Cover, part 3: the text

With Kirby, every word is powerful. And based in reality! Kirby does not deal in hyperbole!

"NEW - EXCITING - ORIGINAL!"

NEW: these are not the same old recycled Kirby heroes: Thor, the Hulk, Fantastic Four, etc. that are milked endlessly. These are NEW Kirby heroes!

EXCITING: they might actually die! And STAY dead! So, unlike with ordinary comics, there is real danger!

ORIGINAL: this is bigger than other stories. Sure, the writers have had galactic battles, but for Kirby this is new. (Not even Darkseid was galactic in scale). And unlike other writers, Kirby is realistic - more on that on later posts!

"In defense of our galaxy"
This is the big one! For the first time, we have a realistic galactic story (as I will argue later). If we accept my argument that Kirby's stories are all connected and all move forward in time, then this is the story that all other Kirby stories were leading up to.

"Captain Victory"
What began with Captain America ends with Captain Victory. For the first time this is an actual captain, and not an honorary one or in name only. (Hence the military stars under the title.) This is a major departure from Kirby's previous "lone hero" approach. Finally humanity will be united and organised under galactic law. This is big (again)!

Also, note that the captain is never named. This foreshadows a major theme of the story: he is the ultimate hero (and I use the world literally, as the final state of what is a hero), who always puts society before himself. This seems to be the final stage of Kirby's evolution of heroes. We are now in the realm of final victory.

"And the Galactic Rangers"
This is about he group, not individuals. They range across the whole galaxy. Did I mention that this is big?

"Forces from the star worlds clash on Earth"
What are the star worlds? better read and find out! But given the relative size of stars and Earth, this is going to be big.

Other stuff on the cover
Given the importance of this, having the price at "one dollar" seems very appropriate. Simple, minimalist, number one.

"Collector's edition"
This not hyperbole.

Next: the splash page, and the real reason this story matters!

I have the entire series and I plan to follow along. 

It's in issues 11-13. Plus other hints throughout the series: I plan to discuss one of them when we get to what look like fire pits on page 3 of issue 1. Of course, for copyright reasons Kirby can't say it explicitly, but there are so many clues and parallels that it can't be coincidence.



Confession time. I am not THAT open minded. My excitement about Captain Victory arose in four stages. (I number things because I tend to be verbose - if you're busy just scan each headline

Discovery 1: Jack's work reflects his interests.

I have a friend who keeps asking me "what did Kirby intend? What was Kirby planning?" As if Kirby had the entire Marvel Universe planned out in 1961. That drove me crazy! I don't think that's how Kirby worked at all. But now, as I read Kirby interviews, I think there may be something to the question. Kirby's stories all came from his real life interests. Not the stories' surface features, obviously. But the big ideas reflect what Kirby was thinking about at the time. And that gives them the stories natural structure over the course of his life.

It is clear from Kirby's interviews, and his life choices, that he wanted to be free. He only wanted to create stories he was interested in. Of course he had to compromise to pay the bills, but he would not compromise for long before he left. He left his first comics job because it was becoming like a factory, and he did not want to work in a factory. Stan Lee says Kirby was offered the art director job at Marvel but turned it down. I don't know how much we can rely on Stan's memory (what constitutes an "offer"?) but it fits Jack's dislike of being just a cog in a machine. So, I think Jack Kirby wrote what Jack Kirby wanted to write. Even when that meant turning down money.

Discovery 2: Jack's life's work has a shape and direction

If Jack's work reflected his interests then maybe it developed as his interests developed. And that is what we see. He started out as a fighter, and those are his early comics: about being young, alone, and at war. He was always asking questions, so this led to a middle period where his work ranged over every topic. This naturally led to an interest in the biggest questions of all, especially "what's out there?" and that is his late work: from cosmic Marvel to his solo work. So I think it's true that Jack's major work - the stuff where you can see the passion on each page - forms a single story. It's the story of the things that Jack was interested in at the time. But how far unified is that story? How far can we push this idea?

