I love comics. But I hate cosmic comics. How can this be, you ask? They’re practically the same word! Am I, an educated liberal of the twenty-first century, going to dismiss and denigrate and entire approach to comics that is clearly so inextricably woven into the very fabric of the comics genre that, if you wrote both words down on a sheet of paper and tacked it up ten feet away, would appear identical?
It’s just that the “cosmic” corners of the Marvel and DC Universes—the Fourth World, the Celestials, even Asgard—bore me to tears. Sure, there are particular aspects of the cosmic comic cosmology that I like—who can’t like Mister Miracle? What would the Avengers be without Thor? (Oh, wait…) And I like a good Galactus story as much as anyone, with the caveat that Galactus stories are rarely about Galactus, and when they are, unless they’re his origin story, they’re boring. But when it comes to the eons-old struggle between Darkseid and Highfather or Hela’s latest attempts to gouge out Odin’s other eye, I just can’t muster up the energy to care. There just never seem to be any meaningful stakes to the conflict, even though the events are always billed as world-shattering.
John Byrne’s relatively recent Galactus v. Darkseid one-shot is a good example of everything I hate about cosmic stories—Galactus decides he wants to eat Apokolips, and Darkseid throws a bunch of parademons at him, and Orion and the Silver Surfer duke it out, achieving an impressive degree of verbosity given that there’s always a fist or the power cosmic or the astro-force hitting someone in the nose. And then, it turns out, oh, Galactus can’t eat Apokolips because Apokolips is such a barren, stagnant ball of crap that it doesn’t actually contain any life force for him to eat. And so he leaves. The end.
I suppose the thing that has always bugged me most is the fact that these stories take place in a strange and psychedelic world of wonder, a banquet for the eyes, except with the nagging worry that the banquet might eat you rather than the other way around. But all the characters, being born to this world, pretty much take it for granted. There’s little exploration, little sense that the stories are in any way interested in charting this mysterious netherscape to the reader. It’s just a gaudy backdrop for an eternal struggle far beyond mortal comprehension. I get the same feeling trying to read classic Kirby Fourth World stories that I got when, as a Tolkein-frenzied teenager, I eagerly cracked open The Silmarillion, only to find an elaborately worked out cosmology that was dead on the page, a beautifully rendered frieze that was in fact frozen. It’s a familiar cliché that comics don’t offer change, only the illusion of change, but Fourth World stories never seemed interested in concocting even the most threadbare ruse.
So why am I enjoying Joe Casy and Tom Scioli’s Godland so much? It clearly wants to be a “cosmic” story in the Klassic Kirby vein, though it’s not an outright homage. It also manages to avoid being a send-up or a rip-off, which is pretty impressive. Godland chronicles the adventures of Adam Archer, a human astronaut who has an encounter with “The Cosmic Fetus Collective” in outer space; when he comes home, he finds himself with tremendous powers far beyond yadda yadda, and also a giant telepathic alien dog named after a lad mag.
Cosmic, right? But I’m a lot more interested in Casey’s stories about Adam Archer and his allies than I was in reading the umpteenth Orion v. Kalibak beatdown. The Fourth World stories I do love tend to be the fish-out-of-water ones, with someone from “our” Earth forced to fight for his or her life in a landscape populated with mythic archetypes who feel compelled to narrate their every action in overwrought Shakespearean dialect. One of my favorite Darkseid moments is from the Giffen/DeMatties Justice League (big surprise), when Oberon runs into him in the tunnels beneath Apokolips, drinking tea in an easy chair and reading Mein Kampf. (This reminds me that I’ve never read the Legion’s Great Darkness Saga, and that I probably should). Since Adam and friends are mere mortals getting a glimpse of something beyond their comprehension, they don’t exhibit the ho-hum attitude towards cosmic spectacle that you see in an average New Gods story.
