Captain Victory - Continuity Is Tribulation!

When it came time to give Captain Victory an origin, Jack "King" Kirby offered up an epic trilogy which not only showcased the youth and early career of the commander of the Dreadnought:Tiger but deepened Kirby's earlier work at both DC and Marvel. How did he do that, well let me explain.

The story begins in Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers number eleven in the notorious Section 51, a part of the ship filled with offbeat aliens who have gotten refuge status of sorts on the Tiger. These weirdos are not unlike mischievous children and to quiet them after a particularly raucous event while waiting for the Tiger's engines to be replaced, Victory tells them the story of his own origins, or at least an origin. It begins when he was a wee child of eight and we learn he lives in a distant area of space dubbed Hellikost with his cousin "Big Ugly" a genocidal brute and other members of an extended family of psychotics. They brood appear to live in awe of Lord Blackmass, a disembodied Voice who sometimes commands them to attack other worlds and torture and murder the locals they find there. Victory is something of a tactical savant who helps scheme out these campaigns with the help of a massive empathetic computer. With the help of that computer Victory finally is able to strike out and kills Big Ugly in retaliation for his many crimes.

Later Victory is able to escape Hellikost, with help by the computer who gives him access to remarkable technology from an earlier era, technology used by his father himself the son of the insidious Blackmass.

Victory did not know his father but the nature of the technology tickles the imagination of any comic book fan who was lucky enough to read Kirby's New Gods.

In issue twelve Victory leaves Hellikost behind and finds a world occupied by Captain Klane, a former member of the Galactic Rangers who has used up his allotted fifty clones and hangs onto the last life with brutal energy. He takes it upon himself to help raise Victory, though it's a rough upbringing to say the least. Klane has used technology to engage the native population who imitate with great speed what they find and become increasingly warlike and capable of waging ever-inceasing technological warfare. Eventually Klane is about to be killed and Victory is sent away before that final moment.

Now a young man, in issue thirteen Victory joins the Galactic Rangers and we follow his career as he quickly rises through the ranks. We meet the love of his  young life but the two of them are separated by orders and he pursues his career.

Eventually he becomes a Captain in the very campaign in which his love is killed. We see him take command of the Dreadnought: Tiger and encounter his command and the  officers under his command for the first time.

Sadly aside from a single special this is the final Captain Victory story by Kirby. But in this origin we learn much about what the title really might mean and what might have come had it been allowed to continue.

While Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers showcases a Jack Kirby who by dint of Father Time has diminished talents, there still seems to be this allure caused by Jack's desire to tell big stories. The mythic scope of the Fourth World does seem to resonate here as well, though without the acute focus. This (if we believe that Victory is the descendant of Orion) is of a universe lacking the singular element of Darkseid which galvanized so much of the disparate folks in the DC material. Though in this story and the one which preceded it, there is a notion of a grand mystery which seems to be that evil raising itself up once again. And artistically Kirby was diminished with the spectacular vistas missing some of the drama which more supple anatomy and composition might deliver. The inking is maybe some to blame as Thibodeaux is not as adept as Royer, but that's not what most of it seems to be. Kirby has clearly lost a step by the time this series appeared, though even at that he was superior to most of his colleagues.

One more to come. Or is that all -- we'll see next week.

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