And that’s a wrap on the retrospective! It was a chore at times… especially for the Fourth World… but I did have lots of fun.
So let’s close off with something unusual: an award session that combines the Eternal Awards, the Gods Awards… and even the Kirby issues of the Jimmy Olsen retrospective.
Ladies and gentlemen: the Kirby Awards!
BEST SERIES
Winner: Mister Miracle
The last third of the series is a huge drop in quality, for sure, but Mister Miracle and Big Barda are just about the only protagonists I cared about.
Runner-up: Eternals
Despite seriously lacking in good protagonists… Sersi and Thena are the only two worth anything and they’re rarely the focus… I find this society and this world so interesting that even the lackluster last issues can’t sour my opinion of the series.
Third place: Jimmy Olsen
Bet you didn’t expect HIM to be on ANY of my podiums, but… while he’s still an idiot, he’s not AS stupid as he used to be… although it might be because he’s barely present in his own series.
The series is a jumbled mess, the Newsboy Legion is infinitely annoying, and Kirby is going in a thousand contradictory directions at once.
But I will have to give him credit: it’s definitely more focused than the rest of the Fourth World books.
Honorable mention: Forever People
Unlike Jimmy, they ARE the center of their book… and I still can’t tell you anything about their personality. Ironically, Kirby captured the “adventure series on the run” better on Jimmy Olsen, where it was NOT supposed to be the theme!
Even the fact that this is the Fourth World series where Darkseid shows up most frequently does nothing for them.
Dishonorable mention: New Gods
I started off this retrospective not caring for these characters and this series.
Now that I have found a genuinely great issue in this run… my opinion of the rest of them is even lower.
BEST WORLDBUILDING
Winner: Eternals
This is the one category where Eternals completely blows Kirby’s DC series out of the water: they’re not even remotely in the same weight class.
For all my criticism of Kirby’s writing, his worldbuilding in this series is excellent: there are multiple layers that can work off each other and are directly related in an understandable way (the Celestials, the Eternals, the Deviants), and this is the only case when I can believe Kirby did SOME planning for how all the pieces fit together.
It also has understandable reasons for why and how all the fantastical ideas work with modern Earth, you don’t have to worry about how they fit in a superhero universe (that’s a problem for LATER series using the Eternals)… and the Celestials sell the “bigger than life” ideas infinitely better than anything Kirby does at DC.
Runner-up: Jimmy Olsen, the DNA Project
The actual Fourth World stuff is surprisingly less prevalent than you’d think, considering this was the first series and that Darkseid was first seen here.
But the DNA Project, which will later be rebranded as Project Cadmus, is quite a solid concept that is very ahead of its time. Kirby does explore its potential a bit, and even although it does a terrible job integrating itself with the DC Universe… something that it SHOULD have addressed, considering Superman is a major character in several issues… at least it’s MOSTLY internally coherent.
Third place: the Fourth World, everything else
I can’t deny there’s a charm to some of the zany campiness, but I still cannot believe how anyone could possibly believe any of this stuff is deep or complex.
Kirby is CLEARLY writing by the seat of his pants and he barely explains ANYTHING; he’s constantly dropping concepts he doesn’t explore that are just thrown out there and then we move to something else.
Contrast his gods with the Celestials, or even the Eternals: aside from Darkseid and maybe Metron, I never got the idea that these are larger than life figures… they’re just weird aliens.
Later writers have attempted to turn these characters as physical embodiments of concepts, but that falls flat to me because Darkseid and Metron are again the only ones that fit.
Like I believe Mister Miracle is supposed to be the incarnation of the platonic idea of freedom or something? Yeah I don’t buy for a second these are not just people who sometimes have powers.
There are SO many things that don’t make sense internally… like, why do some characters get powers and some don’t? Why do some characters know everything about modern Earth and some don’t? What even ARE those powers??? ALL of these have a CLEAR explanation on Eternals, but you just have to go with the flow with the Fourth World.
Ironically the ONE thing that Kirby explains very clearly, the Anti-Life Equation, is later turned into some kind of weird metaphysical abstraction.
BEST PROTAGONIST
Winner: Mister Miracle & Big Barda
I consider them co-protagonists from the moment Big Barda shows up, and I’ve gushed long enough about how great and refreshing they are.
Runner-up: Jimmy Olsen
I’m as surprised as you are to see him here, but… he does have one thing in his favor that nearly every other Kirby character lacks: I can understand WHY he does things!!!
Most if the time it’s because he’s an idiot, but still.
He’s ALSO an active protagonist, going around doing stuff instead of standing around for the plot to just include him. Which sometimes doesn’t happen and he turns into a supporting character on his own series; that’s a major strike that prevents him from reaching first place.
Third place: Thena
Mostly by default by most of the actual protagonists sucking at their job. She’s rarely in the spotlight, although she REALLY should have been!
She would have been the perfect lens through which to see both Eternal and Deviant society, thanks to her relationship with both Kro and Karkas & Reject.
Kirby could have used her to explore the faults of the Eternals society, perhaps set up a generational divide with her father, which would have made her criticisms of Deviant society less shallow.
Honorable mention: Sersi
I considered giving HER Thena’s place. She’s a more fleshed out character, but I don’t see the same potential to explore all aspects of this world. Plus she’s already overpowered for her setting, you would need to work really hard to give her actual challenges and frankly I don’t think Kirby is that good of a writer to do that consistently.
