My Jack Kirby Canon

Lists are fun, so I made a list of the best comics Jack Kirby worked on.

26.) Various Timely comics from 1940-1942 (Captain America Comics, Young Allies, etc.)

Comic books were young and so was Kirby. Kirby and Simon's art is kind of ugly in this era. There's a charm there; it's clearly better than a lot of other Golden Age garbage. Kirby's storytelling in this era is full of decorative flourishes that don't flow the way you expect a Jack Kirby comic to flow. This is simply not the Kirby you're looking for.

25.) Hulk stories from Tales to Astonish (1959) #68-84 by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Mike Esposito, Bill Everett, and more

These are Marvel by numbers. Nerdy guy experiences pressure from a superior while his alter ego is hounded by same superior? Check. Kirby's pencils are slowly phased out for finished art by Mike Esposito and later Bill Everett. Kirby's layouts keep everything clear but there's nothing here you couldn't get from another comic.

24.) X-men (1963) #1-16 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee with some assists from Alex Toth, Werner Roth, etc.

Kirby cranked out so much work in the 60s and it can't all be good. These comics suffer from inconsistent inking, odd word balloon placement, and Kirby's layouts being channeled through the hands of some less than sympathetic artists. It's a shame because the concepts and designs are really cool. Take the Juggernaut. That design is so weird and so Kirby! Yet the King didn't really produce a great Juggernaut story. Seeing Kirby and Toth's names credited on issue 12 and then reading the actual comic gave me whiplash. The Kirby/Toth/Colletta mix is hard to swallow.

23.) The early Spider-Man and The Human Torch team-ups (The Amazing Spider-Man #8 & Strange Tales Annual #2) by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko

These aren't bad comics but I don't particularly like them either. Ditko inking Kirby is always fun and Kirby's macho off-model Spider-Man is novel. Ditko couldn't draw the Thing and Kirby couldn't draw Spider-Man. I guess that's a fair trade.

22.) The Incredible Hulk (1962) # 1-5 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee with Paul Reinman, Dick Ayers, and Steve Ditko 

Like the earliest issues of Fantastic Four, these are a solid attempt at mining a continuing feature out of the monster comic tropes. Fantastic Four went beyond that material but Hulk never did. I'd rather read a one and done monster comic. Kirby would eventually make better Hulk comics with Hulk guest starring in other books.

21.) The Avengers (1963) #1-8 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (W) with Dick Ayers, Paul Reinman, George Roussos, and Chic Stone

The first issue, inked by Dick Ayers, is an ass kicking action comic showcasing a nice portion of the regular Marvel cast. The rest of these are just kind of okay. I know that Ayers trying to make sense of Kirby's abstractions doesn't appeal to everyone but I think it's quite nice.

20.) 1st Issue Special (1975) #5: Manhunter by Jack Kirby and D. Bruce Berry

I bought this in a dollar bin at a weird neighborhood toy store that I only ever saw open once. It's a shame Kirby never did more with this iteration of Manhunter because the theme of aging that this issue hints at is intriguing. The opening scene in the "Cave of Talking Heads" is some of the most wild and weird shit I've seen in a Kirby book.

19.) The Challengers of the Unknown stories from Showcase (1956) #6, 7, 11, 12 & Challengers of the Unknown (1958) #1-8 by Jack Kirby with Dave Wood, Wally Wood, France Herron, Roz Kirby, etc.

The "proto-Fantastic Four" talking point gets brought up all of the time so I won't dwell on it. The real notable thing about this work is how it bridges the gap between Kirby's earlier, more illustrative comics and the more visceral action of his comics from the 1960s and beyond.

18.) The Eternals (1976) #1-19 & Annual #1 by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, and John Verpoorten

This series is a continuation of the themes of the Fourth World series, now mixed with Erich Von Däniken's theories from Chariots of the Gods. As I've said previously, Kirby is a great match for this kind of material. Unfortunately, this series does not maintain that momentum for it's whole run.

17.) The Forever People (1971) #1-11 by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, and Vince Colletta

Like The Eternals, this series also starts strong but runs out of steam. The main cast is really delightful and I always found myself disappointed when they'd leave to let the Infinity Man fight. Their banter, particularly when they interact with squares is some of the funniest Kirby material I've read. This series unravels when Deadman joins the regular cast, a direction that was forced on Kirby.

