The New Gods #3
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe New Gods #3 (July 1971) is the first appearance of the Black Racer, Jack Kirby's cosmic avatar of death — a sky-skiing figure in black armor whose human vessel is Sgt. Willie Walker, a paralyzed Black Vietnam War veteran. The character's grounding in the Vietnam era gives the Fourth World saga an unusually direct social dimension rarely seen in superhero comics of the period, using the tragedy of a wounded serviceman as both emotional anchor and mythic doorway. The issue also deepens the Fourth World cosmology by having Metron re-route the Racer from New Genesis to Earth, interlocking the series' celestial and street-level storylines in a single 23-page story. Scholarly attention — including analysis in Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability — has since made this one of the most critically examined single issues in Kirby's DC run.
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Written, penciled, and edited by Jack Kirby, the issue was inked by Vince Colletta, who handled inking duties across Kirby's Fourth World titles during their early run. According to Kirby's longtime collaborator Mark Evanier, the seed of Willie Walker came from a real news story Kirby read about a young Black football player paralyzed in a car accident; Kirby changed the cause of paralysis to a combat wound to make the character more heroic and to speak to the ongoing Vietnam War. The cover features one of Kirby's photo-collage cityscape backgrounds, a visual technique he was employing throughout the Fourth World line at DC after departing Marvel in 1970.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of the Black Racer (created by Jack Kirby), DC Comics' cosmic avatar of death in the Fourth World mythology — cover-dated July 1971.
- The Black Racer's human host is Sgt. Willie Walker, a paraplegic Black Vietnam War veteran; Walker is chosen by the Source and merges with the Racer's armor to gain mobility.
- Story title: 'Death Is the Black Racer!' — a 23-page story written, penciled, and edited by Jack Kirby, inked by Vince Colletta.
- The plot is set in motion when Metron uses a Boom Tube to redirect the Black Racer from pursuing Lightray in the New Gods' realm to Earth, where it is drawn to a crime scene in a Metropolis ghetto.
- Orion and supporting human character Dave Lincoln appear in a parallel subplot, pursuing Intergang operatives — an Apokolips-backed street gang — in Metropolis.
- The Black Racer's design — armored, ski-mounted, cosmically powered — was noted by commentators as Kirby's conscious parallel to his own Silver Surfer concept from his Marvel years.
- The issue has been reprinted in Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 1 (DC, 2007) and the New Gods by Jack Kirby trade paperback (DC, 2018), making it continuously available in collected form.
- Academic analysis in Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability flagged the racial dynamics of the Lightray/Black Racer chase sequence as a notable example of 1970s superhero visual storytelling worth critical examination.
Cast · 6 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Aventures Fiction #48 (1975), Mighty Comic #107 (1975), Batman #817 (1976), New Gods #2 (1984), Jack Kirby's New Gods #[nn] (1998), New Gods #[nn] (1998), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus #1 (2007), Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus #1 (2011), DC Comics Graphic Novel Collection #84 (2016), The Fourth World Omnibus by Jack Kirby #[nn] (2018), New Gods by Jack Kirby #[nn] (2018)
Key issues in The New Gods
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