WORST PROTAGONIST
Winner: the Newsboy Legion
They are effectively the co-protagonists for a good chunk of the Jimmy Olsen run.
And every time they show up I want to scream: NOTHING about their presence in this book works!
Why is a bunch of kids with barely any useful talents consistently getting involved with super-science freaks and alien monsters?
They’re not funny, they’re not cool, they’re distracting, most of them don’t have ANY personality, those who do can be summarized as “just annoying”, one of them is called Flippa Dippa, and then there’s Tommy.
Nobody has ever cared about Tommy.
Runner-up: Ikaris
Third place: Orion
You could probably do an entire course on “how to write a series protagonist” and base it entirely on how you should NOT follow how these two are handled.
Ikaris is SLIGHTLY worse because unlike Orion he doesn’t have an interesting backstory… but Orion never does anything with it anyway.
Their respective series reach their best moments when they’re sidelined: they’re the worst point-of-view characters you could possibly select for their worlds.
The only thing that doesn’t make them as bad as the Newsboy Legion is that at the very least I can understand why they’re here in-universe.
Dishonorable mention: the Forever People
Jimmy Olsen did a better job than you at being an adventure series with a theme of generational struggle! JIMMY OLSEN!!!
BEST VILLAIN
Winner: Darkseid
In a lot of issues he pales in comparison to later versions, but when he works he’s simply amazing.
Runner-up: Kro
Easily the most complex villain Kirby ever wrote. Mostly because he’s not exactly known for the complexity of his characterization, but still.
Third place: Granny Goodness
Honorable mention: Glorious Godfrey
The fact that the Fourth World villains are generally more interesting than most of its heroes means that the remaining ones on the podium of the Gods Awards sweep the remaining positions.
WORST VILLAIN
Winner: Mister Fez
Runner-up: Mister Hand
Third place: The Head
The trifecta of terrible Mister Miracle villains. How is it possible that the best Fourth World series has ALL the worst villains!?
Dishonorable mention: Hulk Robot
He completely derails the series and REALLY overstays his welcome, but at the very least he was a credible threat that provided SOME tension.
BEST SUPPORTING CHARACTER
Winner: Karkas & Reject, tie
Taken separately, they’re good characters best taken in small doses.
Together, I can’t get enough of this duo.
Runner-up: Dan Turpin
How can you not love this absolute madman? No wonder modern interpretations make him a walking Jack Kirby reference.
Third place: Morgan Edge
Oscillates between a supporting character and a villain, but he does the first job far better.
Honorable mention: Dubbilex
No wonder the post-Crisis Superboy turned him into a regular supporting character!
WORST SUPPORTING CHARACTER
Winner: Orion’s clique
They might just be the most superfluous characters Kirby introduces. They only exist to repeat their names ad nauseam, hype Orion, and nothing else.
Runner-up: Terry Dean
Did you even remember Jimmy Olsen almost had a love interest in the Kirby run? She never does anything interesting besides providing a bit of eye candy. Her inclusion is particularly baffling because she’s not even a Kirby character, she was first introduced in a Leo Dorfman issue!
Third place: Ted Brown
Adds absolutely nothing to the Mister Miracle series.
Dishonorable mention: the Newsboy Legion
Yes I’ve already counted them as the worst protagonists, but they’re a cross between that category and being supporting characters.
I think they suck enough to get two negative trophies.
BEST STORY
Winner: Mister Miracle #9
Runner-up: New Gods #7
Third place: Eternals #10
Honorable mention: Eternals #11
Nothing new here. The best two Fourth World stories take the podium, followed by the two best Eternals issues.
WORST STORY
Winner: Jimmy Olsen 139
Two words: Goody Rickles.
Runner-up: New Gods vol2 #6
The story with the worst Kirby pencils, and the worst story with Kirby writing that does not include Goody Rickles.
Third place: Mister Miracle #6
Two words: Funky Flashman. I thought Kirby had more class than that.
Dishonorable mention: Mister Miracle #16
DC has a long tradition of ending a story with “it was just a dream”; in 1973, it had already become unacceptable. In a Jack Kirby book, that’s insulting.
MOST SILVER AGE PANEL
MOST KIRBY PANEL
MOST MEME-WORTHY PANEL
BEST MONSTER DESIGN
BEST REACTION SHOT
WORST REACTION SHOT
MOST FANSERVICE PANEL
BEST TECHNOBABBLE
This WOULD have felt like technobabble at the time, but it’s the most scientifically accurate part of all series.
WORST TECHNOBABBLE
BEST PANEL
The only reason it didn’t win in the Gods Awards is that I didn’t feel comfortable giving the prize to the 80s follow-up.
But this single panel tells you the important part of the whole 62 pages of that graphic novel.
WORST PANEL
BEST SPLASH PAGE
BEST DOUBLE SPLASH PAGE
WORST SPLASH PAGE
WORST DOUBLE SPLASH PAGE
BEST COVER
WORST COVER
Now that this retrospective is done, its spot in the rotation will be taken by… nothing right now, because I want to finish the 5YL era in the Legion retrospective first.
But once THAT is over, we will begin Character Chronologies: looks at the unusual journeys some characters took over the years.