The Kirbyverse Was Here!
From 1993 to 1994, Topps Comics published a shared world of stories and concepts by Jack Kirby, featuring contributions from Kurt Busiek, Gerry Conway, Steve Ditko, Gary Friedrich, James Fry, Keith Giffen, Don Heck, Len Kaminski, and more (and a special appearance by hot Image property and Erik Larsen lifelong creation, Dragon of Savage Dragon!), in a weave of interlocking and standalone comics running a style all their own.
You may find this unique blend annoys some people for little definable reason other than it not being in the zeitgeist enough, being too or not enough an early 1990s superhero thing, some art being too cartoony, some too old-fashioned, some too experimental, some too whatever. People – some people – like to complain.
Gazra
Coordinated by Roy Thomas (and I take no cheap shots!) and Tony Isabella, the Kirbyverse launched with Jack Kirby’s The Secret City Saga #0, featuring two stories, one by Thomas with Walt Simonson line art and one with John Cleary pencils and Isabella scripting, setting the groundwork for the two major prongs of this franchise.
Beginning with a gorgeous city of towering trees by Simonson and colorist Gregory Wright, we are introduced to, “Gazra. Greatest city of the Ninth Men, in an age fifteen millennia before our own.”
Gazra, you’ll always put Garza on my mind! And, Gaza. (Who says comics aren’t topical thirty years after the fact?)
No one does scale like Simonson, and he makes this look big! The tiny elephants drawing loaded carts all dwarfed by mighty skyscraper-high trees. Broad, stern Simonsonian faces accompanied by those powerful John Workman. sound fx, braced by his reliable text lettering and thick, swimming backgrounds evoking Kirby’s work without slavishly reproducing it.
When this world is overtaken by Shikaakwa and then Chicago in more recent times, the world is smaller, simpler, and increasingly boxed into its panels, because we cannot compete.
Bombast
Even though these are comics about characters millennia or centuries old, and the talent ran an age range from over seventy to over thirty, everyone tries to keep things from the instantly-dated ideals of timelessness and opt for a mix of fashions and styles to befuddle the best.
In Bombast, things are born! As the ground rips open and our heroes begin to wake into the world, it is apt for Dick Ayers and John Severin to drop a kid into the hole and for Bombast to come out first.
Bombast hails from a long line of mythic good-arms like Nodens the catcher or Nuada of the silver arm, right up to your local high school sports hero. At the time of release, criticism insisted that the name was a flaw, that “bombast” had nothing to do with bombs or throwing, but yakking. However, looking at the issue afresh, or fairly, Bombast does an awful lot of talking, and he does so in a language nobody understands, as they similarly talk back at him, and around him, and sometimes through him, in a language he cannot sprechen.
Not so easy to dismiss the critiques of Gary Friedrich’s approach to writing a Black kid in modern Chicago. Friedrich knows what “rap” and “tripping” mean, for instance, but they are applied with the awkwardness of some kind of uncertainty, as is anything that might ground our crack-buying Marty McFly.
Dragon is a bit out of character, but mayhap he is having a bad day. His inclusion, though, opens up this Kirbyverse in showing there are modern day superhumans, that this is not entirely our world, and allows the people of the city to not react too dramatically to Bombast getting in fights or just walking around town.
Night Glider
It amuses me that while each issue, so far, will present a chart showing us the reading order, that chart fails to note that Night Glider, Bombast, and Captain Glory all end at the same scene. Or, that it does not matter if you read those and then Satan’s Six #1 or just those three or just Satan’s Six #1 and then #s 2 through 4.
“For in the secret darkness beneath their city, stirred by the tremors about her, a sleeper wakes…”
Gregory Wright does some beautiful colors under Don Heck’s line art, adding textured depth and letting flight and cross-flight bound on the page.
Night Glider, or Glida, is group-oriented and perceptive of the social ramifications of her surroundings, compared to Bombast mainly staying inside himself and reacting with immediacy. But, we may never know how she sussed out that they slept fifteen thousand years while zooming around a tall building and smiling at hotties.
Some things we take on faith, as the mere mortals of Chi-Town have to when told that Glida is from Slovenia. Or, why comics artists kept up the habit of short-dresses and showing us the underpants of young girls long after most media let it go unless they were being salacious.
Captain Glory
If Bombast surged and Night Glider flew, Captain Glory explodes! This is Steve Ditko and this is freedom!
Oh, sure, Roy Thomas is there writing and Janice Parker colored it and John Costanza lettered, but this is a Steve Ditko show! The man who Jack Kirby wanted to draw Mister Miracle at DC. The creator of Spider-Man and Mr A. He who put Hawk and Dove in Hawk and Dove.
While Bombast has jitters and toughness, and Night Glider swoops and sings, this is a comic pounding with the one man can politics Ditko has been known for illuminating and insisting upon.
While Simonson played the world of the Ninth Men in arboreal splendor and others illustrated modern Chicago as blockish and simple, Steve Ditko adds a chitinous and intestinal intenseness. Tubes and scallops, tunnels and pathways drag us and the Captain to today… and gorillas in the zoo!
Secret City
Naturally, then, it is the Ditko/Thomas/Parker team who carry on in the Secret City Saga miniseries.
