Jack Kirby's Fourth World

Basically the Fourth World (I am not 100% sure WHY it is called that) was a set of four interlocking early-70s titles from DC which told the story of a cosmic war amongst a race of Gods, the good Gods living on New Genesis, the bad ones living on Apokolips. The battleground for the cosmic war turned out to be Earth, as it generally does. The titles were -

- NEW GODS: The core book devoted to the struggles of Orion, who was brought up on New Genesis but may be the son of Apolokips' ruler Darkseid.
- MISTER MIRACLE: Deals with the adventures on Earth of Scott Free, who is Orion's opposite number, being from New Genesis but brought up on Apokolips.
- FOREVER PEOPLE: Five young gods from New Genesis romping about on Earth.
- SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN: The most tangentially connected, basically showing Jimmy Olsen dealing with the schemes of Apololips on Earth.

The first 11 issues of the first three are the 'core' story, and have been traded, Jimmy Olsen has been collected in two volumes too. The overall story was unfinished - DC cancelled the comics for murky reasons (probably poor sales). They are an acquired taste - elemental art married to highly stylised scripting.

Tom's right about the acquired taste, which applies to all post-FF Kirby I guess, as he (the work) just got loonier and loonier. The Jimmy Olsen run is GREAT though (I've never been able to get much into New Gods or Forever People, and have never looked at Mister Miracle)

non-Kirby Fourth World S/D though?

S: the two Evanier/Rude Mister Miracle specials [one was in its own comic around 1985, a sequel appeared in something called something like Legends Of The DC Universe about fifteen years later]: these are mostly excuses for Rude to be fourteen and draw as much like Kirby as he can manage, and for Evanier to run awesome schtick on the Stan Lee-parody Funky Flashman.
Also in the same series was a two-parter by Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh, about a skateboarding kid on Apokolips who managed to rebel against Hunger Dog indoctrination and tag a massive Darkseid statue's face. Really good in its depiction of Apokolips society from ground level, like Morrison tried to do in JLA I guess, but was hampered by artists drawing with a stick held between their teeth.
the Ty Templeton issues of the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI where they get set free because Darkseid just happens to be in a kinda chilled-out mood are really fun both as comedy and as super-duper biff action.
the Great Darkness Saga in LSH, as serialised over a year or so

D:
most other New Gods appearances in JLI - Metron was played as too cosmic for the tone of the book, Orion and Lightray were kinda forced schtick (Mr Miracle was fine throughout though [except for the crossover special written by someone else that set up his dead robot duplicate, that sucked a lot])
the Great Darkness Saga in trade paperback with all the build-up gone and the big reveal shown on the cover
all other 30th Century Darkseid appearances ever
any headlining series at all I dare say (Walt Simonson's Orion run might have been fun, but who could be bothered to find out or care once they did? [nb I am in a bar scene in a back-up story in one issue of this and I still don't remember anything about either the feature or the back-up. but my likeness is now a trademark of DC Comics, and they own the copyright in my character. take that, Grant Morrison!]), there's the occasional bit of mileage in the settings and characters and their themes, but most people fuck this up in guest appearances, and Kirby was the only one who actually had a story to tell with them.

the Mr Miracle dream sequence in Sandman was good at the time. surprisingly Kirby-ish art from Sam Kieth.



I don't know why I have so much to say about the Fourth World when it generally bores me arseless

i like how in morrison's jla: classified arc (which i never got issue three of, ach) batman having boom tube technology kinda indirectly invokes the silver age / cancels out Dark Batman idea - not sure that the particular reference does more than "sci fi closet", though

Didn't that one Kirby-centric Jonathan Lethem comics essay talk about Fourth World?

Do you mean a new one? 'Cause the Great Darkness Saga came out like 25 years ago.

I'd read it again right now to see if it's as good as my memory says if I had any idea where it is...

It was called the Fourth World, because it was supposedly the result of the destruction of the Third World, which had been ruled by the Old Gods (what about the First and Second, who knows?), whose war ended in a Ragnarokian stalemate and they all became the Source Wall.

So I did. My mistake.

But now that I think about it, wasn't there some new version of The Great Darkness Saga in LSH like a year ago? I thought I heard about that.

it's fantastic! i adore it!

"I HAVE HEARD THE WORD, AND IT IS BATTLE!"

Yah, argh. Buying up all the Kirby back issues was going to be one of my projects last summer but I temporarily abandoned it. I guess if you don't mind Baxter paper, you could buy the deluxe reissues DC released in the '80s for cheap.

V1 is better than V2, but only just by a little.

man, why is Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 2 impossible to find? like a mark I picked up Vols 3 and 4 on sale somewhere, but now i need to pick up the first two....

Do what I did: monitor that shit daily on Amazon until you see a price you can live with paying.

I'm generally tired of these series of collections where a single volume goes out of print and skyrockets out of anything resembling a reasonable price range.