Yesterday I pointed to a gallery of Jack Kirby comic book covers from the 1970s. Several readers emailed me to let me know that DC comics has released a two-volume series called Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus, which features most of the comics in that gallery.
I haven’t seen the books, but they are hardcover, 400 pages each, and in color. They contain the complete run of Kirby’s Fourth World Comics: The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen. (Kamandi and OMAC, which came later, were supposedly part of the Fourth World, but the connection was never made clear.) Here’s Wikipedia’s description of Kirby’s Fourth World Series:
The Fourth World dealt with the battle between good and evil as represented by the worlds of “New Genesis” and “Apokolips.” Darkseid, the evil lord of Apokolips, seeks the Anti-Life Equation which will allow him to control the thoughts of all living beings. Opposing him is Orion, his son raised by his enemies on New Genesis. Other characters caught in the deadly battle included the Forever People, an extension of the kid gang concept from the 1940s with a group of adolescents adventuring without an adult supervisor; Mister Miracle, the native of New Genesis raised on Apokolips who triumphed over a torturous childhood to become the world’s greatest escape artist; and Lightray, the gaily flamboyant warrior of New Genesis.
Mercifully, Kirby’s work at this time was inked by “Jumpin'” Joe Sinnot, who made Kirby’s pencils sharp and clear, as opposed to the horsebrush and garden-trowel technique of Vince “Vinny the C” Colletta, whose hamsfisted inking efforts spoiled many a Kirby page when he was at Marvel. Link
Reader comment:
Dan says:
Eddie Campbell (Alan Moore’s collaborator on From Hell) just blogged
a pretty solid defense of Vince Colletta’s inking here.It seems that bad reproduction is to blame for a lot of the loss of
detail in Colletta’s inks that gets blamed on Vince. Just thought
you’d like to know, in case Vinnie’s kids are reading Boing Boing!
Fishing lure fetishist Coop says:
Actually, (adjusts comic-nerd glasses) most of the Kirby Fourth World stuff was inked By Mike Royer, generally considered to be (along with Sinnott) among the best of Kirby’s inkers, due mainly to his alway-faithful limning of Kirby’s pulse-pounding peripatetic pencils!
And yes, I know that a No-Prize is a Marvel thing… fuck off, nerds.