Discovery 3: Jack's major stories follow on from each other

In interviews, and just looking at the comics, its clear that Kirby had favourite titles. As a Fantastic Four fan I am embarrassed to admit that Kirby preferred Captain America and Thor. Those mattered a lot to to him, they were on his mind. He also liked the FF of course, but there are a lot of other titles (Strange Tales etc) that were just paying the bills. So I'm going to focus on his solo work plus the titles that show the most Kirby love. And that's when the big discovery came. Remember my friend who thinks Kirby planned everything? He asked me what I thought of Attilan. So I googled it, and was amazed to see that the island of Attilan appears in Captain America issue 1, from 1941! It's unmistakably the same concept: the island of the gods, the ancient place where advanced people lived. This is a theme throughout Kirby's work: ancient gods and human origins. That idea peaked in the late 1960s to mid 1970s: Inhumans, Eternals etc. But it was always there.

So it seemed to me that Celestials and Eternals is basically Kree and Inhumans. And Skrulls are Insektors. I don't think the surface details or names matter. For one thing, any advanced beings will appear confusing to us: it's the blind man and the elephant principle. But Kree and Celestials, in Jack's early versions, were both vastly above our insignificant planet, and monitored us occasionally. It's only later writers who made them mundane and more human-like. And I am not suggesting that Kirby planned this beforehand: my friend is still wrong. But these stories follow Kirby's lifelong interests, so there is a natural underlying unity.

The second discovery was when my friend asked about Captain Victory. Like most people, I vaguely recalled the title as unimportant: "the old man in decline" - stale ideas, poor art, it's best that we don't mention it. But my friend is such a Kirby fanboy that I Googled it, and was surprised to see the Orion link. Of course I already knew that New Gods followed from Thor, but now I had solid connections from the very first major work to the very last: Attilan (the island of the gods) links Captain America and Marvel - it's not just an old superhero brought back, it's about men as gods. Thor links to New Gods. New Gods links to Captain Victory. It's the same story from 1941 to 1984. Or rather, to 1976: Captain Victory was plotted in 1976, as a screenplay with Steve Sherman. This was not "old man Kirby". This was Kirby at his height, still in his late 50s, completing his magnum opus. Then, in his 60s, dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s.

Discovery 4: the holy grail

And this is where it starts to get very exciting for me! Like any sane person, I wish Kirby had never left the Fantastic Four. But also like any sane person I can see a drop off in creativity from the late issue 60s, and being realistic I know that those stories were a product of their time Even if they were not, they were a result of constant change and growth. By its nature, any stage of growth is temporary. You can't just keep rediscovering Galactus, though goodness knows Marvel has tried!! So there is an essential sadness in these comics. A broken promise. Look to the future, and then the future fails. it is the sadness of childhood that can never be regained. instead we get bills and jobs we hate and failed relationships. (Or maybe that's just me ) it's all very sad. But the holy grail is the vision that somewhere out there the Fantastic Four carried on, to ever greater things. Oh what I would give for that! Well... if the FF is merely a stage in the great Kirby story, then maybe it did continue.

That got me thinking about the New Gods again. I could never finish New Gods. It was hard work. I wanted it to be easy to read, like the Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four, and it wasn't. And yet at the same time I could see it was packed with the same cosmic Kirby richness and drama. I knew the greatness was there, I just couldn't relate to it. It was too much like hard work. but now I have a way in. Maybe it's a continuation of the Fantastic Four? hear me out!

Maybe Kirby's Fantastic Four never ended

I mentioned how the FF takes a slight quality dip after the late issue 60s. When you look closer there is a clear reason for this, and it's not that Kirby burned out. Kirby was already frustrated that Stan Lee kept watering down his scripts (as he saw it) and FF 67 ("Him") was the last straw. Kirby wrote a story where scientists, GOOD GUYS, created the ultimate human. And that ultimate human judged us, and we were found wanting. Deep stuff. But Stan felt that was too hard for kids to grasp, so his dialog changed the scientists into stereotyped bad guys. It destroyed Kirby's whole plan. Form that point Kirby started to hod back his new ideas, and they eventually saw light as the New Gods for DC. Now this makes the FF take on an entirely new light.

