Jack Kirby’s Forgotten Great Disaster Could Be DC’s Answer to Days of Future Past

Jack Kirby is the greatest talent the comic industry has ever seen. In 2026, Stan Lee often gets all the credit for the creation of the Marvel Universe, with fans of the MCU praising him as the genius that created the most amazing superheroes ever. However, without the imagination of Kirby, none of it would have been possible. Kirby wasn’t given a script; he helped plot the issue with Lee and then went in and created everything else, fleshing out the plot, drawing the action, and often adding in the dialogue or at least what it should be for the scene. He was a master of the medium, his blocky, unique style having an energy that few others can match. Kirby changed the way comics worked and more than earned the nickname “King”. However, his relationship with Lee soured over the years (go figure how that happened; Lee just took all the credit) and he ended up going to DC Comics.

Kirby’s time at DC has become legendary for a simple reason – he created the Fourth World of New Genesis and Apokolips, blessing DC Comics with the New Gods and the greatest villain of them all, Darkseid. If he had only created the New Gods, his time at DC would have still been legendary, but that wasn’t all. He introduced readers to the demon Etrigan, created a new Sandman that would partly inspire The Sandman in the late ’80s, Bruno Mannheim and Intergang, and so much more. There was also one of the first major dystopian futures in comic history, introducing the world to the Great Disaster. This future brought readers characters like Kamandi and OMAC, creating an alternate universe that could become the DC version of “Days of Future Past”.

Jack Kirby’s Great Disaster Played on Nuclear Anxieties to Give Readers Something Special

One of the things I don’t think some people realize about comics is that they have always been political and Jack Kirby was always a big part of that. He created Captain America because, as a Jewish man, he wanted to make a character who could fight the atrocities happening to his people and shine a light on their plight. In the ’50s, he created monster stories that played on the atomic anxieties of the age and the Cold War was basically the most important ingredient of the early Marvel Universe, with characters like Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and others representing the intrepid Cold Warriors of the day, often fighting dastardly Eastern European or Asian communists.

Kirby’s Great Disaster at DC is another example of this, but you have to look very carefully and put yourself in a Cold War mindset (which is easier for me, because it was still happening when I was born). Everyone was afraid of the “big one’, when something would happen that would cause the United States and Russia to empty their silos at each other. The Great Disaster took place in a world after such a disaster. Civilization as we know it ended, the superheroes couldn’t stop it, and humanity died out as animals evolved and took our evolutionary niches. In the Command D bunker, human survivors did their best to keep going, using the One Man Army Corps – OMAC – created by the Brother Eye satellite to defend them.

However, the most popular character from the post-Great Disaster Earth was Kamandi, named after the bunker he was born in. At some point, the other humans died and he was left to survive on his own in a world of powerful animals who wanted to end humanity for good after what they did to the world. The last boy on Earth became the standard bearer for the Great Disaster, appearing in various comics since Kirby left the company. It was absolutely unique when it first appeared back in the early ’70s and it would presage a story that changed X-Men history, “Days of Future Past”. Much like the Great Disaster, this story revolved around a terrible event leading to the destruction of society, with humanity under threat by inhuman enemies.

“Days of Future Past” has basically been looked at as the inevitable future for the X-Men, at least, and various DC creators have tried to do the same thing with the Great Disaster. This started with Infinite Crisis, when Bludhaven was destroyed and Command D was built there. From there, it felt like Final Crisis was supposed to be the Great Disaster (Grant Morrison is a massive Kirby fan), with Darkseid’s attack on the Earth leading to the end of humanity and the rise of the animals. However, unlike “Days of Future Past”, which has had various creators do their best to canonize it for decades now, DC has mostly forgotten about the Great Disaster in 2026, which is something of a tragedy, one that can easily be fixed.

The Great Disaster Should Play a Bigger Role in the DC Multiverse

I’m of the opinion that anything that Jack Kirby does is better than anything anyone else did and the Great Disaster is yet another example of that. The King gifted DC with its best alternate future (hey, I love Kingdom Come too, but Kirby), creating a living breathing world of wild characters and concepts. He was smart enough to leave its inciting event to future creators and created characters that have become low-key legends among DC and Kirby fans like Kamandi and OMAC. DC isn’t as much about dystopian futures as the House of Ideas, but the Great Disaster is just too good to leave in the past.

DC tried once to tease the beginning of this terrible future, during the brilliant boom period for the publisher that was 2005-2009 (seriously, the whole period between Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis is amazing across their entire line of books). However, since then, we’ve rarely seen it, with Kamandi and OMAC showing up sometimes. DC is having a lot of success right now by bringing back classic parts of its history, with Jack Kirby creations playing a massive role in that success (Darkseid takes after his father and is also an excellent writer; see the Absolute titles). Now is the time to bring back the Great Disaster and establish it as the “canon” future for the DC Multiverse.

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