New retrospective! We will be looking at the two Jack Kirby creations of the 70s: his Fourth World and his Eternals.
Specifically we will be alternating an issue of the DC series and one of the Marvel one.
New Gods #1 (1971)
by Jack Kirby
The New Gods, the series they liked so much they named it on the cover twice.
And I already have something to complain about.
As I have said many times during the Jimmy Olsen review, I have the lowest possible opinion of Kirby using collages inside the story… so you can imagine I really don’t like the baffling idea of representing a planet like this on the cover.
You mean to tell me JACK KIRBY couldn’t draw a more visually interesting planet!?
Which reminds me, if you’re a Jack Kirby superfan and you haven’t seen my Jimmy Olsen reviews… I’m not exactly kind to a lot of the stuff Kirby does in this period.
We begin with a STUNNINGLY beautiful splash page that explains the backstory to the New Gods mythos. Which is about Jack Kirby burning Asgard to the ground after he leaves Thor the old gods dying.
And it’s also the explanation for why Kirby’s mythos is called the Fourth World, because we have four worlds involved:
1) the world of the old gods
2) the world of the new gods who are good
3) the world of the new gods who are bad
4) possibly Earth? Was there ever an official confirmation?
After that two-page introduction, we have a splash page entirely dedicated to Orion’s face.
We are then introduced to the planet of New Genesis, where all the gods live in a flying city in order to keep the forests clean.
And then another splash page to show off the city a little, as well as giving us a first look of fellow god Lightray.
Alright, I guess I should address the main thesis of my retrospective and one of the reasons why I’m including this together with the Eternals.
Kirby’s artwork is spectacular, his imagination is boundless, his worldbuilding is great and he truly deserves his nickname as The King… but I’m sorry, his writing and especially his dialogues suck.
Just look at how he handles the introduction between Orion and Lightspeed.
There’s some lip service given to how Orion is burdened with some great responsibility while Lightspeed is the one without a care in the world… and it’s introduced in a clunky exchange that doesn’t mean anything because all we saw was them flying around.
You also have Orion admitting he doesn’t have a reason for liking Lightray, and Lightray himself is BARELY a blank slate without any personality whatsoever.
But as boring as Lightray is, at least he’s not supposed to be a big deal.
Highfather, on the other hand, is one of the many reasons why I can’t find anything happening on New Genesis to be remotely interesting.
I think one of the reasons is that Highfather is basically treated as the incarnation of everything good… and without any flaws, he’s INCREDIBLY boring.
As Kirby tends to do, this story introduces A LOT of lore every couple of panels.
Here we have The Source, some kind of mystical that basically acts as God, which for some reason is also liked to Highfather’s staff.
I’m not the biggest New Gods fan, as you can probably tell, so I had no idea the staff itself had ANY significance on its own.
Or that The Source was the Life Equation itself… isn’t it supposed to be something above both sets of gods?
The Fourth World is one of the few fictional mythologies I know that somehow manages to be both incredibly simple and unnecessarily complicated at the same time!
We are ALSO introduced to the only New Genesis character I find interesting (Mr. Miracle doesn’t count).
Metron is one of the few characters here that IS allowed to have a personal flaw that is both interesting and also shown in his actions, unlike Orion’s angst and anger that are mostly informed traits.
Another reason why Kirby dialogues suck: his character just can’t talk without giving exposition to other characters, who most of the time already know all this stuff.
Not only this is a bit old-fashioned for the Silver Age, even by 1971 standards… but I would argue that the way Kirby does it feels even LESS natural than the vast majority of Silver Age dialogue.
Another problem I have with the New Gods is that most of them lack agency.
They’re always either just blindly following whatever Highfather says, or what The Source says, or both.
Also, notice Metron giving a relatively straightforward description of the Anti-Life Equation: the way he says it, it does sound like a way to control minds.
Things will eventually get VERY esoteric about the A.L.E.
I’m serious, these guys just CANNOT stop giving each other exposition.
As he’s been instructed, Orion then travels to Apokolips, the other world created by the death of the olds gods.
And since it’s the exact opposite of New Genesis, Apokolips is AWESOME.
Well, it’s awesome to read anyway. Living there, not so much.
Orion is immediately ambushed by Para-Demons. Unlike modern depictions where they’re barely anything more than drooling monsters, they’re straight up soldiers.
What distinguishes Orion from the people of New Genesis is that he fights.
That’s basically it.
Surprisingly enough, Darkseid is not a main character in this story.
His first full appearance was on Forever People #1 (which I’ll properly include in the retrospective later), which has the same cover date but was published earlier. And of course his first published cameo was at the end of Jimmy Olsen #134.
Yeah, you tell that statue, instead of going after your vital mission!
Why are we following this guy again?
Then he fights some more soldiers.
After dealing with those, Orion leaves behind his flying harness to run towards Darkseid.
Not really sure why he bothered, couldn’t he take the harness back after winning the fight? He would look significantly less goofy.
But Darkseid is nowhere to be seen, having left THIS THING to give orders in his name…
…guarded by Kalibak, who looks SIGNIFICANLY more human than his eventual look.
You’d expect an all-out brawl between these two… but Kirby doesn’t feel like drawing it, so Metron just shows up to handle Orion the victory.
I’m sorry but this is just bad writing. Why have Orion get to Apokolips to be told by Metron that Darkseid is on Earth and be given the means to get there by Metron… instead of Orion discovering it on his own and finding the way to get to Earth on his own?
Better yet, if you must have Metron here, what was the point of introducing him back on New Genesis!?
Getting to Earth is not easy because Kirby destroyed Bifrost after leaving Marvel the bridge of the old gods has been destroyed, which is why Metron created the Boom Tube™.
Apparently Darkseid’s plan is to use the brains of a few kidnapped humans to find which human knows the secret of the Anti-Life Equation.
Sounds legit.
See what I meant about the New Gods lacking agency? Orion can’t even get his own tech unless someone else physically hands it over!
Well at least Orion frees the humans.
This whole series in a nutshell, people.
Kalibak then returns, even wounding Orion… according to the dialogue anyway, because he looks perfectly fine to me.
Orion knocks him back long enough to summon a Boom Tube™, which apparently “stems from the waves of the mind”… whatever THAT means.
You’d think these people would become important later, but not really.
And so Orion vows to fighting Darkseid…
…who responds in the last page.
Historical significance: 10/10
While I would argue that the New Gods themselves are not that significant, it IS the backstory of Darkseid and his world.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
As mentioned it is sometimes even more than the usual.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
I’ve never been able to understand people who hype this as some sort of deep masterpiece.
I firmly believe this is just empty spectacle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s stunningly beautiful spectacle penciled by a legend!
But there isn’t anything more behind it.
The worldbuilding WILL get significantly better, but here it boils down to this: the old gods are dead and new there are two sets of gods, one good and one bad. That’s it.
On top of THAT, Orion is not a good protagonist here. He has barely any characterization, he barely gets to take decisions on his own, heck he’s even denied a proper fight with Kalibak.
Also, say what you want about decompression in modern comics, but this one has a similar problem: barely anything happens, then there’s a ton of information dump, and then whatever action is left is quickly resolved.
It’s a solid foundation, but it’s like Kirby forgot to write an actual story on top of that.
Which is the second part of the thesis I’m going to explore in this retrospective: the reason why people think highly of the Fourth World characters is more based on what other creators will do with them over the years, rather than what Kirby himself does on this series.
Most Kirby panel
Most WTF panel
Darkseid’s troops ride giant dogs.
