Godland

If I'm going to write about Godland then I have no choice other than to start with Jack Kirby. The creators make no bones about the fact that Godland is inspired by the great man. They even write it using Stan and Jack's "Marvel method" with Joe Casey plotting each issue, Tom Scioli drawing it and Casey returning to add the dialogue after the art is in place.

Godland is more than a homage to Jack Kirby though. It's a reimagining of Jack Kirby. In Godland superheroes aren't the genre, Kirby is. The result is a comic which is different to anything else out there.

It's cosmic, it's druggy, it's set in the present day but smells of the sixties. The silver age meets the bronze age meets the here and now. It takes all of the funky stuff from the halcyon days of The Fantastic Four and mixes it up with the quasi-religious, cosmic madness of Kirby's 1970's classic The Eternals.

Given all that, Godland could easily have been a mess, but it's sharp, funny and tightly plotted. The main character Adam Archer cuts a dash as the classically angst riddled hero and is ably supported by a cast of tripped out characters like Basil Cronus (The Red Skull meets William Burroughs) and Maxim (an alien who could well be the bastard child of Lockjaw and an Eternal).

I can see that critics might accuse it of being too knowing, a pastiche of Kirby and Lee's classic comics rather than a tribute, but I think the affection that Casey and Scioli have for those bygone days shines through in every issue. It has a strange postmodern fanboy feel about it for sure, but it's obvious that the creators of Godland are too in awe of their influences to send them up.

In short, Godland is action packed, looks amazing and makes me laugh: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! <<< like that.

Published by Image, the first two trades are available for £6.50 each on Amazon. Buy them now!

Basil Cronus gets loaded on a helmetful of alien plasma