16.) Devil Dinosar (1978) #1-9 by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer

The simple thrills of dinosaurs fighting. How could I not like this?

15.) Captain America (1968) #193-214, Annual #3, 4 & Captain America's Bicentennial Battles (1976) by Jack Kirby with Frank Giacoia, and more

I've heard Kirby's 70s return to Marvel dismissed as self-parody. I think that goes a bit far but it definitely isn't at the same level as his 70s DC comics. There's a similar density of information and panel design in these comics but it feels oddly decompressed. It's like three issues of this run of Captain America contain as much story as one issue of New Gods. These are still good comics. I'm struck by the fictional version of America's wealthy elite using media saturation to drive the populace to violence and paranoia. It's just like real life! At one point Captain America admits that his ancestors may have owned slaves and listens as he has his privilege explained to him. The Bicentennial Battles special explains how America's history is full of horrible war crimes(!) but we can work together for a better and more just future. It's crazy that these comics were drawn by an old white guy in the 1970s.

14.) Boys' Ranch (1950) #1-6 by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon with Mort Meskin, Bruno Premiani, Marvin Stein, and George Roussos

I've been wanting to read these for a long time and finally picked up a set of reprints. I first became aware of them in an essay by Mark Evanier. Evanier mentions that prior to The Pact from New Gods #7, Kirby considered Mother Delilah from the third issue of Boys' Ranch to be his finest work. I can see why he'd feel that way. There is an emotional depth that I haven't see from earlier Simon & Kirby comics. There are some issues with misogyny and some of the allusion is a little too on the nose but these are incredibly ambitious comic books for 1950. The aforementioned inelegance and the roughness of the execution hold these back but they're worth reading. These are a treat for any Kirby fan interested in his development.

13.) 46 Hours and 36 Minutes in the Life of Jack Ruby by Jack Kirby and Chic Stone

I only recently discovered this gem from a 1967 issue of Esquire and now I'm a little obsessed. It's short but dense at three pages with eleven to fifteen panels on each page. It serves as a timeline of the final two days of Jack Ruby's life but Kirby delivers it as a terse little noir story.

12.) Mister Miracle (1971) #1-18 by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, and Vince Colletta

As a fan of stage magic I've always been a little disappointed by Kirby's depiction of prestidigitation and escape acts. I wouldn't want to downplay the physicality of those skills but Kirby leaves out the grace, flexibility, and mental aspects. Scott Free (the best secret identity name in superhero comics) uses willpower to push through every trap set for him. It's still entertaining stuff, even though it loses some steam after the other Fourth World books get cancelled around the eleventh issue.

11.) Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. from Strange Tales (1951) #135-153 by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, John Severin, Don Heck, Jim Steranko, John Buscema, Ogden Whitney, and more

Steranko took control and brought this feature to more adventurous places but it was already pretty damn fun before he came along. The bonus is seeing a motley crew of cult artists working over Kirby's layouts along the way, including John Severin and Ogden "Herbie" Whitney.

10.) Fighting American (1954) #1-7 & Fighting American (1966) #1 by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon

I only just read these this last week and they really surprised me. I knew this was Kirby and Simon's "Commie Smashing Hero" but there's so much more to this. According to the introduction to the collection I bought, they started work on this title thinking they could cash in on McCarthyism. That's pretty gross. When they realized how far McCarthy was going to go they said "fuck it" and decided to go all in on this absurd superhero satire instead. Whoa, these are some wild superhero comics. Fighting American's origin is twisted. Nelson Flagg, our protagonist, is the younger brother of Johnny Flagg, a war hero who walks on crutches. Nelson is jealous of the respect his brother gets as a war hero and now as a tv news anchor. Johnny is beaten to death by evil Communist opera singers and Nelson, feeling guilty swears revenge and the Army offers to help him get that revenge. They rebuild Johnny's body as a sort of superhuman Frankenstein's monster and Nelson's mind is placed in his resurrected body. Nelson assumes Johnny's identity and his job as a reporter, forgetting about his life as Nelson Flagg. As Fighting American he takes orders from random G-Men and fights grotesque communist villains in all sorts of slapstick plots. I think I'm in love.

