New Gods #8

[iamrman]

Writer: Jack Kirby

Pencils: Jack Kirby

Inks: Mike Royer

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Kalibak is rampaging through Metropolis and Dan Turpin is determined to stop him on his own.

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Terrible Turpin isn’t taking any crap from these “Weirdies”.

Turpin used to fight the “Ratzis” with the Boy Commandos back in the day, so fighting monsters isn’t anything new.

Comments

[icon_uk]

Lightray: "We've just hit you with the combined energy output of an entire CITY!"

Kalibak: "'Tis but a flesh wound!"

Say what you will, Kirby could make a fight feel incredibly kinetic.

[dan_ingram]

I'm actually surprised that regular guys were the deciding factor in this fight.

[huntleyhaverstock]

Man, I love Dan Turpin. Rarely has a self-insert character been so delightful.

Really fascinating to see Kirby embracing the grotesque in this phase of his art. Some of those faces are hard to look at, but somehow in a really effective way.

[michael_ellis_day]

Just to be clear, "Terrible" Turpin was NOT intended as a self-insert character. Nor was he intended to be Brooklyn from the Boy Commandos as an adult. Both of these are later fan inventions but they were not at all what Kirby had in mind.

Kirby's idea for Turpin was that he had been an adult policeman in the 1930s who fought racketeers and mobsters like the ones seen in Kirby's black-and-white magazine sized comic In The Days Of The Mob. One of the criminals from that book shows up working for Darkseid in New Gods issue 4. Kirby hated mobsters and Turpin's presence here is to underscore that the evil of the mob and the evil of Apokolips are fundamentally the same thing.

(Kirby did do some self-insertion in the Fourth World when he got Orion together with Bekka, based on his own wife, who is the daughter of Himon, who in turn is based on his own father-in-law. Which makes Orion the real self-insert character...)

[iamrman]

Is it a fan invention if it was on the wiki?

EDIT: I have seen differing information on different wikis, so who even knows what is right.

[michael_ellis_day]

My apologies for a bad choice of words; "fan invention" was clearly the wrong phrase on my part, but both of these ideas came from subsequent writers adding their own twists to the character. Neither one was what Kirby himself intended and his input wasn't sought.

The Brooklyn thing was a retcon introduced in the late Eighties. I don't know whose idea it was but it dates from the time Byrne and Wolfman were writing the Superman comics.

The idea of Turpin as a stand-in for Kirby comes from Bruce Timm and was introduced in an episode of Superman The Animated Series from 1996. Even then Timm didn't think that's what the comics character was meant to be; it was just a way to add a tribute to Kirby himself after he died in an episode based around his characters.

[iamrman]

I was aware that the Brooklyn retcon was a later invention, but wasn't sure from where.

[michael_ellis_day]

I tend to quibble over details where the original Fourth World books are concerned, but I hope my quibbles don't come across as any criticism of you. I love these posts, and I'm a fan of your posts in general.

Call me sentimental but it feels good when stuff I remember from childhood gets a positive reaction on here. "Hey, old guy, that thing you remember being cool? It actually is cool!" Not every old favorite ages that well...

[iamrman]

I didn't take yoir comments at criticism. If anything, my reply probably came off as defensive so I must apologise if that was the interpretation.

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

I do believe a man can fly via machine gun!