Jack Kirby, Great Writer

The first of the new DC Universe titles has been released. Unfortunately, the 2011 Justice League #1 underwhelmed me. I'll write more about it later, but I doubt that any line of dialogue from it will still be in my head forty years from now.

On the other hand, I can cite for you lines written by Jack Kirby forty years ago that are still in my head.

In an early issue of The New Gods (it was almost certainly number seven, featuring "The Pact" (which, by the way, was my first encounter with the word "pact")), Izaya the Inheritor stood defiantly before the Source Wall and demanded "If I am Izaya the Inheritor, what is my inheritance?" First off I thought it was so cool that a chap had been going around with a nickname all along and never knew what it meant, and secondly I thought it was supercool that the answer "The Source" was written by the flaming hand on the Wall.

In a different early issue of the same comic (either number five or six, because those were the two issues featuring Slig and the rest of The Deep Six as villains), I read in awe as Slig mockingly taunted Orion with "Orion is his very own monster!"

And please don't make me tell again how Superman's uncharacteristically contemplative behavior in the last panel of Forever People number one cemented me as a comic book fan for life.

Jack Kirby is pretty much universally admired for his bold concepts and, of course, for his dynamic artwork. Well, I also admire Jack Kirby for his writing.