Developed & written by: Roy Thomas
Penciled & inked by: Walter Simonson
Lettered by: John Workman
Colored by: Gregory Wright
Reviewed by: Will Dubbeld
Because of course they did. It was the 1990s and every-damn-one started a pop-up publishing arm in the hopes of becoming the next Image.
Consisting largely of licensed properties and movie/t.v. adaptations, Topps Comics churned out a deluge of middling books during the speculator heyday. Unfortunately, all the issues of Xena in the world couldn’t save Topps, and the division folded in 1998.
Early on, however, Topps joined up with Jack Kirby.
Kind of...
Kirby had decades worth of sketches, character concepts, unrealized stories, and preliminary ideas in his portfolio and worked out a licensing agreement with Topps Comics. Topps got a bucketful of Kirby material to develop into comics, and Jack (hopefully) got a big, fat paycheck. He even contributed some art and script, though not as much as I’d’ve liked.
Christened ‘The Kirbyverse’, a handful of titles blazed into the scene and were launched with Jack Kirby’s Secret City Saga #0.
Scripted by Roy Thomas, Secret City Saga sets the Kirbyverse stage, but I’d like a brief aside before we dig in to the meat and potatoes.
I find it incredibly amusing and slightly ironic seeing Roy Thomas’ name on this book. After Jack Kirby’s divorce from Marvel Comics he went on to pen books for DC, amongst them his incredible Fourth World books. In his Mister Miracle comic Jack would viciously lampoon Roy Thomas as a character named Houseroy, a simpering sycophant in the service of Funky Flashman who was, in turn, a satirical stab at Stan Lee.
20 years later, Roy Thomas helms a Jack Kirby project...
Anyway, Secret City Saga #0 opens with, “Gazra. Greatest city of the Ninth Men, in an age fifteen millennia before our own.”
Sounds like some Kirby...
Gazra is presented as a civilization in perfect harmony and advanced enough to have tamed the environment not through technology but via organic potential.
Unfortunately, they’re screwed.
A worldwide cataclysmic event called the Darkstorm is raining destruction upon Gazra and doom is on the horizon.
Taking a page from Jor-el’s playbook, Gazra’s scientists safely secret away their best and brightest. Rather than rocket them away to another planet in the face of catastrophe, Gazra opts for suspended animation.
Herein we are introduced to some characters who would go on to star in their very own Kirbyverse titles. Introduced in some amazingly hamfisted writing...
The lead from the Bombast comic:
“The hurler called Bombast there, for instance-“
Nightglider was another Kirbyverse title:
“And that Night Glider, whatever her name is-“
And my personal favorite, the garishly costumed Captain Keltan, who will star in Captain Glory:
“But whatever befalls, we know you will cover yourself in GLORY, as always.”
Emphasis theirs.
I mean, c’mon Roy...
The story closes with a series of time lapse panels depicting the site of Gazra through the centuries following the Darkstorm.
Turns out it’s where Chicago is located.
I’m not intimately familiar with Roy Thomas’ writing style, but he’s either doing his best to ape Jack’s dialogue or is an anachronism. Overly purple writing and borderline hokey scripting abound and, though it fell right into place in the ‘60s and ‘70s, seems unwieldy.
As an homage to the exposition-laden days of yore, however, it nails that feeling.
I almost don’t need to mention the art, but I damn sure will anyway...
Walter Simonson is a maestro and a damn national treasure.
He and Jack are so stylistically bombastic and similar, if ever there was a spiritual successor to Jack Kirby, it’s Walt.
From composition to the use of big-ass Kirby Devices, Simonson paints a picture absolutely representative of a book with King’s name in the title.
Granted he was working from Kirby designs, but I’ve always thought Walt Simonson and Jack Kirby shared some artistic DNA. In addition, I’ve never seen Simonson suffer from poor inking or colors, and there’s no exception here. Bright colors at the hands of Gregory Wright ice the cake on Simonson’s self-inked pencils.
Three cheers to the art department and a, “You really tried, Houseroy, maybe next time!”, for Thomas.
The backup story, “A Memo to: Mephistopheles”, basically pitches the Satan’s Six comic. The premise is sound, revolving around a middle-management demon named Odious Kamodius who has released 6 souls from Hell and sent them to Earth in order to wreak havoc.
Satan’s Six is comprised of:
- Kuga, a tribal hunter
- Dezira, a Babylonian temple dancer (probably because they couldn’t get away with Babylonian temple prostitute...)
- Brian Bluedragon, an oafish rejected knight/D&D character
- Doctor Mordius, a Jeckyll & Hyde mad scientist
- Hard Luck Harrigan, a 1930s petty criminal
- Frightful, the demon assigned to keep them in line
The execution falls a little flat. Scripted by Tony Isabella and penciled by John Cleary, Satan’s Six stands and falls on weak pratfall humor and overly cartoonish art, capturing none of the Kirby flavor. I’ve got the continuation miniseries (unread) and hopefully the comic gestated into something greater than this introduction.
The best part seems to be the origin of the idea, coming from the 1970s when the occult was en vogue (see Ghost Rider, The Demon, Son of Satan, etc. etc.)
Hail to The King and all, but Topps Comics Kirbyverse had an uphill battle. I feel these concepts may have been gold in the ‘60s and ‘70s but couldn’t find their demographic in the Wild West of 1990s comicdom.
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