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In 1970, In 1970, 126 FROM KRAKOW TO KRYPTON: JEWS AND COMIC BOOKS Jack Kirby caused shockwaves throughout the comic-book industry by leaving Marvel Comics, also known as the House of Ideas (a house he helped build), and defecting to the rival DC Comics. The reasons for the veteran comics creator’s exodus from Marvel are complex and well documented. Simply put, he felt unappreciated and believed that he hadn’t received proper credit for characters he had created or cocreated . Kirby hoped for better treatment at his old employer DC, which welcomed him with open arms. It was here, as editor, writer, and penciler of his own line of science-fiction comics, that Kirby would establish one of the most personal and deeply layered works of his career, the Fourth World series. The Fourth World line was an interlocking series composed of four monthly comic-book titles—The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and, for a time, Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen—that all came together to form one big, sprawling epic. Kirby was creating a shared universe of characters under the umbrella of the larger DC Universe. Established DC characters rarely appeared in New Gods, Mister Miracle, or Forever People, and when they did—as in Deadman’s two-episode stint in Mister Miracle—it was at the behest of the DC brass. As for Kirby’s work on the already established title Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen (the other Fourth World titles were brand new), this was also a concession to DC’s editors, who insisted that one of his books be an existing DC title. He did it in typically grand Kirbyesque fashion, by building a world of astonishing otherworldly characters into the established Superman mythos, like the villainous Morgan Edge, a mogul who now oversaw the Daily Planet through his Galaxy Broadcasting Company. Edge was secretly the hapless puppet of the otherworldly dictator Darkseid, and was therefore a “bridge” character between the Fourth World and the world of Superman. But despite the fact that one could open up any issue of Kirby’s short-lived run on Jimmy Olsen and see the Man of Steel on almost every page, Kirby’s Fourth World characters were not superheroes like the Last Son of Krypton, but rather deities. Kirby’s Fourth World Chapter Seventeen One of Jack Kirby’s trademark characters was the curmudgeon with a heart of gold. A perfect example was the cop Terrible Turpin, a character whom Kirby seems to have modeled partially on himself. After Kirby’s death, an episode of the TV show Superman: The Animated Series revealed that Turpin was Jewish, perhaps as a tribute to his Jewish creator. In Marvel’s Journey Into Mystery #83 (August 1962), Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Lee’s brother Larry Lieber had introduced the character Thor, the god of thunder in Norse mythology. In 1963, as a back-up feature in Journey Into Mystery (retitled The Mighty Thor three years later), Lee and Kirby had created a series of strips called “Tales of Asgard” to enrich the backstory of the Norse gods by describing, among other matters, the origins of the rivalry between Thor and Loki. When he was plotting the “Tales of Asgard” stories, Kirby originally planned to have the series build up to the two planets at war, leading to Ragnarok, the cataclysmic battle of Norse myth that would put an end to Thor and the rest of his pantheon. He never got to present Ragnarok in the “Tales of Asgard,” however. The closest he came at Marvel was cannibalizing aspects of this epic and using them in an “Inhumans” storyline for Fantastic Four. But at DC, Kirby was able to use Ragnarok as a starting point for the Fourth World, since—although he never said this was the reason—the first issue of New Gods begins with the death of Thor and his ilk! The old Norse Gods are never named in New Gods; the series merely starts with a two-page “Epilogue” (itself a clue that Kirby was picking up where he had left off at Marvel) wherein we see warring tribes of armored otherworldly gods duking it out on a battlefield wreathed in flame. Their heavily armored costumes wouldn’t be out of place in the pages of Journey Into Mystery or The Mighty Thor. The narration intones, “There came a time when the Old Gods died!” Again, Kirby never mentions Thor, Loki, or their cohorts...

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