The New Gods #5 “Spawn” (October 1971)




The Story: This issue has three parallel plots which never intersect. (Being parallel and all.) In the first, which occupies the first four pages, Metron cruises in his Mobius Chair near the Source Wall. He’d like to break through, but the immense corpses (“larger than a star cluster”) of other would-be explorers cause him to chicken out and return to New Genesis.



The second story keeps the plates spinning for Orion’s human friends. At a Metropolis police station Sergeant Dan “Terrible” Turpin quizzes Detective Dave Lincoln about footage of Orion fighting Intergang. For some reason he calls Dave “Shamus.” Is that an insult?



Lincoln feigns ignorance and returns to his apartment, where the other three human characters are still hanging around rather than returning to their families. Turpin heads to the hospital and interviews a policeman victimized by Darkseid’s creatures. Finally, a Boom-Tube brings Kalibak from Apokolips to Metropolis, and he immediately starts busting stuff up.



Finally on page eight, the story returns to the cliffhanger from last issue: Orion has been captured in a cave beneath the sea by the Apokolips monsters known as The Deep Six. The evil Slig shows his powers to enlarge or disintegrate creatures. After Slig stalks away, Orion defeats several aquatic-themed monsters, then catches up with Slig and tears off the helmet containing Slig’s Mother Box. This unveils Orion’s true, Neanderthal face, much to Slig’s amusement. Brief exposure to his own Mother Box makes Orion look stylish again. He throws Slig into a pit, which seems like a highly inconclusive end to the adventure.



To cap it all off, Deep Six have released a giant mechanical attack whale! I guess some coastal target is in danger.



My Two Cents: The Metron bit was the coolest part for sure. I would have liked to see more of that, but I guess there’s no story per se, just some world building. The idea that bad guys have Mother Boxes was a confusing surprise, especially considering how powerful the Mother Boxes of New Genesis are.

It's Dan Turpin; Dick Turpin was the 18th Century highwayman, in England.

Stand and deliver!

A modern reader can't appreciate just how shocking and disturbing this sequence was at the time. Here's our "hero" murdering his enemy, then destroying the technological marvel that we've been led to appreciate as an almost living thing, capable of "loving" its possessor. And he doesn't grimly scowl and reflect on the deed, he laughs and gloats like a sociopathic brute. Not even the most menacing of Marvel villains ever reacted like that when they thought they'd defeated their enemies. Just Imagine! how Stan Lee might have scripted this page...I doubt there'd be much of a trace of Kirby's unflattering depiction of Orion's battle lust.

NEW GODS #5 / Nov’71 – “SPAWN”


“2 super-beings locked in battle! 1 must die!” You know, if this was the cover of a Marvel Comic, that would turn out to be nothing but meaningless hype in the long run. NOT HERE.


For the 2nd issue in a row, the story opens with Metron out in deep space somewhere exploring. This time, he’s headed to “The Final Barrier”—“The Promethean Galaxy—the place of the giants!!” He finds two huge beings who, like himself, driven by insatiable hunger for knowledge, tried to pierce the “barrier” and reach The Source directly. As our narrator puts it, “There were others with Metron’s boldness and hunger!! THIS one tried to engult the barrier by enlarging his own atomic structure! What happened is NOT known! He FAILED! He drifts endlessly—LARGER than a star cluster—FUSED! LIVING! Taking a BILLION Earth years to feel one heartbeat!! And somewhere BEYOND—lies The Source! THE GREATEST OF MYSTERIES!!” If this is accurate, then in the impressive 2-page spread, Metron’s Mobius Chair is really in the foreground, not the background as it seems, and the giant is an infinite distance away from us, while it takes up our entire view. Metron ponders that The Source, while “serene—omnipotent—all-wise”—does “make contact with us—in New Genesis”—thru High-Father’s Staff (to which he returns at that moment). Wild stuff.


Back in New York, Dave Lincoln is watching a film of Orion in battle in the company of Police Detective Sergeant Turpin— who prefers the nickname “Terrible Turpin”. Stocky, middle-aged, cigar-smoking, dressed in a pin-stripe suit and derby hat, he give new definition to the term “hard-boiled”. Between the film, the evidence found at the waterfront house seen last issue, and the statement made by one of his men, seriously injured in the hospital from an encounter with “a BIG fish—with a face like BLUE GRANITE”—Turpin believes a GANG WAR has come to his city—one between “super-spooks”. As he tells two of his men, “Those old times are BACK! They just look a little WEIRDER, that’s all!!”


