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Post by tartanphantom on Jan 6, 2021 9:45:05 GMT -5
Mister Miracle
Forever People
Kamandi
in that order.
New Gods in 4th place.
Never was a fan of The Eternals, mainly because it's basically a re-hash of the New Gods concept.
I do like the Demon, but the rhyming scheme dialogue can get a bit tiresome.
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Post by MDG on Jan 6, 2021 10:17:08 GMT -5
All this Eternals talk has gotten me curious-I'll probably Hoopla the series soon.
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Post by berkley on Jan 6, 2021 10:54:16 GMT -5
I think Gillen has already given enough away in various interviews on the subject that I can tell it isn't going to address any of the problems with previous failed reinventions but I'll probably read it anyway eventually, just to satisfy my curiosity. I'm always interested in what's going on with the Eternals.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 6, 2021 12:06:30 GMT -5
Though I think the Eternals have probably been the Kirby creation least appreciated and worst written by later writers, the New Gods haven't really fared much better at DC: they've pretty much taken Darkseid away from the character's original context to make him a major DC villain, while the rest of the characters and background have been left by the wayside. When they are occasionally brought back, it's usually to push some other agenda, not to come to grips with the Fourth World as a story concept itself. For example, Orion is often brought in to make some other hero look more heroic by contrast - as in various JLA stories or Tom King's Mister Miracle - which means mmaking him a very different character to what he was in Kirby's original.
I will say for Grant Morrison and Tom King, that while I haven't liked their most recent work on the New Gods, at least they're the first people to treat them like gods … and Darkseid as the God of Totalitarianism rather than some big bad guy like Mongul to punch out … since Kirby left the series.
(I'm not referring to Morrison's old JLA claptrap where Darkseid was defeated by Green Arrow and the Atom.)
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 6, 2021 12:46:15 GMT -5
they're the first people to treat them like gods … and Darkseid as the God of Totalitarianism rather than some big bad guy like Mongul to punch out … since Kirby left the series. A few years ago, I was reading somewhere about what the real idea of "NEW GODS" was, and it struck me as so simple, it appeared to have gone completely over most people's heads!
Rather than mere variations on existing pantheons (which was EXACTLY what "THE ETERNALS" was-- that's why they don't fit and never belonged in the Marvel Universe, the MU already had those pantheons), the simple idea was gods for THE MODERN WORLD.
Taking concepts relevant to "today" (anytime in the 20th Century, really, but mostly spanning World War Two to the late 60s) and creating characters who symbolized them in the form of a person.
Darkseid was (I think Kirby once said) "every bad boss or leader rolled into one". Although, if you want to be specific for inspirations... Darkseid was based on Adolph Hitler's ambitions, Richard Nixon's personality, and Jack Palance's face.
Metron-- who epitomized scientists who search for knowledge without care of the human consequences, was modeled after J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Of course, the initial story-- told in the form of a long graphic novel spread out over 2, then 3 (and for awhile, 4) separate magazines, was intended to have an ENDING. One in which Darkseid would DIE (and, possibly, Orion as well). Corporate comics' insistence of keeping "marketable" characters alive indefinitely dimishes his impact with each passing year he continues to still be around.
In literary terms, Ian Fleming's James Bond villains have become immortal... IN SPITE his having the dramatic sense to KILL THEM ALL OFF in turn.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 6, 2021 16:06:42 GMT -5
DC: they've pretty much taken Darkseid away from the character's original context to make him a major DC villain, while the rest of the characters and background have been left by the wayside. Darkseid's very nature--his interest in the Anti-Life Equation--made him the kind of megalomaniac who would naturally "grow" to a point where he was a natural fit as a DC universe antagonist. From memory, I found his goals to be far more threatening and worthy as a perfect challenge to DC's best of the best than many of a lackluster villain seen in several issues of titles such as the Justice League of America. |
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Post by String on Jan 10, 2021 11:06:29 GMT -5
New Gods for me just for the sheer breadth and scope of it all. Demon comes in second because the concept itself is simple yet elegant.
Close third is a tie between Mister Miracle and Forever People; if you judge a hero by the quality of his/her villain(s), then Kirby knocked a home run with Granny Goodness for Scott Free. She's a demonic grandmother from the lower depths of hell and they had the perfect tone/cadence of voice for her in Superman: TAS. She's never failed to creep me out. I've recently read Forever People for the first time and have quite enjoyed it. There's nothing wrong with youthful exuberance and I thought Kirby had good chemistry among his teen heroes.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 10, 2021 11:45:04 GMT -5
Hilariously, Edward Asner did the cartoon voice of Granny Goodness. Jack Kirby, of course, modeled her on Reta Shaw
(MARY POPPINS, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, etc.).
She'd appeared in the 1st season "LOST IN SPACE" episode "Return From Outer Space", where she played a woman who ran an orphanage, that Will Robinson almost got shipped out to. Re-watching that last year, I wondered if that episode might have been what inspired Kirby casting her.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2021 21:55:13 GMT -5
Kamandi.
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