FOREVER PEOPLE (1971-1972)

 

Though a Jack Kirby junkie since age 8, I never read the full run of THE FOREVER PEOPLE, a portion of his interconnected "Fourth World" epic for DC Comics during the early 1970's, as I don't remember it ever turning up on the comics racks at any of the local convenience stores that carried comics. (Until 1981 I bought my comics from a limited number of convenience stores, and those pretty much stocked only the flagship Marvel and DC fare, along with Archie and a handful of smaller titles that came and went.) I was only ever able to get my hands on its final two issues, which kind of made no sense unless one had been on board since the beginning, and finding the back issues was a relatively pricey endeavor even back then, as it was not long after Kirby's departure from his industry-changing years in collaboration with Stan Lee, so his loyalists snapped up whatever they could get and would not let any of it go.

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge Kirby's DC stuff did not get reprinted until sometime in the '90's, and then only in black & white editions that split his individual Fourth World material into two volumes each. Of that stuff there are those who enshrined his operatic NEW GODS, but I was (and still am) all about MISTER MIRACLE, as it was a colorful, fast-paced master class in how to do an exciting kids' comics series, and all that it had on its mind was being fun and entertaining it readers. From what I'd read of FOREVER PEOPLE prior to and after snagging those two issues when I was around nine, it seemed to me like Kirby's attempt at crafting a would-be-psychedelic super-team of "space hippies" for the Flower Power generation, and in thumbing through the just-released color collected edition of the entire 11-issue run I see that my initial assessment still holds. It's very much a visual feast, but the stories and characters just don't hook me, and the first issue's needless inclusion of Superman with those bland-looking re-drawn Clark Kent/Superman heads whose art style could not possibly clash more with Kirby's far-out "LSD without LSD" aesthetic if it tried. Also, it seems like the series was just an excuse to publish something where Jack could try out whatever crazy concepts crossed his fertile mind on a given day. The plot, such as it is, really does not go anywhere, and the ill-defined main cast are colorful but ultimately have little or no personality. There's a reason why we have seldom seen these characters since their original run. If a master and greative cornucopia like Jack Kirby could not really get this crew to ignite, it's doubtful that anyone could, no matter how gifted a storyteller. It's a pretty gewgaw but that's about all.

I picked up my copy solely for the art and colors and for the sake of '70's DC completism. It's a nice edition that was wisely issued as a trade paperback instead of a hardcover archives edition (which would have cost at least fifty bucks), so it may be worth a peruse for the curious, but I recommend this pretty much solely for Kirby diehards.