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This volume collects everything Jack Kirby drew during his first two tenures freelancing for DC Comics (1941-49 and 1956-59) that doesn't fit into the other Jack Kirby omnibus volumes DC has released (e.g., The Sandman, The Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandos); it's basically an assortment of random issues of Real Fact Comics, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected, My Greatest Adventure, and All-Star Western, plus Green Arrow features from Adventure Comics and World's Finest Comics.

This isn't Kirby at his best; most of the time he's writing to someone else's scripts, or at least someone else's demands. I mean he's still a great illustrator, and I love seeing his image of our supposed rocket-age future, but giving him a two-page feature in Real Fact Comics (don't worry, there are no real facts to be found) is a waste of his talents. The Sandman, from the same era, is a much better use of Kirby's abilities; there's little trace of his trademark dynamism here.

Kirby is good at drawing bizarre monsters, so the stories from 1950s "weird" titles are more suited to him, though they're still not great. There's an odd subset of these stories that present "rational" explanations for seemingly irrational events. But I'm actually found it more plausible that a criminal found a magic lantern during a jailbreak that the idea that an undercover cop planted it there and arranged to have the criminal's three wishes granted on command in a convoluted plot to discover the location of money the criminal had stolen. I guess "impossible" trumps "highly unlikely" in the probability stakes. This must have been a thing, though, because there are a lot of stories with these kinds of endings (I'm not really telepathic, the metal plate in my skull is just picking up your dictaphone from miles away; I'm not really immortal, I just wanted to obtain your money; I'm not really a yogi, I just wanted to sell my crystal ball to another fake yogi and so commissioned a women to pretend to be a Cleopatra waxwork and kiss you; and so on).

This is actually the third time I've read the Green Arrow tales collected here, since DC previously reprinted them in both a thin volume of Kirby's Green Arrow work, and (in black and white) in Showcase Presents The Green Arrow. I have to say, they don't hold up to repeated rereading. Some I still didn't remember reading, though! And man, does Oliver Queen have a loose definition of "arrow" and an ability to make incredibly un-aerodyamic objects fly regardless.

Still, there are times the King of Comics gets to strut his stuff: the cool visuals of "The Two-Dimensional Man" were probably my favorite thing in the whole book. Give Kirby something totally bizarre to draw, and he will always knock it out of the park.

In 1956, Kirby returned to DC for his second tour of duty. His first ran from 1941-49 with an interlude for World War II and his third in the 1970s with the introduction of his amazing Fourth World titles. After the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown in Showcase #6, Kirby began accepting assignments in various DC titles such as Tales of the Unexpected, House of Secrets, House of Mysteries, My Greatest Adventure, and All-Star Western. Eventually alongside the monthly Challengers title, he drew the regular adventures of Green Arrow in Adventure Comics and World's Finest. This period ended in 1958 after an argument with DC editor [a:Jack Schiff|1011732|Jack Schiff|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] about an outside project. Kirby went freelance and eventually ended up at Marvel and a cultural-changing team up with [a:Stan Lee|10303|Stan Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206594565p2/10303.jpg]. The Jack Kirby Omnibus Volume One collects all of his second DC tour works minus the Challengers. The DC editorial brain trust at the time prescribed to the understated [a:Alex Toth|62990|Alex Toth|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] school of illustration with no splash pages and no images exploding beyond the panel borders. DC titles were stocked with inferior Toth imitators. In an attempt to please his new bosses, Kirby's work during this epoch lack some of the sizzle and pizazz of his later works, but many of the concepts and designs are classic Kirby. Bizzaro characters, alien worlds, giant stone men, eerie talismans and other assorted strangers litter these unusual tales. With over 300 pages of rarely seen Kirby -- even lesser Kirby is better than most others -- The Jack Kirby Omnibus Volume One Featuring Green Arrow deserves a place in any fine graphic novels collection. ( )