The rhythm for the last few months has been my following the various volumes and omnibuses of series like Promethea, The Invisibles, and now Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. While this is a rhythm I’d like to maintain, something stuck me when I got to end of the first volume of the Fourth World omnibuses and that’s The Forever People #3 and its introduction of the character Glorious Godfrey. The way this issue begins, the ways his Justifiers plague Metropolis, and the cementing of Darkseid’s personality made it so I couldn’t not further dive into this single issue.

We open in a tent with throngs of people enraptured by words of Glorious Godfrey where he preaches the gospel of Anti-Life—the solution that cures what ails their pride not only in themselves, but in their country as well. The blame for everything is on those who don’t think right. These “Revelations” of Godfrey’s are another strain of the machinations of Darkseid—an early form of subjugation while he searches the minds of those in attendance for traces of the Anti-Life equation. As Godfrey’s Justifiers attack Metropolis and the Forever People, the latter use their Mother Box to call upon The Infinity Man to aid in their fight. But even with their combined might, The Forever People are powerless to stop Godfrey when he’s flanked by Darkseid himself.

It’s no accident that the opening page of this issue is buttressed by a quote from Hitler—Kirby’s own time during World War II and his Jewish heritage would cement his feelings on nazis and those that would espouse their views. Anti-Life, for Kirby, was a fascistic doctrine, one that seeks to strip individuality and individual responsibility with the justification that “Anti-Life makes right” being used by the Justifiers in this issue. We see shades of what Kirby believed to be wrong in this world through Glorious Godfrey with his resemblance to evangelical preachers in the 50s and 60s and their usage of gospel as a form of societal manipulation. It’s in this issue that we see the deep connection Kirby had to the mythology he was creating with this world and characters—the Forever People as the arbiters of life, freedom, and altruism and Godfrey, Darkseid, and Anti-Life as the essence of all that is evil in the world. If every issue to this point is how we discover what the Fourth World is conceptually, The Forever People #3 is where we learn what it is philosophically.

There is so much in the Fourth World that’s lends itself to exploring and diving in deeper. There have always been comics that wanted to do more—looking at many pre-code comics shows that—but for American monthlies in this era, Kirby was out to push the medium. Looking at a figure like Godfrey and his introduction this early into the Fourth World shows that Kirby wanted his work to do more than tell a story—he waned to show the audience the world they were living in at that moment. 

Get excited. Get preached.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.