| Posted: 10 December 2012 at 11:20am | IP Logged | 11
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I love when you do the New Gods characters, JB.•• As do I! When I was coming back to reading comics, in the early 70s, Kirby's Fourth World books were very much on their last legs. I read THE FOREVER PEOPLE, THE NEW GODS and most of MISTER MIRACLE in the form of back issues I picked up at second hand book stores. In fact it was really only the last few issues of MISTER MIRACLE that I managed to buy fresh off the rack. And by then, of course, the Fourth World connection had been shoved into the deep background. To say I was blown away by this stuff would be a colossal understatement. While it's true the actual scripting could be a bit creaky*, the scope of the story being told was astounding. So it grieved and annoyed me when Kirby was allowed to return to his epic, but was forced by DC editorial to shape it to their needs, not his. And when other hands took the helm -- the less said the better! So it was an amazingly Big Deal for me when I was handed that tiller myself. I knew I had to burrow into the groundwork Kirby had laid down, in order to find fresh tales to tell with these characters, but I also knew I must under no circumstances allow myself to fall back on "Everything is a lie" or even the softer "Things are not as they seem". I am sorry to this day that circumstances did not allow me to continue with the FOURTH WORLD series longer than I did. Like HIDDEN YEARS at Marvel, that's a series I could have happily stuck with for a long, long time. +++++ I get a JR Jr. vibe from Barda's face. •• Yeah, I can see a little something of that. Not a bad thing! ______ * I have often spoken of imagining the alternate reality in which Wally Wood inked the first 40 or so issues of FANTASTIC FOUR, and Neal Adams did 100 consecutive issues of BATMAN. In that same neighborhood we would find Stan Lee scripting the Fourth World books.
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