The Hunger Dogs was intended by Jack Kirby and DC to serve as the end to the entire Fourth World saga.

[2] The project was mired in controversy over Kirby's insistence that the series should end with the deaths of the New Gods, which clashed with DC's demands that the characters could not be killed off.

Pages and storyline elements from the unpublished "On the Road to Armagetto" were revised and incorporated into the graphic novel.

[5] Rather than being original stories, the graphic novels of this line were instead adaptations of works published by well-known authors of science fiction.

These were edited by Julius Schwartz,[6] making use of his connections to recruit the famous authors whose works were adapted.