It sort of breaks my heart to give the King a 2.5, especially because there is more going on here than just the art. The art is vintage Kirby, in top form, at the peak of his powers, all the cliches--whether it's roiling cosmic forces or straining superhuman sinews, the keyword here is vigour.


And on the big-picture mythopoeic level, the story is strong here too--the cosmic war, the exchange of sons, each of them warring--one with his insides, the darkness and rage inherited from Apokolips (as always in myth, biology is destiny) that makes him New Genesis' greatest protector; the other with his surroundings, relying on his inner light; something in Scott Free in the pits, Oliver Twistlike, makes us--I'm not afraid to say it--yearn to find and hold on to pur better selves.


Big talk! But I'm afraid Kirby just doesn't know how to use his words, or not very well. Scripting Kirby's storyboards on the classic sixties Marvels, Stan Lee defined so much of the "pop art" aesthetic--pop in the Warholian sense--by embracing the absurdity, the tired oppositions, the awful, clumsy expository dialogue, the jarring introduction of epic elements into the modern context, like Homeric self-naming in every second panel--"I, the ultimate ULTRON!" "the ever-lovin' blue-eyed THING!"--all with a wink, a tip of his impresario's hat, and an mighty "Excelsior!" So say we all! Join the MMMS!


Kirby's dialogue and exposition boxes come across more like a sweaty fourteen-year old at best and a Ditkoesque Objectivist at worst, because he takes it all seriously, and doesn't understand the performance, the dance. And it unfortunately ruins our ability to take the characters seriously or care about their development, because they're lurching around all clumsily rendered and unable to break free. Character abuse! Even on the storyboarding level, his panels are disjointed, because he just wants to get on to the cosmic ejaculation, and the dialogue . . . I won't get into it, because I don't wanna drag Kirby through the mud here, but yikes. Worst of all, though, are the names. "Seagrin"? "Fastbak"? Those would be embarrassing names for Transformers, for God's sake, and the Transformers were all named by Japanese middle management. ( )

Pretty good. It starts out a bit slow and forced but picks up for a very good pace just in time for when the series was cancelled and Kirby had to write an ending that left you wondering what could have been.

I just wish this edition had been in color. ( )

I'd always kind of looked at Kirby as comics' version of, say, Bill Haley - an important player in the development of the artform, but not much else. His Thor, for example, I found atrocious. Reading New Gods, though, was a complete turn-around for me in regards to the man and his legacy.

The basic plot: Ragnarok has already happened, and the "old gods" have all died out. In their wake, however, the New Gods have formed on the twin planets of Apokolips and New Genesis. (Bonus points if you can guess which one is the 'good' planet and which one is the 'evil' one). The two planets are at war, and Earth has just become their latest battleground.
The series mainly focuses on Orion and Darkseid's battle for Earth, but throughout that, Kirby manages to throw out insane, cosmic ideas while still being able to muse on things like the nature/nurture debate and the impact that war has on a man's soul. Reading stuff like this makes me want to write big, goofy space opera stories; I suppose that providing inspiration like that is a bit of a testament to the strength of Kirby's work here, as well. ( )