Plus, although I wouldn’t characterize the book as “jokey,” it is funny, something Kirby and co seemed downright afraid to be. I mean, he created a character named “Granny Goodness,” and then asked us to take her deadly seriously. By contrast, I guarantee that Godland is the only book published this month in which the villain does a dance routine to Bob Dylan while talking to a disembodied-but-sentient skull in a jar. Also the villain’s head is made of nickel. Also the villain is named Friedrich Nickelhead.
So all I’m saying is, there’s all the scope and spectacle of vintage Kirby, but there’s also the humanity and humor that was so lacking in those tepid, turgid tales. The first Godland trade, Hello Cosmic!, is out, and it’s worth a look.
Defenses of Kirby’s Fourth World welcome—I always want to like ‘em more than I should. And I’m probably over-emphasizing the Kirby influence, when, as the Godland website reveals, there are a multitude of other sources. But I didn’t like any of those either.
I want to fight with you over this, but the Jack Kirby Jimmy Olsen trade languishing on my coffeetable is making me agree. Part of the problem with the Fourth World comics (I’m counting Jimmy Olsen because it had Darkseid and the DNAProject, and Lightray shows up) is that there are deadly serious, and . . . plodding. You got the part about Granny Goodness right.
Part of it is context. Space is no longer magic to us. I think there was a time when ANY cosmic work was per se awesome. It still amazes me that the Silver Surfer—a frickin’ silver guy that space-surfs!!—was so popular on college campuses and the like (as has been reported). You often saw a connection between philosophy and space comics, too. Were these the most advanced comics? Was the new frontier of space the perceived key to legitimizing the art form?
I mean, the FF are cool, but they don’t grapple with the place of humans in the world (and the cosmos) until they meet Galactus. Superman battled badguys, but the New Gods’ sworn enemy wanted to unmake the world with the Anti-Life Equation. Cosmic comics were comics one (or fifty) steps up from “normal” comics with their Peter Parkers struggling to lift twisted machinery.
Maybe that’s why you don’t like it: the humanity was lost in the search for grand generalizations and lofty thoughts. I know my favorite New Gods issue is probably “The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin,” which is just some good ol’ fashioned Yancy St. rumbling (even if one of the rumblers is Kalibak). It just seems realer than the space epics, and no less than Frank “the Tank” Miller said of the comic that he “felt like an explosion was going off in my head when I read it.”
(Also scroll down to see Neal Adams’ take on cosmic comics).
But, Professor Fury, what about the Jim Starlin issues of “Captain Marvel” and “Warlock”? Those are among the most powerful in all of 1970s Marvel Comics. You have to stop what you are doing now and pick up the trade of “The Life and Death of Captain Marvel.” The sheer psycheldelic exuberance is like listening to the Jefferson Airplane perform the entirety of “Surrealistic Pillow” and “Volunteers” in your living room. I’ll mail it to you if you don’t believe me! It is possible, of course, that Starlin’s early cosmic work is more effective than the Fourth World books because of Starlin’s wide-ranging, idiosyncratic sense, almost Kubrick-like sense of humor and of the absurd. I am also partial to Steve Englehart’s cosmic leanings on his run (with Gene Colan) of “Doctor Strange.”
I, however, am not fond of any of the Infinity Gaunlet, Goblet, or whatever those other series were called…but that’s another story.
Ha! I knew this post would flush out Catpants. It’s true that I haven’t read any of the Starlin Captain Marvel stuff besides “Death of”, so I should; perhaps I’d narrow my gripes to a low-level annoyance with a certain kind of Kirby story. Is there Pip the Troll in those Starlin stories? I like Pip the Troll.
Pip shows up briefly in the “Death of…” seqeunce, but he is all over the Warlock stories. Now what I am now sure of is whether or not Marvel has collected those stories into a trade or not. I have the reprints Marvel did for the direct market in the early 1980s, and I think the company might have printed them again in the mid-’90s, too—but has there been a more recent collection?
