RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Jack Kirby's NEW GODS

Someone's valiant attempt to explain all the New Gods/Fourth World continuity over many decades and creative teams. In addition
to the storylines, he details the series, issues, and writers and artists.

https://www.cosmicteams.com/newgods/history1.html

I see the non-Kirby stuff is being collected in hard cover. Being a Don Newton fan I'm definitely getting it. I actually enjoyed that era of New God's personally. Jezebel looked pretty cool.

I like Don Newton, just not as wild about his NEW GODS run. More so for Conway's part than for Newton's. I think one of the things that bothered me was they put Orion in a new costume, tamed him down, and made him a little too much like the other superheroes. He lost the heroic monster aspect that he had in the Kirby run.

Newton I felt was at his best in the Shazam stories in WORLD'S FINEST, and a good percentage of his BATMAN, DETECTIVE and BRAVE & THE BOLD issues. And for his anthology stories in TIME WARP, Newton's THE PHANTOM work for Charleton, and lots of other stuff he did. He was only 49 when he died!

I think my favorite non-Kirby NEW GODS stuff was by Simonson. Especially the X-MEN/TITANS special in 1982.

And the DeMatteis/Paris Cullins FOREVER PEOPLE series in 1988.

And ultimately, the Levitz/Giffen "Darkness Saga" in LEGION.

Loved Newton's Shazam. Never cared for his Batman work. Reminded me too much of my least favorite Bat-artist Ernie Chua (Chan).

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority on liking the Conway/Newton run better than Kirby's original creation. I thought Jezebel was a cool character design and while the superherization of Orion was soundly rejected by fans I still prefer that over the original. I'm not a Kirby hater and enjoyed his Kamandi and Eternals so not sure what is different with New Gods. Just so surprised and happy that DC is doing a collection of this. Agree about "the Great Darkness" story. Levitz at his best with Kirby's characters.

What I disliked in the first year or so Newton was drawing Batman is that he'd draw Batman in these weird awkward
mid-leap and rather un-masculine poses, almost like he was dancing in a ballet.








http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2014/04/making-splash-don-newtons-batman-in.html

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/...0_QL80_TTD_.jpg



As Newton developed, he drew Batman in a more Adams/Novick/Aparo style. His first story was in DETECTIVE 480, immediately following Rogers on the series. I'd say the first issue where Newton was developing a creature-of-the-night Batman in the tradition of Adams/Novick/Aparo was DETECTIVE 497, the same issue Conway began writing the series. But even at his peak on the character, while having a clean linestyle, Newton's version was a bit too caricatured and cartoonish. The face, the neck the ears in these images are definitely not as atmospheric as Adams/Novick/Aparo.

I'd compare Newton most closely with Colan's work on Batman. I hated Colan's work on the series, coupled with writer Moench bringing back (a new) Robin, and the Batcave, it was for me an odd fanboy throwback to the camp days of the Adam West TV series, only pathetically trying to be taken seriously.
Having Alcala ink many issues didn't sweeten the deal one bit.

I liked both story and art in the atmospheric 497, and with the Scarecrow in 503. But even at his peak, Newton's DETECTIVE work, and BATMAN work, were pretty hit and miss. He also did three nice single issues of BRAVE & THE BOLD.

I think some of the worst Newton issues were the R'as Al Ghul stories in DETECTIVE, somewhere between 483-495. It contrasted Newton' art to that of both Adams and Novick, and also showed how badly O'Neil's scripting had declined on the series. Very shortly after, O'Neil quit DC and started doing better more inspired work for Marvel.

A sample of Newton's THE PHANTOM work for Charleton, circa 1976-1977.
Similar in style to Batman, it should have indicated that he'd be perfect for Batman, but somehow he wasn't.

A sample of Newton's NEW GODS work, to bring things back on-topic.





There's nothing wrong with Newton's art on the series, it's actually quite nice for the most part. My problems were primarily
1) Newton isn't Jack Kirby and his art was a vast departure from Kirby, and especially Conway's writing presented strange new very different characters that to me weren't the New Gods.
2) the cartoonish charactured exaggerated facial expressions in many scenes.
and
3) Conway's writing just made it into essentially a generic Marvel comic (where Conway just came from), indistinguishable from an issue of Thor or Hulk or FF or Spiderman. There was not the same epic grandness to Conway's run that there was to Kirby's classic run.

Englehart/Rogers came closer to that Kirfby-level grand scale in their MISTER MIRACLE 19-22 run.

It will probably be much more impressive by itself with offset printing in a nicer format.

