Final Crisis Retro Review Part I: Overview

So, a decade goes by…

DC's big crossover event for 2008 was Grant Morrison's Final Crisis. I started this blog very shortly after FC concluded, which would have been a fine time for me to write and post a breakdown. But, at the time, I focused on other subjects, and since then, I've commented on ongoing events while gradually working my way through comics history with retro reviews going from the Thirties back up to the 2000s. Now, I've worked my way up to the point where the blog started, ten years ago, and the time is right for a breakdown of Final Crisis. There's enough to say about it to fill more than one post, so I'm going to start with comments here about how the story was structured and some of the factors that I think detracted from the way FC reached the fans.

Final Crisis was not received by fans as warmly as other comparable DC events, including the previous two "Crises." Critical reviews on Amazon call it messy, scattered, and even incomprehensible. I think, for various reasons, the criticism is fair, and I'll spend some time talking about why. However, unlike a work that begins well then loses its purpose, or is mediocre in every aspect, Final Crisis – I believe – benefits enormously from re-reading and careful attention. I hope that with a thorough breakdown, it can be a much better story for people who give it more consideration.

Naturally, Final Crisis has already received a fair amount of attention, most of it during and immediately after its 2008-2009 release. I have the benefit of standing on the shoulders of those giants who've analyzed it before. I'm giving my breakdown now for a few reasons:

1) Working your way through it page-by-page with detailed annotations still loses the big picture. If the difficulty many readers have is that it's messy, annotations merely shine light upon the mess. What can help is an overview that puts the details into a meaningful structure.

2) I've enjoyed the work many times over the years, but I still didn't have a solid grasp of FC on the highest level – what it's saying about superhero stories and the people who write and enjoy them. The feeling that all the pieces fit into place didn't come for me until 2017.

3) As we'll see, the plotlines of Final Crisis weren't really complete until 2010, as some of the backstory was filled in with a Morrison mini-run in Batman #700-702, the fate of a Batman clone in Batman and Robin#8, and some mention of the Fourth World at the end of Return of Bruce Wayne. Some extremely helpful clarification was added by Multiversity in 2014. Some very fine annotations posted in 2009 weren't privy to all the information we got later.

4) Final Crisis commented on many the same things that Doomsday Clock is discussing now. It is timely to bring FC's comments into the discussion, and Johns' story may soon prompt us to do so.

An Apology

Among the various crossovers and tie-ins, ostensibly meant to give readers additional information or related reading, there are several that related to Final Crisis poorly – even very poorly. It's safe to say that there were works that strongly implied a connection to Final Crisis, perhaps even in the title, that turned out to be disconnected, or even contradictory. This surely didn't help the community of readers trying at the time to understand the story, and surely subtracted from the reception of the series itself. I will discuss these here, and the problems with them.

Countdown (to Final Crisis), The Death of the New Gods, and (Final Crisis) Last Will and Testament are three works that a reader would naturally expect to be connected, plotwise, to FC, but that failed to do so in an effective way, prompting a few disclaimers from the creators, mainly found online, that told readers to disregard their plot points as unrelated to Final Crisis and even continuity as a whole.

Countdown (#51-#1) seemed hardly to know what to do with itself, despite the fine talent of Paul Dini at the helm. It did not match FC in themes or tone. It did little to prepare readers for the important plot points of FC. Fifty-one issues were far beyond overkill for establishing those few plot points, and yet Countdown didn't perform that simple task adequately. The existence of multiple Monitors, the nature of Morticoccus, the fate of Earth-51, the temptation of Mary Marvel, and the death of Darkseid are all illustrated in Countdown, but in ways that seem mildly or substantially different from their depiction later in Final Crisis. And, really, there is no need to introduce the multiple Monitors before Final Crisis; it is not hard to understand their existence from the first page one sees them. If anything, the reader of Countdown is slightly less well prepared for Final Crisis than a reader who simply skipped it.

