Monday, October 5, 2009

"My auxilary atomic structure can make me as a mountain! Resist that, you tongue-flapper!"

The eleventh and final issue of Forever People is kind of an abrupt finish, demonstrating that Kirby wasn't ready to give up on it yet, but he still manages to close things out pretty satisfactorily. It's a pretty showy issue, giving us scenes like today's Fourth World Panel:


I love the unique, exotic look of that alien planet, like nothing else I've seen from Kirby, all delicate filigree and beautifully weird foliage. Nice. And we finally find out why we haven't seen the Infinity Man for so long: he's been banished by Darkseid to some unreachable cosmic dimension, which gives Kirby the opportunity to showcase other cosmic imagery:


I love that stuff.

The main portion of the story, however, sees the Forever People fighting an unrelenting foe named Devilance the Pursuer, who is described as "the relentless personality who must fulfill what he was created for--at all costs!" He's like the Terminator, never giving up or stopping until he reaches his goal, which starts out as capturing them, but after they piss him off, he decides to go the extra mile. It makes for some pretty awesome fights, as the hippie kids fend him off in various ways, but never able to take care of him permanently until they finally find a way to summon the Infinity Man, who brings one hell of a bombastic fight:



Man, I love the way Kirby could make those explosions seem almost incomprehensibly powerful. It's one of his techniques that's more effective than anybody else could manage. And here's another one that I've noticed:


That sort of image pops up here and there, sometimes with policemen and their guns, or other characters and their weapons. It's another effective image, with the characters' expressing their will through their weapons to a point that it almost subsumes their personality. Very cool.

So that's it for this portion of the Fourth World. It might not have been the best of the series, but it certainly had its moments, and Kirby found a pretty good way to end it in a fairly satisfactory manner. I can only hope he does the same for New Gods.

Next: The end of New Gods! Don't let me down, Kirby!

1 comment:

  1. Totally unrelated, but I'm starting to feel like the Manhattan Guardian is like my favorite superhero of all time. The design is just awesome and the back story is pure crazy!

    ReplyDelete