FOREVER PEOPLE #1 March 1971

In the 1980s and 1990s I visited many different comic shops around the UK. In those pre-internet days you found out about these places either by word of mouth or most usually from the ads in comics themselves or mags like STARBURST or DOCTOR WHO MONTHLY. As well as the original Forbidden Planet in London's Denmark Street (the first comic shop I ever went to), I also went to the capital's Fantasy Inn, Gosh!, Comic Showcase and various others whose names I can't remember, though I was too young to ever visit the legendary Dark They Were And Golden Eyed. Then in Manchester there was Odyssey 7, Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham and Plymouth's Purple Haze. 

It was at a comic shop situated on Park Street, Bristol that I finally completed my collection of 2000AD, purchasing the rarely seen Prog 2 (with the first appearance of JUDGE DREDD) for what is nowadays the measly sum of £40, from the display board above the counter, moments after sighting it. 

That Bristol shop was Forever People, sadly now closed and currently a swish looking restaurant. But at the time that I completed my 2000AD collection there, I had no understanding of the origin of the shop's name whatsoever. But the name Forever People sounded cool and quite exciting, so that even before I went there, when I'd see adverts for it I felt it would be something special--

At some point I must have become aware that FOREVER PEOPLE was in fact the name of an American comic series, and then at some later date that this series was the artist most usually associated with Marvel superheroes, Jack Kirby. But since my interest in comics has been predominantly non-superhero and (in terms of US comics) almost exclusively post-1986, it's not a series I have ever sought out and read. Then, last year, in the locked-down summer of 2020, I embarked, more by chance than anything else, on a first-time journey through Bronze Age comics, starting with titles originally released in 1970. And having begun to familiarise myself with various titles there came a point where I glanced on-line to see what new titles lay ahead of me if I endeavoured to try reading the comics roughly as they were released, only 50 years after the date. So as well as CONAN THE BARBARIAN, HOWARD THE DUCK and of course the original SWAMP THING, I also noticed with no little excitement and curiosity FOREVER PEOPLE #1, dated March 1971.

Now that I have actually read FOREVER PEOPLE #1, I am still processing exactly what it is Kirby is doing with it. I have no prior knowledge of the rest of the series nor of how events will turn out in the other Fourth World titles, I will find out 'in real time', taking them in month by month as original readers would have done in the early 70s. All I know really is that this epic series only lasted a few years before Kirby resumed duties at Marvel. What happened in the meantime I am about to find out.

From the opening image in FOREVER PEOPLE #1, Kirby is letting his readers know that this comic is going to be different to most others-- 

Firstly, the Boom Tube is redolent of the concentric circles of Hell or Inferno in Dante's DIVINE COMEDY--

Or possibly his Heaven or Paradiso--

And the captions, themselves unusually written in verse, suggest that the reader is about to see and hear things most people don't-- 'You may hear sounds heard by few men'-- in other words that they are about to become privy to some kind of arcane knowledge, just like Eve did when she took the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge--

It should come as no surprise then that Kirby laces his story with ideas inspired by other writers-- At one point Clark Kent opines that he is "a stranger in a strange land". Kirby is subversively namechecking the controversial counterculture novel by Robert A. Heinlein that tells of a man with super powers, born on Mars and coming to Earth where he re-shapes humanity's understanding of religion, sex and various other taboo subjects. Although well-known at the time, it's unlikely this book would have been familiar to younger members of the comic's readership. And look how the artist on this edition uses an image that immediately suggests Adam and Eve--

According to the novel, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, the concept of life on Mars is summed up by the phrase "Thou art God", an apt description of the omnipotent Superman, whose birth name Kal-El approximates to the Hebrew phrase "Voice of God". 

But that phrase, "Thou art God" can also be related to the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the concept of 'being-in-itself', or the desire to be God. Sartre suggested that humans were characterised by a desire -or yearning- to control their own lives and destinies (being-in-itself)-- something that was only achievable, he felt, ultimately by having a God-like power over everything and everyone else-- in other words an impossibility. Despite being an atheist, Sartre thought and wrote quite a lot about God. This lovely example also utilises the concentric circles idea quite effectively don't you think?

This idea of people yearning or searching for something they will never get is referenced immediately the Forever People appear, the opening caption on the double page spread reading "They're from a place that men have sought, but never found"--

To Sartre, this "yearning" was an act of "bad faith", as inauthentic as nostalgia. Fittingly, when Superman embarks upon his mission to find Supertown, Kirby teases that its discovery could offer the sort of peace he calls 'the end of all yearning'--

So, perhaps we can understand Superman's yearning to reach Supertown in much the same way as this description of the main character Von Aschenbach's yearning in Thomas Mann's DEATH IN VENICE-- "His yearning for new and faraway places, his desire for freedom, relief and oblivion was, as he admitted to himself, an urge to flee- an urge to get away from his work, from the everyday site of a cold, rigid, and passionate servitude".  