The same, and worse, is true of Jim Starlin's Death of the New Gods. DOTNG, a nice work in and of itself, with Starlin disposing of Kirby's Fourth World creations in a whodunit that establishes the Anti-Life Equation as a sentient and corporeal being. New Gods are killed, one after another, with Superman along as a combination soldier, detective, and witness as the ALE succeeds in killing every last New God using the Infinity Man as its tool. It's a good story, well told, but this plot is strikingly contradictory with that of Final Crisis, which begins with its own, utterly different whodunit, with Orion as the fallen victim. Orion dies in both stories, but at the hands of different killers and means. In FC, Orion is shot in the head with a time-travelling bullet by Darkseid, and his dying words are spoken to Dan Turpin in Metropolis before the Green Lanterns and Justice League take up the case. This is quite different from DOTNG, in which Orion's death takes place far from Earth and is known to Superman, who has no knowledge of any of this when FC begins. It's essentially impossible to digest DOTNG as having occurred before the events of Final Crisis.

The same can be said of Last Will and Testament, a work published midway through FC and originally intended to tie into it, but reference to FC was removed from its title before publication because it, too, contradicts FC on basic facts. In LWAT, Brad Meltzer shows how different superheroes react to the knowledge that the world is going to end the next day in a fight that they will lose. However, nothing like this situation occurs in FC, which, like other Morrison works that decade, shows a sneak attack as the killer blow, reflecting the real world events of the September 11 attacks. Therefore, LWAT can't even take place in DC continuity at all, and it becomes an unintended Elseworlds story, as does DOTNG.

Finally, the planned release schedule turned out not to be realistic, which led to artist J. G. Jones beginning the series, illustrating it wonderfully, but then handing off some of the duties as he fell behind. The fill-in artists performed admirably, with Superman Beyond's penciller Doug Mahnke doing memorable work on FC #7, but the shift from Jones to Carlos Pacheco and Mahnke was still a case of the original vision suffering due to an unintended failure on the organizational side.

One glitch may be bad luck, but four are a pattern, and this was only a partial list (note that Aquaman returned from the dead in FC, but all later stories ignored that). It is difficult to take this set of facts and not conclude that the writers of other stories were simply not informed of Morrison's plans by Morrison and whatever editors hold responsibility. And this certainly led to confusion on the part of readers as well as a bit of a grudge that they'd spent their comic-buying money on sixty or more prologue issues without receiving what they expected.

Flagship Crossovers

There was also confusion engendered by stories involving DC's two flagship characters, Superman and Batman that tied directly in with Final Crisis. In this case, a lack of communication cannot be blamed, because Morrison himself wrote two out of the three stories that I'll mention here. In these cases, nothing is strictly contradictory from one story to the next, but the plots become more convoluted than seem strictly necessary.

In the case of Superman, the confusion is this: After Lois Lane is incapacitated by a bomb in Final Crisis #2, he is called away on a mission that sidelines him from the main action. Two missions, in fact. In Legion of Three Worlds, Superman is summoned into the future to help the LSH fight an attack that threatens their survival. In Superman Beyond, Superman is summoned into alternate dimensions to protect higher-level worlds, and all worlds, against the first attack by Mandrakk. Both of these stories, which are both quite good, have a curiously common context and seem to serve the same role, which may confuse readers as to which occurred first (if "first" even has an easy interpretation in stories with time and interdimensional travel). In both, Superman's summoners both promise him that he can be returned to the "exact instant" from which he was taken. In fact, this seems not to be the case. The timeline, from Superman's point of view, must go like this:

1) Lois Lane is injured by a bomb.

2) Superman is taken on an adventure involving the Monitors.

3) Superman is flying in the sky over Metropolis.

4) The LSH brings Superman to the future.

5) Superman and the LSH defeat the threat.

6) Brainiac 5 shows Superman the God Weapon that can do anything.

7) Superman returns to Earth and witnesses that Darkseid has conquered it.

This can all be sorted out from the stories, but not until Final Crisis #6 at the earliest. Perhaps there's no proper cause for complaint; a mystery is what readers often expect and appreciate. However, this feels more like an over-busy nesting of storylines with confusion that has no payoff except understanding the basic facts. It feels as though the premise of Superman being called away was perhaps intended for one of the two side-stories, but then was used for both of them.

