Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! ™ June 2018 No.104 $8.95 FOURTH WORLD AFTER KIRBY Jack Kirby’s New Gods in Comics and Media An all-star lineup, including the work of: Byrne • Cullins • Englehart • Evanier 1 82658 00123 0 Golden • Hoberg • Mignola • Rude • Simonson • Starlin • Timm & more! Superman, Jimmy Olsen, and New Gods characters TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Volume 1, Number 104 June 2018 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Steve Rude (Variant cover originally produced for DC Comics’ Covergence #5. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions.) COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Karen Berger Karl Kesel Jerry Boyd Paul Kupperberg Alan Burnett James Heath Lantz Marc Buxton Paul Levitz John Byrne Brian Martin Gerry Conway Mike Mignola Paris Cullins John Morrow BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury. 2 DC Comics Tom Peyer J. M. DeMatteis Joe Phillips FLASHBACK: The Post–Kirby New Gods . 3 Steve Englehart Rachel Pollack An exhaustive examination of the never-ending efforts to reboot the Fourth World Mark Evanier Mark Reznicek Funky Flashman Steve Rude BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Darkseid . 25 Grand Comics Walter Simonson A look inside the mind of the Tyrant of Apokolips Database Jim Starlin Larry Hama Roy Thomas THE TOY BOX: Jack Kirby, Super Powers Toy Designer . 34 Tim Hauser Bruce Timm The King’s designs for a Mister Miracle figure and an unproduced Darkseid playset Ben Herman James Tucker Heritage Comics Rick Veitch FLASHBACK: Miracle Master: The Post–Kirby Mister Miracle. 36 Auctions Why can’t the World’s Greatest Escape Artist escape cancellation? Rick Hoberg Dan Johnson FLASHBACK: The Forever People Miniseries . 53 Dan Jurgens Kirby’s super-hippies become super-yuppies in this DeMatteis/Cullins/Kesel mini ART GALLERY: Forever Your Girl: Beautiful Dreamer . 59 If you’re viewing a Digital A superstar-powered lineup of sketches of the Forever People’s fetching flower child Edition of this publication, PLEASE READ THIS: BACKSTAGE PASS: The Animated New Gods . 64 The Fourth World, as seen on TV and in direct-to-video cartoons This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The New Gods Animated Movie . 73 another website or torrent, go ahead and The story of the full-length animated epic intended for the big screen read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal down- BACK TALK . 78 load, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT Reader reactions SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, them so we can keep producing ones like NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, this. Our digital editions should ONLY be Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: [email protected]. Eight-issue downloaded within our Apps and at subscriptions: $76 Standard US, $125 International, $32 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds www.twomorrows.com to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Steve Rude. Superman, Jimmy Olsen, the New Gods, and related characters TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2018 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. Fourth World After Kirby Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1 “The great one is coming! The Boom Tube! So powerful in concept it’s almost terrifying!” Those words appeared in full-page ads in DC comic books dated August 1970. They were trumpeting the arrival of “the King.” Jack Kirby was coming to DC and bringing with him a number of concepts he had been holding back during his final days at Marvel. The triumvirate of books that Kirby initiated, The Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle, combined ® with him taking over the already-existing Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, introduced a staggering number of concepts that have since become universally known as Kirby’s Fourth World. The problem was, according to most sources, the books didn’t sell phenomenally. And books that don’t sell get canceled. [Editor’s note: After strong initial sales, by Kirby’s titles commanded mid-range sales, but not the Brian Martin huge numbers that were expected due to the King’s Marvel profile.] Despite that, pretty much all of the characters, situations, and core concepts introduced in those books have been fixtures in the DC Universe ever since, and along with the original Kirby issues are viewed with almost universal reverence. So when everyone loves the creations, it makes sense that people will use them and even try to revive them in standalone books. Again, though, it is pretty much the common belief that while a few have come close, no one has handled them as well as their creator. Maybe the concepts are just too big, too… “Kirby” for anyone else to get a grip on. Of course, that doesn’t mean that over the years a lot of people haven’t tried! THE LAST FIRST ISSUE 1st Issue Special was the brainchild of Carmine Infantino during his tenure as publisher of DC. The series was given the BACK ISSUE treatment in issue #71 in which Gerry Conway, who edited some of the series, explained its premise. gerry conway “Carmine came up with this rather brilliant notion that first issues sell better than subsequent issues, so why not put out a magazine that’s entirely first issues?” Though the concept did not fly in the ’70s, you have to wonder how it would have done in later years when first issues and appearances became all the rage. With the 13th and final issue of that series (Apr. 1976), it was decided to try and revive the Kirby concept of the New Gods, but the impetus for that decision may have come from a very unlikely source. None other than Roy Thomas reveals, “Sometime soon after Kirby left DC entirely, Gerry Conway, then back at DC, said Carmine would love to meet with me. So the three of us got together briefly at DC. We talked about a lot of things, including Carmine’s desire to see me come over to DC, which I wasn’t ready to do just yet. Just to see if I could influence Carmine to do something, I told him that one Kirby Kontinued 1st Issue Special #13 (Apr. 1976), featuring “The Return of the New Gods.” Cover by Dick Giordano. TM & © DC Comics. Fourth World After Kirby Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3 good thing about Kirby leaving was that now he Fourth World Revival was free to being back New Gods, etc., with a different writer/approach. Carmine sparked to the (top) The New Gods, back in idea, and soon afterward the revival was published.” print. A Kirby-conjuring, Gerry Conway received the writing assignment for the issue with dialogue help from Denny bombastic Al Milgrom cover O’Neil and art by Mike Vosburg. The story graced issue #12 (July 1977). attempts to follow Kirby’s final issue, referencing events from it several times while also mentioning (bottom) Return of the New a truce that is surely intended to explain what the characters had been, or rather, had not been Gods’ versatile penciler Don doing since the original series was canceled. Newton (who was profiled way Most readers were probably a little shocked, though, as the characters seem to take a definite back in BACK ISSUE #19) was turn towards being portrayed as superheroes adept at both the tranquility of more than gods. There is no better indication of this than early in the issue when a pack of New Genesis (left) and the cosmic Parademons attack New Genesis and Highfather chaos of intergalactic warfare calls on Metron to create a Boom Tube to dispose of them. Later, the duo engages in some plotting (right). Page 3 of New Gods #14 together, certainly not things the scholarly (Oct. 1977), inked by Dan Adkins, character would have done under Kirby. From there the story moves on to Orion and page 4 of issue #16 (Feb. tracking Darkseid. He first travels to Earth, 1978), inked by Joe Rubinstein. where he battles Kalibak and Granny Goodness, then to Apokolips and a confrontation with Courtesy of Heritage Comics Darkseid, which ends in a stalemate. Though it Auctions (www.ha.com). took a while, a later letters page did mention that the issue of FIS did “prompt” the full revival TM & © DC Comics. that followed. 4 • BACK ISSUE • Fourth World After Kirby Issue Rachel Pollack herself scribes the story in Showcase ’96 #5, which features Highfather’s daughter Atinai, a character Pollack introduced during her New Gods tenure. The story takes place in the distant past and touches on themes Pollack would echo in the main book. A series connected to the gods also ran during the same time period. Takion was the creation of Paul Kupperberg and Aaron Lopresti and ran for seven issues in his own title, beginning with a June 1996-dated issue. Created by Highfather from a blind Earthman, Takion was a Source elemental and is supposed to have been created to help clean the taint from the Source, though he is later revealed to be paul kupperberg After the events that ended issue “Wall of Souls” created more as an avatar for Highfather.