I have the impression that he is an everyone villain, but for Superman he has a personal stake when fighting Darkseid?
Can anyone explain this?
Can anyone explain this?
Is DC's Darkseid a Superman Villain or an Everyone Villain?
- Thread starter Samtemdo8_v1legacy
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Darkseid is an everyone villain that only Superman is strong enough to reasonably fight. So, he only tends to show up in Superman comics and team-up books.
Sort of. See, Darkseid is one of very few villains that drive Superman to the point he's willing to kill because of how he treats his people. The man is a militant fascist dictator that indoctrinates people from an early age to the point where even when they're given an opportunity to free themselves from his rule, they HELP him recover from the beating Superman gave him.Samtemdo8 said:
Superman does have a somewhat personal stake in fighting him, but Darkseid is a villain that everyone would fight against, both because he is insanely powerful, he has a large army, and he has wide reaching influence and corruption.
He was originally created to be a foe to other Fourth World characters, like Orion, The Forever People and Mr. Miracle. But he did first appear in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. To use a half-decent simile, he's a Superman villain only in the sense that Doctor Doom is a Fantastic Four villain or Kingpin is a Spider-Man villain.
Yeah, like I said, the simile is only half-decent. He's clearly mainly a villain of theirs originally, and it's still clearly their rogues' gallery where he fits. But most of the time nowadays, he appears to fight somebody else (or fight a large bunch of heroes where they are included).Asita said:
He's an everyone villain, but Superman is Superman, so when they want someone to Superman to punch they get someone like Darkseid. He became an arc villain in later seasons of the Superman cartoon, but reappeared in Justice League as a more general threat.
This is actually the reason why Mongul [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongul] was invented. They needed someone on punchworthy terms with Superman, but didn't want to use Darkseid because they were evolving him into a Justice League enemy, so they made a carbon-copy of Darkseid - big guy from space, flat forehead, weird skin tone, likes to sit on a throne, conquers worlds with a mechanised world - and gave him a new name.
Mongul then turned into a more personal villain for Superman after Alan Moore [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Man_Who_Has_Everything] wrote a story where he traps Superman in a Matrix-like ideal reality where Krypton was never destroyed and Superman grew up there and raised a family. When he woke up, Superman was understandably upset. [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/67/d0/fd67d0a70d06dd5e946d8e2b19b857d1--comic-movies-art-manga.jpg]
Meanwhile, Kingpin started out as a crime boss for Spider-Man to fight, but Spider-Man literally had too many archenemies, so they started using Kingpin for other "street-level" heroes in New York. Now Kingpin is now more closely associated with Daredevil and/or the Punisher than Spider-Man.
This is actually the reason why Mongul [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongul] was invented. They needed someone on punchworthy terms with Superman, but didn't want to use Darkseid because they were evolving him into a Justice League enemy, so they made a carbon-copy of Darkseid - big guy from space, flat forehead, weird skin tone, likes to sit on a throne, conquers worlds with a mechanised world - and gave him a new name.
Mongul then turned into a more personal villain for Superman after Alan Moore [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Man_Who_Has_Everything] wrote a story where he traps Superman in a Matrix-like ideal reality where Krypton was never destroyed and Superman grew up there and raised a family. When he woke up, Superman was understandably upset. [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/67/d0/fd67d0a70d06dd5e946d8e2b19b857d1--comic-movies-art-manga.jpg]
It's actually the best comparison. While Doctor Doom and Kingpin are primarily antagonists for the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man respectively, their power and scope means that they've been used as antagonists for other heroes and for crossover threats. Doctor Doom is a wizard scientist with a time machine and his own country, so he fights the Avengers more often than not.Asita said:
Meanwhile, Kingpin started out as a crime boss for Spider-Man to fight, but Spider-Man literally had too many archenemies, so they started using Kingpin for other "street-level" heroes in New York. Now Kingpin is now more closely associated with Daredevil and/or the Punisher than Spider-Man.
I believe he's mostly associated with Superman, but if I'm not mistaken he's one of the Ultimate evils of the DC Universe which kinda makes him an everyone villain.
@OP Pretty much this. Darkseid is really on the power level of the New Gods like Orion but when it comes to the maintstream more popular heroes the only one who can even approach being able to take him 1 on1 is superman. Batman stands up to him in Final Crisis and uses a special bullet to disable him, but by and large he is a whole world/Justice League level threat. The dude is basically a god who runs his own military planet/indoctrination center. If you're looking for a good reference point for Darkseid check out Grant Morrison's Rock of Ages Storyline.bastardofmelbourne said:
Bastard, I'm glad you mentioned that story because there's a great Justice League cartoon episode that covers that. I believe Superman, Batman, and The Martian Manhunter are all affected. Batman's and MMH's are particularly heartbreaking.
Supes takes it personally because Darkseid can hurt him and will be unrepentent about anything, which is something he can't accept. It's not personal. Darkseid only singles out Superman because he has no intention of letting any being defy him. He's only singled out by him in the sense that everybody else dies or serves.
Alright time to ask a BIG question.bastardofmelbourne said:
Who exactly are these NEW Gods? Who and What were the Old Gods for starters?
It has a lot to do with Jack Kirby, Marvel, DC, and his personal beef with Stan Lee.Samtemdo8 said:
Jack Kirby was an artist who was one of the founders of the Marvel universe. Working with Stan Lee, he created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, Doctor Doom, Galactus, Black Panther, and Ego the Living Planet, A.K.A "Chris Pratt's space dad." He even wrote the initial concepts for Spider-Man. The guy basically invented Marvel. Like a lot of writer/artist collaborations, it's hard to say how much of it was Kirby and how much was Lee, but it's safe to say that neither of them could have done it alone.