Something similar occurred with the Batman title, then penned by Morrison. Final Crisis was published concurrently with Morrison's masterpiece, close to my heart, Batman R.I.P. The publication times interlocked, with RIP beginning before FC began and ending before FC ended, with about four months during which both stories were in monthly publication. However, the story timelines were related in a completely different way, with Batman, R.I.P.'s main plot (flash-forwards withstanding) ending completely before the main action of Final Crisis' Darkseid plot began. Readers eventually found out, in 2010, that about four days of story time took place between the end of Doctor Hurt's attack in Batman and the death of Orion early in Final Crisis. Until then, it had been a mystery how Batman made his way between the plots of RIP and FC and from his zapping in FC to the start of Return of Bruce Wayne. Readers picked up each of the following issues with some significant uncertainty regarding how "Batman" had arrived into the situation:

• Batman #676: An unidentified Batman and Robin declare that they will never die.

• Final Crisis #1: Batman surprisingly alive after RIP.

• Final Crisis #7: Bruce Wayne in a cave, writing on the wall.

• Batman #682: Narrating flashbacks from his entire career.

• Return of Bruce Wayne #1: Again at the cave.

• Blackest Night#5: The clone body fried by Darkseid.

• Batman and Robin#6-7: Again the clone body.

• Batman and Robin#15: In silhouette, tells Doctor Hurt, "Turn around, Doctor. It's all over."

Eight times in two and a half years we saw a version of Batman enter the story without readers knowing who that Batman was. We also saw Batman depart from the stories of RIP and Final Crisis without understanding what the helicopter crash or eyebeam zap really meant. Twice, he apparently departed from the DCU, though the RIP helicopter crash ultimately proved to be of minor consequence and its drama at odds with the mundane escape-from-crash that got Bruce Wayne home by the end of the night. (In addition, two RIP crossovers strictly contradicted this by showing Batman's superhero allies unaware of his fate after RIP.) That's not to say that all of those scenes amount to mistakes: These were, in many cases, deliberate mysteries intended to heighten intrigue and keep readers guessing; however – and here's the rub – only in many cases. In other cases, there are scenes that seem straightforward with undramatized mysteries behind them; in other cases, there are scenes that seem mysterious with a perfectly mundane reality when all the facts were known. Simply put, there was sometimes annoying confusion rather than entertaining mystery. Cumulatively, these disconnects detracted from the overall experience, and Final Crisis was one of the works to lose a bit of cachet.

I have posted the aforementioned comments here because I feel it's an important critique of FC in the larger sense, and once one allows for the many, highly flawed connections FC and other stories, it further emphasizes how good FC itself was as a standalone work. Having dispensed with my critical comments regarding the crossovers, I will close this post with a quick summary of how my next two posts will review the series itself.

What Final Crisis is…

Final Crisis is a seven issue miniseries, but also had many crossovers. I won't review all of that here. For my purposes, Final Crisis is the seven-issue miniseries plus the two issues of Superman Beyond, which chronologically fit into the middle of FC. That said, I find many of the crossovers, particularly Final Crisis: Revelations, to be very good. Material found in some other places, including Batman #701-702, Multiversity, and online interviews illuminate the discussion, but I'll only discuss those insofar as they cast light on FC.

It is very helpful to note the general structure of FC and I will offer this here, then elaborate on it in the next two posts.

Final Crisis has two central plots that are not connected to one another in a straightforward cause-and-effect way.

1) The Darkseid Plot: Darkseid and his underlings hide on Earth, kill the last New God, Orion, and carry out surprise attacks against the superheroes. When they have accomplished their preliminary goals, sidelining most of Earth's defenses, they seize control of the world, holding it for several weeks until Earth's major superheroes liberate it and undo the damage.

