Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" -- origin of the phrase? 0

[vaillant]

I am still missing some Jimmy Olsens, so it would be a good reminder for me as well… (thumbs u

[Zonker]

I found a few lists online, but I just wanted to check here. Can someone give me the lists of Jimmy Olsen books related to Kirby's 4th World?

133 - 148 (except for 140) are the Kirby issues -- some are more tied into the Fourth World storyline than others, but even the later issues are generally considered to be part of it...

 

JO 147 is an important part of the Fourth World arc, because it is the payoff to the question Kirby posed in Forever People #1: Would Superman be happier among the gods of New Genesis, rather than stuck here on Earth among the mortals?

 

 

[vaillant]

Agreed. Jack’s reflections on Superman were awesome…

[Monstro]

Awesome! I'm headed off to my sons soccer game, when I get back I'll start it up. If anyone has thier scans ready to go before then, start the thread and I'll add what I have when I get back.

[jools&jim]

 

Here's another interpretation of the "Fourth World" that I've never heard before:

 

The exact meaning of the phrase was never fully defined. When I read the books at the time they came out, I understood it literally. To me, Kirby previously had three other "worlds," namely Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Thor. So the "New Gods" saga was his fourth world. (I'm not claiming this interpretation is correct, just that it's how I understood the phrase at the time.)

Here's the source (a good article in its own right):

 

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/600/600-3.html

 

 

[Prince Namor]

Here's another interpretation of the "Fourth World" that I've never heard before:

 

The exact meaning of the phrase was never fully defined. When I read the books at the time they came out, I understood it literally. To me, Kirby previously had three other "worlds," namely Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Thor. So the "New Gods" saga was his fourth world. (I'm not claiming this interpretation is correct, just that it's how I understood the phrase at the time.)

Here's the source (a good article in its own right):

 

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/600/600-3.html

 

 

Good stuff!

[jools&jim]

 

Here's more evidence--contemporary with the earliest Fourth World titles--to support the idea that the four worlds could indeed be Asgard, Apokolips, New Genesis, and Earth...from the 1971 "Kirby Unleashed" portfolio, compiled and written by Steve Sherman and Mark Evanier:

 

 

And the full page:

 

[vaillant]

Well, it just says that the two new worlds are meant as a new mythology, as indeed they were. Earth is common to both the Marvel works and the DC ones, but obviously it’s not intended to be included in the same creation.

[jools&jim]

 

It's fairly well known that the New Gods grew out of Kirby's work on Marvel's Thor (Zonker alluded to this earlier), and that after a Marvel version of "Ragnarok", during which the old Asgardian gods would die, Kirby intended to populate the Marvel Universe with a completely new pantheon.

 

Of course, this didn't fly at Marvel (nor with Kirby, who was frustrated by lack of creative and financial control over his creations), and both Evanier and Sherman, who were very close to Kirby, knew it.

 

So the idea that Asgard (world #1) was split in two by Ragnarok, thus producing New Genesis (#2) and Apokolips (#3), with Earth (#4) as the common ground for warring gods, would have made perfectly good sense to Evanier and Sherman when they wrote that text in the Kirby portfolio.

 

Looks like Four Worlds to me, even though Kirby would probably have been the first to agree that someone else higher up than him created the one which is common to both storylines!

 

So...whether or not it is "obvious" that "Earth is...not intended to be included in the same creation" (and I think by now all that's obvious about any of this is that nothing is!), it's still true that Earth IS central to both Kirby's Thor stories and Kirby's New Gods saga, and is in fact MORE pivotally important in the Fourth World books due to it being the home of the Anti-Life Equation.

 

Not saying that this is the correct interpretation or the one intended by Kirby (which is unknown and unknowable). All I'm saying is that it makes sense, and that there's at least, maybe, an echo of it in the text I scanned which was written very near the beginning of the project by two guys who knew their stuff, and who were very, very close to...well...The Source -- Kirby himself!!

 

 

[jools&jim]

 

A little more food for thought...

 

"The Fourth Way"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way_%28book%29'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way_%28book%29

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way

 

We all know that Jack read voraciously, and was interested in pseudo-science, mythology, spirituality/mysticisim and other topics, some of which occupied the fringes of various "legitimate" disciplines (astronomy, theology, philosophy, etc.). So could something like this (published in 1957, so the mid-century period is correct) have intrigued him, too, and found its way onto his bookshelf somehow?

 

 

 

 

 

[Mr bla bla]

On 9/10/2013 at 1:37 PM, jools&jim said:

 

 

I'm pretty sure it first appeared (formally) as a cover masthead on the Aug-Sep '71 cover-dated Kirby books:

 

 

 

But it's possible that it may have been used in house advertising before that, or maybe in a text piece somewhere?

 

Here's a very early house ad (somewhat obliquely) promoting Kirby's move to DC with no mention of it...

 

 

And a later one, which does use the phrase, after the line of books had been established and the cover price had shifted to 25-cents for the 52-page issues:

 

 

More house ads are here:

 

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/557/

 

 

Oh, these beautyful books. Love'em ...