BrightSparrow
Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2020
- Messages
- 18
I just read the collected #1-11 and it has made a great impact on me. Growing up I used to read Marvel more than DC, my local shop had Guardians of the Galaxy and New Warriors, and my aunt had the collected Secret Wars. So I am much more familiar with the Marvel universe than the DC.
But I wanted to see what Kirby did here with his own universe. It's so fascinating, because I think its decades ahead of his time, and yet the dialogue and character and story choices are completely of the early 70s. It's dated and also timeless.
One bit I love is Darkseid, the most powerful and evil creation of any comics universe, taking a walk through a funfair and having a chat with a man and his kid, then having an evil chuckle to himself about the fact that nobody realises he's a cosmic level mastermind. It's such a weird juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extreme, like Thanos depositing a cheque in a bank then Muwahahahaing that he's gonna destroy half the universe anyways.
Darkseid
The combination of aliens who also know 60s-70s US hippy slang is really striking as well. I get that he was making the Forever People to be the hippies of their culture. It's still funny to see these wacky superheroes sitting around making sandwiches in their brownstone hideout.
But still despite the dated Silver Age narratives (pointless Superman story appearance, Darkseid being able but unwilling to just kill the kids, the Anti-Life Equation being discovered and lost twice in anticlimactic ways), Kirby's creative vision still stands out here.
I haven't read the New Gods or the later stuff, but I can see how it would have an impact on DC's Universe, it's got so much strange richness to the ideas that you can't forget them.
But I wanted to see what Kirby did here with his own universe. It's so fascinating, because I think its decades ahead of his time, and yet the dialogue and character and story choices are completely of the early 70s. It's dated and also timeless.
One bit I love is Darkseid, the most powerful and evil creation of any comics universe, taking a walk through a funfair and having a chat with a man and his kid, then having an evil chuckle to himself about the fact that nobody realises he's a cosmic level mastermind. It's such a weird juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extreme, like Thanos depositing a cheque in a bank then Muwahahahaing that he's gonna destroy half the universe anyways.
Darkseid
The combination of aliens who also know 60s-70s US hippy slang is really striking as well. I get that he was making the Forever People to be the hippies of their culture. It's still funny to see these wacky superheroes sitting around making sandwiches in their brownstone hideout.
But still despite the dated Silver Age narratives (pointless Superman story appearance, Darkseid being able but unwilling to just kill the kids, the Anti-Life Equation being discovered and lost twice in anticlimactic ways), Kirby's creative vision still stands out here.
I haven't read the New Gods or the later stuff, but I can see how it would have an impact on DC's Universe, it's got so much strange richness to the ideas that you can't forget them.