The Darkseid plot is enclosed by a somewhat larger context of the entire timeline of the interaction between Kirby's Fourth World characters and the superheroes of the DCU; this is seen in flashback

The great majority of Final Crisis #1-7 and a few of the crossovers are devoted to the Darkseid plot. In many respects, I think the reader response was almost as though Final Crisis simply was the Darkseid plot, or that it should have been no more than that.

2) The Monitor Plot: As introduced by Marv Wolfman as part of Crisis on Infinite Earths, godlike beings of ancient origins called Monitors observe and direct events in the DC Universe, though Wolfman only posited two characters called the Monitor and Morrison gives us 52 Monitors, each responsible for one of the 52 dimensions of the Multiverse. In recent times, at least two Monitors named Mandrakk and Ogama conspire to destroy and feed upon the worlds of the Multiverse. They fail in two attempts to kill Superman, and are fated never to defeat him, with the good Monitor Nix Uotan returning from exile to aid Superman, other Supermen of the Multiverse, and the Green Lantern Corps to defeat Mandrakk and his ally Ultraman.

The Monitor plot is found in just a few sections of Final Crisis, predominantly in issues #1, #5, and #7, in addition to almost the entirety of the two issues of Superman Beyond. There are also a few scenes that tie the Darkseid and Monitor plots together, and many scenes that narrate events in the Darkseid plot but intertwine thematically with the Monitor plot.

The Monitor plot is not simply a superhero-supervillain story, but is an allegory that comments upon the relationship between comic book writers and comic book superheroes.

Interestingly, while a large proportion of reader commentary online had a critical or mixed reaction to Final Crisis, most readers seemed very supportive of Superman Beyond, and I wonder how the response would have been if Final Crisis #7 had simply ended with the defeat of Darkseid and then the material that ended Final Crisis #7 with the culmination of the Monitor plot had appeared under the banner of "Superman Beyond #3". I suspect that this minor alteration of the structure would have led to a warmer response by fans, who would have found the second encounter with Mandrakk to fit more easily within the framework of Superman Beyond.

Next up: The Darkseid plot!
Part III: The widely misunderstood Monitor plot.

Kirby's Fourth World

A hundred years ago this week, Jack Kirby was born; it is striking to observe the medium of superhero comics begin to approach its own century mark, something that Kirby and his contemporaries brought about in their early adulthood. In an earlier post, I discussed Kirby's first work at DC, taking over the existing Jimmy Olsen title. Here, I break down Kirby's three original titles that presented his Fourth World.

Kirby's Fourth World work is a case study in extremes. Kirby came to DC from Marvel with a gigantic reputation and a new vision to match. DC practically could not debut his new work fast enough; he was first given control of the poorly selling Jimmy Olsen title. Kirby's ideas expanded in the three new titles he was allowed to launch: Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle. In the span of his first few months (and issues), he introduced numerous characters who have been, individually and collectively, among the most enduring in DC's history. This is a remarkable achievement, and one that virtually no other creator has approached or matched.

And yet, this splendid body of work failed to thrive. The original work itself is not widely read / republished proportional to its creative power, and in its own time was not embraced. None of Kirby's three original titles caught on and two were cancelled before reaching their twelfth issue – an ignominious sign that would normally be interpreted as failure. There is some controversy regarding the reasons for this, whether it was outright disappointing sales, unrealistic expectations, or something else, but amid the brilliance and creativity there is a scattered, unhinged nature to the work itself that asks a lot of the reader's attention. Kirby's original Fourth World work has many qualities of a cult work – adored by a few devotees, but not loved or even liked very much by the masses.

The central fact of the Fourth World is an almost perfect division into two parts, one good and one evil. Two worlds exist opposite one another in both physical space and morality. The good world, New Genesis, is named after a beginning and the first book of the Bible. The evil world, Apokolips, is named after the last book of the Bible (alongside the more popular name in English, "Revelation," are alternate names involving the word "Apocalypse"). Those books, in turn, are not the beginning and end in terms of mere page order, but in terms of a narration of the human race itself, describing its origin and its annihilation. These names alone say a great deal about the Fourth World – the strict binary division, generous inspiration from classical and Judeo-Christian culture, and religious overtones.

