Jack Kirby Has Done It Again!

Hard to believe it's been almost two decades since Jack Kirby left this plane to go create in a more expansive one. Yet, all these years later, The King is still impacting our wide world of comics.

I watched Smallville for the entire ten years it was on the WB (I mean CW) network. Some seasons were better than others and some were worse. This final year has been building to a crescendo to the drumbeat of "The Darkness is coming." Since last fall we have been introduced to Glorious Godfrey and Desaad and a quite excellent Granny Goodness (and we even found out that Lex Luthor's sister Tess (yes, you did read that correctly) was raised in Granny's orphanage). All year these minions were paving the way for the arrival of the dark lord Darkseid himself.

(When Darkseid did finally appear in the last couple of episodes, he was a shadowy and towering perfection of computer-generated imagery. And did you see that fireball of Apokolips filling the sky over Metropolis in the finale? Very nice effects.)

Not only are all these characters the brainchildren of the one and only Jack Kirby, the impending threat of Darkseid was the impetus for Clark Kent to once and for all don the Superman costume in the Smallville series finale. I thought it was a little bit cool when writer Jeph Loeb had the climax of the first season of NBC's Heroes take place in "Kirby Plaza," but here we have the writers of Smallville attributing the entire costumed mythos of Superman to a confrontation with Jack Kirby's Darkseid. I'll never stop saying it: HOORAY FOR JACK KIRBY!!!

(And maybe you'd like a closer look at that Superman splash page from Jimmy Olsen #143 that I've proudly owned for almost 30 years? Just click here.)