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Comic books as we know them would be a very different place if it weren’t for the great Jack Kirby. Alongside (and sometimes despite) Stan Lee, Kirby created many of the most iconic comic book characters of all time. While The Fantastic Four: First Steps sees several of Kirby’s most famous characters enter the MCU, it isn’t the best homage to the man we’ve seen this week. No, that honor actually belongs to the irreverent and ridiculous anime, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, which dropped a new episode dripping with love for Jack Kirby’s work.

The fourth episode of New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt includes a short called Shoot For Yesterday, in which a cosmic cube lands in Daten City and begins to turn everything and everyone into characters from a 1960s comic book. Characters get new designs, and it quickly becomes clear that they are all focused on many of Jack Kirby’s most famous works. Panty gets a Thor makeover while Stocking looks like a cross between Darkseid and The Thing. Jack Kirby’s name is never mentioned, but when a parody of the Silver Surfer called Baywatcher showed up, it became clear what was going on.

What gets me are the references to more of Kirby’s work than just the Fantastic Four. We’ve got art that is clearly inspired by his New Gods era, which is gorgeous in its own right. What makes this the perfect Jack Kirby tribute? It is how the Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt episode ends. In order to stop the cube from potentially destroying the universe, Panty has to shoot her gun through time to destroy it before the events of the episode even happen. Thus, the Kirbified Panty and Baywatcher go off on intergalactic adventures together in a separate timeline, leaving her family and friends behind. There is a depth to the writing in this episode that Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt isn't usually known for, but it works perfectly in the context of a love letter to Jack Kirby.

The fact that this episode came out the same week as The Fantastic Four: First Steps landed in theaters feels too perfect to be a coincidence. If you’d told me that the perfect tribute to Jack Kirby, one of the architects of modern comics, would come from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, I would have thought you were on something. And yet, Studio Trigger pulled it off.

New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is streaming on Prime Video.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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