Visionary Kirby: Comics and the Sacred Part 1

A symbolic study

Jack Kirby provided modern culture with New Gods. They came in the form of dime store drawings, pressed into pulp paper and sold for a nickel.

He did the work of an entire civilization, producing not one god, or one pantheon, but a multiplicity of myths, each containing sacred truths and transmitting the Eternal.

Though these have been horrifically perverted (as all myths are!), as far as his own work goes, they are legitimate.

Let’s have a look at some of Kirby’s most significant myths!

The Fantastic Four (Elements!)

Four challengers of the unknown are altered by cosmic rays! Changed from mere humans into beings with great power.

When we scratch the surface a bit here, we can see that the four powers in question are Elemental in nature.

The most obvious being Fire in the Human Torch.

This one requires no explanation.

Next we have Earth in the form of The Thing.

The Thing has rocky flesh, and uses brute strength, both Earthen characteristics.

Now it gets a bit more difficult, we have the airy shapeshifting of Reed Richards, and the watery invisibility of Sue Storm.

Crowley describes the Queen of Cups:

She is robed in, and veiled by, endless curves of light, and the sea upon which she is enthroned conveys the almost unbroken images of the image which she represents. The characteristics associated with this card are principally dreaminess, illusion and tranquillity. She is the perfect agent and patient, able to receive and transmit everything without herself being affected thereby. If ill-dignified, all these qualities are degraded. ~ Everything that passes through her is refracted and distorted.

This lack of definite characteristics, along with the veiled illusory form of the card gives us as good an image of Invisibility as we can get!

As for Reed Richards, he is airy, particularly like the Mercurial Gemini.

See how he flexes his limbs and has power over strange tools?

While these may seem like a bit of a stretch as one studies antique and occult literature, it becomes clear that there are truly very few super powers that lack precedent. Consider a brief list of Magick Powers listed in Crowley’s 777:

Though flight is not listed here, it is a known power of witches.

The Pantheon

In Kirby’s Avenger we find a mirror to the Greek and Roman pantheons.

Captain America is Apollo: moral and clear of vision.

Thor is Jupiter: this may seem tricky, as one would think Odin is Jupiter, but the Norse reverse the roles, Odin is Mercury. Both Thor and Jupiter and Gods of Thunder.

Iron Man is Mars: Not only the planetary ruler of elemental Iron, but Stark is a weapons dealer and war monger par excellence.

Ant-Man is Mercury: A changer of size, like Richards, he has a Mercurial ability.

The Wasp is Venus: Honestly I don’t know much about the Wasp, but she is similar to Ant-Man?

The Hulk is the Moon: Always phasing through physical states, full of misery and emotion.

The New Myth

In The Eternals, Jack Kirby presents us with perhaps his most fascinating Myth, a far more modern myth than his Elementals and Gods.

In the Eternals we are given a brilliant story which takes after Lovecraft and Richard Shaver.

We find that mankind is the product of aliens modifying our genes, and not only that, but we were created alongside two other species: Deviants and Eternals.

Not only this, but the ancient technologies of these aliens remains dormant in underground cities, populated by the demonic deviants, and utilized for good by the angelic Eternals.

In Richard Shaver’s mythos (which he truly experienced as real) we find mankind lives alongside a species of horrid subterraneans, the Deros (detrimental robots) which kidnap and torture human women and children.

And the Teros (integrative robots).

These inhuman species are the source of all angelic and demonic phenomena throughout human history.

One of Shaver’s Deros.

This piece is getting too long, so I’ll continue it soon! If you dig this check out my comic dedicated to Kirby: Black Sun