Thread by @HeerJeet

1. So, god help us all, I have a few thoughts on the Synder Cut, Jack Kirby, Richard Nixon, Billy Graham, anti-Semitism, L. Brent Bozell, crusader LARPing, the motherbox, and techno-Freudianism.

2. I have mixed feelings about this whole Synder Cut business in part because it involves the popularization of what I think is the greatest achievement of American commercial comic books, Jack Kirby's truncated Fourth World epic. But alas in depoliticized & domesticated form.

3. The Fourth World was a long but aborted storyline, extending for more than 1,500 pages in four interlocking series from 1970 to 1973 (with a brief epilogue in 1984). Although cancelled mid-stream, it still stands as Kirby's stunning allegory for the upheavals of 1960s/1970s.

4. The influence of Kirby's Fourth World is pervasive in the superhero genre in the move from crime-fighting stories to cosmic epics. But it also extends to Start Wars & the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Thanos was Marvel's response to 4th world villain Darkseid).

5. But as pervasive as shadow cast by Kirby's Fourth World has been, something has been lost in the popularization: the specific political context that the work was Kirby's grappling with how the hopes of 1960s were besieged by reactionary & atavistic forces.

6. Stuff like "the anti-life equation" & "the motherbox" in the Justice League are just generic fantasy McGuffins (like the Infinity Stone in the MCU). But in context they referenced the politics of reactionary fear that Kirby thought thwarted human flourishing.

8. Darkseid, the villain pursues his goal of domination in alliance with very specific social types: Glorious Godfrey (a televangelist who stirs up hatred of minorities and sexual liberals) and Billion Dollar Bates, a plutocratic lech.

9. According to Mark Evanier, who during the early 1970s was Kirby's assistant, creation of Darkseid & Glorious Godfrey was influenced by Nixon and Billy Graham, who Kirby believed were allied anti-Semites. (Subsequent White House tapes verified this fear).

10. Glorious Godfrey helms a vigilante group called the Justifiers who dress in crusader garb and target an unnamed minority group (in scenes that call to mind Kristallnacht) as well as libraries with "decadent" books.

11. Godfrey's Justifiers are also suicide bombers. I think in creating a group of medieval garbed religious fanatics Kirby could have been influenced by the "Sons of Thunder" -- a group created by L. Brent Bozell which attacked abortion clinics.

12. Arrayed against Darkseid & his alliance of plutocracy with religious fanaticism are various manifestations of Oedipal rebellion, in the form of the Forever People (hippies), Mister Miracle (the artist who escapes) & Orion (the rebellious son).

13. The thematics of Oedipal rebellion (Darkseid's main opponent is his son Orion) brings Freud into conversation & the Fourth World is fairly explicitly Freudian, with a science fiction twist ("The Battle of the ID" where the ID is a literal monster).

14. The Mother Box is very much part of the Freudian thematics Kirby was exploring. In the movie, Mother Boxes are just easter eggs (like the Infinity Stone). In Kirby's narrative they are attempt to imagine a technological response to Freudian family drama.

15. A Mother Box, in Kirby's narrative, is a handheld AI that offers psychological, spiritual and medical relief: a super-smart iPhone: A substitute mom in a world where biological reality has been erased (the high tech world of both New Gods & Darkseid).

16. In other words, the Mother Box is also suggestive distillation of social critique. That's all lost in Synder's Justice League. I'm not sure how any of this could be adapted short of a multi-year miniseries.

17. All of which is to say I really hope people read Kirby's Fourth World books (available in multiple reprint iterations) which have a richness that has yet to be fully mined.