Two ‘70s Kirby series with a cosmic spin and some interesting stories which fix some of the problems of his Fourth World books are “2001” and “The Eternals.” Neither one is perfect, but “2001” in particular is more focused because each issue features a self-contained short story. I don’t think either one of these is available in collected form just yet. (Though now that “Omega the Unknown” has been collected, anything is possible…though I have to see it was pleasure to see “Omega” finally getting his due…)
On a related note, I am really really enjoying the Essential Defenders collection. Perhaps it’s because I have been home sick with bronchitis, but those Englehart stories are a lot of fun, especially when the Hulk stomps things. Choice line of dialogue: “Furry monkey-things—snarling at Hulk! Hulk bets they are animals that killed guides! Then—Hulk will smash!” (from issue #2).
“Life and Death…” is indeed still in print; I have a copy of “Death of” from the old days, but it’s probably worth picking up the new trade anyway. And when does the new Lethem-penned Omega the Unknown series start, anyway?
And you’ve gotta admire the Hulk’s logic there. If it snarls, smash it.
Is there seriously a new Omega coming out? I had never heard of the series, but my mom picked up a buncha 70’s era #1’s at a antique shop when I was younger. It was among them, and the eerie story stuck with me.
Yeah—Jonathan Lethem is writing a new Omega series. Relevant link here.
i agree, somewhat. i tend to like DC cosmic better than Marvel comic. I can do withouth Eternity or the living tribunal, no matter how much i thought i would like it. That being said, in the 90s the Spectre became my favorite character and Dr. Fate is great if done in that same vein. I’ve never read a straight Dr. Strange story (though i want to). i think one of the reasons these stories often suck is that they are prone to deus ex machinas and the characters are so broadly constructed, what they can ‘do’ in the terms of action in the story.
I like Thor and FF, but i can only have them in does where they live up to the best of their themes, but rarely can they keep it up on repeated stories.
As to Lethem—I now believe Fortress of Solitude to be an (even more deeply) flawed version of Jujitsu for Christ.
As to Doc Strange—I’ve got a run of the Marshall Rogers stuff, Mooch. It’s on newsprint but still fine. And, two cheers for Quasar!
dag yo! gimme that Dr. Strange!
My “gateway comic” was Infinite Gauntlet #4. I still think the cover (Thanos floating in space saying, “Come get me”) is one of my favorite covers of all time. Reading the issue as a kid, I was utterly floored as Thanos picked off the Marvel heroes one by one. I remember sitting there, 12 years old, and going, “This dude just KILLED a bunch of superheroes!”
I have probably re-read that issue more times than any other comic, and still enjoy it thoroughly to this day. I mention this because it clearly biases my argument.
Having said that, I favour Marvel Cosmic stories over those at DC, for the simple reason that heroes like Spider-man and Captain America don’t seem to belong in space. While Superman and the Green Lantern are perfectly at home fighting aliens and cosmic beings, there is something strange about seeing Dr. Strange or the Hulk do it.
Having the Green Lantern battle an Alien ship is just seems right. Having Spider-man do is a lot more interesting.
Was just reading everyone’s fantastic comments… just thought I’d say (besides echoing the praise gdue Starlin’s peerless run on 70’s Warlock) that the grandeur of cosmic comics lay precisely in their dehumanizing aspect. It is through sheer spectacle, the confrontation with the immense and the mechanized, the alien and the indifferent, that the viewer, helpless and awed, is faced with his own diminishment. Next time do not read a word of dialogue from a Kirby Thor or New Gods or FF or even Celestials… Instead just look at all those nearly too large splash pages, that impossible, inscrutable machinery, gleaming without flaw, towering high above the insect like humans below. That almost gaudily coloured mindscape of space that provokes and defies this world at our service. That justly flat, near abstract Kirby perspective meant to rip the human from the page and then set him down again feeling pretty damn helpless and a knot in the viscera urging him to close the mad book up, before giving into temptation to sneak a peek at the whole insane theatre again. Kirby. Amen.