Wow, no wonder you haven't had time to update - sounds like you have a lot on your plate!

You are doing the top three things that cause stress all at the same time.  Good luck , my friend.

It looks like it will be a long time before I have the time to finish the series in depth. But I'm sitting here waiting for a solicitor to email, so have a few hours. (We just bought a house, and get married next week, so it's hard to concentrate on my regular work.) So here are the top ten reasons why I think Captain Victory is Kirby at his best: a misunderstood masterpiece, a crowning glory to his life's work, etc, etc.

Now with pictures! I didn't want to do that before, because the in depth analysis covered every frame. So that would mean copying the entire series. But I don't feel guilty about showing just a few frames here and there. OK, let's go!

Reason 10: this completes his fifty year story.

It is my belief that Kirby's work forms a single story: the history and future of mankind. Captain America led to Thor, Thor led to the New Gods, and the New Gods ends with Captain Victory (what a perfect name!). Here is where we finally learn Captain Victory's life story. Any of this sound familiar?

And here is where we learn of his father. Seen that before anywhere?

Reason 8: the familiar and best

Although this is packed with new ideas, it has enough references to other part of the Kirbyverse that it feels familiar and wonderful. Here for example is the distortion zone between our reality and sub space:

To anybody who loves the Fantastic Four this is so familiar! And anybody who remembers FF 51 will recall that what we later called "the negative zone" was in fact merely a part of subspace (here called hyperspace: same thing). I mentioned earlier how the Insektons bursting out of the street reminds me of the cover to FF 1, and minor characters like the Goozlebobber and Mr Mind share similarities with Mr Fantastic and the Supreme Intelligence. Of course, these are not the Marvel characters. Marvel characters always stay the same (more or less). Kirby's new characters are different. But Kirby's characters change constantly: five years is a very long time in the Kirbyverse, as it is in real life. It is easy to imagine how a Fantastic Four character in 1965 could evolve into a Captain Victory character by 1984.

Reason 6: the layers

With most comics, what you see is what you get. But with Captain Victory there are always new layers to uncover. On the surface Captain Victory is like Judge Dredd: more machine than man, with no life outside his work. He seems always cold, sometimes brutal, sometimes a jerk.


But Kirby provides a supporting cast to bring out the nuance that we might miss. First we have Klavus. While not technically human, Klavus shares familiar goals and fears and reactions, so we can easily relate to him. We can see ourselves in his shows, dealing with this frustratingly distant captain. Klavus shows us the surface CV.

Next we have Tarin. Tarin is more heroic, and his arguments with CV show us that CV is not what he seems. In the climax to the insekton battle for example, Tarin is clearly the better choice for operating the final weapon. And in any other story we would expect the argument to end with Tarin doing the job (and dying heroically). But we clearly see that CV does not always choose the best thing for his role. In fact he wants to die, even though it means risking the mission.

Finally we have Mister Mind, the telepath. If we haven't worked it out by issue 6, he states it plainly: this is bad acting.

Captain Victory is not a bully, he is not a jerk, he does not live for his job, he does not want this. he is a man in turmoil. This becomes clearer and clearer toward the end. We can then go back over CV's earlier actions and see the interpersonal conflicts in a new light.

I think the layers are why CV did not sell well. At first it seems like a one dimensional story. But by the second arc it is anything but. I think the second arc is much more enjoyable than the first. But the first was necessary,as a build up. In that regard it reminds me of The History of Mr Polly by H. G. Wells. When I read it at school I hated it at first. Mr Polly begins as an uninteresting and not likeable character, and the reader has t slog through chapter after chapter... until he begins to realise that Mr Polly is a lot more interesting than he seems. Captain Victory is the same.

Reason 4: the noble deaths

when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaborated, one of the hallmarks of Stan Lee's writing (according to a article in the Comics Journal, if I recall), was the tear jerking noble death. See Franklin Richards, the unnamed scientist in" This Man This Monster", the Gremlin, etc. When people argue about what influence Kirby had on the plots, those parts are all Stan. I agree. Because I think Kirby did deaths much better.

The typical noble death is either a red shirt death or a sham. Either we get some nobody character to die for us, or the hero dies but comes back. I loved these at first, but the more they happen the more they bother me. How can a hero be a hero if it's the other guys who always pay the price? And if the hero does die for good, doesn't that mean the bad guys won? And since when is death ever noble? There is nothing noble about seeing a loved one suffer, their children abandoned. But I think Kirby's approach is more powerful and more inspiring.

Kirby's attitude to death is that it is not a good thing: he fought in the war and that hammers any "noble death" idea out of you. He has said in interviews that his characters do not die. Or rather that he does not believe death is permanent because we live on through our children. This is how he handles death in Captain Victory, and I think it's beautiful. When CV's mentor dies he lives on through Captain Victory.



CV is allowed fifty clones. But he is burning though them as quickly as possible, which brings up the counterpoint to the noble death: CV is not happy with his life, so why would he want it to continue? 

When CV's lover died it was powerful because it is half way between the noble death and CV's unwanted life: she should have lived on through his love, but she cannot. He is one of the gods: his life is duty. She cannot share that and so (if we see her as an individual - more on this later) her ideas and hopes die with her. CV never wanted the life that was forced on him, and is not free to be the carefree person he wants to be, so must let her go though he does not want to. It's powerful stuff.


I put this high up the list because Kirby is often accused of not having human relationships and emotion in his stories. I disagree. Kirby's characters have such strong passions that they must keep them barely bottled up les they overflow and destroy them. Kirby is like Jane Austen in that regard: such powerful feelings are expressed with just a word or a look. But unlike Austen he does not go for the easy ending. Captain Victory does not get his old sweetheart back at the end, and she does not get him: she stays dead. Captain Victory has to deal with it, and deal with it he does (next!)

First off, a pre-congratulations for next week, Chris! Second, a post-congratulations on the move and house!!

I've been paused in my reading of this series because I didn't want to get too far ahead of your reviews, but now I think I'll finish up so that I can fully take in your reasons and evidence here. I don't always agree with your arguments, but I always--absolutely always--find them meticulous and fascinating. Thanks so much for finding time to do this today!