The issues of MISTER MIRACLE after the other Fourth World books were cancelled don’t get that much attention, as they mostly shy away from the big cosmic over-arching plot and tell simpler adventure stories. They’re fun books, for the most part, but seem to show a bit of Kirby trying to figure out exactly what DC wanted from him after they’d responded to two years of some of the best work of his career with multiple cancellations (though that was largely a DC thing, very few books they launched in that era lasted much longer than the average Kirby book).

MISTER MIRACLE #13, “The Dictator’s Dungeon”, is a few months after the companion titles had been cancelled. After Scott Free practices yet another close escape, this time from a train, Ted Brown is captured by a flying ship, piloted by odd man-ape creatures (which Kirby calls “aboriginal”, but I’m not certain he’s using it in the right sense). Scott and Barda are also accidentally captured by the same ship, breaking in and cleaning house.

The ship takes them to Mount Everest, where we meet King Komodo, a masked man who’s taken control of the abominable snowmen of the region, and who turns out to be Nazi war criminal Albert von Killowitz, who Ted had recognized and escaped from in Korea some years earlier. Of course they defeat him and take him in eventually.

It’s an odd story, with some promise that it doesn’t quite manage to achieve. There are a lot of nice things, especially the characterization of Barda and her interplay with Scott and Oberon. There’s a cover layout that’s been printed a few times that shows Kirby considered a “Big Barda and Her Female Furies” series, and I’m kind of sorry he never got a chance to do it, as he always had fun with the character even in small scenes.

“That Jockey of the Ink Jars” Mike Royer inks the 23 page story and cover.

Published 1973