Kirby worked with old artist pal-turned-DC head honcho Carmine Infantino. “Jack and Carmine were dreaming big – of college-age readers, better techniques, and an improved quality of product,” says Hoppe. “It got foiled by a junkie industry and distributors and bad luck. They were riding high on a hog but it didn’t happen.”

Among the genre-shaking, adult-skewed experimentations was a jaunt into erotic comics – a strip called Galaxy Green, about superwomen searching for intergalactic mates. Randolph Hoppe laughs at the mention of it: “Two pages of Jack drawing women action figures at angles he’d never drawn them before!”

More significant was the creation of the New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle – collectively known as “The Fourth World” – a series of intergalactic adventures with celestial-like super aliens.

“New Gods provided a cosmic level of scope to DC,” says Hoppe. “Jack brought his universe-wide stuff and helped bring DC together.”

It was too complex and ambitious. The New Gods and Forever People were effectively canned. “One of the worst days of my life,” said Kirby. Fifty years on, the New Gods are integral to the DC-verse. The villain, Darkseid, featured in the Snyder Cut of the Justice League movie. Kirby had based him partly on Richard Nixon. “Jack hated Nixon!” laughs Hoppe.

Kirby’s DC titles were axed as quickly as they were dreamt up, and he returned to Marvel in 1975. He created The Eternals – a Marvel equivalent to The New Gods. The Eternals (made into a 2021 movie) were an example of Kirby unleashed: gods, mythology, epic wars across the cosmos. The themes went back to childhood tales of folklore, or “wonder stories”, as told by Kirby’s mother.

“Those are my favourites of his, when he does the gods stuff,” says Thomas Scioli. “It felt he would always put a little extra heart into those.”