Is it time for Kirby's 4th world to get the respect it deserves?

[hogations]

The 4th world stuff is pretty bad both writing and artwork wise. It gets more respect than it should - the only reason there is any demand is due to that fact that Kirby was involved and Darkseid.

 

When I was a lot younger, I used to hold this point of view - especially with regards to the artwork. However, I've come to appreciate how bold and ground breaking this 4th World artwork is. He was largely ahead of the curve when doing this work. It may not be pleasing to the eyes compared to other artists of that time (i.e. Adams, Smith, Buscema) but if he wanted to, he could have easily worked at that level. He brought a highly stylized, heavy, unconventional look to the format, and wasn't afraid to do it. Was it successful? Not really, but I'm glad DC game him free reign to do this crazy stuff.

 

I used have the same feeling towards Kubert and Ditko as well. Not anymore!

 

P.S. I did find (and still find) Kirby's 4th world stuff to be very hard to read.

[jools&jim]

 

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god of the cylinder, square, rectangle and circle school of drawing.

Fixed that for you.........

I can understand, genuinely, why not everyone appreciates Kirby's work, especially the later stuff. That's just how it goes with Art.

 

I don't appreciate ballet...but that doesn't mean for a moment that I think it's all just a bunch of artless hacks jumping around in circles, and that what they're doing is elementary nonsense which anyone can do, and which has been vastly superseded by other forms of dance.

 

I respect the talent, skill, effort, passion, dedication, expressiveness, and professionalism of the dancers, even if what they're trying to communicate doesn't always register with me.

 

 

[Marvel Zombie]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

 

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god. [/quote

 

 

 

this

+1

[vaillant]

With Jimmy Olsen #134 commanding the prices that it has for awhile and now Forever People #1 breaking out, does this mean that some of the rest of Kirby's 70's work at DC might finally get some respect from collectors?

 

I don’t think so. These are things that hold a varying degree of quality for themselves. They just have to be rediscovered in a conscious way, not driven by some momentary fad.

People are buying JO #134 just because it’s the "first apperance of Darkseid". Who cares? Darkseid is out of place in whatever other thing they have done, it’s quintessentially Fourth World, and ends here, no matter what other authors have done with the character (including "Cosmic Odyssey", IMO).

[vaillant]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

 

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god. [/quote

 

 

 

this

+1

 

Dialogues and certain excesses were more than often his only weak point, but yes, you have got to consider his work as a whole, and most things pale in comparision.

[divad]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

 

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god of the cylinder, square, rectangle and circle school of drawing.

 

Fixed that for you.........

 

Better than pouches . . .

[JuliusSeizure]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

 

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god. [/quote

 

 

 

this

+1

 

Dialogues and certain excesses were more than often his only weak point, but yes, you have got to consider his work as a whole, and most things pale in comparision.

 

Kirby gets away with those excesses, like the rough dialogue. Whereas it would seem puerile and lazy from another writer, once you read enough of Kirby's comics you can understand the boyish enthusiasm at the root of it. He's just constantly going for broke to entertain me, an inferno of ideas just bursting out through his mind and pen onto the page. The over-the-top dialogue is just part of that, and you roll with it.

 

The gentleman who brought 8-year-old me, through the convention long boxes, two issues of android gangsters fighting talking gorillas (Kamandi 19-20) earned himself the extra quote marks and exclamation points.

[Ken Aldred]

 

The "kid" in the scene with Highfather is a young godling of New Genesis. How should he speak? Like Peter Parker? Rick Jones? Johnny Storm? Bugs Bunny?

 

 

Fair point.

 

With that scene, Kirby has a justification for the florid dialogue.

 

- The kid's not human, he's a New God, so could be far more intelligent and articulate than a human kid of the same apparent age, and have markedly different thought processes and expressiveness.

 

- Has the lifespan of a New God ever been established? There's a young-looking Eternal character who's actually thousands of years old.

 

 

[jools&jim]

 

- Has the lifespan of a New God ever been established?

