Bring on the Back Ups: Tales of the New Gods - Frank Miller

To many comic book fans Jack Kirby's New Gods series (February 1971 – October 1972) was the peak of his many artistic endeavours and is considered to be one of the most important comic book series of all time. However, from the few issues I managed to pick up at the time these stories really didn’t interest me, perhaps as an 10-11 year old its deeper concepts went over my head (I wasn’t the smartest kid) or maybe it was because I was just more interested in “traditional” superhero type comics. Rip Jaggers blog has just completed an excellent series of articles on Kirby’s classic series that are worth reading (if you haven’t already). For myself, my first real interest in the New Gods characters came many years later when Walt Simonson took on the adventures of Kirby’s brooding New Gods protagonist Orion in an excellent series that ran for 25 issues between 2000 and 2002. As good as the main story was (and it was ) there were several interesting back-up strips that appeared under the title “Tales of the New Gods” (a series that began in John Byrne's “Jack Kirby's Fourth World” comic in 1997-1998). Below is one of my favourites formthe Orion comic by Frank Miller:

Below the cover to "Orion" issue 3 where this tale is taken from.