Credits:
I didn’t really follow the story beyond an uprising against Darkseid on the planet Apokolips, but art was wonderful.
Super heroic moron flying through space, vaguely near his space horse.
An especially super heroic landing.
I do genuinely love the old school approach to color of metallic objective like Darkseid’s armor here.
Sire, the peasants are revolting.
This panel suffers from some proportion issues meeting with the intrinsically goofy design of Darkseid to produce a kind of squished action figure visual.
A standout panel. The white silhouetting is inventive and evocative.
A helmeted lasergunslinger.
Oh good lord. At least there won’t be a closeup of that face.
Oh no.
The planet broke before the peasants did.
Just a super intense panel.
Nope, as a storyteller, Kirby had ideas he just couldn’t execute on.
As noted, New Gods, Forever People, Kamandi, Eternals are more or less unreadable. Machine Man, which sprung out of his 2001 adaptation isn’t much better.
Then there’s the indie work he did like Captain Victory and Silver Star which are more or less incomprehensible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Victory_and_the_Galactic_Rangers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Star_(comics)
There’s a difference between what makes a good artist and what makes a good storyteller.
Yeah, everything you said makes sense… given that the context is that you think Stan Lee is a good storyteller.
Stan Lee has solo problems as well. If you look at the crap he turned out with Stan Lee Media in the 90s (shudder).
What I’m saying is, these guys combined were greater than the sum of their parts. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby NEVER would have come up with Captain America on their own, but together? Legendary.
Same for Lee and Kirby or Lee and Ditko.
But you look at their solo work? You get the Fourth World nonsense from Kirby, the Stan Lee Media garbage, and things like “Missing Man” from Ditko.
Never heard of Missing Man? Yeah. Exactly.
Some creators need another person to hone their edge, leave them on their own with no control? Yeah…
Fourth World is fantastic and is the foundation of all of modern DC and also Star Wars. I’m really struggling to connect with what you’re saying.
Fourth World has nothing to do with Star Wars which was taken from Hero With a Thousand Faces, Lensman, and Valerian and Laureline.
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-valerian-series-inspiration-similarities/
And no, Fourth World is not fantastic.
The hero Orion (a member of the rebellion) is the estranged son of the primary villain: a man in what looks like a glossy robot samurai suit. Both sides use an invisible magical power that rhymes with horse.