Day 32: The Forever People!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Heroes, New Genesis, The Forever People #1.

Via the Boom Tube, riding the Super-Cycle, come the kids from Supertown (minus the female member), The Forever People, arriving for their debut adventure on planet Earth. The flower-power young people of New Genesis consist of [from left] Vykin the Black, Big Bear, Serifan, and Mark Moonrider… we’ll meet up with Beautiful Dreamer later in this story, as well as with two other integral “characters” very closely associated with the quintet.

The Forever People is Jack Kirby’s statement about his hope that the young people of his day, the hippies, would deliver the rest of us from a violent, selfish world. It’s remarkable, really, that Mr. Kirby, a middle-class workaday guy with a work ethic that would exhaust the puritans and other zealots, one saddled with a mortgage, home-making spouse, four kids and intensely demanding job, had such obvious affection for the Baby Boomer generation, by 1970 well into their twenties. Hippies were a huge demographic in the U.S., who (to wildly generalize) were virtually united against the Vietnam War, demanded the voting age be reduced to 18, heavily into drug use (particularly pot and LSD) and advocated free love. They also professed non-violence as a creed (though an active minority did engage in radical politics, some preaching the violent overthrow of government) and a curiosity for other world cultures. Nowhere was the hippy movement bigger than in the Golden State, where Jack and his family had recently moved.

Hippies also embraced one trapping of their younger years and seized it as their own: the comic book. Underground comix, originating out of the very heart of hippydom, the Haight-Asbury district of San Francisco, had huge distribution and astonishingly frank and explicit work was being published. And the mainstream work of Stan, Steve & Jack’s Marvel Comics was firmly entrenched in hippy culture, alongside the alternative funnybooks of R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and Rick Griffin. This, the Woodstock Generation, was receptive to Jack and vice versa…

It needs to be said, Jack also personally encountered any number of young people with increasing frequency. His street address and phone number were in the directory and The King (and Queen Roz) would welcome into their kitchen an endless parade of youthful pilgrims seeking an audience with the creator. Plus the fact the San Diego Comic Convention and other shows were being held so, perhaps for the first time, Jack had regular — and ever-growing — larger scale dealings with the longhairs…

Back to our subject: The Forever People may be the first super-hero group who is primarily non-violent (now, I’m not counting a certain infinite personage here, so settle down!). Their mission is to beat Darkseid to the discovery of the Anti-Life Equation and to end the Super-War between Apokolips and New Genesis. Their creed, as is all of Supertown, is “Life!!” and they live to protect and help others. We’ll discuss them as an entity in the days and weeks to come, but suffice to say they are an utterly original grouping in mainstream American comic books and, again, they are testament to Jack’s open-mindedness and empathy for the younger generation.

Mark Evanier has a particularly fine description of the kids in his Kirby: King of Comics biography:

“The Forever People featured the teenage gods, patterned after the youths that Kirby was observing all around him. In the midst of the Vietnam era, Jack was wholly on the side of those opposing Richard Nixon and the ongoing military action. He saw idealism, passion and a better future in them and sought to infuse his Forever People with the same hopes, the same sense of responsibility at inheriting a world made dangerous.”

I’ll be dealing with each character in the entries to come, so I’m going to feature an eloquent letter of comment regarding this issue, the first of The Forever People run, that appeared in #3:

Dear Editor:

Just to add a few words to the already awesome mound of praise (one might term it a “mountain of judgment,” had one a way with clever nomenclature) surely deluging you, my compliments on the first issue of Jack Kirby’s The Forever People. In recent memory only Deadman, Enemy Ace and Bat Lash seem to match this strip for innovation and success. Which probably means — if we are use as yardstick, the commercial failures of these high-water marks of quality continuity — The Forever People is too good for the average comic audience.

Its power and inventiveness display the Kirby charisma at its peak. Every panel is a stunner. Potentially, it appears to be the richest vein of story material National has unearthed in years. One hopes Kirby will be given total free rein, that he will be allowed to ride his dreams wherever they take him, for the journey is a special one, and we get visionaries like Kirby only once in a generation, if we’re terribly lucky. To constrain him, force him to fetter himself with the rules and rags of previous comics experience, would be to dull the edge of his imagination.