Kirby's three new titles, while centered on different characters, also offered different kinds of dynamics. The Forever People acted as one unit, very much like Kirby's jovial, wonderous Hairies from Jimmy Olsen, and though they had distinctive names and appearance, they didn't have much characterization to distinguish one from the other. Fittingly, they were capable of unifying physically into one, nigh-unbeatable hero (though the metaphysical explanation was that they simply switched places with the Infinity Man rather than became him). This was a fitting tribute to the Youth Movement of the time, with a group of individuals becoming more powerful when they acted together. The Forever People's time on Earth memorably began with a guest-starring role by Superman in which his yearning to know other super-people was so evocative that the story earned a place in The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told.

New Gods centered on Orion, who went to Earth and formed a small squadron of ordinary people to aid him in his battle against the forces of Apokolips. Subtle hints from the beginning led up to a dramatic and brilliant revelation in flashback that a secret pact between Izaya and Darkseid had them exchange their young sons so that neither of them could tolerate what would otherwise be an all-encompassing destructive war between them.

Among Kirby's Fourth World titles, Mister Miracle was the only one to last more than 11 issues, but it too was short-lived, ending after issue #18. Scott Free, the son of Highfather and raised by Darkseid in the trade with Orion, lives a heroic life on Earth, alternately performing as an escape artist and fighting for his life against various plots launched from his home world of Apokolips. Along the way, he befriends Oberon and begins a romance with Big Barda. Maybe this title outlived the others because Mister Miracle more closely resembled a conventional DC superhero. Maybe it's because he really was the greatest escape artist.

Not long after Kirby's titles were canceled, his Fourth World creations resurfaced in other writers' work, in memorable Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes stories, a revival series penned by Gerry Conway, a key role in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and many times thereafter, including various animated features, Cosmic Odyssey, the post-Byrne Superman titles, Grant Morrison's mid-2000s work including Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis, the New 52, and soon enough in the upcoming Justice League movie.

Despite the conceptual symmetry, the Fourth World's good and evil beings have endured in different ways. Kirby's three titles were all named for good characters – the Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle – but the most compelling creation of this work is Darkseid, the central evil character. Generally speaking, Darkseid looms large in each title, sending different underlings in various plotlines to menace good people on Earth who are associated with the good New Gods. The overall effect is a stalemate, with the good characters winning almost all of the battles, which serves to neutralize one evil plan after another. In this regard, Fourth World stories are not unlike prototypical superhero comics.

The Fourth World came to belong to DC for contractual reasons, but it easily could have been Marvel's or even some other company's had one business relationship or another turned out differently. Creatively, the Fourth World wasn't very well tailored to fit into the DC Universe. The neo-mythological realm of the New Gods didn't span a Multiverse so much as it endlessly involved plots on Earth (which usually means the United States). Like the deities of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, the New Gods have a privileged relationship with Earth and it is little explained why, in a DC universe with countless civilized worlds, the New Gods are so transfixed with Earth as opposed to Rann, Thanagar, Oa, Daxam, etc. But obsessed with Earth they are. Darkseid has agents at work on Earth, searching for the Anti-Life Equation, but also doing evil for its own sake. Numerous members of the New Gods migrate to Earth and still others are shamelessly obsessed with its culture – cowboy movies, Prussian militarism, the Italian Renaissance, and more. Pragmatically speaking, the characters are obviously intrigued by these things because Kirby was intrigued by them, and they don't cite Thanagarian culture because it never existed. Later writers build on Kirby's slight hints that Earth is a particularly important planet as when Grant Morrison developed the plot line by which the Fourth World came to an end and the Fifth World began on Earth – a suitable backstory explaining their obsession with that one planet out of billions. And so, the New Gods – good and evil ones alike – readily obsess over terrestrial culture and the narrative is richer for it.

