Jack Kirby's Fourth World

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The Fourth World is the popular name given to a metaseries of interconnecting comic book titles written and drawn by Jack Kirby and published by DC Comics from 1970 to 1973. Originally intended to form a finite epic story, the books were cancelled for reasons that remain controversial and unclear.

The three original titles comprising the Fourth World were The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and New Gods; the pre-existing title Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen was also adopted into the series.

Published as the newsstand distribution system for comics began to break down, Kirby foresaw a day when comics would need to find alternate, more legitimate venues for sale. Toward this end, Kirby envisioned the finite series that would be serialized and collected in one tome later.

Unhappy with Marvel Comics at the time (as he had created or co-created a plethora of characters without ever having copyright or creative custody of them), he turned to rival publisher DC Comics. There he produced what is arguably his most personal work in the "Fourth World" titles. Though a thirty-year veteran of the comics industry at the time, Kirby had previously worked only in collaboration with other creators. Kirby's interest in science fiction and mythologies shone most clearly at Marvel's Fantastic Four and Thor. Kirby's operatic dialogue style and grandiose pageantry of heroes and villains surprised and disappointed some fans who were expecting work similar to that which he had produced with scripter Stan Lee at Marvel. Other fans were intrigued by the modern day mythology of the titles.

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 40s 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.

Kirby was his own editor on the series, allowing him to work with more complex themes and storylines than was usually the case in comic books, and showing brutal violence that, although less graphic than what would become allowed in the comic book industry later, was very strong for its time.

The Fourth World was never completed. Cancelled with little warning by DC, Kirby attempted to tie up the storylines in the final issues of each series, but the over-all story of the Apokolips-New Genesis war was never finished, and a few years later Kirby went back to Marvel where he worked on Captain America, Black Panther and, Eternals, a concept similar to New Gods and the Fourth World mythology. In 1985 Kirby attempted to create a conclusion to the Fourth World storyline in a graphic novel entitled The Hunger Dogs set many years after the original series, though DC continued to use the characters.

Thus, the characters created have appeared in various series under different talents, becoming fully established in the DC Comics superhero universe. This is especially true of Darkseid, who after the Legion of Superheroes's famous storyline, "The Great Darkness Saga", reintroduced him to the larger DC mythology, leading him to become one of its major villains. A number of relaunches followed the Fourth World characters, notably Mister Miracle in the early 1990s (who was also a member of the post-Crisis lighthearted Giffen-DeMatteis version of the JLA), Jack Kirby's Fourth World in the late 1990s, and Orion in 2000. They have also appeared in the recent Seven Soldiers of Victory series of mini-series by Grant Morrison, and the whole mythology is featured extensively in the larger plot of his mid 1990s run on his version of the company's premier sueprhero-team JLA. Orion and Big Barda became team members for a time.

In the early 2000s Kirby's Fourth World comics were reprinted by DC in trade paperback format, though a number of fans were disappointed by the fact that the reprint was in black and white rather than in color (although the Jimmy Olsen work was reprinted in color).

In September 2006, DC announced that it would publish the entire Fourth World Saga in a collection entitled New Gods Omnibus. While some specific details of the collection have not been determined, the collection is intended to be comprehensive:

"We're still trying to determine the final contents, but essentially, it’s going to be a hardcover collection of the full New Gods saga," (DC's Collected Editions editor Georg) Brewer said. "Right now, and this is subject to change, my bias would be to collect the stories across titles, as they were released chronologically, so it gives you a sense of how the concepts evolved, so that way you’re not stuck with a full Mr. Miracle collection or a full Forever People, but rather, build the larger story as the issues and pieces were released chronologically."

The Omnibus will include the full run of New Gods and The Hunger Dogs, but will also include, as Brewer said, assorted other issues which contain pieces of the larger whole, such as the debut of the characters in Kirby’s issues of Jimmy Olsen and others. "Those are some of the details we’re still working out, but it’s looking like it will be four collections of 200-plus pages each," Brewer said. "They’ll be color hard covers – a nice, definitive collection. I think that’s something that the core Kirby fans have wanted to see for a long time."[1]

[edit] Other Media

• Characters from Fourth World have also appeared in the animated series Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited.

• Toys of several Apokolips villains have been made over the years, as early as the Super Powers line.

[edit] Trivia

Comics artist and writer John Byrne has claimed that the Masters of the Universe live action movie, though based on Mattel's He-Man property, was analogous to the Fourth World. Director Gary Goddard provided a commentary track for the film's DVD release which made no such claim regarding any intent to produce a covert New Gods adaptation, though he clarified this in a letter appearing an issue of John Byrne's Next Men #26, stating that the film drew on a wide range of sources but was intended as a tribute to all of Jack Kirby's work.

For the full story see: Masters of the Universe film: Comparison with Jack Kirby's Fourth World