After the many false starts of National efforts in the past five years, at last it seems you’ve struck the main route. That it should be Kirby — at the top of his form — that worked point-scout, is not surprising. He has long been master of the form, and in The Forever People, it seems he’s found his metier.

Best wishes and prayers for a long, long life for The Forever People. Till now, all the flack bushwack about this being the Golden Age of Comics has fallen tinnily on us; but with Kirby in the saddle and The Forever People casting its wondrous glow, you now have leave to bang the drums.

— Harlan Ellison
Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Day 31: The Boom Tube!

by
Posted in Apokolips, Day Entries, Earth, New Genesis, The Forever People #1, Vehicles, Weapons & Devices.

Here, on the first comic book story page Jack wrote and drew for his legendary ’70s stint at DC Comics (first, according to the job number assigned to it, X-100), on page one of The Forever People #1 [Feb.-Mar. 1971], is the transportation device he created to get his Fourth World characters from New Genesis and Apokolips to Earth and back again. A kind of hipster “rainbow bridge” [see Thor, The Mighty], the Boom Tube was used by both the children of Highfather and denizens of Darkseid in the Super-War that was only just now beginning between the new generation of cosmic gods, using our small green globe as battlefield.

The Boom Tube (a name coined, I reckon, because it sounds like the contemporaneous derogatory term Americans often used to describe their televisions, “The Boob Tube”) is an inter-dimensional tunnel that appears out of thin air — with a sonic boom heralding the arrival — in our world’s environs and, with its travelers safe on earthly soil, just as suddenly disappears with a thunderclap. It is also used between the two worlds of the new gods.

The question begs an answer: Just where do New Genesis and Apokolips exist in relation to Earth? Is it, indeed, in a parallel dimension or in or around the Promethean Galaxy, which we see Metron (the developer of The Boom Tube, by the by) teleporting to its edge in the opening of New Gods #5? It’s probably a silly question — where does Asgard or Valhalla or Heaven or Hell reside, for that matter? — but the deeper and deeper we read into the Fourth World saga, the more the connections between the three worlds matter…

Oh, never mind. I need to relax and enjoy the new story that’s only just beginning: Who or what is traveling through this Boom Tube and what adventures are in store? Find out tomorrow…

Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #135

by
Posted in Bonus, Cooke Looks, Jimmy Olsen #135.

Cooke Look: “Evil Factory!”

With this issue, the third of Jack’s run, the Jimmy Olsen segment of The Fourth World tetralogy is starting to gain texture, the pacing nicely building, and the storytelling just a smidgen more measured, as if the artist/writer was beginning to cozy into his new creative environs at DC and getting comfortable with a whole new set of characters. While we do get boatloads of exposition — hey, all that’s happened is a lot to take in; just check out how many entries we have for 66 pages of story thus far! — and, believe it or don’t, Jack throws in concepts he obviously plans for, but the ideas are coming at him so fast, sometimes he plain forgets and keeps in forward motion! Have a look-see at the “File 202” so prominently displayed as a major coming element on this issue’s splash page, and after finishing the entire JO run, you tell me what that dalgarned “File 202” is! (Hey, I can surmise it pertains to the coming “Four-Armed Terror,” but never be certain…)

A great deal of pleasure can be derived from this issue: the mini-Supes, Scrappers and Jimmys; the slightly mincing Mokkari and cravenly Simyan; the two Newsboy Legions joyful embrace; not-so jolly green Jimmy; and (sigh) a delightful “new” super-hero, The Guardian. Reading this specific comic book as a kid eased any doubt I might have had about where Jack was going (I mean, “Whiz Wagon”? “Hairies”? “Mountain of Judgment”? “Flippa-Dippa”??? In the beginning, as charmed as I was, I wondered whether or not this guy was sane!) and when I was finished with this issue I surrendered to a new existence as a fan for life. My motto became “Trust In Kirby: Maybe We’re Headed for Crazytown, But the Ride Sure Is Wild!”

