Fun Springs Eternal In The Inhuman Breast!

The Dojo has been very DC centric over the last many months and this time I want to bust out and check out some of Mighty Marvel's vintage efforts. Following on after his famous tenure at DC and the creation of the "Fourth World", Jack Kirby was lured back to the "House of (Mostly His) Ideas" but he was reluctant to tackle any of the Silver Age creations he'd made famous. With the exception of Captain America (which he created in the Golden Age with Joe Simon) and the Black Panther, Kirby spent this time at Marvel mostly making new things or working on licensed things like 2001 A Space Odyssey. Among the most potent of the new things he worked on was The Eternals, which is seen quite properly as yet another go at the cosmic concepts he had played around with in The New Gods and elsewhere. The Eternals is not a sequel of any sort to the "Fourth World", but it does offer a bevy of new characters and we'll see characters which will become infused into the Marvel Universe and quicken it in remarkable ways, just as the denizens of New Genesis and Apokolips have done for DC. 

In addition to the original Kirby stories which will be covered in an extensive series of "Dojo Classics" posts throughout the month, I will be reading the highly interesting Thor comics by Roy Thomas and company which first worked the Eternals into the already sprawling mythologies of the Marvel Universe. I remember loving these comics as they spun out in real time in the late Bronze Age, real gems of retro-continuity.  

Also look to see the work by Peter B. Gillis when he took the helm of the Eternals and created along with Sal Buscema a first rate maxi-series in the 1980's. 

The Eternals were more thoroughly blended into the Marvel Universe by the detailed oriented Mark Gruenwald in the pages of What If? no less. These are important stories which take many of the things created by Jack Kirby and later Jim Starlin and make of them a somewhat unified whole. 

And speaking of early creations of Jack Kirby, I will be kicking off the weekends this month with close looks at his original Earth meets Outer Space epic The Inhumans. These weird and wonderful characters infused many of the most important issues of the Fantastic Four with wonder and drama. 

And later spread across the whole of the Marvel Universe and even for a time had their own comic series in the pages of Amazing Adventures. With work by great artists like Mike Sekowsky and Neal Adams, the Inhumans always seemed to bring out the best in the talent who worked on them. 

If I have the time I will also be dabbling in wee bit of DC by checking out the always entertaining Dial H for Hero from the vintage pages of  House of Mystery in this month's "Showcase Corner". Those riotous Robby Reed outings are always a delightful morsel of Silver Age madness.

And hopefully I'll still find some moments to continue with "The Sunday Funnies" feature this month taking Prince Valiant and his clan into the 1970's. It's an important era for the strip as creator Hal Foster will step away from the art chores for the first time in over thirty years. 

All this and maybe a tad more like Gerry Anderson's UFO perhaps will make for a very hectic September here at the Dojo. Hang in and hang on. 

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