9.) Marvel Western comics including Rawhide Kid (1960) #17-32 & Two-Gun Kid (1953) #60-62 by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Dick Ayers

For a New Yorker, Kirby drew awesome westerns. Boy's Ranch had more character depth but a rougher execution. These on the other hand are beautifully drawn and intensely physical. If you wanted to find more comic book gun fighting this exciting you'd have to go to Japan. The plots feature a lot of Marvel superhero tropes, some developed here and some lifted from the superhero titles. Oh yeah! I almost forgot but there's even a Kirby monster in one of the Rawhide Kid issues!

8.) The Demon (1972) #1-16 by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer 

DC's 70s era pulp/horror informed superhero books are among my favorites in that company's history. I think a lot of people associate Kirby's art with weird future tech and forget that he's also really good at drawing gothic castles and medieval fantasy imagery. Jason Blood's allies and enemies are more archetypal than naturalistic but Kirby does archetypes better than most.

7.) The Marvel/Atlas Monster stories by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Dick Ayers

There's a certain thrill in picking up a classic Archie comic. If you can find joy in that sort of thing you'll enjoy any issue you pick up, whether it's drawn by Al Hartley or Dan DeCarlo. You'll know exactly what you're getting. The monster stories from Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Journey Into Mystery, and Amazing Adventures are like that. There's a formula that repeats, there are storytelling beats that show up in every single one, and it always works.

6.) Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (1954) #133-139 & 141-148 by Jack Kirby, Vince Colletta, and Mike Royer with alterations on Superman and Jimmy Olsen by Al Plastino and Murphy Anderson

It's rare to see Kirby working with characters created by someone else. That's not what I'd normally want from Kirby but this time it worked. It makes sense that Kirby would mix nicely with the utopian science fiction concepts associated with DC's Silver Age characters. In the first story arc of this run Kirby pushes those concepts further than they'd ever been pushed before. Jimmy Olsen befriends a society of highly advanced hippie scientists who live in a utopian separatist community. They produce some of the most beautiful and bizarre looking Kirby tech we've ever seen. I'm also going to go on the record saying that I sort of like the extremely on-model Superman and Jimmy Olsen interacting with these crazy Kirby settings and characters.

5.) 2001: A Space Odyssey Treasury Special (1976) & 2001: A Space Odyssey (1977) #1-10 by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, and Frank Giacoia

The idea that there was a licensed comic book based upon 2001, and an ongoing series at that, is absurd. The fact that they're actually good is sublime. The Treasury Special is a movie adaptation but the series itself is like a Jack Kirby tone poem about cavemen, astronauts, robots, and more. I loved the movie when I was a kid but these days I'd rather read Kirby riffing on the same themes.

4.) Fantastic Four (1961) #1-102 & Annual #1-6 by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Joe Sinnott, and others

When I was younger the consensus seemed to be that this was Jack Kirby's defining work. The trouble is that this run is huge and hasn't always been accessible. The omnibus collections are too damn big to read. The Marvel Masterworks collections were too expensive, especially considering what a long series it was. So for the longest time I, and I think a lot of comics fans, were best acquainted with the most famous issues of this series. Those would be the very earliest issues, the Galactus trilogy, and This Man, This Monster. I've read a few of the final issues when I found some cheap coverless copies. Now I'm trying to fill the gaps. I'm making my way through this run and I still have a ways to go. It's great, and I'm not surprised by that. Still, this ranking is based upon an incomplete reading of this material. I'm trying to pace myself, reading an issue here and there. When all is said and done I might rank this differently but for now, I feel pretty good about it at number 4.

3.) New Gods (1971) #1-11, New Gods (1984) #6, and The Hunger Dogs (1985) by Jack Kirby with Mike Royer, Vince Colletta, Greg Theakston, D. Bruce Berry and more

I feel as if I've lived with these characters longer than most of Jack Kirby's creations but only in my most recent reading did these comics make a real impression on me. I wrote about them here.

2.) Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth (1972) #1-40 by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, and D. Bruce Berry

For a long time this was my favorite series Kirby had created. In an era when I was interested in Jack Kirby but his work was not extensively reprinted I found that these back issues were more affordable than the series I heard more about like Fantastic Four and New Gods. This has breakneck action, double page spreads that flesh out the setting, and plenty of far out imagery. It also has some of Kirby's most somber imagery and story beats. If you want to look for it, you can find a concern about dehumanization that is closely linked to Kirby's experience viewing the holocaust as a Jewish American soldier in World War II. The sixth issue is up there with The Pact as one of Kirby's best stand alone stories.

