MOTHERBOX

To those among you dear readers that don't know Scott Free from Shilo Norman, stop snickering, there is nothing dirty about a motherbox. Let me get you caught up to speed.

A motherbox is a fictional device invented by one Jack Kirby, you know, the guy who co-created Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor . . .perhaps the most influential and productive figure American superhero comics has ever seen. The guy was a genius, a visionary, a WW2 vet, and looked like this:But we can say more about him some other time. We're talking about Motherboxes here, not the King. Anyway, after he gets tired of Stan and Marvel dicking him around, Jack went to DC. This was an unbelievably huge deal at the time. Imagine if at some point John Lennon was like, "Fuck you, Paul, I'm joining the Stones." Kind of like that. Well, DC, in order to get him basically said, "Hey, nobody really reads our comics anymore and everyone reads yours. So, uh, here. Do whatever you want."

So Jack went insane (in the best ways possible). He was putting out multiple titles a month . . .writing them and drawing them, all filled with dozens of new ideas each issue. This "Fourth World Saga" was mainly centered around two planets of gods, an evil one (Apokalips) and a good one (New Genesis). Jack was working with a lot of primal myth stuff mixed in with crazy sci-fi and the dynamic action only he could bring. It was fucking crazy and great.

So, anyway, what's a motherbox? Well, in the stories, motherboxes were these living computers that the New Gods had. It was alive and had emotions, it cared for its "owner." It said "ping ping ping" and somehow people got what it was talking about. What did it do? Well, um, anything? For Mr. Miracle, escape artist extraordinaire, he kept his in his costume sleeve and it helped him get out of impossible traps.

For Orion, the son of the evil Darkseid raised by the king of the good gods, it soothed his savage temper. And for the Forever People, who were basically space hippies with a giant dune buggy (it's way cooler than it sounds) it somehow combined them all into this amazingly powerful guy called the Infinity Man.

They all bore the distinctive, unique design Kirby did so well, while each looking different. And as to what they did, well, they basically did whatever the story needed them to do. Whether calming an angry hunter, helping a clever man escape from danger, giving power to the young and idealistic, or just transporting people to better places, a motherbox basically was a stand-in for creativity and wonder. It's the sort of thing only Kirby could have thought of; other artists would be tempted to give long, boring explanations, motivations, origins . . .but, really, no one cares where a motherbox comes from.

They just know that it's awesome.