The concept and characters have been tinkered with so much over the years (and often by lesser talents), that it's now a bit hard to say what Kirby originally intended. But my sense of it has always been that Kirby saw them as impervious to death by disease or most physical trauma resulting from the actions of lesser beings (e.g. humans) and therefore effectively immortal (similar to the Asgardians in the Marvel Universe).

 

BUT, the New Gods title itself begins with what is essentially the mythological Norse Ragnarök ("There came a time when the Old Gods died..."), so presumably the gods who survived, or who rose from its ashes, and whose story forms the core of the Fourth World series, share a similar limit to their endurance when faced with the threat of supernatural or metaphysical extinction...

 

 

[Chadwick]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god of the cylinder, square, rectangle and circle school of drawing.

Fixed that for you.........

I can understand, genuinely, why not everyone appreciates Kirby's work, especially the later stuff. That's just how it goes with Art.

 

I don't appreciate ballet...but that doesn't mean for a moment that I think it's all just a bunch of artless hacks jumping around in circles, and that what they're doing is elementary nonsense which anyone can do, and which has been vastly superseded by other forms of dance.

 

I respect the talent, skill, effort, passion, dedication, expressiveness, and professionalism of the dancers, even if what they're trying to communicate doesn't always register with me.

 

 

I've rewritten this like five times, because it's so hard for me to say this without sounding pompous so take it with a grain of salt. I think the problem that a lot of readers have with Kirby is that it just goes over their heads. Imagine a kid sitting down to read a superman book and getting new gods - I contrast it with someone going to the movies to watch terminator 2 and getting citizen kane. Pretty much if someone doesn't like Kirby, it's just not for them; my problem is when someone says "KIRBY SUCKS BLOCKS & DIALOGUE" instead of saying "this isn't for me, I was looking for more action". If you can't appreciate his dialogue maybe you should read it with a mind of literature and not a mind of "comics".

[jaeldubyoo]

What kid talks like that?

And how many teenagers and young adults talk like this?

 

My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words / Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound...

...or this?

 

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyoked humour of your idleness:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

Answer: Quite a few, when the speakers in question are characters in works of art (Shakespeare's, in the examples above: Juliet in the first; Prince Henry in the 2nd) whose words are structured in a particular way by the author to make a point, paint a picture, evoke a mood, and/or to provide consonance with a certain time, place, or setting.

 

The "kid" in the scene with Highfather is a young godling of New Genesis. How should he speak? Like Peter Parker? Rick Jones? Johnny Storm? Bugs Bunny?

 

 

 

You have to consider the audience that you're trying to reach. At the time, comics were more for teenagers. Honestly, when you were in high school, were you entertained more by reading a "juvenile" comic book or Shakespeare.

 

Ok, the kid was a godling. But what about the common thugs and underlings Kirby depicted or the more common folks in his comics. There's no denying that the dialogue sounded wooden.

 

Kirby was a great artist and had grand ideas, but he certainly would have benefited from having a good writer -script his stories.

[jools&jim]

 

You have to consider the audience that you're trying to reach. At the time, comics were more for teenagers. Honestly, when you were in high school, were you entertained more by reading a "juvenile" comic book or Shakespeare.

 

Ok, the kid was a godling. But what about the common thugs and underlings Kirby depicted or the more common folks in his comics. There's no denying that the dialogue sounded wooden.

 

Kirby was a great artist and had grand ideas, but he certainly would have benefited from having a good writer -script his stories.

Like I said, Kirby's dialogue in these books is an acquired taste. I happen to think that it's generally well-suited to most of the Fourth World titles, which, as Grant Morrison describes them, are "...dramas staged across Jungian vistas of raw symbol and storm"-- not exactly your typical mainstream comic book fare in the early '70s, in other words.

 

Kirby also suffered comparisons (fair or not) to his then recent work by producing the Fourth World saga immediately after leaving Marvel (and Stan Lee's dialogue). To say that these new books were not quite what his Marvel-era fans were expecting is an understatement.