1.) O.M.A.C. (1974) #1-8 by Jack Kirby,D. Bruce Berry, and Mike Royer

This is probably Kirby's most radical work, mixing his utopian visions, dystopian concerns, and a Philip K. Dick-esque post-modernism. Similar to my renewed love of New Gods, I revisited these comics a couple years ago and was blown away. Now these are the comics I point to as Jack Kirby's best work.

But there's still so much more. Kirby was insanely prolific, as I'm assuming anyone reading this already knows. I only have so much time to read comics and contrary to what you may think I actually read comics by other cartoonists as well.

I haven't really read any of his romance comics, his war comics, or his long run on Thor. I'm sure I'll make my way through that material eventually. I've read one issue of Silver Star and I really liked it but I haven't run into the others when digging through back issue bins. I guess I could look harder and maybe one day I'll decide to buy a complete set.

Perhaps I'll find more gems where I didn't expect them. There's an incredible Newsboy Legion story reprinted in one of those 70s DC 100 page comics. I had long written off Kirby's comics of the 40s because I didn't like the Timely stuff but this piqued my interest. The story is titled The House Where Time Stood Still. The Legion runs into danger when they attempt to sell War Bonds to a pair of hermits who appear to have been based upon the Collyer Brothers. The hermit's home is taken over by Nazi spies and the Guardian is forced to save them. The plot itself isn't a revelation but I'm curious about the setting. Suicide Slum appears to be a mythologized version of the Lower East Side where Kirby grew up. It made me think of the neighborhood legends we passed around when I was a kid.

Jack Kirby isn't my favorite cartoonist but I can't think of anyone else in comics with a body of work this large and very few whose works are this rewarding. Taking regular trips to Kirby's worlds have served as a redemptive escapism for me and writing a bunch of silly blog posts has been an attempt at paying him back for that. Happy Birthday Jack, thanks for the comics!

The World That's Coming

On July 25th, 1976, Viking 1 took a controversial photo of the Cydonia region on the planet Mars.
 

Hold on, is that a face?

As a child I thought there was no question. There was a face on the planet Mars, probably left behind by some ancient Martian civilization. I heard all of the expert speculation in an episode of Sightings and I was reminded of it's existence every time the Time-Life: Mysteries of the Unknown commercial aired. They played that ad over and over.

In 1958, Harvey Comics published a science fiction comic put together by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby called Race for the Moon. It contained a five page story titled The Face on Mars.

The first time I read this story was on some now defunct UFO website, accompanied by the kind of vaguely paranoid and poorly researched information I'd come to expect. The poster implied they were introducing information about a real extraterrestrial civilization through fiction. That was as funny to me as Jim Keith implying the increasing level of sex and violence in 90s Batman comics were part of a government mind control experiment in Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness. The intelligence community has messed around with plenty of niche groups over the years but I feel like I'd have heard some rumors from inside comics if we'd been infiltrated.

The Face on Mars was a good comic even if it's not amazing. The story of astronauts discovering the ruins of an ancient alien civilization has been told many times but this one is pleasingly executed. Kirby's designs are attractive and his art is enhanced by Al Williamson's beautiful inks. Those aspects are nice but it's the appearance of the infamous face that makes this comic memorable.

I wasn't a child when I read The Face on Mars. I had already learned about pareidolia. Mars Global Surveyor had already taken pictures of the face under a less friendly light. I was pretty sure what we'd obsessed over was an optical illusion. In spite of it's implausibility, knowing that Jack Kirby told a story about the face two decades before it entered the public imagination made it seem important again.

I would continue to find examples of Kirby's prescience. Kirby deployed Captain America in Europe fighting Nazis before the US officially entered World War II. He depicted the Easter Island heads having bodies buried underground before archaeologists dug them up and found out that they really did have bodies. There are drone weapons and smart bombs in The Hunger Dogs, OMAC, and even in a 1954 issue of The Fighting American.

Then there were the vaguely new age trappings of his most epic works. His characters regularly interacted with gods, if they weren't gods themselves. They attained higher states of consciousness or perceived unseen levels of reality.