In Lincoln’s apartment, the foursome, relieved to have come out of their encounter intact, still wondering what they can really contribute to the cause, go their separate ways until they hear from Orion again.


Meanwhile, “far beneath the Inter-Gang hide-out, in a cavern leading to the sea”, we find Orion a prisoner of Slig, leader of The Deep Six. Held prisoner in the grip of a giant mutated clam-shell, Orion listens while Slig shows off their prowess with mutating sea creatures. But as soon as Slig walks off, Orion uses the Astro-Force to ESCAPE—and begins wreaking violent, brutal havoc among his enemies. First the mutant clam is destroyed—then a half-man/half-shark is taken out. He then finds a gigantic harness—empty—which housed the monstrous juggernaut created by The Deep Six.


While this is going on, Kalibak, huge, muscle-bound, ugly-as-sin, brutal, arrives in the city via Boom Tube. I guess he got tired of being left being on Apokalips by Darkseid.


In the cavern, Slig returns to find the bodies of his soldiers strewn all over the place. What follows is some of the BEST dialogue I’ve read from Kirby yet! “Only ORION could have caused this carnage! But HOW did that savage free himself!!” “COME IN, SLIG! I was just RECLAIMING my equipment! One of your mutates FINALLY volunteered to show me where it was stored!!!” (“Volunteered”—oh, I love that.) “Allowing you to LIVE was a MISTAKE, Orion!!!” “How RIGHT you are, Slig!!! I HAVEN’T enjoyed being your guest!! This blast of ASTRO-FORCE is just a HINT of my displeasure!!” “AAAAAAA” “ZOM!” “That- didn’t-- --finish me—off—Orion!! I’m still going to get my hands on you! – and, then!!-- Then---!!” “HAHAHAHAHAH!!! THAT’s the kind of talk I LIKE to hear, Slig!! Tell me!! Tell me how I will DIE at your hands!” “BLAMM!” “Your reply is SLOW in coming!! Perhaps you need a bit of URGING!! Talk, slig, TALK!! You seemed so FOND of it when I seemed to be at YOUR mercy!!! You dogs of Apokalips are ELOQUENT when destiny FAVORS you!” Great, great stuff! I was enjoying this so much, I wound up going back and reading the scene over OUT LOUD. I could just picture what Orion’s voice would sound like, going into berzerker mode.


Ripping off Slig’s helmet, he finds Slig’s Mother Box inside, which, under pressure, self-destructs. Slig, still barely alive, notes that Orion love of destruction has “forced” his true face from hiding—as the fierce visage we saw briefly in NEW GODS #3 has returned. “YOU’RE A MAD, TORMENTED ANIMAL, ORION!!” ‘I WOULD be, Slig!! I would be! –if it were not for the MOTHER BOX!! Mother Box PROTECTS me! She CALMS and RESTRUCTURES and keeps me PART of NEW GENESIS!!” “HAHAHA!! ORION IS HIS VERY OWN MONSTER!! HAHAHA!!!” Then, as Orion once more uses Mother Box to restore his “beautiful face”... “That revelation shall DIE with you, Slig! --for between beings of POWER like ourselves—there can only be ONE survivor!!!”


Slig tries to attack once more, but to no avail. “Once STIRRED in the fires of HATE and INNER FEAR, there’s no stopping the arrival of DEATH!!!” Orion lifts Slig above his head, then hurls him into the depths of the caves below. “It’s DONE! Slig has PAID the price he exacted from others! It’s time to see what the HANDS of his kin have MOLDED!!” In anyone else’s book, one might expect Slig to have survived this episode. NOT HERE. This is WAR, and Slig, who was responsible for the death of Seagrin before last issue began, now shares his fate.