I think I caught a hint that this guy Kirby was a genius early on, especially in his Jimmy Olsen series, when all of his abilities started to coalesce for me: His unique dynamic drawing style (even when muted by Colletta’s oft-inappropriate, feathery inks); his unrelenting, pile-driving, never look back storytelling; his delightful, sometimes wonky dialogue, so melodramatic and so… so Warner Brothers, I guess!; the overarching cheeriness of his comics, urging us kids to come along and have some fun; and, maybe the most important aspect, his lack of sentimentality about the nature of man but (albeit guarded) optimism for life itself: the vision of Jack Kirby.

While much of this issue is exposition and setting up for the “time-bomb” of the story to come, we still get to relish again one of Jack’s longest running devices: The good old fashioned slugfest, with “Giant Jimmy” beating the Krypton out of Kal-el… Nobody, but nobody does a fistfight better than the King!

Upon re-reading there’s always something new to find — or something I think I uncover — and I’m beginning to detect that while Jack depicts authority very often in light-of-day, clean cut imagery, there’s nuances and subtleties that show however good the intentions of the institutions of “our” side, disastrous badness just might emerge… The Guardian clone’s strange brain patterns, the mere fact DNA was used to grow alien monsters, the folly of building super-nuclear reactors in Metropolis’s basement, to name a few of The Project’s creating the opportunity for their own — and maybe our own — demise. Do I detect an uneasiness emerging from Jack about science and technology, and a yearning for a return to the Garden, so to speak, the pristine nature of New Genesis and the Wild Area?

Themes are beginning to take shape and come into sharp focus. And next entry, Jack lays his cards on the table just what the coming battle is all about, as we move on to the second-released title of his Fourth World opus. They belong to sunrise — they’re here in mid-day — to stop the spread of night! Yes, Kirbyheads, here come The Forever People of Supertown!

Day 30: The Golden Guardian!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Earth, Heroes, Jimmy Olsen #135, Supporting Characters.

Talk about an in-your-face ending to this ish! Here, comin’ rightacha, is the return of one of Jack and Joe Simon’s great 1940s super-hero creations (the last costumed hero the pair initiated for DC during the WWII era), The Guardian! Originated as a guardian angel of a group of paperboys, in 1942’s Star Spangled Comics, the adventurer is actually Suicide Slum beat cop Jim Harper, who apparently can justify his nightime vigilantism. The group headlined SSC until their disappearance after the war.

To be frank, The Guardian was a bald-faced swipe of S&K’s greatest creation, Captain America, right down to the shield (though the DC character’s accessory was in the shape of a police badge), only without the “Old Glory” color scheme and Harper didn’t have just one kid sidekick — the rookie-by-day had four: Scrappy, Gabby, Tommy and Big Words!

Admittedly, The Guardian, with his great cyan-&-gold ensemble (was the helmet gold-leafed?), served as permanent guest-star within the breathless exploits headlined by The Newsboy Legion, but the audacity of S&K of virtually transplanting Timely’s “Sentinel of Liberty” and making a home for him at their new publisher, The House of Superman, was exhilarating and apropos of the creative team’s tenacity and chutzpah. (The duo suspected they were being cheated out of royalties by Timely publisher — hence their move — and they only produced ten issues of Captain America Comics… but, boy oh boy, what star-making issues they were!). Here was a S&K action hero smashing, punching, flying, exploding from the page… Yowza!

I’ll confess, too, that though I had zero prior knowledge of the character, upon first seeing this very same final page of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #135, The Guardian instantly became one of my favorite super-heroes (a very short list). Why he’s never caught on in the “DC Universe” to much of a degree is a shame; maybe because he’s a Cap rip-off? But that’s one of the main reasons I dig the hero — it’s S&K stealing from… S&K!!!

But, wait, this isn’t the original Guardian. This one has been grown from the dead cop’s DNA in The Project from a test tube by Harper’s former wards. And, there is something even more different about Guardian 2.0… The clone complains of feeling out-of-sorts… Doc Big Words worries that the resurrected Harper has “some strange unidentifiable activity in the brain area,” and later agrees that though, “He’s physically perfect and well-adjusted mentally! But in his brain is something common to all of the living products of our genetic labs! Something still elusive!”

Alas, Jack never expanded on these tantalizing hints of storylines to come, and while the hero only guest-starred in a small handful of JO stories during the Kirby run, The Guardian of Metropolis was a joy to behold!

