8Man outraces a speeding train, from the original Japanese* opening to his animated series (November 7, 1963 - December 31, 1964).
(*When the series was imported to America in 1965 a new opening sequence was created by animator Ralph Bakshi. The animation does not match the original Japanese anime at all, and 8Man is able to fly, which he cannot do in either the original manga or anime. Additionally, 8Man battles a dinosaur that strongly resembles the one Superman fought in the Fleischer Studios short The Arctic Giant [1942].)
Godfrey scares me more than Darkseid in this story. His version of Anti-Life exists in our world. It isn't supervillainous army building. He says it's the cosmic hunting license, the right to point the finger or the gun. He's giving permission for people to give into their worst fears and turn against each other.
June/July 1971. A vital aspect of Jack Kirby's original Fourth World books is that they were, for all their strangeness, often urgently topical. There's no more forceful example than THE FOREVER PEOPLE #3, which introduces the sinister Glorious Godfrey, preacher of the church of Anti-Life. Godfrey was inspired by Evangelical preacher Billy Graham, and Kirby's feelings about him were not subtle:
Oof. A crowd of blank-eyed, self-stigmatized believers, eager to surrender their individual will in pursuit of scapegoats upon whom to vent their rage. As we'll see, this is a call and response, part of a sermon by Glorious Godfrey:
In later, non-Kirby appearances of Godfrey and the Justifiers, DC has presented Godfrey as having supernatural powers of persuasion and the Justifier helmets as electronic mind control devices that can immediately overcome the wills of even determined anti-authoritarian types like Oliver Queen. Kirby walks a finer line in this story: Godfrey is using his high-tech pipe organ (pictured above left) to drive his believers into an ecstatic frenzy and "stimulate the brute instincts." However, everyone in his church is there because they believe in his horrifying message: "Life will make you doubt! Anti-Life will make you RIGHT!"
As for the Justifiers, the helmets in this story don't work by Mad Hatter-derived mind control circuitry, but by something much scarier: the promise of power in anonymity.
Godfrey's Justifier captain, for one, may be a dupe, but he's clearly not mind-controlled:
Godfrey's facial expressions in this story make the skin crawl. Look at his unctuous smile, full of utter contempt! Kirby, who watched a lot of TV while drawing, had undoubtedly seen Billy Graham's televised sermons, and the revulsion he obviously felt is palpable here.
This is a harrowing story — the Justifiers murder, bomb, burn books, and round up whole neighborhoods of "Others" to be carted off to concentration camps run by Darkseid's henchman DeSaad — but perhaps its most unexpected twist is the revelation that at the end of the day, Godfrey is really just a huckster. He sells Anti-Life, but not only is his pitch not driven by the supernatural force of the will-destroying Anti-Life Equation Darkseid is seeking, Godfrey doesn't really even believe the Equation exists.
Kirby draws an important contrast between Godfrey's church and the Source Wall on New Genesis, where Highfather receives the word of the Source directly, written in fiery letters by the disembodied hand of the Uni-Friend. In THE NEW GODS #1, Orion declares, "The moving hand appears! The Source gives us the irrevocable counsel!" Highfather corrects him, saying, "But it does not decide! The right of choice is ours! That is the Life Equation!"
The central conflict in Kirby's Fourth World saga, then, is not good versus evil, or belief versus nonbelief — it's choice versus subjugation, Life versus Anti-Life. Those who would remove or willfully abandon that choice are servants of Anti-Life. This is something later writers have dropped or obfuscated (particularly Jim Starlin, who can't resist filtering Kirby's Jewish ideas through his own lapsed-Catholic world view), but it's the conceptual spine of the Kirby stories.
Introducing Samoa Joe: the king of not giving a single care in the world. Or more fittingly in his case, the king of giving a big flat NOPE to those who try it with him and fail in the process