Kirby created a new mythology, with the various royal families and their followers engaged in a neverending war akin to similar epics in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies as well as the Bible, and akin in other respects to historical struggles between royal families. Darkseid and his following is explicitly patterned on Hitler and the Nazis. Kirby also choose names that pun so bluntly that one must wonder why characters in the story don't give pause frequently to point out the heavy-handed reference to inspirations such as "dark side" and apocalypse, Isaiah and Genesis, the Marquis de Sade, and unapologetic references to figures of speech and Earth culture such as the constellation Orion, the distinctly British phrase "scot-free," the Greek letter omega, and perhaps the biggest groaner of a pun of all – an evil team of underwater beings called the Deep Six. The "Fourth World" is an evocative phrase, inspiring curiosity as to what went before, not only the old gods before this generation but – apparently – two other generations before that; Kirby chose the name by extending the then-common term "Third World" to suggest that his inventions transcend reality in uncanny ways.

However much Kirby provided a big vision that spanned his four titles, the most apparent motif in his work is his wild inventiveness. Virtually every issue contains at least one new character who is weird and worth revisiting. The Fourth World concept allows Kirby to pile up great heaps of science fiction, technology, myth, magic, and mystery in his new characters. He is equally inventive in creating vehicles, disembodied concepts like the Anti-Life Equation and Omega Effect, making almost every issue entertaining to the point of disorienting the reader with a lack of certainty regarding what might happen next.

As an example of this, one Kirby trait is to end an issue with a cliffhanger, usually in the form of expository dialogue by a character in the story or expository text in a caption. But not all cliffhangers are equal. The typical cliffhanger in the 1966 Batman television series showed Batman and Robin in some elaborate death trap, from which they inevitably escaped at the beginning of the next episode. This plot device is notoriously formulaic, and is found even in many of the better comics and other forms of serial storytelling. Kirby's cliffhangers were different, often creating a threat whose true nature was unknown and even unguessable. Darkseid himself was created as such a cliffhanger, which hints at the magnitude and richness of Kirby's inventiveness.

What does Orion face? It has destroyed a god–and threatens the entire Earth! Don't miss SPAWN

What kind of world is it–that spawns gods of evil and lesser beings with horribly hostile hang-ups!!!?? You've seen some of its nasty products!! Now, come along with Scott Free and Big Barda!!–And take a fearful glimpse of– THE APOKOLIPS TRAP!!

It is Desaad's own little domain on Earth–A pilot project of purgatory–where torment is conputer–death is controlled–and escape impossible! Don't miss–Kingdom of the DAMNED!

Besides promising, and delivering, unguessable surprises, cliffhangers show another distinctive Kirby trait: unbridled, and shamelessly promotional hyperbole. Religious overtones and vocabulary of death and destriction permeate the text. Throughout the text of his stories, hyperbole is piled on top of hyperbole, and if I were to offer a fond parody, it would go something like:

To even attempt to imagine surviving the futility of meeting someone who would dare merely to contemplate speaking the name of Darkseid is sheer folly!

Of course, these words have to be backed up action, and Kirby no less than any comic creator offers scenes and entire issues packed with almost incomprehensible kinetic smorgasbords of punches, ray gun blasts, explosions, tumbles, and all sort of superpowers emanating from the hands, eyes, and minds of his characters. The human characters were no less bold, as one issue was devoted to the reckless heroism of normal human cop Dan "Terrible" Turpin going up against malefactors from Apokolips.

This disorienting quality is probably what made his work a cult classic – readers used to the more typically formulaic stories in other superhero titles probably found less of the strident heroism and more need to follow plot details than they were used to, and it would take an older reader to appreciate some of the cultural subtext, while the black-and-white morality of the concept offered less subtlety that such readers might enjoy. The Fourth World was for a particular kind of reader and those readers seemed not to be very numerous.