Jack Kirby was a prophet. He was also regular guy with a great talent and an impressive drive to make new things. He was tapped into something intangible and it poured out of every one of his comics. Was it imagination or was it arcane knowledge? I don't think it really makes a difference. There's a voice in my head, and it may just be my sentimental side, but that voice tells me that Jack Kirby's 100th birthday is a significant event. Let's celebrate.

For a closer look at the original art for The Face on Mars check out this post from the Kirby Museum. 

For some writing about Kirby that touches on his more occult qualities, check out this article and some of the other articles it links to.

Their Numbers Are Endless! Their Fear Is Contagious!

From New Gods #7 (1971) by Jack Kirby with Mike Royer

The ending of the seventh issue of Jack Kirby's original New Gods series is the kind of thing that you might immortalize in a marble sculpture or an epic metal song.

A temporary peace is established between the warring planets New Genesis and Apokolips through a pact in which each world's leader agrees to raise the other's child. Orion, the son of the series' principle antagonist Darkseid, is sent to live with Highfather on New Genesis. The fiery Orion draws a smuggled knife from his boot and demands to see the father he's never met. Highfather is able to cool Orion's temper and set him on the path toward becoming the hero of New Genesis.

It's easy to draw the comparison between this issue and the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. These days the internet is rife with articles about how these comics might have inspired it. Now if you've never read New Gods, imagine watching The Empire Strikes Back and never following it up with Return of the Jedi. Imagine if the story never ends.

If you can't imagine it then I'm going to assume you didn't grow up reading superhero comics. It's a world where heroes are destined to fight the same villains over and over again. New Gods ran for 11 issues but that last issue is just another episode. New Genesis and Apokolips are still at war. They always will be at war.

Darkseid appearing in The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984)

Jack Kirby was eventually given the opportunity to revisit the New Gods by the company that cancelled their title back in 1972, but only after the characters he created were part of a successful toy line and started appearing in the newest Super Friends cartoons. Mark Evanier's afterword in the Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus suggests that DC's new investment in this cast of characters prevented Kirby from producing the finale he had envisioned more than a decade earlier. Evanier avoids condemning The Hunger Dogs, the graphic novel that served as the conclusion of Kirby's New Gods stories. By reading between the lines he seems to imply that it's a lesser work than it could have or should have been.

I think Evanier is attempting to navigate the negative critical reputation of this work but let's be honest, we're not talking about how critics feel about this work. We're talking about the opinions of fans. Evanier points out that Kirby couldn't kill off any characters that DC might be able to profit from but why do these characters have to die to make a great story? Sure, fans know that Kirby draws great fights but why does this story have to end with hero punching villain like almost every other superhero story?

Looking back, Kirby cleverly incorporates those editorial mandates into one of the most powerful works of his career, easily as powerful as The Pact from New Gods #7.

The revival began in 1984 when DC reprinted New Gods on heavy baxter paper. Each issue of the reprint series collected two installments of the original series.The final issue containing a brand new story bridging the gap between the originals and The Hunger Dogs. In 1984 it'd been twelve years since Kirby's last New Gods story. At 66 years old his technical skills were different than at his perceived peak. Kirby in 1984 was working with a more raw, loose, and occasionally abstracted array of imagery.

From The Hunger Dogs (1985)

From Even Gods Must Die (1984)

Kirby is a cartoonist I associate with a certain visual clarity. When I imagine a comics page drawn by Jack Kirby I see a simple layout that is easy to read but that's not true of Kirby's work in these stories. These pages are very design heavy and it's not always obvious how they should be read, with Kirby occasionally relying on golden age style arrows to guide the reader's eyes. I don't think these are flaws. It makes this work stand out in his prolific career. Those design heavy pages are beautiful, often symmetrical, and shouldn't be too hard for a relatively comics literate reader to grasp.

In this new story, titled Even Gods Must Die, Kirby brings back old favorites like the Female Furies but they're upset about how things have changed since we last saw them. Instead of being engaged in the kind of battles we/they remember, they're stuck at monitors displaying Darkseid's new high tech weapons. Perhaps Kirby felt a similar distance from these characters given that he hadn't interacted with them in more than a decade.

