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A review by stegan
Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, Vol. 1 by Jack Kirby
4.0
Gah. What to say about this. It is a gorgeous volume- DC did a fantastic job of reprinting the comics. They look like you wish 70s comics had actually looked. As a result, Kirby's art is even more wild and wonderful on the page, with one and two-page splashes that readers can get lost inside. And once in a while, you get a pop art collage of our heroes over black and white photographs that just stops you dead. It's all just so much fun to look at.
But the story. Oh, the story. I think Kirby's vision is clear at points- he wanted to show 1970 that its young people had a thing or two to teach them about some of the lessons yet to be learned from World War II, about the preciousness of freedom and equality and how they could usurped by greed and malice. But the man needed a writer to really get the point across. Because his old school style of ending every bubble with an exclamation point to convey urgency becomes downright torturous after a while. And his mixture of slang and five-cent words will make your head reel.
DC is not without blame here either. As Mark Evanier explains in the afterword to this volume, they were pushing Kirby to constantly add more characters and stick with conventional storylines. The universe Kirby was creating was not commercially viable, and I don't think he cared. But DC did, and so you end up with Don Rickles being introduced as a character in a multi-issue "Jimmy Olsen" arc. Just a classic Silver Age DC moment...
All in all, this is a fun read- to see how far Kirby was ahead of the curve, to see the origins of Darkseid and Mister Miracle, to reminisce about hand-lettering in mass produced comics... It's a three star book, overall- the fourth star I gave it here is a Kirby bonus.
But the story. Oh, the story. I think Kirby's vision is clear at points- he wanted to show 1970 that its young people had a thing or two to teach them about some of the lessons yet to be learned from World War II, about the preciousness of freedom and equality and how they could usurped by greed and malice. But the man needed a writer to really get the point across. Because his old school style of ending every bubble with an exclamation point to convey urgency becomes downright torturous after a while. And his mixture of slang and five-cent words will make your head reel.
DC is not without blame here either. As Mark Evanier explains in the afterword to this volume, they were pushing Kirby to constantly add more characters and stick with conventional storylines. The universe Kirby was creating was not commercially viable, and I don't think he cared. But DC did, and so you end up with Don Rickles being introduced as a character in a multi-issue "Jimmy Olsen" arc. Just a classic Silver Age DC moment...
All in all, this is a fun read- to see how far Kirby was ahead of the curve, to see the origins of Darkseid and Mister Miracle, to reminisce about hand-lettering in mass produced comics... It's a three star book, overall- the fourth star I gave it here is a Kirby bonus.