So, correct me if I'm wrong (heck, you can even correct me if I'm right), but my understanding is Jack was unhappy with at least two versions of this (not necessarily these two) and then went back to his amaz'n Martin Dyes version from a few years earlier and viola, instant grail
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For my money, this NEW GODS 1 cover and Kirby's FOREVER PEOPLE 1 covers are two of the best covers in comics history. Truly breathtaking, in both composition and coloring. Kirby did the next to last imaage you posted back in 1967-1968, creating and keeping many concept characters to himself and not sharing them with Marvel, until he left to DC and used them in his Fourth World series.
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated with the "Superman-National Comics" logo on some of the paste-up pencils you posted here, I've seen them before. DC eliminated that logo in Oct 1970, right before Kirby's first DC story in JIMMY OLSEN 133.
I've seen paste-up pencils of this NEW GODS 1 cover with this logo, and (I think in BACK ISSUE magazine) in a paste-up as a SHOWCASE issue with this same logo. I don't know if DC actually tentatively planned these in 1970, or whether fans like us just photoshopped "what if" possibilities like this just for fun long after the fact.
Maybe John Morrow in the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR could answer this, or already has. Or maybe Mark Evanier who was with Kirby all the time in that period.
In any case, beautiful, and fun to look at, and imagine what might have been, if not published the way we know them.