 

Still, I wouldn't have let any of the "good" writers of the era--Stan Lee or Roy Thomas, for example--anywhere near this stuff. Stan was aces with the snappy, quippy New Yawk wise-guy patter, but his various attempts at "cosmic dialogue" were invariably turgid (the Silver Surfer) or flat-out corny (Thor).

 

The Fourth World is the idiosyncratic product of an equally idiosyncratic imagination. It can justifiably be criticized for what it's not (or what it could have been), but I prefer to just enjoy it for what it is...

 

 

[jaeldubyoo]

I agree the snappy patter of Stan Lee would have been totally wrong for Kirby stories. But I would have liked to have seen what Roy Thomas could do with Kirby's ideas. Think Kree/Skrull War. I enjoyed the art in Kirby's books, but I found them to be unreadable. It's a taste I never acquired, despite trying to read through them several times. Definitely not my cup of tea.

 

 

 

[HighStakesComics]

4th World + Mushrooms=Cryptozoic Man

[kimik]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

 

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god of the cylinder, square, rectangle and circle school of drawing.

 

Fixed that for you.........

 

Better than pouches . . .

 

Anything is better than tiny feet hiding in pouches.

[kimik]

Kirby's storytelling skills as an artist--if by storytelling we mean the visual information conveyed via the page-layouts, plotting, pacing, etc.--were superlative in nearly all of the Fourth World books, just as they were in the Marvel comics he also laid out, paced, and (depending on whom you believe) plotted.

 

As for his dialogue? Well...I'll admit it's an acquired taste.

This. Respect the man for his whole canon of work. He was a god of the cylinder, square, rectangle and circle school of drawing.

Fixed that for you.........

I can understand, genuinely, why not everyone appreciates Kirby's work, especially the later stuff. That's just how it goes with Art.

 

I don't appreciate ballet...but that doesn't mean for a moment that I think it's all just a bunch of artless hacks jumping around in circles, and that what they're doing is elementary nonsense which anyone can do, and which has been vastly superseded by other forms of dance.

 

I respect the talent, skill, effort, passion, dedication, expressiveness, and professionalism of the dancers, even if what they're trying to communicate doesn't always register with me.

 

 

I respect him for the quantity of the work he delivered just not the quality.There were plenty of his contemporaries across the ages that were better artists, IMHO, but he was more prolific.

 

That being said, I would be happy to own an page/cover from his early Marvel SA work since it will keep appreciating in value (although I would prefer an early Ditko ASM page/cover instead).

[jools&jim]

 

There were plenty of his contemporaries across the ages that were better artists...

Maybe, maybe...the eye of the beholder and all that. But my guess is that by "better" you may mean artists whose work is more realistic or less abstract...

 

What is interesting to me, though, is how many of those sorts of artists, including (I'm sure) at least some of the "better" ones you might have in mind, were in awe of Kirby's raw talent, and, by their own admission, unable to replicate what he did...

 

I wouldn't call what Jack does anatomy. He does an impressionistic thing and he does it because he pencils very fast and he's a storyteller. You don't sit Jack down and say "Here's an anatomical study, Jack. Do this." What you get is the impressionistic quality that is in many ways superior to someone who draws realistically the way I do... --Neal Adams

More here from Neal...plus The King himself!

 

 

 

[divad]

And one of my personal favorite pics:

 

[Marvel Zombie]

And one of my personal favorite pics:

 

 

 

 

Zappa / Kirby

 

wow ...

[KirbyJack]

 

Kirby gets away with those excesses, like the rough dialogue. Whereas it would seem puerile and lazy from another writer, once you read enough of Kirby's comics you can understand the boyish enthusiasm at the root of it. He's just constantly going for broke to entertain me, an inferno of ideas just bursting out through his mind and pen onto the page. The over-the-top dialogue is just part of that, and you roll with it.

 

The gentleman who brought 8-year-old me, through the convention long boxes, two issues of android gangsters fighting talking gorillas (Kamandi 19-20) earned himself the extra quote marks and exclamation points.

 

Very well said!

That is what struck me most on my recent re-reading; the sheer volume of genuinely interesting ideas. Any one of which would today be padded into a 6 issue trade.