Jack Kirby was born 100 years ago today. Known for designing a massive chunk of the Marvel universe, his work at DC creating the Fourth World in the early 1970s is most directly relevant as a huge over-the-top space opera of human-ish space travellers fighting across the universe coming to Earth and pulling ordinary people into their adventures.
It features, among other things... an exiled son of Apokolips hiding on Earth with human companions, a heroic escape artist who is essentially a mythic take on the Houdini idea of escapologist as symbol of hope, a not-exactly-neutral observer in a time and space chair, accidental time travel, deliberate time travel, sufficiently advanced technology even by spacefaring alien civilisations, an artificial planet built for war, an undersea culture with a mix of enemies and allies, unwitting human underlings for alien invaders equipped with unearthly technology, a loch monster, a miniaturised planet with a society based on Universal horror movies, a thing called The Lump who is surprisingly amenable to conversation, superhuman propaganda, a robot boxer with a convenient off switch, a Metropolis cop defeating an alien champion with a weapon using the city’s entire power grid...
No comments:
Post a Comment