Sunday, May 29, 2011

Kirby Genesis #0

It's great to see Jack Kirby getting more attention, since he's arguably one of the greatest creators to work in the comics field.

He was a creative genius, serving as a fountain of ideas during the decades he worked in comics.

And with Kirby Genesis, he's back in the spotlight in a series that promises to bring a large number of his characters back to life.

As much as I admire Kirby and love his work, I have to say that not every character he created was gold - in fact, some of them were downright silly.

More than one comics company has tried to bottle that Kirby magic by building a series or issue around one of his ideas. The mistake that's been made many times in the past is the assumption that the idea is the only important thing - so they've turned lesser talents loose on those comics.

The result, sadly, was a line of comics that were mostly duds.

But this time around they're using the "A" team - they have Kurt Busiek writing and Alex Ross supervising the art along with Jackson Herbert. Judging by this preview issue, the results are going to be very impressive.

This issue sets up the reason why so many strange and alien characters are coming to Earth - and it's going to be interesting to see how the creative team brings it all together.

With Kirby at the heart of the book, they're halfway home. Here's hoping the creative team can hold up their end and bring us a comic that's worthy of The King.

Grade: B+

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4 comments:

Dwayne said...

I still can't believe DC let Morrison kill off the New Gods. If a writer can't come up with their own ideas, why is it OK for them to kill off another creator's characters in the name of creativity?

I know no one remains dead in comics, but still, the new "Mr. Miracle" in the Seven Soldiers was a joke.

Chuck said...

Dwayne, I thought DC just shifted all the New Gods-related characters to one of the 52 alternate dimensions - but it is surprising that they haven't done anything with them since then, and that they have barely used the "52 Earths" concept at all. Makes you think they didn't really have a plan in mind, doesn't it?

Dwayne said...

Did they do that? That whole Death of the New Gods series had them hunted down and killed off, I thought.

Chuck said...

The whole "Final Crisis" storyline was something of a mess - I think Orion was killed two or three different ways in that "Death of the New Gods" series and in the "Final Crisis" series, but Morrison explained it away with a neat throwaway line about "gods being beyond normal visions of both life and death" (or words to that effect). In the wrap-up to the last Crisis there was a panel indicating that the New Gods removed themselves from our universe and were located in one of the other 52 universes. I think.