Coming Soon: After tomorrow’s JO #135 round-up, we finally advance to the second title in Jack’s Fourth World opus, The Forever People, so grab your Mother Boxes, buckos, cuz the Super-War heats up Big Time! (Remember, we’re dissecting the 4W chronologically, looking at each issue in the order they were published.)

Day 29: The Project’s Life Chamber!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Earth, Jimmy Olsen #135, Weapons & Devices.

Just what have the former members of the original Newsboy Legion been up to at The Project? What could possibly bring a teacher, geneticist, social worker and medical doctor together at the U.S. super-secret scientific facility? (Mr. Dippa? Apparently he’s a babysitter!) The mystery begins to be answered as the men entrust Jimmy by revealing a personal project of their own:

In the giant petri dish called a Life Chamber by Jack, their experiment speaks, is agitated, demands freedom! And who can this replica be? The humanoid tells the doctor it is prepared to be released from the growing booth: “Yes, I am strong! Strong! Let me out! My mission is to defend — to protect! You face disaster! Let me out!”

Are you folks ready for one of the biggest debuts in the Fourth World run? Well, watch out! He’s almost here!! Hang tight, Kirby fans!!! A Golden-Age “newbie” is coming rightatcha!!!

Day 28: The Incredible Jimmy!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Earth, Jimmy Olsen #135, Villains.

Here, finally, is the reveal of just who is under that hood! A giant green clone of Jimmy Olsen, hellbent on crushing the life out of J.O.’s best pal, attacking Supes with “almost galactic force”! Bred by The Evil Factory, its “prize giant” has a singular mission to destroy the Man of Steel, who is “The one ally of Earth,” Simyan explains, “who could successfully defend them against us.”

I am led to believe that Jack did have some big plans for Superman in his Fourth World mythos (later recognized by stalwart creators including John Byrne and Bruce Timm, in comics and animation respectively, who both integrated elements of the Apokolips-New Genesis War into their own Superman projects), and the more you think about the melding of the two — Superman and Super-War — the more apropos the connection. I’ll wax on when we discuss Supes’ guest-star turn in The Forever People #1, but just gotta say, man, what coulda been!

It’s a delightful twist to have another freakish version of Jimmy tramping through the pages of his comic book, one that harks back to the wonky Weisinger-edited tales of Jimmy as a werewolf, or giant turtle man, or super-fat man, stories that were actually a lot of fun, if rankly juvenile. For the life of me, I can’t imagine Jack sitting down and reading the JO run before commencing on the title, but still, it’s a nice echo, whether intended or not.

It’s interesting, too, that the creature has a certain resemblance to another giant green behemoth prone to rage, one The King co-created at the competition nine or so years earlier, though where’s Green Jimmy’s purple pants? Watch out, kids, OLSEN SMASH!

The synthetic Kryptonite has helped the monster to smackdown Superman, and the creature is determined to destroy the entire Project…

Day 27: The Penetrator Beam!

by
Posted in Apokolips, Day Entries, Earth, Jimmy Olsen #135, Weapons & Devices.

Have ya wondered how Simyan and Mokkari are able to steal through the super-tight security of The Project to swipe cloning technology and DNA samples? Ponder no more as the caveman-looking Apokoliptian agent whips out the handy Penetrator Beam ray cannon, which Simyan uses to zap the berserker, a not-so Jolly Green Giant rampaging through the Evil Factory, out of their hair and into The Project to kill… (gulp!) The Man of Steel!

(To catch up with our tale: While Superman continues his tour of The Project with Jimmy, The Evil Factory’s keepers are applying a finishing touch to the oversize being they’ve grown from pilfered genes, spraying the caged humanoid with synthesized Kryptonite, which now gives the guy the ability to conquer the Last Son of Krypton (and just happens to turn his epidermis green). Mokkari and Simyan report by television to Darkseid, who berates the pair with a lecture on duality: “…Who can deny the power of the other side? Death can eclipse life! A great lie can smash truth! And the answer to a finely disciplined Superman is what you have created — a chaotic fury of a thing…” But, alas, the monster decimates his confinement cell and attacks the pair, and Simyan realizes he can save his partner with the right Kirby kontraption!)

Day 26: Jimmy Olsen XLIII!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Earth, Jimmy Olsen #135, Supporting Characters.