The rise of these impersonal weapons where there had once been symbolic battles between archetypes also mirrors the way war evolved from the 20th into the 21st century. With characteristic prescience, Kirby criticizes the development of something like drone combat. Kirby saw war first hand as a soldier during World War II, one of the most gruesome collections of horrors strewn across the Earth. The war ended with a brand new horror, the atomic bomb. To optimistic hawks the bomb was a more "humane" form of warfare, as long as you can easily forget that your enemies are human. The architects of war were able to further distance those who commit violence from their victims by making war more similar to playing a video game. The myth that a future will come when wars are fought without troops on the ground isn't too dissimilar from the myth that modern war is less barbaric than those fought in our past. Kirby saw how ugly war's truth was up close. He was definitely suspicious of a war fought from a distance and possibly felt a certain weltschmerz about the honor we attach to old wars.

Even Gods Must Die ends with a confrontation between Orion and Darkseid. One might expect an epic battle but Kirby subverts that and we see Orion gunned down by enemy soldiers before his body falls into a pit of flame.

But the Gods are not dying this time. Orion is back for The Hunger Dogs, screaming in pain while he recovers from those wounds in the home of Himon. Himon had previously appeared in the Mister Miracle comics as an older resident of Apokolips's Armagetto. He rebelled against the laws of Darkseid and encouraged others to exercise their free will. In this story he appears to be preparing Orion for something like an ending.

The ending isn't a battle between gods. It's brought on by the uprising of the "Hunger Dogs" themselves, the disenfranchised residents of Armagetto. With his kingdom falling apart Darkseid makes his way through the chaos in an effort to kill Himon and Orion. He shoots the old man but instead of fighting Orion leaves with Himon's daughter. The last time we see Darkseid, he is alone. The bird's eye view makes him look small, and with the mortals he's ruled for so long overthrowing his power structure, he is smaller than he's ever been before.

From The Hunger Dogs by Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry, Mike Royer, and Greg Theakston

For me it brings to mind The Apocalypse of Adam, one of the ancient Gnostic manuscripts unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945. A 700 year old Adam (of Adam and Eve fame) reveals to his son Seth the knowledge that he and Eve obtained. They realize that they are greater and more powerful than the god of the bible, who is actually the demiurge. They once had knowledge of the true god of the universe but they lost it when man and woman were separated by the demiurge. He tells Seth "After those days, the eternal knowledge of the God of truth withdrew from me and your mother Eve. Since that time, we learned about dead things, like men. Then we recognized the God who had created us. For we were not strangers to his powers. And we served him in fear and slavery. And after these things, we became darkened in our heart(s). Now I slept in the thought of my heart."* Adam goes on to describe an apocalyptic vision where after a great deal of destruction an "Illuminator of Knowledge" appears and asks the kingdoms of the Earth about where their false knowledge came from but only those without a king know the truth.

The Hunger Dogs is an effective ending for a powerful body of work but as I said before, these characters lives continued after Jack Kirby drew his last page. The mythology of the Fourth World characters became a cornerstone of DC Comics and the universe where their stories take place. Aspects of those titles were absorbed into the relaunched Superman books in the late 80's and Darkseid became just another villain for Superman and the Justice League.

Darkseid in Superman: The Animated Series (1996)

That's how I became aware of these characters when I was a kid. Orion, Darkseid, and a few other Jack Kirby creations were recurring characters on Superman: The Animated Series. I was not as big of a fan of that show as the Batman cartoon from the same creators but the episode that introduced Orion really captured my imagination.They even included an abridged version of The Pact. Unfortunately we didn't get to see an animated version of bloodthirsty baby Orion.


When I first saw that episode I immediately thought about Star Wars. I loved Star Wars but it was different back then. It had already ended before I was born. Now we get a new Star Wars movie every year. Darkseid, Darth Vader, and the rest are kept on life support as intellectual property. In the end, the old gods never die.

*Apocalypse of Adam translation by George W. MacRae

Darkseid doing the "Basic Instinct" in DC Universe: Legacies #8 (2010) by Frank Quitely

The Crimson Circuit is Complete (Tom Strong #3)

My god, Todd Klein must have spent so much time on this lettering. - cover art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrilich

Aztec and Mayan imagery has been a symbol of hidden ancient knowledge in science fiction since the release of Chariots of the Gods, if not longer. I wonder if that will fade the further we get from the much hyped Mayan Apocalypse of 2012 (which in case you hadn't realized, never came). I wonder if the long term association with the History Channel's Ancient Aliens will one day transform the white guy truth seekers who appropriated that imagery, into symbols of early twenty first century kitsch. I suppose Action Bronson turning that show into MST3K material is a start.