Orion mounts his harness, and, underwater, goes in search of the still-unseen monster. The next page reveals all. “And at that moment, the THING spawned by the powers of the Deep Six hurls itself into view, like an ARMORED MOUNTAIN given angry life!! --easier to revive the DREADED myths which have TERRIFIED sea-men since ages lost!!!” In one collosal full-page shot, we see it. And boy, is this thing UGLY! Like a huge magenta-colored sperm whale, only with HORNS—lots of them—and a stone-like battering ram somehow protruding forward from under its mouth. YEESH!


This issue’s reprint is a Manhunter story, “SCAVENGER HUNT”, from ADVENTURE COMICS #74 (May’42). And all the way in the back, where you might almost miss it, is another Young Gods Of Supertown spotlight, “INTRODUCING FASTBAK!" It seems the Forever People aren’t the only young residents of the satellite city, as we meet “Fastbak”, whose obsession is using flying shoes to zip around town thru the air at high speeds and cause a lot of consternation among others. As one puts it, “GROWING UP is more of a trial to the ELDERS than the young!” Pursued by uniformed “Monitors” (clearly the police force of New Genesis), he’s soon joined by others of his age, each using their own outlandish flying vehicle to race about town. Its like a “beach party” movie has crossed paths with a science-fiction/fantasy film. However, before any real harm is committed, Fastbak suddenly finds himself drawn against his will back down to the ground, where he’s quickly rushed into his duty as a lectern speaking on a podium. I guess even in New Genesis, they have Sunday services!


The big change this issue is the arrival of Mike Royer on both inks and lettering. A lot has been made about Vince Colletta’s work being rushed, making too many changes to Kirby’s art and sometimes leaving out details. Having re-read so many of these Kirby-Colletta books recently, what I see is more like some of Colletta’s best work ever—particularly on JIMMY OLSEN. But I’ve also noticed what few have ever mentioned—the glaringly obvious fact that Vince had SEVERAL different people helping him on these books, some of them with noticeably different styles to his. The quality has also varied greatly, sometimes from page to page. From here on, ONE person did the inks. And by all accounts, Royer’s main focus was to be as “faithful” to Kirby’s pencils as possible. After decades of inkers who took it for granted that their job included bringing their own style to inks, this must have been a SHOCK to many longtime Kirby fans. Apart from a couple issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA inked by Dan Adkins, this may be the first time Kirby fans got to see what Kirby’s art REALLY looked like, without it being heavily filtered thru someone else’s style.


I’ll be honest... it’s a mixed batch. Some pages are STUNNING—but some are downright UGLY. In particular, the pages with “Terrible Turpin” look almost amateurish compared to just about anything I’ve seen over the course of this epic, so far. Some faces, and even moreso, hands, look so crude, it’s hard to believe any professional inker would have left them that way. And certain panels seem severely lacking in “depth”, everything, foreground, middleground, background, looking like it’s all on one level. But overall, most of the book looks very good, and I’m willing to give Royer the benefit of the doubt, considering this was his FIRST time inking a Kirby story. Still, some of the linework is so inconsistent, if I didn’t KNOW with some certainty it was all Royer’s work, I’d almost swear HE was using assistants, as Colletta had been. Incidentally, Colletta did ink the back-up story, and he continued to do most JIMMY OLSEN issues, so he wasn’t gone entirely.
(7-12-2011)

You're right; I omitted the post-Manhunter material. Here we go:

Lettercol: After an Evanier/Sherman editorial introducing new inker Royer, Dennis Tyler writes in to complain that Black Racer hogged the spotlight in New Gods #3. He also wonders why the photo collage on the cover anachronistically contained a Ford Model-T. The editor chalks this up to Kirby's dated clips file. Letters also arrive daily to the tune of, "Dear Mr. Kirby, how can I become a comic book artist?"

Back-Up feature: profh0011 already summarized the Fastbak intro story above. It starts off with a strong "rambunctious youths upsetting the status quo" theme before switching at the last minute to "the purpose of youth is to serve the needs of thelr elders."  It's more a concert than a church service; Fastback is compelled by "The Force" to sing for Highfather Izaya.

The monsters were part of editorial dictates. The "mystery" titles were the ones selling and DC pushed everyone to do more horror-tinged comics. Mister Miracle, once it finished dealing with Apokolips, was turned almost entirely over to it.

Not saying it was a bad idea; just the reason for the abrupt shift in things.