Returning to our action already in progress reveals the widening scope of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga and why it needed to be four separate series. Kirby knew the scale of war and how it could slowly encroach upon the world around it. As we thumb through this second volume of his Fourth World, we see how many different pieces move simultaneously across the galactic board—the gods and monsters that inhabit our new reality, the furies that bend the cosmic thread of fate around their fingers, the awesome cosmic forces that could rend the earth in twain, and also Don Rickles.

Our story continues along its four-pronged path with Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent coming into conflict with Morgan Edge’s machinations as he tries to get the duo killed by using his connections with Apokolips and Inter-Gang; The Forever People have been captured by Desaad and are now displays in Happyland, his amusement park-turned-torture playground; Mister Miracle is locked in a box and thrown from the top of a fifty-story stairwell while Big Barda can only to try to catch him before he crashes; and Orion and the humans he saved from Apokolips dive further into the underworld to find the traces of Darkseid littered throughout Metropolis via Inter-Gang. Pacing-wise, it’s much the same as the first volume as each issue feels like we’re seeing whole arcs of story play out. But lore-wise, we’re getting more character and more revelations about the nature of Anti-Life and the Source that have set the stage for this cosmic opera. And, for some reason, Don Rickles is here.

Rickles aside, we see in this volume even more of the experimentation that would eventually lead to Kirby’s single-issue Spirit World magazine with its use of collage and unconventional page layouts to better demonstrate the strange cosmic forces at play. But the strangeness of the cosmic forces extends beyond the usage of the medium and more into the characters, namely Darkseid. We have, since the beginning of the saga, known him to be a menace—the kind of god-like being that exists to be an antagonist. But in The Forever People #4, we see him walking through an amusement park. In terms of presence, it creates this odd dichotomy as we’re used to seeing Darkseid flanked by horrors and rhapsodizing on his desire for the Anti-Life equation. But here he is instead, scaring children on a day out with their grandpa and laughing about the whole situation. He’s always been a grand cosmic threat, but a moment like this makes him feel almost human. 

Kirby feels unique even now. His ability to pack story, lore, and character into a single issue is a feat that many have studied since reading his work as children. But his approach to the medium itself—finding ways to deliver something new visually nearly every month—is inimitable. And we’re somehow only halfway through this saga.

Get excited. Get Goody.

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