Wouldn’t you think, coming face-to-face with a clone of yourself, grown from cells taken from unsuspecting you during a routine workplace medical check-up, wouldn’t you be the tinsiest bit concerned that your D.N.A., the essence that is you had been stolen and there were hundreds of your duplicates being used by the government in place of “authentic” humans?

Apparently not our intrepid Daily Planet reporter, James Bartholomew Olsen, who greets a double — designated Jimmy O. 43 — with no more than a startled gasp, while he takes a tour of The Project hosted by his pal, the Man of Steel (who knew the cell tissue of Jimmy, the Newsboy Legion, and even his impervious self was being nipped). Consider the ethical implications! Would this lead to a Blade Runner-like future?

After encountering No. 43, Jimmy is led by Supes into a laboratory where, the red-headed journalist looks through a “magno-microscope” to see a bunch of tiny underwear clad mini-Jimmys, as small as dust motes, unconscious. Our super-hero tells the kid, “Yes, they’re real, Jimmy! They’re you! — and they are in shock! Some outside agency has rifled our replica section!”

(Interesting how Superman uses the plural possessive for The Project. Hard to say he isn’t a staunch ally of this questionable government endeavor, huh? And also, the accelerated growth process isn’t even hinted at — the cloning procedure seems to develop the replicants fully-formed… never mind being grown with clothes on!)

Day 25: Legionnaires At Ease!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Earth, Events, Jimmy Olsen #135, Supporting Characters.

A marvelous moment, calm and joyfilled, as the two Newsboy Legions, the old and new, greet one another with affection and delight. Even Flippa-Dippa’s father (this, as is obvious, is a meeting of fathers and sons) is there, who was not a member of the original Suicide Slum gang, but apparently pals around with the guys.

We soon learn that the fathers have been at work at The Project, on their own secret enterprise, one that involves an old ally of the grown-up Legion. We’re also informed about the adult occupations of the men in this issue:

Gabby, Sr., is now a teacher; “Big Words,” Sr. (still no first name given) is appropriately a geneticist; Scrapper, Sr., is now, natch, a social worker; and Tommy, Sr., is currently a medical doctor. Flippa’s dad? Not so sure…

Linking the Golden Age kid gang to the present was a splendid touch in not only adding some continuity and relevance to the concept, but it also gave readers a sense of Jack’s own history as a comic book creator through the decades. Always a forward-looking guy, it’s remarkable the artist/writer resurrected characters of a bygone era, so it reveals an affection he held for the boys and their erstwhile protector (whom we will soon learn much more about, Kirby fans!).

Enjoy the friendly moment, fathers and sons, ‘cuz things are about to heat up!

Day 24: The Project!

by
Posted in Day Entries, Earth, Jimmy Olsen #135, Locations.

A vast American underground preserve, hidden in a mammoth cave under the foundations of Metropolis, The Project is an enormous Federal scientific complex devoted to DNA research and experimentation. Jack tells us it’s “a new and far reaching experiment which could change humanity as we know it!” Comparing it to the Manhattan Project, Superman tells Jimmy and the boys, “Even as the A-bomb began a new era for man — this project may begin a new history!”

Supes is a big supporter of the program, which grows its own clones to staff the huge facility (some for secretarial tasks, others for military duty), so much a booster he donated the first cells to be grown into duplicate beings! (What happened to that backstory!)

While it appears Jack, pretty much confirmed as a Kennedy liberal Democrat and no Nixon fan, had a generally optimistic view of a government devoted to the betterment of its peoples (think moonshots, not Vietnam), ya gotta wonder, if the saga had kept going, whether the dark side of The Project itself would have eventually come to fore. Perhaps we get a glimpse when Jimmy says to the Man of Steel, “Do you realize what weird, and perhaps dangerous, channels are being probed here?”

When Supes gushes to his pal, “The Secret of Life, long hidden in the DNA molecule, has been extracted and is now being used for mankind’s benefit” by The Project, and you see evidence of unethical cloning of unsuspecting donors, and the possible use of clones as slave labor, you just gotta ask the big guy, “For whose benefit?”

At least The Evil Factory is upfront with its intentions!

Anyway, the place is rife with story possibilities and we’ll meet a bunch of groovy inhabitants in the entries to come…