rickd
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Post by rickd on May 12, 2017 10:25:46 GMT -5
How could the Jimmy Olsen stories not count? It's where the entire Fourth World starts.
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rickd
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Post by rickd on May 12, 2017 10:27:28 GMT -5
Kirby's Jimmy Olsen is "The Hobbit"; the other three books are LOTR. An excellent analogy. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 12, 2017 10:37:19 GMT -5
How could the Jimmy Olsen stories not count? It's where the entire Fourth World starts. By accident of publication schedule. New Gods #1 was written first, so Darkseid's first appearance was intended to be there. If you put aside the fact that Jimmy Olsen happened first, nothing about those stories really introduces or sets up anything meaningful about The Fourth World; it just mentions and shows them first. Heck, even by the end of the run, not a single Kirby-created character in the other three titles is even aware of Jimmy Olsen's existence, but they all know each other. |
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Post by Spike-X on May 12, 2017 20:27:46 GMT -5
Once the single-volume omnibus comes out at the end of the year, I'll have to read it with this in mind.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 13, 2017 6:03:10 GMT -5
Just read Paul Levitz' introduction to volume Four of the Omnibus in which he praises the concept of three interlocking series. And, in the afterward, Evanier drives home the idea that Kirby wrote the Jimmy Olsen stories reluctantly by the end.
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rickd
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Post by rickd on May 13, 2017 10:29:43 GMT -5
Being either an accident of publication or a reluctant addition seems irreverent since regardless of why the books were published, they were what was published first, and they were where several key pieces of the Fourth World were introduced. I also have to admit to having an issue with the idea that the other three Fourth World books were these epic classics while the Olsen stories were so much crap. Okay, I know it's all Don Rickles fault, but the Olsen book is actually where the Fourth Worlds effect on the ground and on regular humans took place. Jimmy and the Whiz Wagon were in many way's Kirby's Jason and the Argo. traveling around, having adventures where occasionally the Gods would interfere.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 13, 2017 12:39:34 GMT -5
Being either an accident of publication or a reluctant addition seems irreverent since regardless of why the books were published, they were what was published first, and they were where several key pieces of the Fourth World were introduced. I also have to admit to having an issue with the idea that the other three Fourth World books were these epic classics while the Olsen stories were so much crap. Okay, I know it's all Don Rickles fault, but the Olsen book is actually where the Fourth Worlds effect on the ground and on regular humans took place. Jimmy and the Whiz Wagon were in many way's Kirby's Jason and the Argo. traveling around, having adventures where occasionally the Gods would interfere. I love the Jimmy Olsen stories (well, at least the first two story arcs). That doesn't change my sense that they don't fit. Sure, we meet Darkseid there first, but Darkseid is neither properly introduced nor important to the story. Intergang might as well be working for Kingpin. It's association by name only. Same with the evil factory. |
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Post by Red Oak Kid on May 15, 2017 12:28:29 GMT -5
Both sides make good points. This is a close one, but I will have to fall on the side of the Kirby issues of JO being part of the Fourth World.
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Post by berkley on May 15, 2017 19:09:00 GMT -5
It's related to the whole question of whether the New Gods story is set in the DCU: well, yeah, obviously it is, in one sense, because that's where Kirby wrote and published it; but in what I think is a more meaningful sense, no it is not, because the concept wasn't designed as part of the DCU and doesn't need the DCU in order to function.
Which is why I look at subsequent versions of the characters with something close to the same feeling with which many readers, myself included, look at stuff like Before Watchmen or the upcoming blending of the Watchmen and their world into the DCU.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 16, 2017 5:15:59 GMT -5
It's related to the whole question of whether the New Gods story is set in the DCU: well, yeah, obviously it is, in one sense, because that's where Kirby wrote and published it; but in what I think is a more meaningful sense, no it is not, because the concept wasn't designed as part of the DCU and doesn't need the DCU in order to function. When we have scenes like Kalibak mass killing on the city streets in order to draw out Orion, and not only do no superheroes show up, but the police comment on how they've never seen super beings like this before and have no idea how to respond to them, this definitely feels outside of the DCU, but the Jimmy Olsen title complicates that. |
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Post by Cei-U! on May 16, 2017 7:54:48 GMT -5
There was a reason I left the Kirby Fourth World characters out of "Lash House," and that was my belief that the cosmic concepts introduced there did not fit in with the DC Universe as defined in the Golden and Silver Ages.
Cei-U!
I summon the mismatch!
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