Supposedly an ancient depiction of a spaceship's cockpit. Looks uncomfortable as hell to me.

There was a time I'd have identified myself with that sort of behavior. I've been a UFO buff since I was a kid so I totally went through a Von Däniken phase but I found the archaeological evidence a bit lacking and got over it pretty fast. Plus, thinking that aliens built the pyramids made it all feel like less of an achievement and as a human being myself I wanted to take part in the victorious afterglow. Humans are horrible for a million different reasons but it's pretty cool that we built the pyramids, right? Let us have something!

Even though I only believed in ancient alien visitations for a brief period of time the imagery of lost Mesoamerican technology is something I have been immersed in with a relative amount of consistency. Just trying to read about UFOs casually you can't avoid the subject coming up. As a science fiction fan I kept noticing this imagery showing up in the movies, books, and even the comics I'd been reading. Jack Kirby did it best in The Eternals which I would have read the summer of my seventeenth year after having bought the omnibus with graduation money. When the old gods returned they were titanic, like you'd expect Kirby monsters to be. Maybe even more than that.

The "Aztech" Empire in Tom Strong handles that in a different way. They come from an alternate universe where their knowledge was never lost. Instead, they conquered America, Europe, and then the rest of the world. They turned their Earth into an advanced civilization then traveled sideways, conquering every Earth they encountered throughout the multiverse. They eventually attack Millenium City where they appear in golden ziggurats. When Tom Strong is captured and meets the old gods they turn out to be a computer program.

It's far less grand than Kirby's Celestials marching across the Earth but I guess it's unfair to compare the two. That said, the Modular Man's reformation in the previous issue also felt like a bigger deal. The Aztechs and Quetzalcoatl-3 just amount to another villain of the month.

The major setpiece of this issue is a series of pages that occur during Tom Strong's escape. They're structured similarly to the Gasoline Alley Sundays where the page depicts a single setting with the characters appearing in different positions throughout that setting. The pages succeed to varying degrees. The best page features Tom Strong stealing some sort of vehicle from his captors and moves through the space with a Kirby like momentum. The other pages are a bit more bland and I can't help but think that employing an obvious grid like Gasoline Alley's Frank King would have done a better job of guiding the reader's eye.

Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

The other stylistic tic that I noticed in this issue is the inner monologue of Tom Strong spread across the issue in red caption boxes. I can't think of any other issue using a first person narration like this one. It's weird seeing so much text in this comic because Alan Moore's writing was so much more lean during this era as opposed to the wordy but occasionally overwrought passages of his runs on Miracleman and Swamp Thing. That prose mixed with Tesla talking about her father serve to introduce the idea that as Tom Strong enters his hundredth year, his mortality may become more apparent. It's an interesting message to send to the reader but by hiding it in such a forgettable issue it's made into little more than a pleasing piece of furniture in an otherwise dull waiting room.

***

The third issue of Tom Strong is also the first one with a letters column and it contains this intriguing letter:

I was aware of the idea that Tom Strong's mother Susan could be attracted to Tomas, the sailor that died while bringing her and her husband to Attabar Teru. That's mainly because of how that factors into the alternate reality driven "Tom Stone" stories that appear in later issues. However, I didn't read that into their brief interactions in the actual first issue. Susan is depicted as broken up about the death of Tomas and Sinclair coldly notes that she had been fond of him. That doesn't really translate into sexual attraction to me because, well, I have plenty of people who I like without wanting to fuck them. Perhaps there are other social cues that I'm not picking up on here because this idea is echoed in a few letters in future issues.

Now if Tom Strong can be read as a mixed race character I still don't think that makes the questions surrounding noble savages and magical black people from his origin story go away, particularly because he passes as white. His daughter Tesla on the other hand is actually of mixed race. Her representation throughout the series is certainly one of it's finer points. She is one of the most well defined members of the cast and probably my favorite, especially when she's griping about her parents. As a kid I identified with her and I didn't find a lot of depictions of women in comics I could relate to back then.

Tom Strong #3 (August 1999) was written by Alan Moore with art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrlich as well as lettering by Todd Klein

Strongmen of America - Revisiting Tom Strong 

More on race in Tom Strong: 
Tom Strong #1 and race in pulp narratives