Comic Info
Comic Name: The Forever People
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Jack Kirby
Artist: Jack Kirby
# of Issues: 11
Release Date: 2020
The Forever People #3
Reprints The Forever People (1) #1-11 (March 1971-March 1972). Big Bear, Beautiful Dreamer, Vykin the Black, Mark Moonrider, and Serifan are the coolest bunch of New Gods on the block. When the young gods leave New Genesis to rescue Beautiful Dreamer, they find themselves on the adventure of a lifetime. Guided by Mother Box, the Forever People are a thorn in Darkseid’s side and could be the only ones standing between him and the Anti-Life Equation.
Written and illustrated by Jack Kirby, The Forever People by Jack Kirby is a DC Comics superhero collection. The issues in the volume have been collected multiple times including Jack Kirby: The Fourth World Omnibus, but the volume does not contain the back-up story reprints from Forever People #4-9.
The Fourth World storylines are just strange. They are marketed as wild and weird, and as odd as the stories in Mister Miracle and New Gods are, The Forever People was another level of strange. The Forever People by Jack Kirby is a great collection to round out the Fourth World exploration.
The big aspect of The Forever People seemed to be that the Forever People are young and hippy-esque. Being published after “the Summer of Love”, the characters seem to be an old guy’s perception of what a hippy is. All of the Forever People are rather bland and one dimensional, and it is hard to get a read off of them regarding their personality…it is just a bunch of different people hanging together because they are a strange makeshift family.
The Forever People #6
The story for The Forever People also jumps all over and feels like it has less direction than some of the other Fourth World titles. The series is credited for really introducing Darkseid who first cameoed in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen and also introduced his lackeys DeSaad and Glorious Godfrey. The Forever People is best when it is more tied to Darkseid and Fourth World but it seems like Kirby must have seen the writing on the wall in his creation because he kept trying to go different directions near the end of the series including a few issues with a relaunched Deadman…the series literally ends with a bang that has the Forever People trapped on another world (and they didn’t appear again until post-Crisis).
Jack Kirby had vision and his vision wasn’t always the best but it was always unique and unusual. I admire that a writer who had been around a long time already in 1972 would try something like creating the Fourth World within the DC Universe (much like his attempt to create the Eternals within the Marvel Universe). It is often hard for something new to catch on like that, and Kirby did his best to try. The Fourth World might not have always worked out the best and reading it leaves you sometimes scratching your head, but it is worth seeking out. The Forever People did finally return with their own six issue mini-series in 1988.
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