Or maybe Kirby was familiar with T.S. Eliot's poetry, for instance LITTLE GIDDING which contains this idea, using the word 'exploring' rather than 'yearning'--

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

And in these lines Eliot was surely referencing Dante's DIVINE COMEDY in which the narrator's circular journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise ultimately results in him returning to where he started where, feeling God's Love, he declares--

And I who was approaching now the end
  of all man's yearning, strained with all
  the force in me to raise my burning
  longing high.

Of course, another possible interpretation of the phrase "the end of all yearning" is death itself-- in DEATH IN VENICE, mentioned above, this is indeed what awaits the protagonist, who slips away alone on the beach, a pathetic figure destroyed by his yearning for what he will never attain, his hair-dye running down his face. 

The presence of the threat of death in FOREVER PEOPLE #1 is certainly never far away-- as soon as the Forever People emerge from the Boom Tube on their Super-Cycle they almost collide catastrophically with another vehicle--

Then, having managed to avoid the collision, the car's driver loses control and hurtles over a cliff--

As well as all the fights and death-attempts, there is also symbolic death-- when Serifan makes contact with the missing member of their team, Beautiful Dreamer, he falls into a trance, the colorist rendering him a cold, deathly pale blue like a corpse--

And then there's Beautiful Dreamer herself, also seen lying lifelessly like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, a prisoner of Darkseid--

Whether she is alive or not we do not know immediately, an appropriate state for a character whose name is shared with the popular song (recorded by the likes of Roy Orbison, Bing Crosby and Jerry Lee Lewis), BEAUTIFUL DREAMER. The lyrics tell of a woman lying lifelessly whose lover urges her repeatedly to wake up, all the while suggesting the possibility that she might be dead. And the idea that she has entered the state best described as "the end of all yearning" is also captured by lines such as--

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

But the other possibility suggested for Superman in the caption box is that his search will not result in 'the end of all yearning', but that he might instead be 'in pursuit of what could be a will-o'-the wisp'. In folklore this is a fairy spirit associated with the Devil, which appears at night in woods or marshes, leading unsuspecting travellers astray. Its appearance in this illustration certainly bears a similarity to the appearance of Kirby's Boom Tube--

Kirby might also have been consciously referencing Milton's PARADISE LOST in which Satan himself masquerades as a Will-o'-the-wisp, "hovering and blazing with delusive light" in the Garden of Eden as he seductively lures Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. And here once again is a depiction of Eve, and look how her foot is causing concentric circles to appear on the surface of the water, almost like someone about to step into the unknown, much like Superman in the image following--

As the issue ends, Superman at last gets the chance to find out what lies at the end of the Boom Tube-- will it be 'the end of all yearning' or is he simply being lured by a malevolent 'will-o'-the-wisp'? 

We do not find out, because Superman resists the yearning to satisfy his own desires. Instead he remains a heroic figure, more resolute perhaps than most of us. He realises his mission is still to help others, that continuing through the Boom Tube might well be "deserting mankind when it needs me most".

And as he stares into the Boom Tube from outside it again, he 'catches a glimpse of distant, gleaming towers" that fade 'like a dream'-- Again it cannot be ignored that the spectacle and description here are in keeping with Milton's view of Heaven in PARADISE LOST, described as having "opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire"

Or equally he might be glimpsing the city of Pandaemonium, according to Milton, at the heart of Hell--

It seems appropriate that at the start of this epic comic story of New Gods and beings from the 'Dark Side', Kirby should imbed subtle references to some of literature's most famous and influential works about Heaven and Hell, long before writers like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman et al strip-mined them for their purposes. 

So, returning to my feelings a few months ago when I saw on-line that FOREVER PEOPLE was going to soon be on my 'reading list' as part of my own journey through the Bronze Age-- I must admit that the excitement and curiosity I felt were not because this was a Jack Kirby comic, nor that it represented one strand of what I soon learnt was his Fourth World series, nor indeed because thr cover-blurb on the recent collected edition calls it an "astonishing" and "groundbreaking" series in which "Jack Kirby reinvented the superhero genre". No, the reason I was so excited and curious was simply because seeing the title, FOREVER PEOPLE, transported me back to that day in Bristol in the early 90s when the completist in me could at last smile smugly in the knowledge that I'd finally amassed every single issue, annual, special and spin-off of my favourite comic, at that time approximately 1000 comicbooks in total. Because at least for just that moment I felt "the end of all yearning"-- that feeling that is felt by any collector, surely, when they know their collection is complete. Until, that is, you start on another collection, the 'gleaming towers' too beautiful to resist, the will-o'-the-wisp too bright and exciting to ignore.

My thoughts on the first part of the SUPERMAN story arc KRYPTONITE NEVERMORE and on Kirby's JIMMY OLSEN #136 can be found by clicking the titles below--

 

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