Comic Book Review – The Forever People by Jack Kirby

The Forever People by Jack Kirby (2020)
Reprints The Forever People #1-11
Written by Jack Kirby
Art by Jack Kirby, Vince Colletta, and Mike Royer

The Forever People is the most forgotten of Kirby’s Fourth World creations. The New Gods is an epic Biblical-style chronicle of the beings that make up the worlds of New Genesis & Apokalips. Mister Miracle (which we’ll be reviewing next week) is tied into these things but ultimately the most superhero-style book. The Forever People is strange, full of ideas that don’t entirely develop, as well as moments where Kirby is forced to shoehorn in a character he didn’t want to as the title dwindled down to cancellation. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. It is a very slept-on part of the larger mythos that, while certainly not perfect, offers a different experience than the other two books, something that feels more like a Marvel Comics book sneaking into the DC Universe.

Young Gods from New Genesis emerge from a Boom Tube onto Earth. They are Big Bear, Vykin the Black, Mark Moonrider, and Serifan, and the group is searching for their fifth member, Beautiful Dreamer. Dreamer has been kidnapped by Darkseid and gets rescued in the first issue, thanks to some help from Superman. The Forever People find Earth to their liking and establish it as their home with classic fish-out-of-water antics. Along the way, they discover many of Darkseid’s agents operating on Earth and manipulating humans. Desaad, Darkseid’s sick & twisted torturer, runs a deadly amusement park where the kids get trapped. Glorious Godfrey uses his powers of persuasion to manipulate people into becoming his hate-filled Justifiers.

There is one aspect to the Forever People that I don’t feel goes anywhere in this iteration but did get explored as other creators picked up Kirby’s loose threads. The five teens can merge their consciousnesses and become Infinity Man or something like that. I don’t think the comic makes it clear if Infinity Man is them or if they are trading places with him until the final issue, which develops the concept more. For a massive chunk of its eleven-issue run, Infinity Man never gets brought up, which indicates to me it was very much an experimental idea of Kirby’s that maybe wasn’t quite ready for print. 

I got the sense the creator had a lot of love for these characters, and in interviews, he stated that the Forever People represented all the good he saw coming out of young people during the 1960s. Unlike many of his peers, Kirby wasn’t jaded about the peace & love movement. Seeing and hearing him makes this seem like a contradiction, a cigar-chomping tough-as-nails short king; Kirby didn’t convey the attitude of someone who would appreciate the peaceniks. Yet he did, and very passionately so. 

There have been questions over the years if Kirby partook in using psychedelics, but statements he made on the fact clearly point to “no.” I think he was a person whose mind, due to circumstances & openness to the world, didn’t need those drugs to illuminate itself. He could see worlds beyond our simple imaginations, but thankfully, he was a fantastic storyteller and could transfer what he saw to paper for us to see & read. In all these books, he makes it very clear that humans are full of flaws and contradictions. The opposing forces of New Genesis & Apokalips serve as metaphors for our duality, capable of immense love or tremendous horror.

The Forever People is probably the closest Kirby gets to straight-up referencing psychedelics, mainly through the character of Serifan. Serifan is the youngest member and the most sensitive. While he has limited psychic powers, his primary ability comes from using “cosmic cartridges,” small capsules that can produce incredible power. There is one that can reverse gravity or generate intense heat, and they are used strategically throughout the series. When the Forever People are setting up home in an apartment building, Serifan lets Donnie, a neighbor kid, hold one of the cosmic cartridges. The boy is shown seeing the infinite expanse of space in his mind’s eye and talking about how while he holds it, he can see the connections between everything. Having used psilocybin & LSD, I could tell immediately what this moment was referencing. 

Issues 9 & 10 are the weakest of the bunch, and Kirby would agree. He was forced by DC Comics to put the character of Deadman into a story. Deadman was a creation of Carmine Infantino and Arnold Drake, a circus acrobat who died and then returned as a ghostly superhero able to possess the bodies of the living. His aesthetic and tone do not work with Kirby, so these are strange and clearly feel like something he was obligated to write.

The book ends on a cliffhanger that Kirby never really addresses. The Forever People pop up briefly in his concluding story of Mister Miracle but don’t play a role other than as background. Later writers would pick up the concept and add to the character’s development, but I don’t think any of them could really capture what Kirby was doing and the period it happened in. While The Forever People doesn’t get as much love as the other books, I highly recommend it, especially for the Glorious Godfrey story. That one feels like it has powerful parallels to the conservative demagogues of today who preach their own version of Anti-Life.