Destroyer Duck - Graphite Edition!

As it did with Captain Victory and Silver Star, Twomorrows Publishing has created a "Graphite Edition" of one of Jack Kirby's oddest 80's comics. In conjunction with Steve Gerber who first created Destroyer Duck, Kirby and Alfredo Alcala produced the pages in the original comic to help Gerber defray his legal expenses. 

He needed the money to continue his lawsuit against Marvel Comics for a piece of Howard the Duck. The lawsuit had been percolating for a time and Gerber was going to have to abandon it for lack of funds until some of his colleagues got together created a "Special Lawsuit Benefit Edition". 

And so, we get one of the grand comic books of the 80's, the totally in-your-face satire named Destroyer Duck. The comic started out as a method by which like-minded talents (Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Evanier, Joe Staton, Sergio Aragones, among others) donated their time and talents to produce a comic with various features, but headed by Gerber's and Kirby's Destroyer Duck. Goo the Wanderer by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones debuted in this little Eclipse comic too.

The debut story is about that struggle directly and hilariously as we meet Duke Duck, an ally of the "Little Guy", a small duck who gets sucked into a distant dimension where he is exploited and killed by Godcorp Ltd., a soulless organization which lives up to its credo of "Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!" (Remind you of anyone we know?) Duke ends up going to this other world and kicks some Godcorp butt. 

(Kirby with Neal Adams embellishment.)

After this one-shot though it was deemed smart to do more Destroyer Duck stories and Gerber and Kirby and Alcala kicked out four more issues before seven issue series was taken over by Buzz Dixon and Gary Kato. Duke has showed up a few times since, in the pages of Total Eclipse in the late 80's and the Image one-shot guest-starring with Savage Dragon in the late 90's. Surely there's an audience for these bizarre tales of the "Marauding Mallard of Vengeance".

 (Frank Miller)

Destroyer Duck is far from prime Kirby comics, but even his worst have charm. Tomorrow, something different. 

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Captain Victory And The Galactic Rangers!

One of the most fascinating pieces of my Kirby collection is Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers - Graphite Edition. This jewel published by Twomorrows Publishing way back in 2003 captures the original story by Jack Kirby which was to form the basis for his own comic book company in the late 70's. That didn't come to pass and later the project was put forth as a screenplay. That didn't happen either. 

Here is the Captain in glorious black and white sans the bright shiny inking by Mike Royer. I got the latter to sign my copy of issue number one several years ago, and he seemed quite happy to see a book he says doesn't come his way very often.

I loved the series, which took vintage sci-fi melodrama and bonded onto that a cosmic scale and echoes of then popular flicks like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is generally held that Captain Victory is a sequel of unofficial sorts to the grand Fourth World saga. When we learn Victory's backstory we discover (unofficially and between the lines) that Victory is supposedly Orion's son and Darkseid's grandson. He was mentored by a man who in likelihood was Scott Free, Mister Miracle, who wears an eyepatch but looks strikingly like Highfather. 

When Pacific Comics came calling and Kirby dusted off the good Captain, revised the story a bit and started a whole series and by extension a whole new side of the comic book industry when Captain Victory became the first direct sales comic by a major mainstream comic book talent.

Seeing Kirby's work in the raw is a spectacle in itself. He put so much into the pencils that it's fascinating to see what inkers brought to the mix. Kirby reputedly had little interest in inks, preferring to get on to the next story, because as much as I admire the dynamics of his artwork, it was making that serve the needs of storytelling which really marks the genius of Kirby. The Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers Graphite Edition captures that beautifully. Highly recommended.

Here's the cover gallery for the original run. 

Even with at least three revivals that I know about, this original run has never been collected and made available to a larger audience. Almost everything else from this era of the early Indy market has been reprinted, but this one just goes neglected. It's a shame. 

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The Fourth World Artist's Editons!

There will never be another creator in comics the equal of Jack "The King" Kirby. The influence of this small soft-spoken Brooklyn-born comic book artist resonates on almost any page of any modern comic you might care to peruse. Kirby is properly given kudos for his work with Joe Simon and Stan Lee, but for pure unadulterated Kirby the first stop is "The Fourth World". (As we've talked about all month.)

I can still remember seeing the debut issue of New Gods sitting in the top rung of a classic comic book spinner rack at the local drug store. The logo yelled across the old wooden floors, and the pronouncement that "Kirby is Here!" was all the coaxing I needed. I was a young "Marvelite", but I was just at the stage of expanding my horizons when I discovered "The Fourth World".

It blew my mind. I won't pretend I "grokked" it all at the time. I was confused by the sundry super-Hippies, the Forever People. I was unclear whether it was pronounced "Darkseed" or "Darkside", but both seemed highly suggestive. The social commentary inherent in characters like Glorious Godfrey eluded me originally. The Dickensian spirit of Granny Goodness (based on Phyllis Diller no less) was hidden. And to be totally honest, I never quite got exactly what the "Anti-Life Equation" was. I should've but I didn't...not really.

And maybe the fact that despite my limited understanding of Kirby's opus it still was fundamentally compelling is what makes it resonate in my imagination and memory all these decades since. Coming at the saga as an adult I can glean depth of meaning which eluded my naive boyish self. I can find themes and understanding where before I only sought adventure and excitement. That's the allure of real literature, that's the allure of Kirby's "Fourth World".

And now I've been given the chance (actually I paid rather dear for it to be honest) to read much of the core New Gods saga in the original manuscript, or at least as close to it as we're ever going to come. IDW Publishing has issue six of the first eight issues of New Gods (see below for the issues included) in their "Artist's Edition" format and we have these stories again.

Included with the stories are numerous pages filled with ad art, promos, commissions, and capped by fold-out color images of Metron and Lightray, the images Kirby produced in anticipation of this project. Utterly fabulous. Some of the artwork is inked by the unfairly maligned Vince Colletta and the rest by the great Mike Royer, who adds an afterword to the volume.

I keep getting older, but Kirby's elegant and awesome creation only gets sweeter and richer with time.

IDW has also come out with Artist's Editions for Mister Miracle and the Forever People. 

It is great to have both of the key stories "The Pact" from New Gods #7 and "Himon" from Mister Miracle #9. These were both mythic tales which revealed the secrets of the Fourth World. 

Amazing! Even after all these years it's just amazing! 

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