Think of the "real" FF as just issues 1 to 67, or rather 1 to 71, since Kirby was freelance and would not see Stan's finished version until it was published a few months later. What do we see? Constant, rapid change. And by the end they have done what they intend to do: Reed has built his ultimate technology, the interdimensional portal (that we know as the negative zone portal). He and Sue are married and expecting a baby, sop Sue finally has what she wants. Ben has finally grown a backbone and left the team. Johnny has found his true love. The final issue (71) is called "and so it ends": and Reed and Sue, dressed in civilian clothes, leave on a train for a new life. If the Fantastic Four means anything, it means constantly moving forward, and so the story has to end here, with issue 71. Of course, Kirby had to make a living so he treads water with recycles stories and copies of movies and TV shows, but the FF really ends with issue 71.

What would happen next? Well Johnny and Crystal are not like the others: they actually LIKE being superheroes. Bt they are still discovering what is possible. I have not read the Fourth World stuff in detail, but I will lay money down that Johnny and Crystal would fit perfectly among the young gods of supertown. With different names and maybe different powers of course - in a story of constant change those things are secondary. As for Reed, there's a character in Captain Victory who could very well be what he would become in couple of generations. I am just being tentative here: I would need to trace him via some Fourth World character. But Kirby deals with definite character types, and they do not end when he changes employer: they just change names and continue to grow and change.

I find this such an exciting concept: the glory days of the Fantastic Four never ended, they just kept moving forwards and left me behind. But I want to catch up.

As for the problem of New Gods being hard work, I think I was just reading it too quickly. I maintain that each Kirby comic is TWO comics. One that can be read very quickly - all explosions and battles. And one that can provide a full month's enjoyment as we consider each frame as an extended scene. Now maybe I will be proven wrong. Maybe I will change my mind. But right now it looks like I have enough Fantastic Four to keep me busy forever, and I could not be happier.


tl;dr not the Fantastic Four? Au contraire! This is the mother lode!

Finally,.. the splash page!

"This is how it will happen when the star worlds come to Earth!!! Don't look for gods or Gurus or benevolent gift givers..."

This is why Captain Victory matters. Steve Sherman (who helped on the original screenplay) says it was written as a direct response to Arthur C Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama." Clarke was the dominant science fiction writer of his age, and was seen as an expert on science in general, having correctly predicted geostationary satellites IIRC. He was used as a media figure, host for the TV series "Mysterious Worlds", and of course wrote 2001, which became the seminal sci fi movie. All of Clarke's most famous works deal with meeting aliens for the first time: 2001, Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End etc. Clarke's message is that aliens are more advanced and therefore benevolent! But Kirby is saying that is a terrible error. That is not how the universe works. Are we benevolent to insects? Do we care what bacteria want? Is factory farming ever a political issue? Assuming that higher beings are benevolent represents a frightening naivety about the universe, and Captain Victory is the response. Kirby knows what it is like to be small. He was the short Jewish kid on the toughest of tough neighbourhoods. He was on the front line against the Nazis. He had to deal with corporations but lacked a silver tongue and was consequently ripped off time and again. He knows that when a greater power meets a lesser power the lesser power is crushed: that's just how power works.

The other major theme in sci fi is that even though aliens may be bad, we can beat them! This is the Marvel COmics view: Earth is so special! We can end the Kree Skrull war! Almost all science fiction takes one or the other view: either aliens are friendly, or we can beat them. Because otherwise we are doomed. But Kirby deals with the real world. No, they are not friendly. No, we cannot beat them, So what are we going to do about it? Denial is not an option. Reality is reality, and we either find a way round it or we cease to exist. Captain Victory suggests a solution: find out as much as you can about the unknown, and find a way that your existence benefits the gods more than your destruction. More on this in later reviews.

