Starlin's Newer Gods!

Jim Starlin is one of the greatest talents in comics of his generation. And his cosmic storylines owe a lot to Jack "King" Kirby by his own admission. Starlin was inspired by Kirby's work overall but the first time I know that he actually worked on the Fourth World characters was on two covers for the mythic annual Justice League of America and Justice Society of America team-ups. 

Tragically the cover above is for the last issue of JLofA which the great Dick Dillin worked on before his untimely passing. But long before he drew the Orion and the gang, Starlin was doing an incredibly successful pastiche on these important characters. 

 Perhaps Starlin's most famous creation is Thanos the Mad Titan. Above we see an early image of the character rendered by Starlin and Rich Buckler. 

By his own admission Starlin based Thanos on Metron of the New Gods. I'd always assumed that Thanos owed his creation to Darksied, but Starlin says not. 

And evidence supports him. Above is the debut of Thanos and he is much slimmer than he would become. He does evoke Metron, but still I see a bit of Darkseid in there. 

As the character continued to appear and develop he filled out and his more robust frame more and more brought Darkseid to mind. It's difficult not to see parallels between two granite-faced alien megalomaniacs who seek absolute power over others. 

Cosmic Odyssey is Jim Starlin's first crack at Kirby's Fourth World as a writer. Cosmic Odyssey tells how a group of disparate heroes are drawn together by Highfather of New Genesis and Darkseid of Apokolips to battle the threat of the Anti-Life.

The Anti-Life Equation as imagined by its creator Jack Kirby was an indistinct thing, a cosmic Maguffin which was the goal that Darkseid sought which triggered the battle on Earth among the New Gods. It was a somewhat vague notion which was held enigmatically in the minds of some humans. In this story by Starlin and Mignola the Anti-Life is reimagined as a sentient force, an actual being which exists beyond our dimension but which after discovering us through the overly bold investigations of Metron and Darkseid wants to visit.  Four aspects of the Anti-Life find their way into our realm on four different planets and so a super team is called together to battle this threat.

The heroes are pretty solid. Superman and Batman are on board and both are handled exceedingly well. Martian Manhunter is present does himself proud. Starfire of the New Teen Titans and John Stewart of the Green Lantern Corps are on the team. In addition to these stalwarts are Orion, Lightray, and Forager. Kirby's Demon is also on hand. In classic Gardner Fox fashion they divide into duos and seek out the planets Xanshi, Rann, Thanagar, and Earth to discover the Anti-Life fragments which have been up to various types of mischief, not least of which is the goal of sundering the Milky Way Galaxy and ushering in the complete Anti-Life. How they manage is of course the stuff of the story.

I can't say honestly that this is how I best understand the Anti-Life. I prefer Kirby's rendition, an enigmatic equation I found puzzling as a young reader, but which I now understand to be simply the lack of freedom and more importantly the lack of the desire for freedom. Darkseid ideally seeks willing slaves, those who pursue not life but what can only be described as "anti-life".  Starlin by changing it into a thing apart, turns a familiar trick to what he did with Thanos and Death in his vaunted Captain Marvel saga, a tale similar in many ways to the Fourth World. It makes for a solid story, but I'm not  so much sure it's solid Kirby theology.

Walt Simonson
That said, this is a compelling story which thanks to Mignola's rock-solid storytelling unfolds quickly and quite effectively. There are plenty of twists and turns and each hero has a moment, some of glory some of ignominy. I'm glad I've finally gone on this particular "cosmic odyssey", it was a worthy journey, and one not inappropriate for the holiday.

Following on after the end of Cosmic Odyssey, Starlin took the writing reins for three of the first four issues of the revived New Gods title. More on this tomorrow. 

But arguably Starlin's most profound effort on the New Gods was his epic The Death of the New Gods produced in the early 21st Century in response to DC's efforts to refine its universe yet again. 

I didn't follow this series when it first came out because I had just pretty well grown weary of following modern comics as they wove through endless "big" events parading under countless alternate covers. I get a choice few here and there, but the number dwindled to almost nothing. That said, this series did intrigue me at the time because of Jim Starlin. Starlin's artwork is singular and compelling, and I finally popped for the trade. 

When someone like Starlin gets the chance to play with the real Kirby-items it intrigues me. Then the story got out that this "Death of the New Gods" was not the true one, that Final Crisis was going to largely ignore this telling and knock the New Gods off all over again, and the story became a sidebar. That's good for me, as I prefer it skewed off on its own. I can read it as is. 

The story is not a bad one. Some mysterious killer is knocking off New Gods, both from New Genesis and Apokolips and leaving their blooded bodies to be found. Some of the favorites get knicked pretty quickly beginning with Lightray and soon followed by Big Barda and others. There are lots of red herrings in this storyline and Starlin did a good job keeping me off balance. After a year of waiting for the trade reprint I had forgotten most of the bluster about the story online but I somehow thought I remembered the culprit's identity. I was wrong and my mistake made for a real surprise as the story unfolded at last.

There's much to like here. Starlin's style suits the New Gods, though as always no one other than Kirby can draw Orion's helmet. Starlin's version is particularly annoying. Otherwise I like what he does, and his Darkseid is magnificent. This is a good story, compelling. I'll just view it as the end of the Kirby Fourth World for now, and I can easily forget whatever it is DC might dream up for the dopplegangers it still controls from now on.

NOTE: This is a Dojo Revised Classic Post. 

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