ALARMING COMICS #1

December 17, 2020 1:16 AM

Jack Kirby’s The Fourth Dimension is a Many-Splattered Thing (via Linkmachinego). More on Kirby’s trips to the fourth dimension.
posted by adrianhon (27 comments total)

Adrian via-ing Darren on the front page of Mefi is giving me a much needed nostalgic vibe this morning. Great link too.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

There's a strong "Kirby does Ditko" vibe about the effects there. Any one know more about the background to the strip?
posted by Paul Slade at 5:15 AM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

I want to know more about the backstory of Eddie and Max owning a little hat store, together. That seems adorable to me.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:20 AM on December 17, 2020 [13 favorites]

Yeah, I don't like that Martian girl coming between Eddie and Max.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:02 AM on December 17, 2020 [4 favorites]

"The Fourth Dimension is heteronormative!" is not a sentence I expected to say today.
posted by dannyboybell at 7:12 AM on December 17, 2020 [7 favorites]

Eh, reasonably sure this is just the story they told the immigration authorities. "My wife is a Martian hat thief who fell in love with me after stealing my photograph" is the oldest trick in the book.

Eddie and Max are FINE, guys.
posted by kyrademon at 7:56 AM on December 17, 2020 [9 favorites]

Yeah, I don't like that Martian girl coming between Eddie and Max.

That dame looks like trouble. Of the fourth dimensional kind, if you know what I mean.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:06 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’ve always found it interesting that the term “the fourth dimension” had such a cultural impact. To start with, I assume that the fourth dimension in our universe is just time. We live in a four dimensional universe. I think some people got confused with this term and thought it was some other spatial dimension, a dimension where other things could lurk. And this became a seed to fuel a lot of quasi-scientific / spiritual thought. C. Howard Hinton wrote a book The Fourth Dimension in 1904 that was influential in math, science fiction, and religion. The fourth dimension became a home for all those entities who we knew existed, but we couldn’t see. Hinton tried to diagram the fourth dimension, he invented the tesseract, and maybe this stuff contributed to Kirby’s depiction of the fourth dimension. Anyway, adding one more dimension opened up a lot of new stuff and ways of looking at things.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:03 AM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

There's also the Dali painting of the crucifixion on the tesseract. The style here seems like a mid point between Dali and the Bugs Bunny cartoon where they end up in... Well, what looks like Kirby's 4th dimension. (What was that cartoon called...)
posted by kaibutsu at 9:12 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Was it the Porky cartoons with Yoyo Dodo? Porky in Wackyland/Dough for the Do-Do
posted by jason_steakums at 9:34 AM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

Oh yeah, looks like Dough for the Dodo is the one I was remembering; I'm not sure I've seen the black and white original before. Thanks!
posted by kaibutsu at 9:53 AM on December 17, 2020

Porky in Wackyland/Dough for the Do-Do

Here they are on YouTube - the original B&W cartoon alongside its colour remake.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:54 AM on December 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

C. Howard Hinton wrote a book The Fourth Dimension in 1904 that was influential in math, science fiction, and religion.

Preceded by a couple decades by Edwin Abbott's Flatland, whose denizens had to cope with extra-dimensional beings of their own.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:59 AM on December 17, 2020 [5 favorites]

There was a MeFi post a couple of years ago discussing the history of the concept of other/higher dimensions and the occult, which also touches on Hinton's work and Abbott's Flatland.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:29 AM on December 17, 2020

I missed that earlier post, but Hinton is quoted in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, and his father James appears in the book. Moore has also played around with the idea of higher-dimensional creatures intersecting with our own; 1963 has a chapter with a higher-dimensional villain.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:34 AM on December 17, 2020 [4 favorites]

Moore has also played around with the idea of higher-dimensional creatures intersecting with our own

It's also a fundamental part of his novel Jerusalem.
posted by Beverley Westwood at 10:52 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Reading that Kirby book put me in mind of a story by Moebius (Jean Giraud) called 'Shoreleave on Pharagonesia.' There was a particular panel I was thinking of (guy turns into a pile of ribbons) but I can't seem to find it. Here's one that at least gives you an idea.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 11:32 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

. C. Howard Hinton wrote a book The Fourth Dimension in 1904 that was influential in math, science fiction, and religion.

Speculation about the fourth dimension was also a huge influence in early modernist art, especially Cubism and Futurism. I’d love to know if that was on Kirby’s mind at all when he drew this story.
posted by newmoistness at 12:47 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I vaguely remember reading a comic when I was very young where Dr. Strange went wandering through some other-dimensional place like Kirby's fourth dimension. Pretty sure Steve Ditko was the artist on that one, but couldn't tell you when I saw it.
And since Flatland came up, I enjoyed reading "The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World" By A.K. Dewdney some years ago, where we are the extra-dimensional beings intersecting a 2-D world. (Surprise! it's available on Google Books... who'd a thunk it?)

Modern me appreciates Eddie and Max, and agrees "that dame looks like trouble..."
posted by coppertop at 1:37 PM on December 17, 2020

Ah, an excellent blast of Kirby.

I'm especially glad that the first link included big enough images.
posted by doctornemo at 1:38 PM on December 17, 2020

So how did Eddie become 3-dimensional again between pages 3 and 4 (01_14 and 01_15)? It almost feels like there's a page missing but the page numbers are clearly hand drawn in the lower corners.
posted by indexy at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2020

Didn't Clive Barker also write a book set in a 2D world? Weaveworld? Is that the book I'm thinking of?
posted by Paul Slade at 1:58 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Also, this reminds me of The Universe Between by Alan E. Nourse.
posted by indexy at 2:07 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’ve always found it interesting that the term “the fourth dimension” had such a cultural impact. To start with, I assume that the fourth dimension in our universe is just time. We live in a four dimensional universe. I think some people got confused with this term and thought it was some other spatial dimension, a dimension where other things could lurk.

Time is "a" fourth dimension. You could just as well call time the second dimension and x, y, or z the fourth.

So if there are any other spatial dimensions, there's no reason you couldn't call one of them "the fourth dimension" even if you didn't mean it as an abbreviation for "the fourth spatial dimension" which is how those people were using it, whether they realized it or not.
posted by straight at 2:49 PM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

As a couple of other commenters have noted above, this really seems much more Ditko than Kirby to me. I would not have guessed it was Kirby's work just from looking at it.
posted by tdismukes at 3:49 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Speculation about the fourth dimension was also a huge influence in early modernist art

Yes, I read a book once that explained everything about Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare... in terms of n-dimensional geometry, though it was over thirty years ago and I was very stoned at the time. It was a proper academic book, and I wonder how it would read more recently and sober.
posted by Grangousier at 12:28 AM on December 18, 2020

Did the burglar also steal Kirby's energy dots?
posted by doctornemo at 4:01 PM on December 18, 2020