The point is that this comic is about reality. It is not escapism, it is the opposite. Kirby is dealing with the real world and has a real message, one we seem keen to avoid. But if we avoid it then it's goodbye human race.

This question might not seem urgent. After all, how likely is it that we get visited by space gods any time soon? Well, simply asking that question reveals dangerous complacency. Are we so clever and important that we could notice aliens? Are aliens so clumsy, or so like us? Captain Victory indicates that aliens they could already be here. The comic XKCD gives a good analogy:



I want to drive home the point that this comic is about reality. Captain Victory uses the metaphor of humanoids and space ships, but later (in the person of Mister Mind) we have an indication of what real aliens look like. The implication is that real aliens are already here, now, in 2016. The human race might be within a generation of effective extinction, or actively accelerating it. The evidence is in front of our faces: and I don't mean any Eric Von Daniken nonsense. But we choose not to see it, in exactly the same way that we choose to believe that aliens will either be benevolent or beatable. We can't handle the truth. Remind me to discuss real world aliens in more detail when we meet Mr Mind.

"If our vast universe spawns an infinite variety of planets... [etc]"

The story is about the real universe. It is based on logic. This is how it starts, and what we have to remember throughout. I cannot emphasise this strongly enough. Kirby intends this comic to be about the real universe, the real world. He often headlines his solo stories with "the world that's coming" or "this could be you" etc. Kirby talks about the real world, using metaphors because the topics are so big. Like all the best story tellers, Kirby aims at children. Because children still have open minds.

"star worlds"

This is the second time we've seen that phrase: it must be important. It seems like a nod to "Star Wars". But the difference is crucial. CV is not about war, but about people. The initial conflict in CV is over destroying a world of individuals, people as varied as we are. These worlds matter. In Star Wars, planets are just statistics: the Death Star destroyed a statistic, X billion people, where only one (princess Leia) really mattered. Star Wars is all about maintaining a class system where royal birth mattered. But CV challenges this (as we shall see). Even in the next couple of pages we will see that each individual matters, even if they are among the bad guys: there are no nondescript storm troopers here. CV worlds are characterised by their depth and variety. Each Star Wars planet is much simpler than Earth (one is a desert, one is a swamp, one is an ice world, etc.), but in CV we will see that it is planet Earth that is the boring speck in comparison.

Why is Captain Victory blond?

It's interesting that Kirby, the Jewish kid, makes his god-like beings look Aryan. Contrast Superman, the other godlike being created by Jewish kids: definitely dark haired. But Kirby absorbed his culture from everywhere and treats heroes and villains the same, judging them by their acts, not the colour of their hair. Kirby would know, even directly or indirectly, that the ancient Greeks thought of their gods as golden haired. (Link, another link). According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great was pale skinned and fair as well, even though the majority of Greeks of course had dark hair. Kirby's concept of godhood is based on real mythology. He is extending the work of Homer and Hesiod.

The real world ancient gods

I mentioned before that Kirby's constant interest was the mythical ancient gods who "created" us. I mentioned how the Kree and Celestials were much closer in concept before later writers changed them. In the real world, the ancient Greeks (first scientific humans) looked back to their cultural origins in Minoan Crete. Hence Zeus, head of the gods, was born on Crete. The most likely explanation of Atlantis is that it refers to Crete, but the distances got confused in translation so Plato assumed it must be beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Crete was destroyed by a great tidal wave at the eruption of Thera c.1420 BC. This island of the gods was the mythical origin of scientific man. In Greek, Crete is spelled with a "k". Its inhabitants were called the Kree-tee. With Kirby they became the Kree. Plato's mythic version of this island was in the Atlantic, so he called it Atlantis. In the Kirbyverse it is Attilan. The exact names do not matter, as each civilisation gives these myths different names. but it is the same story. But that's a tangent: back to the splash page!

Why does his body look so... wrong?

