Mister Miracle: Jack Kirby's Fourth World

WHEN YOU THINK of the name Jack Kirby, you conjure up images of The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and a slew of other heroes, villains and monsters that inhabit the Marvel Comics universe as well as your local movie theater.

But amazingly, Kirby, the undisputed king of comics, was more then just the co-creator of some of the most recognizable Marvel creations. After leaving that company in 1970, the artist and writer went to the rival DC Comics where he began working on his epic Fourth World saga. That story not only introduced some integral characters, such as Darkseid and Mister Miracle, but also was, as DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz said, arguably "the first attempt of a creator in our field to reach a sophisticated audience with a complex form of storytelling, if you will, to break the walls of the periodical format."

That attempt is beginning to be collected, starting with the first of four volumes of "Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus."

"It's the first deliberately constructed universe of fiction in comics that was not confined to a single character or a single title at birth," Levitz said. "All of that became models for ways that you could develop comics and ways in which comics influenced other media to develop."

Kirby first started on a long-running comic book called "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen," which was a sillier title that focused on the young photographer who worked with Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent. Acclaimed writer Grant Morrison said Kirby's first issue looked as if "someone slipped LSD into Johnny DC's Kool-Aid."

From there, Kirby launched three new books: "The New Gods," "Mister Miracle" and "The Forever People." These comics were unlike anything DC was releasing at that time.

"The characters Jack introduced in the Fourth World added a new level of cosmic mythology to the DC Universe." Levitz said. "Although the DC characters were in many cases born very deeply out of science fiction, the Fourth World took this up a larger scale of battle. You could always hear the Wagnarian music playing in the background as you read his stories."

The stories in the omnibus are being presented in the order they were published in, jumping from title to title, allowing readers to get the same experience as the audience in the '70s. Each page is filled to the brim with ideas that are simultaneously mythic, fantastic and, at times, campy. Colorful new characters and futuristic machinery interact with established icons such as Superman and comedian Don Rickles. The books also introduced perhaps the most fearsome DC Comics villain since The Joker — the aforementioned Darkseid.

Levitz is very familiar with that particular villain. He was used during his run on "Legion of Super Heroes" with a storyline titled "The Great Darkness Saga."

"What I tried with 'Great Darkness' was to really bring Darkseid into the core of the DC Universe in a way that preserved his stature," Levitz said. "It was one of the first — maybe the first — to bring that whole mythology into rest of the DC Universe."

To this day, the characters Kirby birthed in The Fourth World are still impacting the DC universe. Mister Miracle was a member of the Justice League, DC's preeminent superhero team, and Darkseid is set to play a prominent role in DC's current year-long weekly series, "Countdown," with the character's rocky visage featured prominently in teaser ads.

It is a testament to Kirby's creative genius that although the artist himself died in 1994, The Fourth World is still alive and well, and still captivating audiences enough to justify a four-volume hardcover collection of this work. When you read the book, it's not difficult to understand why The Fourth World is so appealing. In a world where there are so few new ideas, The Fourth World is unique. It was unique at the time — and to this day has yet to be repeated.

Images courtesy DC Comics