omac

They say that the 60s ended when the Manson family killed a couple of celebrities. They say a lot of things that aren’t true. Certainly, the moment in history was one of horror and brutality that would come to define a lot of what was to follow. But the 60s were long dead by the time the Manson family entered 10500 Cielo Drive. One could more sensibly argue that the 60’s ended in May of 1968, when the youth movement of France was brutally slaughtered by the police, ending the young generation. You could also argue that it ended in 1969, but not with Manson’s family killing Sharon Tate, but with Ronald Regan ordering troops to open fire upon hippies at a public park. Or perhaps it died with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

The New Gods experiment was, in many ways, an attempt by Jack Kirby to keep the dream of the 60s alive and well into the 70s. That the core of this dream came in the form of The Forever People, the first of Kirby’s series to get canceled, speaks to how many people had faith in the dream. OMAC, in many regards, is Kirby reckoning with the 70s. And it’s a bleak picture.

But it’s not bleak enough. [Read more…] about The World That’s Coming: OMAC by Jack Kirby