand up to is the photographer, who’s, y’know, paying her to be there, and thus isn’t crazy about her leaving. She foils him by assuming the appearance of a hideous hag, causing him to fear for his sanity and bolt from the room. Ha ha! Take that, photographer! That’ll teach you to expect me to work in exchange for money!

A moment later, we learn that Beauty isn’t the only FP to have joined the ranks of the gainfully employed:



So awesome. And since the other three make no mention of getting a job, you just know Beauty and Big Bear were going to be carrying the rent. But then, that’s a pretty un-hippie thing to be doing, isn’t it? I wonder if Kirby was starting to realize that he’d missed the counterculture boat here and was attempting to get with the times (“the times” being the materialistic 70s). Again, this being the second-last issue, it’s hard to say if this was supposed to represent a new direction for the series or if it was just a pit stop into satire, but I’ll have more to say about this in the final issue.

Anyway, despite the apparent excitement caused by the Forever People getting together to give Deadman a new body (which Beauty describes as “like a big birthday party!” The hell?) Mark, accompanied by the ghostly Deadman, has decided to go upstairs and have a snack, courtesy of Trixie Magruder, their new (temporary?) landlady. This leaves the Follower unguarded, allowing a Scavenger operative to sneak in and steal it (it helpfully starts to follow his every move without any further prompting besides the guy standing near him). Oooookay…I’m not seeing why Deadman isn’t *already* in this body—I mean, it’s nice to wait for everyone and all, but I don’t think Boston really needs the company of a gang of kids he just met last issue before gaining the thing he’s been wanting for so long. Why would he leave it unattended?

Oh, right. Narrative convenience.

Of course, Mother Box quickly sounds the alarm—just a little too late—and Deadman is immediately chastising himself while running down the stairs (couldn’t he just pass through the floor?) but the Scavenger is gone. In fact, with typical Kirbian transition speed, the Follower is already back at the base, and being tested. This is how the Scavengers test it: by setting a beefy guy in boxing trunks to give it a punch. The Follower, of course, reflects his actions and punches him back, knocking the guy out. Wow, the Scavengers use their time wisely.

Toad-face, meanwhile, is haunted by the fact that the Follower looks like Boston Brand—with whom he clearly has some kind of history, wink wink nudge nudge—and has come close to sussing out exactly what the Follower is meant for. Fortunately, just as he makes up his mind to destroy it, Boston shows up, enters the body of the Follower, and violence ensues. Especially once Boston spots the Director’s hook-hand. The FPs show up and join the melee, smashing through a wall of steel-hard glass just in time for Deadman to be hit by a “frost beam” that freezes him solid. “See the look on that face!” Declares the ever-douchely Serifan. “Deadman’s very atoms have been locked to that body, so he can’t leave it!” So maybe you could, I don’t know, HELP HIM, you moron.

Meanwhile, the Director is unleashing another of the Scavengers’ ill-gotten weapons: an army of “Mechan-apes” from a “fully automated robot circus”. Oh, of course, that makes total sense. Not only that something like that would exist, but that an international criminal organization would want to steal it. If the mechan-apes don’t work, no doubt they’ll unleash some of the other terrifying weapons they’ve stolen: a length of string, a shiny button, and a quarter.

Of course, the mechan-apes make for a rousing fight scene. “Whoever built these things should have foreseen their being used with evil intent!” declares Big Bear as he demolishes them. Yes, of course. How could someone build robo-apes and NOT foresee that they might be misused by the hook-handed master of a gang of petty thieves? It’s just common sense, really.

The Director makes his getaway in a classic Blofeld-esque go-cart on a track, but is stopped by Beautiful Dreamer projecting a horrible monster up ahead. He bails out and surrenders, but the FP’s troubles aren’t over; his underling, referred to only as Manager, has stayed behind to unleash more exhibits from the Robot Circus on them, including a knife-throwing machine. Fortunately, Vykin uses his technical savvy to disable it, as Serifan thaws out Deadman. Grabbing hold of a trapeze, the undead avenger swings up to the Manager’s glass viewing box, smashes his way in, and knocks him unconscious.

So there you go—both the Scavenger operation and Deadman’s killer, brought to justice in one fell swoop, right? Well, not really. The Director reveals that his is just one of many Scavenger depots…and each one is headed by a guy with a hook for a hand. D’oh! Sounds like Deadman has his work cut out for him. To that end, Serifan gifts him with the blue cartridge from his hat, which will keep him bound to the body he now occupies, so he can continue in his quest to track down his killer. On that note, the FPs bid him farewell.

I have no idea what happened to Deadman in the immediate aftermath of this story. It seems like the suits weren’t too crazy with Kirby’s reinvention of the character, because every time Deadman’s shown up since—chronologically, the next time I’ve seen him is in Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing in the early 80s—there’s been no talk of robot bodies, blue cartridges or Scavenger depots. It’s not really that surprising to me, either; I mean, Kirby’s new paradigm for Deadman pretty much robs him of his distinctive power—the ability to posess people—and turns him into just a schmuck with a robot body (a super-strong, bulletproof robot body, of course, but still.) Further reinventions were probably inevitable, and it’s probably appropriate that Deadman, the ghostly superhero, is never able to rest in peace, constantly resurrected by fan writers, while never quite returning to life either.