What I like most about Kirby's New Gods seems to be what you didn't: the quiet nobility and pathos, and its commentary on the universal tragegy of war. And the dichotomy of good and evil gods, fighting either directly or metaphorically a spiritual war for Earth.

Simonson initially expanded on the spiritual warfare/anti-life aspect of the Fourth World in the first issue of ORION, perfectly in that first issue.
But then went lighter because, as he put it himself in an answer to me on the DC boards, changed gears and said he "didn't want to work that hard". He even thinned his page-load in the monthly book by farming out a third of the book to backups by a revolving assortment of artists.
Too bad.

THOR remains Simonson's writer/artist masterwork.

ORION could have been just as good. And there is no other artist I can think of more able to continue on, or even improve on, Kirby's Fourth World and other storylines.

A Simonson version of THE DEMON, KAMANDI or OMAC, if Simonson were fully committed, would be a dream come true.

Agreed. Colan's work on Batman was a great disappointment after his run at Marvel. I've heard rumors he was developing vision problems by that point. And, like you, I thought Moench's stuff was extremely weak.

That run was when I finally dropped the book after years of being a loyal reader and didn't really come back until Batman Year One.

I thought Colan was well-suited to NIGHT FORCE in 1981-1982, and SILVERBLADE and NATHANIEL DUSK with Don McGregor, but just completely unsuited to BATMAN and DETECTIVE. What I've sampled of his TOMB OF DRACULA run is good work. I think Colan was at his peak in the 1960's and early 1970's on DAREDEVIL (part of which he was working under the pseudonym "Adam Austin").

Of the artists on Batman by 1982 when Colan took the reigns, Aparo is the only one I truly liked. And even Aparo was beginning to decline at that point.

Of all the artists to take on Kirby characters in that era, Jim Aparo is the only one who could have been tapped for a series who I think (despite having a very different style from Kirby) did a beautifully rendered version of Kirby characters that felt compatible with the Kirby material. The Demon, Mister Miracle (and with him other New Gods characters) and Kamandi all appeared in BRAVE & THE BOLD during the 1970's period, and all of them were well handled by Aparo. Some nice single issue stories, a series by Aparo would have been great.



As this B & B 128 cover gives a sample of. As I recall, there were 3 issues with Mister Miracle, 2 issues with the Demon, and 2 issues with Kamandi. Which together approach or exceed many Kirby runs of that period, such as Kirby's SANDMAN, FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL, JUSTICE INC., OMAC, OUR FIGHTING FORCES, NEW GODS and FOREVER PEOPLE runs.

So I guess we did get a pretty good taste of what an Aparo NEW GODS run might have looked like.

Aparo's Mr. Miracle was, at least to my ten year old eyes, even better than Kirby's.

And, goddam, nobody did a splash page like Aparo back in the day:




Though, I must admit, Marshall Rogers' Big Barda was even better than that to my thirteen year old eyes.

Yeah, my first choice on the Fourth World is always Kirby.
But it's hard to dispute the quality of later work on the same characters by the likes of Rogers and Aparo.







Or on anything else they worked on.

Aparo in particular sustained his quality for most of the 100 issues he worked on BRAVE & THE BOLD.

Rogers, while producing a large volume of work, I think suffered from the fact that he didn't do runs for any sustained length of time, like, say, the Claremont/Byrne/Austin X-MEN run that ran for 35 issues, over close to 4 years. (Austin was making a name for himself not only inking X-MEN, but also the Englehart/Rogers DETECTIVE issues at the exact same time.

The longest run Rogers did was his DETECTIVE Batman run, "The Calculator backups in 466-468 with Rozakis, the classic 471-476 with Englehart, a few pages framing an Adams reprint in 477, two issues with Wein and Giordano in 478-479, and another final good issue with O'Neil in 481. So just when people began to know he was doing good work on Batman, he was gone. And even if they were reading all along, it was a bit uneven, in issues collaborating with 4 different writers.

Even more so with MISTER MIRACLE 19-22, only 4 issues, just the slightest sampling of what Englehart/Rogers could do on the series. But still, a damn good 4 issues.

while I agree with you on Rogers' Barda, Kirby's version was not without its charms as well...







This issue also presented Funky Flashman, and his lapdog assistant Houseroy. Kirby's editorial opinion on the subject of Stan Lee and Roy Thomas.
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when Stan Lee and Roy Thomas read that issue.

From CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE in 1978, the cover for what would have been MISTER MIRACLE 26.

To my knowledge, no story was created, only this cover. Although at least Gerber/Golden/Heath completed issues 23-25 before the series was cancelled.

I've seen this page reprinted in black-and-white several times, last in the 2007 book from Two Morrows, MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 12: MICHAEL GOLDEN.