Born on The Fourth World: Part XVI
Mister Miracle #3, August 1971
On Earth, a Boom Tube from Apokolips opens in an empty room. Several silver mannequin-like creatures appear. These ‘animates’ carry office furniture with them, which they arrange around the room in precise positions. Finally, one animate is seated behind the desk and the others back away, warning each other that ‘the ‘mind-force' begins to take possession of it!’
Energy crackles around the head of the seated animate. Its blank face slowly fills with heavy, sinister-looking features. ‘Study the face!’ reads the caption, ‘The mind-force peers back and it is evil!’ This is Doctor Bedlam, another of Darkseid’s lieutenants. He orders the other animates to return to Apokolips. They leave. The Boom Tube fades away. Doctor Bedlam picks up the phone to give Scott Free a call...
On a splash page, with the chapter title; The Paranoid Pill, Mister Miracle is rehearsing another escape. He is bolted into a steel and wooden A-frame, with a colossal block of granite suspended above his head. The phone is ringing. Frustrated, Scott asks Oberon to answer it.
Surprisingly, Oberon says, “Are you daft, Scott?” - Do Americans normally say ‘daft’? People do say a lot of unusual things in Jack Kirby dialogue, I suppose. I digress.
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The granite block falls. Mister Miracle leaps free, as the wooden A-frame is shattered into a thousand splinters. Oberon answers the phone. The voice on the other end asks to speak to Scott. Oberon passes the phone to Mister Miracle. “That voice,” says Scott. “I’d know it anywhere. It’s like the sound of rats digging beneath the floor! State your terms of battle, Doctor Bedlam!”
Scott agrees to the doctor’s terms and replaces the receiver. “Another visitor from this mysterious hometown of yours, Scott?” says Oberon. Scott explains that, if he was not carrying his mother box, then they would both be at Doctor Bedlam’s mercy. “This character is some sort of super-hypnotist!” says Oberon. “He attacks the mind!”
Mister Miracle sits down, cross-legged on the floor and instructs Oberon to join him. “You can’t visualize the kind of enemy we face,” says Scott, “unless you truly experience the effects of his power!” The pair take hold of mother box with both hands. The lights begin to dim.
“Mother box is drawing us into a large formless dimension,” says Scott. Oberon is freaking out. Terrifying faces rear up out of the darkness. Oberon screams. Scott tells him to resist. A monstrous, hallucinogenic assault on the senses hits the pair in wave upon wave. They resist the tearing claws of shrieking creatures, freezing temperatures and flame from the burning pits of Apokolips!
‘After an eternity, it passes! And in the fading darkness maniacal laughter fills the chambers of their souls!’ Scott checks on Oberon. His diminutive friend is exhausted, but alive. Mister Miracle states that this was caused by Doctor Bedlam ‘reaching out to them’ and that now he must face the evil psychic alone!
Using his aero-discs, the World’s Greatest Escape Artist soars to Chandler Towers and the office of his adversary. Doctor Bedlam is waiting for him. He commands Mister Miracle to surrender or die in his death trap. Scott tells him to do his worst. Bedlam holds out a green pill. Mister Miracle reminds him that the ‘code of combat’ forbids tranquilising an opponent. Doctor Bedlam says, “The pill is not for you! It is merely the spark that activates the trap!”
Subscribe nowThe office is at the top of Chandler Towers. To defeat Bedlam, Mister Miracle must descend through the tower and leave via the lobby on the ground floor. Bedlam then drops the pill into the ventilation system, sending clouds of paranoia-inducing, green vapour throughout the offices, driving the thousands of human office workers insane!
Doctor Bedlam laughs maniacally, angering Mister Miracle, who boots the giggling villain to the ground. Instantly, the animate is vacated. A silver mannequin lays crumpled on the floor. Doctor Bedlam has gone. Throughout Chandler Towers, the office workers are going insane. They scream, they fight, they smash things to pieces. Armed police fire guns randomly.
Mister Miracle uses his aero-discs to swoop through the corridors, desperately trying not to engage the murderously paranoid people. Bullets fly, furniture is flung and eventually, Scott is overcome by sheer force of numbers. Unable to fight the mindless mob, Mister Miracle is bundled into a large trunk, which is locked, then chained shut.
The trunk is then dragged to the top of the forty fifth floor stairwell and thrown over the edge! “I’ve waited too long!” Scott thinks to himself, as the trunk hurtles towards the ground floor. “My chances of escaping this are ten past zero!”
Here is where we leave the World’s Greatest Escape Artist. The next chapter of his saga is called The Closing Jaws of Death.
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And here also ends the first gospel of the Fourth World. We have completed volume one of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus.
What have we learned?
In just nine months, from October 1970 to August 1971, Jack Kirby wrote and pencilled three issues of Mister Miracle, three issues of New Gods, three issues of Forever People and seven issues of Jimmy Olsen. That’s sixteen comics, written and drawn by one man (with Vince Colletta inking), averaging at roughly one and three-quarter comics, which is around thirty-eight and a half pages, every month!
With such staggering productivity, it is almost impossible believe that the Fourth World saga could be in any way coherent at all. Except that it is. It has the resonance of something primal. Kirby is channelling the unfiltered divine, straight onto the page, like a man possessed. If the dialogue, occasionally, feels as if characters are speaking in tongues, then that only adds to the sense of awe.
I am lucky to have been born of the Fourth World.
Next time, the Forever People enter the Kingdom of the Damned!
In the meantime, why not buy one of my books?
Faction Paradox: Weapons Grade Snake Oil
The Rise and Fall of Senor 105