The Kirby heroes and villains arrive on earth, and the human geek named after Kirby watches from afar with his best friend, the knockout Bobbi. The Gods will have a direct affect on one of the two. This is a good setup for the series, but there’s a lot of narrative sleight of hand involving cut-to-scenes and timing to disguise what amounts to a simple plot. A group of space criminals possibly led to earth by the Pioneer space probe land.
Two different factions of law enforcement officials track the criminals. Captain Victory — he of the long blonde hair and the red and blue union suit — leads the federales. The body armored female bounty hunters Galaxy Green also pay a visit to the Big Blue Marble. The Jack Kirby Collector recently covered the “lost” story of Galaxy Green, and Captain Victory was once published by Pacific Comics. Unrelated events, or are they, such as Silver Star fighting in Afghanistan and the discovery of an underground complex fill the remainder of the superpowered section.
It really doesn’t appear that Kirby’s and Bobbi’s story will synchronize with the more interesting superheroes. The youths appear to be point of view characters representing the everyman opinion, but Busiek in the final pages fuse the two. Although I have no doubt that Busiek planned this fusion all along, with regard to the debut, the merger feels almost like an aside. Doubly so, given the nature of the metamorphosis.
The art team of James Herbert and Vinicius Andrade perform spectacularly. Kirby and Bobbi appear sufficiently realistic. Although Bobbi is essentially a brunette Mary Jane Watson, you could probably meet a girl like this at the local Starbucks.
The Kirby heroes bear distinctive larger than life appeal, and Andrade’s colors are notable, for a complimentary aesthetic, not always present in the original adventures of the characters. Judicious uses of Alex Ross painting further amp up the resonance of the Kirby champions. It’s as though Ross’ Kirby characters inhabit more dimensions than the humans.
Nick Hanover also reviewed Kirby Genesis #1. Read his thoughts, too!
Ray Tate’s first online work appeared in 1994 for Knotted. He has had a short story, “Spider Without a Web,” published in 1995 for the magazine evernight and earned a degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh. Since 1995, Ray self-published The Pick of the Brown Bag on various usenet groups. In the POBB, as it was affectionately known, Ray reviewed comic books, Doctor Who novels, movies and occasionally music. Circa 2000, he contributed his reviews to Silver Bullet Comic Books (later Comics Bulletin) and became its senior reviewer. Ray Tate would like to think that he’s young at heart. Of course, we all know better.