Mister Miracle #4
Mister Miracle #4 (cover-dated October 1971, on sale July 15, 1971) is one of the most consequential single issues in Jack Kirby's Fourth World saga, delivering the debut of Big Barda — a warrior New God from Apokolips who would become one of Kirby's most enduring and beloved DC creations. Barda was a genuinely unprecedented figure in superhero comics: a woman depicted as physically massive and formidably strong in her own right, whose ferocity and independence set her apart from virtually every superheroine on stands at the time. The Scott Free–Barda dynamic also gave the Fourth World its emotional center, a relationship drawn directly from Kirby's own marriage, which gave the series a warmth and intimacy rare in Bronze Age action comics. Barda's arrival in this issue completed the book's core cast and set the series on the narrative trajectory that would carry it through its run and far beyond into DC's larger mythology.
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Written, pencilled, and edited entirely by Jack Kirby, with inks by Vince Colletta (his final credited inking contribution to the series), the issue was published under DC's National Periodical Publications imprint as a bi-monthly title. It was also the first issue of the series to appear in DC's new 25-cent 'bigger and better' format, which added page count that Kirby filled with Golden Age reprint material — a Boy Commandos story from Detective Comics #82 and a Jean Lafitte historical piece from Real Fact Comics #1 — since, unlike other DC editors, Kirby had no pre-existing Fourth World archive to draw from. According to Kirby's then-assistant Mark Evanier, Barda's physical design was inspired by singer Lainie Kazan's October 1970 Playboy pictorial, while her personality was consciously modelled on Kirby's own wife, Roz, with Scott Free standing in for Kirby himself.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Big Barda, created by Jack Kirby; she debuts as a fellow Apokoliptian warrior and love interest of Scott Free (Mister Miracle), arriving on Earth to aid his escape from Doctor Bedlam's trap.
- Story title: 'The Closing Jaws of Death!' — written, pencilled, and edited by Jack Kirby, inked by Vince Colletta, lettered by John Costanza; Colletta's involvement here represents his final inking work on the series.
- Issue published on-sale date: July 15, 1971; cover date: October 1971; published by National Periodical Publications (DC Comics) as a bi-monthly title.
- First issue of the Mister Miracle series to appear in DC's new expanded 25-cent format, adding roughly fifteen pages of backup content to the lead story.
- Backup features include a Boy Commandos reprint from Detective Comics #82 (scripted/pencilled by Kirby and Joe Simon) and a historical Jean Lafitte strip reprinted from Real Fact Comics #1 — both by Kirby, filling the new page count with the only available archival Kirby material at DC.
- The Boy Commandos airplane in the backup story is named 'Rosalind K.,' noted by Kirby himself as a tribute to his wife Roz Kirby — an affectionate echo of the issue's main event, Big Barda's character being personality-modelled on Roz.
- Doctor Bedlam appears as the issue's central antagonist; his ability to transfer his disembodied consciousness between identical android bodies made him one of Kirby's more conceptually distinctive Apokolips villains.
- The lead story has been reprinted in: Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle (1998 DC series), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 2 (2007 and 2011 editions), Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby (2017 DC collection), and The Fourth World Omnibus by Jack Kirby (2017/2018 DC collection), as well as in French in Aventures Fiction #48 (Arédit-Artima, 1975).
Cast · 10 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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The Boy Commandos fail in their mission to blow up a railway tunnel, but the plane that was carrying them manages to destroy the tunnel without any crew aboard.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).