My comic-reading life began just months after Kirby's titles ceased publication. A few years later, I picked up the revival of New Gods scripted by Gerry Conway and found it memorably unsuited to my tastes. I wasn't aware then of what I see now, that this was the result of a new creative team trying to fill in for a master of his craft. Conway was a very good writer; he produced some of the best parts of the JLA Satellite Era, but DC's star superheroes have been the subjects of good stories from countless different writers. Kirby's work was different, and what makes it stand out is his distinctive style, not the greateness of his characters and his inventions. Many years later, as Final Crisis loomed, I went back and read Kirby's original Fourth World works for the first time, to understand better the villains at the heart of that story. Rarely have I felt so appreciative of the quality and originality of older material, and I now regard it a bit audacious for later writers to use Kirby's characters, because the difference between his handling of them and theirs is so readily apparent. And so, on the hundredth anniversary of Kirby's birth, I bid the great King Kirby a "thank you" from back down here on Earth. 

Retro Review: Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen

In 1970, Jack Kirby was already one of comicdom's most accomplished creators. To an uncommon degree, he moved from company to company during this phase, working for several different publishers and syndicators of content, sometimes in freelance, sometimes under contract. He – also to an uncommon degree – worked as a part of prominent pairs, working with Joe Simon in the Forties and Fifties, then Dick and Dave Wood, and teaming up with Stan Lee to spectacular success in the Sixties. Working with those various partners, Kirby co-created the likes of Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Magneto, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, Black Panther, and teams of staggering prominence – the Newsboy Legion, the Challengers of the Unknown, the Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and X-Men. By Kirby's account, which Lee disputed, Spider-Man was also a Kirby-and-Simon creation, and therein one sees the central tension in Jack Kirby's career. As an artist who frequently teamed up with writers, Kirby was often edged out of the principal credit – and the financial gains – for many of the characters he created, or helped created. Kirby possessed a remarkable imagination, to say nothing of his skills in bringing passion to artwork, but ended several creative and business relationships on bad terms. This brought him, in 1970, to DC (the heir of comic companies he had already left on bad terms, years in the past) for a new chance at a fresh start.

One of the most mind-bending incongruities of Kirby's work for DC in the Seventies is that the master creator with such impeccable credentials began his new career working on such a minor title. While Kirby planned work on multiple new series featuring mythical ideas that he had begun to explore while working on Thor, he was first given writing and pencil duties on Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. It is hard to imagine a title and a character more obviously subordinate to another character – a powerless young man with no superpowers, dubbed the mere "pal" of Superman. Inarguably, Kirby used the small title to introduce some very big ideas, making early-Seventies Jimmy Olsen prominent in big-concept comics history, far out of proportion to its small concept origin.

Kirby's Jimmy Olsen brought together several aspects that might seem incongruous, but were a perfect fit for the circumstance. If there's one thing that distinguished Jimmy Olsen from DC's most prominent characters, it was his youth. Kirby took over the title the year after Woodstock, at the height of student protests against the Vietnam War, when language and fashion developed around a counterculture that defined its era. Jimmy Olsen, far more than, say, a Batman title, was the perfect venue for incorporating those ideas. Kirby makes the youth culture that was prominent in the Woodstock Era an important element in his story, and that is the one area in which Jimmy Olsen has unquestioned superiority over Superman.

Kirby injected youth into his title by introducing two different groups of youngsters (furthermore, young men). One from his own past, the Newsboy Legion, was the a creation of Kirby and Simon in the prewar years, and was therefore a property of DC that he was free to use again. In order to use them as newsboys despite the intervening decades, he introduces a team of newsboys who are the sons of the originals, each of them virtually a doppleganger for his father. The younger generation of newsboys promptly adopt Olsen as their leader – old enough to earn their respect, but not so old as to lose it. Kirby also shows the older Newsboys, now men, as supporting characters, and a clone of the Guardian to fill in for the deceased superhero who operated with the original Newsboys.

The other group of youths in this story is the Hairies, who are a mashup of so many disparate influences that a lengthy essay could profitably discuss the Hairies alone. The Hairies, for the visual trait that earned them their name, visually resemble hippies and other counterculture figures of their time, as this facet of one's appearance became the title of the concurrent and massively successful Broadway musical Hair. Appearance is only a superficial characteristic of the Hairies; they are otherwise distinguished by their origin as creations of the DNA Project, a biotech initiative run by the older generation of Newsboys. The Hairies, products of human cloning and genetic engineering, are superior to ordinary people in spirit and in intellect, and left the DNA Project to live in homes and vehicles produced by the superior technology that they themselves created.

