I've written many times about the impact Jack "King" Kirby's "Fourth World" books made on me when I was a young man on the verge of becoming full-fledged teenager. Now it turns out it's been fifty years since those impactful comic books Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle burst out of the "Boom Tube" and onto the newsstands. I can still remember seeing the debut issue of New Gods on the stand at a drug store which is long gone in my old hometown which has itself fallen into disrepair. I've lots of things planned in my imagination for this blog in the next year, but one thing for certain is that I will be taking yet another of my annual revisits to New Genesis and Apokolips and all points between, and by that of course I mean Earth itself. Every time I read them again I learn more about their world and more about mine. I learn more about the people of those faraway climes and most importantly I learn more about the world in which I live and more about myself to boot. Aside from a minor excursion into weed a time or two in college, I've never partaken of drugs. I've altered my consciousness with drink a time or two or three, but for the most part I've lived a pretty much totally sober life by society's standards. When I need to readjust the molecules of my mind I just dig out my vintage Kirby comics and snap through the "Boom Tube" of my imagination to altered realities of a most pleasant kind. I highly recommend it.
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Hard to believe that was 50 years ago. The first Kirby Fourth World comic I remember buying was Jimmy Olsen issue 141 with the Guardian and Don Rickles (who I had no idea who he was). I loved that title but the others weren't to my tastes although maybe that was because the distribution of New God's, Mr Miracle and Forever People was very patchy in the Glasgow area at the time. I was more into his Kamandi and Demon books which I really enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteI was the reverse. I jumped into the Fourth World, but when they folded I left feeling Kamandi and Demon were of lesser quality. Boy was I wrong! I made up for my indiscretion years later and gathered them up.
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