In essence, a group of libertarian tech bros from 15000 years ago are still struggling to conquer the world (or Chicago) today, and our three soldiers are all that remains of a once great society, and all that can protect us from the conquerors (except, maybe, for Dragon, who exists in this world and is up in the city, acclimated and, well, all Dragon-y). Led by General Ortiz and Doctor Roag, their main modus operandi appears to be gesturing dramatically and blaming each other, but they do have mighty physical and psychic powers, and a technologically supreme armada of weapons. So, there is that.
Up top, Chicago’s finest rabble have already declared the heroes, “illegal aliens,” and the kid from Bombast is getting smacked around a holding cell by a police. The baddies’ “main agent” is US President Bill Clinton. Young Zardik of the olden days is found wandering the street and adopted off the books, renamed Richard to meld in.
While factions today may claim comics of any past era were apolitical, they never were and this is not.
Our heroes are “illegal aliens,” soon in stolen clothing. Each issue comes polybagged! With trading cards! Some of which are of politicians! Some politicians which do not even show up to their own Where’s Waldo riff, in the backup feature, Where’s Bubba?
Deep breath and steady.
The modern day Chicago names run a gamut from Darren Roberts to Kimba Nolan to a guy barely in his teens, in 1993, who self-elects to be called, Dick. At worst this can become distracting, if we start to wonder how Nolan got her given name, but when Darren tells lil Richard, “Butt over booties, Dickie-boy,” we know it is all worthwhile.
The four issues tumble along in a mess of emotions, a mass of politics, a marjorum field of spectacle and happening. Night Glider saving her brother from brainwashing corruption only to see him die with his own power of flight taken away. The inexplicable threat and power of the Boojum who was a Snark. Those who believe they are masters of the Earth are only slaves! Who seeks their deserved inheritance will only inherit what they are given!
Is shuffling the Black kid, Darren, out of the comic in time for the group shot finale a grand idea? Probably not. But, it is nice they said they would take him to a hospital.
And, to show you how secret this Secret City Saga is, they are still – by the final issue – offering coupons to be collected and redeemed for that zero issue which was supposed to launch the whole beast!
Satan’s Six
Like the Secret City side, it is hard to say at a glance what of these comics is from Kirby and what, whole cloth. “Molly Ringworm” feels more Tony Isabella than Jack Kirby, but who am I do speculate? Like her boss’ name, Odious Kamodious, it’s good. It’s funny.
John Cleary’s extreme exaggeration could have been the Nineties equivalent of Not Brand Echh parody, Marie Severin for the Image era, but for whatever reason, people were cranky about it. What was this big-eye, big-mouth cartoonishness coupled with heavily-lined pecs and imaginary muscles of the Rob Liefeld sort?
The first issue having pages of Jack Kirby pencils interspersed, inked by a range of talents with no attempt at uniformity, may not have helped, but if you want to know what Frank Miller or Steve Ditko could do with a Kirby page, or see Joe Sinnott and Mike Royer take late-in-the-game cracks at it, this is for you.
I dig it. And, that is the phrase for you. Either you dig, or you do not.
Maybe the backups, by Fred Hembeck or Batton Lash, among others, could have convinced an audience to relax and take this comic for what it intends to be, but well, comics people. Comics people can be judged, maybe, on how badly racist ol’ Lash, himself, could go.
Maybe it is okeh if comics audiences were, if not as quick to condemn, still on guard.
Hellspawn
The second Satan’s Six miniseries, Hellspawn, shifted from writer Tony Isabella to a team, Len Kaminski and Scott Benson. Three issues, the first two with Hilary Barta covers, all three main stories backed by Lamarcus, by Jean-Marc Toussaint and Caroline Vié.
More focused, more satirical, Hellspawn also took on how hard it is to get good hardcore Christian scares working in the late Twentieth Century, post the Satanic Panic, with the murder of Beavis and Butthead and hardened drug dealers unable to satisfy demonic demands.
Oh, the great divide!
Various comic book badasses get in a bar fight that goes nowhere. Chastity belts are divinely applied. The agents of Hell and Heaven cannot quite hack the hard-partying, muscle-flexing, body-indulgent goofball Nineties. But, maybe our hacky chump heroes, who really took a backseat this entire miniseries, maybe they can.
Teenagents
Many times we will be faced with the quandary of a comic we cannot read.
Elvis clones and kid detectives tie together strands of the earlier comics via walking by or light commentary, but I cannot bring myself to read Teenagents for fun. I cannot focus enough on the pages, feel any urge to move panel to panel.
I present no excuse.
Silver Star
“This ends now!” declares the first page of Silver Star: Odds Against Part One, but who knew it would end as soon as that issue was over? The comic by Kurt Busiek and James W Fry III lasted only the issue.
But, what an issue!!!
Whether letterer Richard Starkings or the penciler handled the massive sound fx, they explode across each page. Beautiful, chunky, crinkly letters with personality and color!
Silver Star is packed with action, packed with intrigue, and packed with characters! Promising one thousand villains, we certainly get more than the average serving in even issue one. Bedbug! Sizzler! Gasbag!
And, with the abrupt end, the unfortunate cancelation, we may never know what became of our hero’s love, or their daughter. Where things would have gone.
Victory
“Is this the end of the Kirbyverse?”
Yes, it is. And, it does not even get to finish.
This rebis bringing it all together. This alchemical work.
Captain Victory came back for one page! Mysteries unravelled! The Boojum, shut up!
One issue of the miniseries to usher in the next era, to close out these opening salvos, is all Keith Giffen and Kurt Busiek got before it abruptly closed shop.