The first time I saw this splash age I thought "that's bad art. Kirby is not trying." Oh boy, was I wrong! Well technically I was right: Kirby can probably create great art unconsciously, and this is supposed to be wrong. It's bulbous, dead looking. Worse, he's just standing there! Kirby's splash pages always show insane action, so why is the first issue of Captain Victory, the guy with gigantic guns on the cover, just standing there? It's like not wearing a Kirby head piece, it's so shocking that it has to mean something. Modern readers maybe do not notice: our modern comics are full of boring talking heads. But this is Kirby!!! We see in later pages that Kirby has not forgotten how to be Kirby. Other characters are in constant Kirby motion. His frozen immobility is the story. It reinforces what we saw on the cover about his inner conflict. Time to look at his dialog:

"You heard my order! I want ANOTHER computer check on the position of this solar system!"

Why is he shouting? There is no doubt the other guy can hear easily. Is the other guy some unruly subordinate? not in a military command as important as this. Why is "another" emphasised? He keeps rechecking the data. Yet everything to this point - plus the explosive background - screams urgency. Why is he hesitating? What will be the cost of this hesitation? (Hint: possibly allowing the enemy leader to escape, and the destruction of planet Earth)

What we see is the greatest battle of all: the battle inside the mind of a moral individual about to commit genocide.

"What we're looking at may be a serious breach of galactic law!"

I find that Kirby works best if you imagine each frame as six frames in a modern decompressed comic. In my opinion Kirby writes the best dialog out there, but you have to give it room to breathe. You have to imagine a Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando, and give them as much time as they need. As a reader you have to insert the pauses and change of tone. You have to imagine the different camera angles yourself. Just as Shakespeare famously gives the absolute bare minimum of direction, so does Kirby. Kirby expects his readers to be fluent in the art of reading compressed comics. Kirby knows that a lot of kids don't have much money, so he will not waste paper (and his drawing time) giving you pauses and inflections that you can add yourself.

Who is committing the "serious breach"?

This line is a good example of Kirby's superb dialog, and why it often passes people by. On a quick reading he is wasting words, using tell don't show, and then adding a superfluous very stiffly worded sentence saying the same thing: something bad has happened, check your data and then we attack. Bad dialog, right? But look closer. Given the distance between speech balloons, the "breach" quote should be thought of as several panels later (in a decompressed comic), with a suitable pause. Then the serious breach almost certainly refers to what Captain Victory himself is about to do, if he makes even the slightest error.

Intergalactic law

This whole series is a conceptual progression from Kirby's other work. This is not about a lone hero taking risks and sometimes breaking the rules. It is about the rules finally being right: just laws throughout the galaxy. Laws designed for the most horrifying and difficult of dilemmas. Law is the only way humans can survive as a group. That was how our ancestors first defeated larger mammals, by forming groups with rules to ensure the best best possible division of labour. And that is our only hope for facing threats bigger than our planet.

Explosive tension

We are only on the plash page and already we know a danger of galactic scale is present. And with Kirby, galactic scale actually means something. We see the greatest hero unwilling to give the command. yet there could be galactic repercussions. We do not know what the threat is, but we know it's big!!!

This decision frozen in time, at the start of a Kirby story (which lives and breathes action) is like an explosion in anyone else's story.

The story is about stopping to think, even when faced with what seems the most obvious and urgent choice. Captain Victory does not want to give the command, yet he must. On the next page this will become even clearer. This adds an irony to his name: what kind of "victory" is it that allows an entire world to be destroyed? And the buck stops with him, the captain. What kind of "victory" results in the deaths of billions of innocent people (for why they are innocent see later installments!) His very name creates the conflict at the heart of this story. How do we win when faced with annihilation? Is violence really the answer? Yet hand wringing good intentions are not an option! Kirby faces the dilemma of real world violence head on, and in this series will suggest solutions.


Next: the story really begins! I might not have time to post for a week or so. But I will try to get the whole first issue reviewed by the end of the year.

I remember reading issue #1 and being turned off because he had multiple clone bodies. Where's the drama if he can't be permanently killed?

Sounds like No-Man of the THUNDER Agents