Jack Kirby's Fourth World its a must read?

Jack Kirby's Fourth World its a must read?

Yes

why? i read many "classic" and "best" comic books of superheroes (like Animal Man, Doom Patrol and Invisibles from Morrison, V from Vendetta, Watchmen from Moore, Sandman, Starman from James Robinson, etc) but i just cant get into this comic.
I read the first issues.
I know, Kirby is The King, but i just can find why this comic book is a classic (only the scifi topics).

The designs are unbelievable

I think it is just a great story, and can give insight to the '70s. In the forward to one of the Fourth World omnibuses it said Darkseid was initially based on Richard Nixon, and the Forever People represented the youth back then. When DC ended up cancelling then bringing the series back like 10 years later, Kirby's contempt for Nixon had died down.
But I realize I'm not providing any groundbreaking reasons that it's a must read. If anything, read it for the fantastic art. I hate when people use the word epic but it applies.

Maybe it's just a little dated for you if you haven't read a comic from 60s or early 70s.

Superman 90s cartoon was the closest thing to a New Gods show.

I wish Kirby could have ended it the way he intended. Fuck dc

I have one problem: i am reading this comic in cbr and the scans are from a edition in b/w. the absence of color ruins the experience?

Nah I don't think so.

i mean it's not like you can blame DC for cancelling low selling books

I've never read any of Kirby's fourth world stuff, only material like Final Crisis, Byrnes Superman etc. That used his creations.

When the fuck are they going to reprint them so I can actually read them? Because I'll buy that shit as soon as it comes out.

Well, according to Mark Evanier Kirby didn't exactly have an ending planned, he just knew that he wanted to end it eventually.

there's a Kama Di omnibus planned so I'd guess fourth world is afterwds, In time for justice league

How did this stuff sell low if it's so highly appreciated nowadays? What changed?

What's my best bet if I want to read this in print? Are there any recent reprints that are widely available?

It didn't have Batman to pull numbers.
Not selling good =/= comic is terrible, you should know that by now.

this was the 70s, the primary audience was children. Fourth world was an entirely new concept that was a bit too heavy for the target audience

So it's all that one psychiatrist's fault. Again.

The Fourth World saga is amazing, bombastic, pure unadultared awesomeness, but it also takes a certain amount of readiness. I remember trying to read it 10 years ago and I couldn't get into it. Then I tried again about 4 years ago and it all clicked. The way the art just springs from Kirby onto the page. The quintessential heroic spirits redone as with the new age space gods Kirby was into. It was something primal, something familiar, something different.

So yes, it's worth reading. But if you don't get it now, give it some time and come back to it.

I know Jack Kirby is one of the biggest names in comics, but I still feel the man's sheer genius is underrated.

t. mangafag

>tfw your local library only has the first two volumes of the Fourth World omnibi but not the rest

the second one is the hardest to find

I've only read the first book but I honestly feel it's overrated. The art isn't that great, the dialogue is so bad like nobody talks like that. Shit ton of exposition. And the story doesn't even make sense. There's some advanced civilization living under metropolis and the project, which i assume is Cadmus, are cloning Superman and Jimmy Olsen who are both okay with it for some reason.

According to Evanier it was mid selling. Series that sold less got to continue.

Awww... baby's first comic that's not from the 80s British invasion? If you cannot grasp the significance of the 4th World, you need to educate yourself on comic book history.

I still feel like Orion's character is the most perfect allegory for war our civilization has ever produced.

the oppurtunity cost of having Kirkby on mid-selling titles is huge though

>TJKC: Why did DC really cancel the Fourth
World books? Was it due to bad sales?
>E: That’s what they said at the time,
that’s what the former publisher still
says. For years, I’d heard his successors
at DC say that Jack’s Fourth World
books were among many that they felt
should have not been cancelled, that
sales did not warrant it and you have to
expect some new books to take a while to
catch on. For the Kirby tribute book we’re
putting together, Paul Levitz, who is now the
publisher, specifically dug into the DC files,
looked up the numbers, and gave me a quote that
they were mid-range books. They were selling better
than some books that were continued, according to Paul.
So everyone can believe whatever they want.
You know, someone pointed out a couple of
things to me the other day which are not irrelevant
to this discussion. One is that DC was
going through a bad period at the time. Almost
every new book they introduced lasted five or
six issues and some of them were very good
comics. There has been the insinuation
that, if New Gods didn’t sell at a certain
level, there was something wrong with the
content of the book, that Jack somehow
did something wrong. Comic book history
is filled with books that sold poorly
but later caught on big. Conan is one
example. The first run of the Hulk only
lasted six issues. X-Men was cancelled at one
point. So even if Jack’s epic sold poorly, maybe
it was the wrong time for it or maybe it should
have been marketed differently... or something.

The first few issues of the Fourth World
books, like everything at that time, were 15¢.
Then there was a paper and printing
increase and DC went up to 48-pages
for a quarter and they stuck reprints
in the back. I don’t think that was a
very commercial format and apparently,
since they retreated from it, it
hurt sales on the entire line, across the board, especially with Marvel
undercutting them. So one could say that, right when New Gods
might have been catching on, DC raised prices in an experiment that
didn’t work. New Gods may have been a casualty of that experiment.

the scans are shit, even the newly ripped New Gods stuff isn't as good as holding it in your hand. if you don't have the omnis you're a poor sod.