Blogging Is Hard/ Jack Kirby & Bob Dylan

So, for the three of you who read this blog; i apologize for not posting for five months. My bad. Here's some thoughts that I stole from myself; in that I uttered them during an long chat session with one of my frequent chat collaborators. However, it's content and I'm throwing it in here.

So i'm on a 4th world kick right now. been reading some of the stuff and I have 3 of the 4 omnibuses. I'm talking Jack kirby: new gods, apokolips, new genesis, orion, highfather, you know them well. Here's the thing; Kirby's 4th world stories are very uneven, yet he created something so spectacular, so truly mythical in their nature that it's no wonder that generations of DC writers loved his toybox. These writers were so aware of how epic and archetypal these characters were that in deference to Kirby and future writers they never were able to or were unwilling to advance the storyline unless it was an Elseword type of deal (Kingdom Come: Orion overthrowing Darkseid and replacing him as Lord of Apokolips). Of course that has now changed with Jim Starlin killing pretty much every New God in "Death of The New Gods" mini-series. If any writer should do this, it's Starlin. Starlin created Thanos who is very much the Darkseid of the Marvel Universe, but arguably far more successful in his universe.

Kirby created these timeless characters that were extraordinary even though the stories they were featured in were so forgettable. Kirby was like Dylan. Dylan wrote songs that sounded better when others performed them. This particular dylan-kirby metaphor only applies to his New Gods stuff, of course. Also, not to push the metaphor too hard, there are plenty of Dylan songs where his voice is quite appealing; I can't really say the same for Kirby's writing to that extent.