Jack Kirby's Spirit World

I've been looking for this book for around 25 years. Because DC - and the comics publishing industry - neglected Kirby back in the 1990s and 2000s, this book, along with others from Kirby's late period (the 1970s and 1980s), was hard to come by. In the present decade, publishers have realised that nostalgic Generation Xers are willing to pay money - and lots of it - for reprints of classic material. They have released nearly everything from Kirby's back catalogue in handsome hardcover volumes which are overpriced. I was lucky enough to find this book in the bargain bin for only $20. I want the companion volume - Jack Kirby's In the Days of the Mob - but will wait until it comes down in price.

In some ways, the essay that comes with this book - by Kirby biographer Mark Evanier - is more interesting than the Kirby stories therein. I was appalled to learn that DC effectively buried the book and In the Days-: they were ashamed of the books and published them through a dummy company - 'Hampshire Distributors Ltd.' -  without any attempt at promotion so as to offload them. The business practices of DC have always struck me as being rather odd and self-defeating. It remains a mystery to me why they cancelled all of Kirby's Fourth World titles despite their popularity (DC claimed that the books didn't sell, but I don't believe them). I don't know exactly what Kirby himself thought of such shabby treatment, but he seems to have taken it all in his stride.

Fans know what to expect in this volume. We find the usual spectacular artwork. A few of the early stories are inked by the horrible Vince Colletta - a man who ruined many a Kirby issue - but after that, Mike Royer (?) takes over. We are plunged into the Kirby universe - of handsome, two-fisted WASP men who wear suits and smoke pipes; beautiful, buxom women; hideous, craggy-faced, neanderthal-looking villains; grotesque monsters which are often quaint-looking (such as the 'Mandarin Dog'); photo collages; and shiny 'cosmic' superheroes with metallic skin.

The theme of this book - the paranormal and pseudo-science - was close to Kirby's heart. I think one can distinguish between the two Kirbys at the two stages of his career: the New York Jack and the California Jack. After he moved to California, Kirby, if his work is anything to go by, became fascinated with the paranormal schlock and the theories of Von Däniken. He also became convinced that humanity was about to evolve into a god-like race of supermen. Andrew Weiss calls this philosophy 'Aquarian', which it is; it's also very Californian. One can dismiss Kirby's world view as outdated, but, through the medium of his pages, I find it enticing. Many have paid homage to Kirby - see the excellent series Godland, by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli - and Kirby's characters from the Californian period have been used again and again. But none of those who came after Kirby seemed to 'get' Kirby; they didn't really quite believe in Kirby's ideas and world view, at least not with the same fervour.

I'm very pleased with this volume, but I'm biased - I don't recommend it for anyone except the Kirby completist. If you want the best of Kirby's 1970s work for DC, start with the four volumes of Jack Kirby's Fourth World and then move on to Jack Kirby's OMAC, Jack Kirby's The Demon, and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. You'll find that the work he did for Marvel in the 1970s is great too, but that's another story.

Mark Hootsen signing off.

DC Showcase Presents The Great Disaster featuring the Atomic Knights

This book represents something of an oddity. It contains stories from horror titles Weird War Tales and House of Secrets as well as Superman, DC Comics Presents and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth and reprints all the Atomic Knights stories (a series which debuted in the early 1960s) and the 1970s short-lived series Hercules Unbound. Jack Kirby's one-shot Atlas is inserted gratuitously - Atlas is a Robert E. Howard-style fantasy character who has nothing to do with the theme of this volume, which is post-apocalypse Earth. We see a lot of disparity here - disparity between stories which have no real connection to one another.

An essay by Paul Levitz appears right at the end, which attempts to bundle all the story threads into the one DC continuity, and the Atomic Knights and Hercules are retconned out of existence in a Superman story from 1983. The loose ends of the DC post-apocalyptic arcs evidently bothered DC, who felt that they had to do something to tie them up.

The Atomic Knights stories stand out. Oddly enough, despite being set in a post-nuclear war America, the world of the Atomic Knights seems utopian, and the Atomic Knights and the survivors of the apocalypse resemble pioneers in the Old West and are imbued with an optimism, a can-do attitude and a faith in positivism and science. I imagine that the values of the Knights reflected those of the book's readers - boys who lead a healthy, outdoorsy existence and read Scientific American.

One could write at great length on the ideology of the Atomic Knights book, but I'll leave that to other hands. Suffice to say, values had changed by the 1970s and 1980s, and the remaining stories (written in that era) in the volume strike me as dark and dystopian.

For Hercules Unbound, Wally Wood does the pencils for most of the run, José Luis García-López the inks - two great artists. Walt Simonson comes on board later and does some pencils, doing as good a job with the Greek gods as with the Norse. The series reminds me of a Marvel title - it's very Marvel-esque, which is a good thing - and the high-quality art work makes it a joy.

In the last story, Superman and Atomic Knights team-up in DC Comics Presents, in a tale which is an anti-nuke polemic. As we know (from Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Raymond Briggs' When the Wind Blows, Judge Dredd and other books), the threat of nuclear war loomed large in the comics books of the 1980s. A kid growing up in that time, consuming all that Cold War nuclear-hysteric literature, would have found it all rather frightening. I know I did.

Mark Hootsen, signing off.