Super Powers in DCUC!

[Rocko]

Guess not.

If you still want to make an article, you can use anything I wrote. If not, it's going on The Snake.

[Rod Keith]

So you're saying you weren't paying attention to them, then?

well, I was. I'll tell you more about it.

Super Powers is not the same continuity as Super Friends. Fuck Super Friends, not related. I don't give a shit about that.

But I do love Jack Kirby, and I especially love the New Gods. Kirby at DC is fucking fire. It deserves to be it's own thing, and it is. if you said something to Kirby about how this story can't be that because of continuity, he would probably just blink a couple times and ignore you. Kirby did Kirby, anybody with editorial bean counting bullshit was just in his way, and he told a complete story around it. I'll lay it out for you:

New Gods was out in the 70's, it was supposed to be Marvel at DC, that's what they wanted when they bought Jack. It wasn't. It was this cosmic, ambitious, far out stuff, and it was shortly cancelled. Years later, of course, DC took on Darkseid as the main villain, which to me is one of the single most galling things in comics.

New Gods was designed to be a sprawling epic. Jack foresaw what we've got now; a time at which single issues of comics would be collected into books. He envisioned New Gods as being sort of a Lord of the Rings type saga. Instead, he got his books cancelled.

There was Forever People and Mister Miracle, but they were companions to New Gods. New Gods was about Orion and Darkseid. It read like stories that were going somewhere, that would be finite. Not like a show like Law and Order or comic like Superman that will be on forever as long as there's a profit, but like Mad Men, which has a destination. An endpoint. Way too far out for mainstream comics then (and maybe now).

In the 80s, DC made overtures to get right with Jack. They brought him back to write a single issue length story to put at the end of the New Gods reprints they ran on beautiful Baxter Paper. They had 6 issues to fill, 2 original issues each, but the book was cancelled 11 issues in, so that last one got a nice extra bit. The first issue had the words READ THE NEW GODS-AS THEY REALLY ARE! A nice big FUCK YOU to everyone that had done other shit with these characters. New Gods was intensely personal to Jack. This was to be his magnum opus.

Those stories end with Orion completely defeated and seemingly dead.

At the same time Jack was doing that, he was writing the first Super Powers series, in which a now unchallenged Darkseid puts his target back on Earth, which Orion had been defending.

Then came Hunger Dogs, a prestige format book. Darkseid has given up on Earth for the moment and became fixated on micromanaging the shit out of Apokolips. He's bored. He brings Desaad, Kalibak, Mantis, and Steppenwulf back from the dead. They're the closest things he ever had to friends, but re-encarnated they're like zombies that he can command. He finds himself still depressed.

Orion struggles back from the edge of death, goes to kill Darkseid. Decides he's not really worth the effort and splits to go seek a happy life with a girl he likes. Just as Darkseid's kingdom begins to collapse, as his people (The Hunger Dogs) have an uprising.

The second Super Powers miniseries is about what happens after that. Once again, Darkseid is Earth's problem. He intends to make Earth into Apokolips, because he's just lost the actual Apokolips. At the end, he dies painfully because Desaad betrays him.

One of my favorite bits in any comic I've read follows as such- Desaad crows that the world is now his. Batman says "It's going to be hard ruling the cosmos on your back."

The book ends with a thing saying "Maybe hDarseid be back somehow." But Jack never drew him again, so no, he didn't. Not once does Cyclotron, Golden Pharoh, that Samurai dude, a couple twins, a dog, some bitch named Wendy, none of that is in there anywhere. Just Jack Kirby running wild with DC characters.

Love this post, Rocko. Never really thought about how those two minis fit in, but it sounds like they do. I'll have to give them another look.

[Doghouse Reilly]

If you still want to make an article, you can use anything I wrote. If not, it's going on The Snake.

Thank you, sir. I do play to work on something, but I don't want to steal from the thunder of the Snake. Do your thing, brother, and I'll quote you where appropriate. Cool?

[Rocko]

Thanks, Rod. It really does all fit. Super Powers even directly references Hunger Dogs in a couple places. "*as seen in Hunger Dogs" editorial bubbles. Never saw them anywhere else. This isn't fantasy football, here. This was Jack's. Paul Kupperberg gets the writing credit, but that was just for going back in and doing dialogue. They went Marvel Style on that one, that was part of the deal. The overarching plot is all Kirby.

We're sometimes our own worst enemies as OCD geeks and freaks. I was talking to some guy awhile back who loves Warren Ellis, he refuses to look even look at Secret Avengers, the best work the guy has done in years. The reason? "That shouldn't be called Avengers. Those characters don't make sense as Avengers." Pretend the goddamn book is called "Spy-Fi" or something. It doesn't matter what the title is, it's the content that matters. We're smarter than this. Or we should be.

This post is all your, Doghouse. I wrote it for you. Now you have to get your shit together and put it up.

[Doghouse Reilly]

This post is all your, Doghouse. I wrote it for you. Now you have to get your shit together and put it up.

Gah! Pressure!!

You're a good man, sir; many thanks.

[ero]

So is Kirby's SP stuff included in the Fourth World Omnibus?

[Rocko]

Unfortunately, it is not.

[powersthatbe]

because of the kirby super powers comic,it made me a bigger fan of his and of the fourth world,and i always thought hunger dogs and that series went hand in hand.It made go out and pick up the new gods,forever people,mister miracle,jimmy olsen.

[JSayonara]

No, really.

[John Moores]

Now THAT'S how you start a RUMBLE thread...

[JSayonara]

I am.

[ero]

He looks up to the challenge.

[JSayonara]

Crocodile Dundee - That's not a knife	powered by Aeva

[Mirthquake]

THink this is where they were taking the NU version of Boomerbutt?

[JSayonara]

Where's Fishmilkshake when you need him?

Nine Questions with the men of Sequart

A Sequel Soliloquy: Scot Eric's Top Twelve #2's of All Time

The Golden Age Blog - Flash 11-20!

American Comics: The Illusion of Change

The Golden Age Blog - Flash 1-10!

CriticalMess interviews writer Steve Bryant!

Mess member Jim Beard helms new Batman TV book!!

Nine Questions with Pamela Des Barres

Advanced search