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Starlin thinks is a human face in check, nothing about Starlin's style seems to have changed in nearly forty years. Elongated limbs poised akimbo at all times, spines twenty-five vertebrae tall, and "perspective" that caused my eyes actual pain attempting to resolve. For a famous, popular comics artist who's been in the business this long to still produce work this amateurish is disappointing.

Along the way, we're treated to such beautiful moments of characterization as Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion finding the Black Racer dead(who is death itself; oh, Starlin, you ironic scamp!) and being visibly delighted with the scoop. I was going to say that Starlin's Jimmy acts like the most insensitive SOB on Earth, but then I reminded myself that he's a reporter. Another New God is killed, one you've never heard of, nor I, mostly so the other New Gods can notice. And how would this first issue be complete without a woman-in-the-refrigerator. Or a woman near the refrigerator, anyway; Big Barda, killed in her kitchen. I hope this already misogynistic moment, one of a line in the Permanent Crisis starting with the disgusting rape and murder of Sue Digny in IDENTITY CRISIS(and continuing with the graphic impalement, right between the cleavage, of Phantom Lady, and many others), was not somehow meant ironically, given this is the death of one of the strongest, toughest, and most interesting female characters Kirby gave them. One wonders: why not really surprises us and instead kill Scott Free, whom Grant Morrison already replaced in SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY? Oh, who cares...

At the moment, DC is loath to call a character "Superboy" because of an ongoing copyright reversion dispute with the Siegel estate, which is why they killed off the one they had, and why he's not called that on SMALLVILLE, despite their lack of shyness about using many other much cheesier DC superheroes by name, and in many cases, costume. Perhaps a similar situation is occurring behind the scenes with the Kirby estate, especially given that the New Gods were created under Kirby as editor of his own work, before the Work-For-Hire laws of the late seventies. This would explain their cashing-in with the lavish(and beautiful) Fourth World Omnibus volumes(which every serious comics fan should own) at the same time as releasing this comic. And given what DC is now, maybe it's better his creations are spared what's to come afterward.

But don't you think Kirby's creations deserve a send-off better than a countdown ticked off by characters' hearts being ripped out? Certainly it's as good a metaphor as any for what Dan Didio's herocidal reign has done to anything likeable about DC. But I'd be surprised if Starlin himself can see the analogy.

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