DOCTOR FATE, No. 28 (Messner-Loebs / Giarrano; DC, 1991)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-) read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box09): Finally, something from the latest wave of comics procurement, the hybrid "grab fascinating things at random antique malls / make highly calculated offers on ebay for specific issues and complete series" wave, this issue being part of the former.

While the Doctor Fate mythology was, is, and remains somewhat murky (to my fantasy-incompetent brain), I've held a nigh-lifelong fascination with the character – a fascination no doubt initiated via the wave-two Super Powers figure (which should, at some point, become part of the latter hybrid procurment wave) and I do love what little I gleamed here: that the 1991 incarnation was Inza Nelson (I think I've had the issue where she assumes the mantle since it came out, one of those 10-year-old Rite-Aid grabs in the first phase of the great procurement), while Kent Nelson, the usual Doctor, has remained young "through becoming Dr Fate and now possessing a new body through The Lords of Order... and that (his) old body is now possessed by a particularly right-wing Lord of Order named Shat-Ru" (love his old body's opening line, "Humankind is a filthy mass of grubs, battening on lust and deceit"); it doesn't hurt that Messner-Loeb's writing makes me want to read the next issue which I don't have and, further, makes me want to collect the entire run (written by one of my favorite writers, J.M. DeMatteis) – which seems to be the way as I've been making my way through these late-eighties DC series which I was too young to appreciate or read when they first came 'round, the O'Neil / Cowan THE QUESTION series being at the peak of that list.

Short version: very cool stuff that makes me wish that Doctor Fate – and Pierce Brosnan – had gotten a better big-budget film debut than a Doctor-Strange-meets-Professor-X knockoff (at least DC and Marvel were honest about it in the 1996 Amalgam Comics combo when the characters merged during DC VS MARVEL into Doctor Strangefate) in a shitty vanity project. Such a great character yet to be used to their full potential – though this series is a solid start.

spewflow(state)

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Stumbled into a relationship with vomit drafting that seems to work: I use Flowstate with a five minute timer, and just let things come, spewing whatever’s in my brain all over the screen (handy that FS starts deleting everything after five seconds of inactivity). Once the five minutes are up, I copy and paste what I've “written” into Obsidian, and then sift through the carnage to find words or phrases that repeat and work / build from there. While the results are more often than not little more than gibberish, I’m occasionally able to use the repeating words, phrases, and rhythms to generate the bit, the fragment that I was looking for.

complete (for some reason)

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Such is my love of the character and penchant for self-inflicted punishment that not only do I now have all issues of the entire 1964 “let’s make The Shadow a blonde no wait black hair is better superhero” Archie series, the last few issues of which were written by Jerry Siegel, but I intend to read them. And maybe write about them.

🔗 “Why was ‘The Fourth World’ called ‘The Fourth World?’”

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Better late than never, but I only just stumbled across Mark Evanier’s amazing News From ME blog by way of his “Jack F.A.Q” about Jack Kirby and, as The Fourth World is one of my Kirby obsessions, had to share this bit about where the name originated:

I can give you about eleven answers to this and if you'd asked Jack eight times, you'd have gotten eight more.  Len Wein, who worked at DC at the time, says that it was a cover blurb intended to only appear on the covers of the fourth issues.  It referred to the fact that every issue of a Kirby comic was like a world unto itself; ergo, each #4 was a "Fourth World."  Folks then adopted it to refer to the whole epic that flowed betwixt Jack's books.  Meanwhile, Steve Sherman — who worked with me as Jack's assistant at the time —recalls Jack coming up with it as a variation on the term, "The Third World," as used in a socio-economic context.  It was Jack's way of transcending that term, as Jack transcended everything.

That may be true but I don't recall that.  Apparently, Jack also told a few folks that he considered the material his fourth universe in comics.  The Marvel books would have been "Kirby's Third World" and I've never quite gotten clear what the first two were. There are other answers, even less credible.  Personally, I buy none of them.  I don't think there was any logic behind it, at least when Jack first used it.  I think it was just a term that popped into his head and he liked the sound of it.  Later on, he came up with several different retroactive explanations.


The whole blog is an amazing resource and has been duly added to the RSS reader for daily brainfood.