Big Bear
61 years ago - Big Bear is born on New Genesis.
42 years ago - Big Bear becomes the groundskeeper of the Academy of Higher Consciousness on New Genesis, first bonding with his Super-Cycle Kirbee.
39 years ago - Big Bear first meets Vykin the Brave, Beautiful Dreamer, Serifan & Mark Moonrider, when they come to attend the the Academy of Higher Consciousness.
38 years ago - Big Bear helps Highfather hide a next generation mother box named Maya on the grounds of the Academy of Higher Consciousness, but when Vykin the Brave, Serifan & Beautiful Dreamer show him that Doctor Bedlam is hiding on New Genesis to steal it, he helps them find it before Mark Moonrider.
32 years ago - Big Bear, Vykin the Brave, Beautiful Dreamer & Mark Moonrider all undergo the ritual for Serifan to relinquish his godhead and receive it anew, so his physical form aligns with who he is, bonding them together as the Forever People.
25 years ago - Big Bear and the Forever People defy the commands of Highfather, banding together to go to Earth to save Beautiful Dreamer from Glorious Godfrey. Seeing the effects of Anti-Life on the planet, they choose to stay on the planet, helping free it's people.
23 years ago - Big Bear and the Forever People stage a giant concert, helping enough of Glorious Godfrey's followers to turn away from Anti-Life to force him to abandon the planet. Knowing that he had many other Anti-Life experiments across the galaxy, they venture into space to begin freeing those people.
11 years ago - Big Bear and the Forever People help refugees from Despero's campaign of interplanetary conquest band together and find a new home, becoming the gods of a new religion.
4 years ago - Big Bear and the Forever People return to New Genesis at the request of Highfather to help navigate the Boom Tube inversion field around Earth. They lead the way for the New Gods to confront the Parademon wave invasion
1 year ago - Big Bear and the Forever People travel into the territory conquered by Lady Styx to bring help to the people there.
The Forever People, as they appear in their own comic stories, were really about the group as a whole more than about any one individual. This isn't to say they weren't complete characters, of course... in fact, I would say that there's something almost magic in how minimally these five were focused on while still each being so loaded with personality. Maybe that's part of what Kirby was deliberately aiming for, to emulate something vibrant about the people of the 60s he was celebrating.
If there's any one character that really defines the Forever People, it's Big Bear. The main visual of the group is all of them mounted up in their cool alien super cycle with Big Bear riding proudly up on top, driving them through a Boom Tube into their next adventure. It's his incredibly unique design and personality that really pop for this team, giving each new version of the Forever People it's unique vibe. It's also true for OUR version; it was Big Bear that clued us into the story parallels we chose to base their timeline around!
If there's any one character that really defines the Forever People, it's Big Bear. The main visual of the group is all of them mounted up in their cool alien super cycle with Big Bear riding proudly up on top, driving them through a Boom Tube into their next adventure. It's his incredibly unique design and personality that really pop for this team, giving each new version of the Forever People it's unique vibe. It's also true for OUR version; it was Big Bear that clued us into the story parallels we chose to base their timeline around!
Big Bear's Comic HistoryBig Bear and the Forever People debuted in the first issue of their own comic in 1971, but I think it's also worth pointing out just how much Big Bear himself owned the cover of that first issue, an explosion of color and design and charisma. His characterization in the comic absolutely delivered on the promise of that cover, depicting him as a big, unflappably positive, boisterous personality. The fact that the Forever People followed a creed of non-violence meant that he avoided the usual depiction of a superhero team's bruiser. He was their pilot (which might remind Kirby fans of which member of the Fantastic Four was the pilot?) and their history buff, always able to recite obscure history facts that would help them understand their situation.
Later series would find a few different interesting new ideas to try with Big Bear. It was suggested that he was actual a human selected by Highfather to grow up on New Genesis as a experiment, or that he was actually from Apokolips and hiding out on New Genesis. In the DeMatteis series we learn that evidentially his incredible strength and invulnerability are made way stronger by his ability to manipulate atomic density... a power with such insane implications you can see why that was left behind. Even better, that series revealed that he and Beautiful Dreamer had been married, and that they had a daughter together. |
|
|
Our Big Bear StoryWe all agreed that, while it didn't need to be big, we wanted to find a way to make Big Bear just a little different than the rest of the Forever People. While exploring the idea that they all meet as students at New Genesis's Academy of Higher Consciousness (an idea actually from the new 52 series) we considered that perhaps Big Bear is just a little bit older than the rest of them. Suddenly the idea that perhaps he was a former student who had become the Academy's groundskeeper came from SOMEWHERE. It immediately felt like the perfect framing device, and all the relationships just crystalized for us.
We also wanted to make a reference to his relationship with their Super Cycle, and in fact stole a small reference from their Young Justice appearance, where a Super-Cycle is named Kirbee. that's just too perfect. |
Related Characters