Olsen's relative youth lead both the Newsboys and the Hairies to recognize him as a leader; in this way, there is a perfect harmony between the title character, Kirby's plot, and the Woodstock era. Kirby, the master writer, thereby made his assignment on a minor title starring a minor character a brilliant one, with Olsen's youth, Kirby's ideas, and the current culture all coming together in a uniquely appropriate way.

That said, Kirby's ideas are so far-reaching that virtually anything would intersect with them in some way or another. In current parlance, Kirby's work in Jimmy Olsen is a mash-up – of so many different cultural and technological perspectives that it is simultaneously disorienting, all-encompassing, and wonderful. Virtually every scene begins by plunging the reader in some fresh, exciting domain, soon adding qualities or perspectives from other domains. There are secret government organizations, secret armies, strange aliens, famous celebrities from real life, strange religions, adherents of countercultures, monsters and villains, mysterious cryptozoological species, futuristic technologies, miraculous vehicles, and dose after dose of biological engineering. Kirby mashes up these different fantastic story elements in multiple different ways in each issue. It's always exciting, entertaining, unpredictable, and perhaps in some way educational.

At times, it is apt to make many readers find it too unpredictable, too erratic, too kooky. In one very strange feature, Kirby includes a text essay in issue #135 that rambles almost disturbingly about the Hairies, and it is hard to say in what voice Kirby is speaking. The Hairies are not real, but he writes in the first person as though they might be real, or as hypothetical entities who might come into existence one day. He describes their science fiction underpinning as the result of DNA engineering, but emphasizes their moral and cultural qualities, as idealists who live in perfect harmony. He writes of them with unadulterated admiration as though they embody an ideal society that, in Kirby's view, should exist in a perfect world, but he goes on to say that mankind should feel threatened by the Hairies because they're better than we are, and that it is inevitable than mankind seek to kill the Hairies, exterminating them. At the end of the essay, Kirby concludes "I felt great, writing that! It made me feel that all's right with the world, that my place in it was secure. It made me feel like a man!!!" This emotional ramble would sincerely make me worry about Kirby's sanity if that concern were still relevant. Perhaps he was a masterful creator who enjoyed getting swept up in the emotion of his creations. This essay makes him appear, perhaps, to be swept up to an unhealthy extent. The quality of what is in Kirby's stories makes it intriguing to consider every recorded aspect of the man and his thoughts, perhaps clues as to how work of this quality is formed.

The wild worlds that Kirby created hosts a cast of heroes led by Jimmy Olsen. As Olsen triumphs against bizarre alien conspiracies led by Darkseid and shines as a man of action, he becomes a top-rate hero in the DCU, more relatable than most, as a young man with no superpowers, no super powers (usually), and no super origin. He simply rises to the occasion time after time. When he encounters an amazing vehicle, he soon starts piloting it. When he learns of an enemy base, he infiltrates it. When he is transformed into a hideous monster  – twice! – he ends up being un-transformed back to his normal self. The series is the epitome of a "normal" man going up against cosmic forces, coping with them just as well – at times better – than his superpowered pal Superman. And it is strange to contemplate that DC's most iconic cosmic villain, Darkseid, was introduced in a title headlined by that common young man, Jimmy Olsen.

Thus DC lore inherits the improbable and disproportionate quirk that the master creator Kirby and his most amazing creations began at an arbitrary midpoint in a title named for a non-superpowered sidekick. The combination was probably too odd to survive, and lasted less than a year and a half before Kirby focused on titles of his own concoction. Soon, both the Jimmy Olsen title and Kirby's most productive work at DC were at an end, but the legacy endures in the Fourth World creations of Darkseid and Apokolips. Kirby's work in Jimmy Olsen stands as a historic turning point in comic history, and those issues remain worth reading as a record of how great storytelling in comics is done.