RX Comics had a giant sale over the weekend, and I stopped by on Sunday to look for Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber's Whiteout, since I accidentally picked up the sequel last week (thinking it was the first volume, of course). They didn't have it in stock, but they did have the first two volumes of DC's amazing reprint collection of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, and let's just say the discounted price made them irresistible.In the comics world, Jack Kirby is without peer. He was there at the start of the superhero genre, co-creating Captain America with Joe Simon in 1940 and was still doing high profile work until the mid-80s. Along the way, he either created or helped to create: the Challengers of the Unknown, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, and the Uncanny X-Men (Kirby's input on Spider-Man was minor, but he draw the cover to Amazing Fantasy #15, which was the first the world saw of the webbed-wallcrawler).
His Fourth World series, which included Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods, and Mr. Miracle, were pretty much the last great acts of imagination and creation in superhero comics. Everything since then has been pretty much about either lionizing the canon, or tearing it down. But the Fourth World characters and storylines were all new (excluding the Guardian and the Newsboy Legion, Kirby creations dormant since the 40s), and they were all Kirby.
...to be continued...
MP3: "Jack Kirby Was Ripped Off" by the Ken Vandermark Quartet
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