Anyway, in the 70s Kirby got pissed off with Stan Lee over something-or-other and decided to jump ship to DC. Now, Kirby had a personal taste for high-concept, pseudo-mythological science fiction, as shown by Galactus. While at Marvel, he'd created a title called the Inhumans, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhumans] who were god-like precursors to humanity that had been given superpowers by alien experiments way back at the dawn of time.
The Inhumans didn't do much because they weren't that popular, and after leaving Marvel in the 70s, Kirby decided to create an ambitious new set of titles based around these guys called the New Gods. Like his earlier work at Marvel, the title was a space for Kirby to experiment with this idea of having a kind of galactic/universal space-myth, like the Greek and Norse pantheons but with godlike aliens instead of Thor or whatever. The New Gods were "new" in the meta sense, being a modern mythology for modern readers. The core plot of the New Gods revolved around a Manichean conflict spanning the universe between the two worlds of New Genesis and Apokolips, utopian and dystopian societies respectively. New Genesis, ruled by a Zeus-like figure called Highfather, was an Olympian paradise world. Apokolips, ruled by a Satan-like figure called Darkseid, was a hellish fire-belching machine planet. The two sets of gods were locked in an eternal conflict for the fate of the universe etc. etc. etc.
The actual plot followed Orion, a Hercules-like figure with a rad space scooter, and Mister Miracle, who was a very good escape artist. Orion was the son of Darkseid, and Mister Miracle was the son of Highfather; before the plot began, they had been exchanged as part of a mutual hostage arrangement to ensure a ceasefire. So Orion, who was basically the son of Space Satan, was raised by Space Zeus in Space Heaven, whereas Mister Miracle - who was basically Space Jesus - was raised in prison in Space Hell. It's actually a really cool story. Orion learns that he is destined to defeat his father Darkseid, and Mister Miracle falls in love with one of Darkseid's Furies and elopes to Earth to pursue his passion of becoming a professional escape artist (he grew up in a prison, it's smarter than it sounds).
However, the New Gods had the same problem the Inhumans did; they weren't very popular. They were Kirby's masterpiece, his pet universe that he had wanted to create for years, but readers didn't like them because the story was a bit esoteric and weird, and it was the 70s. Sales were never very good, the titles were cancelled before Kirby ever got to finish the story, and DC pushed Kirby into working onto projects he didn't like very much. In the mid-70s he got fed up with it and went back to Marvel.
Once Kirby was back at Marvel - surprise surprise - he creates these guys called the Eternals [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternals_(comics)], who were - surprise surprise - primitive humans experimented on by godlike aliens called Celestials [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_(comics)] who take the role of modern mythological heroes. You can see there's a clear arc here; Kirby basically plagiarised himself twice over trying to get his vision of a science-fantasy pantheon of alien gods into shape.
But he could never get over the very basic hurdle that readers hated it; none of Kirby's space-god titles ever sold that well. But Kirby was a titan of the industry, the man who drew the Marvel universe, and his name carried massive weight. For DC, in particular, who had squandered a golden opportunity in convincing Kirby to switch sides and then wasting him on Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman%27s_Pal_Jimmy_Olsen] and shit, they were banging their heads. They still had the rights to Darkseid and the New Gods, so they decided that they'd keep them alive and in the public consciousness - even though they never sold well enough to justify their own title - basically just to spite Marvel. Marvel themselves weren't much better; a few years after Kirby left and was elbow-deep into writing New Gods, Marvel came up with a suspiciously-similar-looking space demon with bad skin tone and a blocky forehead who liked sitting on chairs, only his name was Thanos. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanos]
And the thing is, it worked. Kirby was ahead of his time in a lot of ways; Darkseid got more popular as time went on, because he was a cosmic threat who could be used to justify the kind of massive crossovers that DC started pulling off in the 80s. He was basically a stand-in for Satan, existing so that Superman could punch the physical manifestation of evil and glue reality back together or whatever. The rest of the New Gods never showed up; only Darkseid was useful, and the general idea of "big evil space demon from space" was used in other big DC crossovers like the Anti-Monitor and Imperiex.
In particular, Darkseid caught the attention of one Grant Morrison, who in the late 90s was handed the JLA title and decided to reintroduce Darkseid as an antagonist for the Justice League. This eventually built up to the Final Crisis storyline in 2006, where Morrison reinterpreted Darkseid as less of a punching bag and more of a metaphor for the concept of evil itself; a terrifyingly powerful, reality-warping demon god whose very physical presence twisted space into a knot and who for some reason still decided to manifest as a block-headed dude with bad skin tone and a fancy chair.
By then, the New Gods had gained what you'd now call hipster cred; if you knew who they were in 2006, it meant you were showing off that you'd been a comic book fan since 1971. They were old enough to be embedded into the background of the universe despite never actually being very popular on their own.
And so now, when Zack Snyder says to himself "I've really heavily emphasised these Superman-as-Jesus metaphors in Man of Steel, and I figure we need like, a Satan guy for him to fight, y'know, get real Dante-style in here," the nearest comic book fan produces a copy of New Gods with a quizzical look on his face. And that's how we get to Justice League, although Darkseid probably won't be popping up personally since that would be the cinematic definition of premature ejaculation.
To be fair to Kirby the concept of New Gods supplanting the Old Classical Gods we know sounds awesome.
Very awesome write-up bastardofmelbourne, thanks.
OT: He's a DC villain, DC's number 1 villain in fact so he's often pitted against DC's number 1 hero, but I would never classify him as Superman villain.
OT: He's a DC villain, DC's number 1 villain in fact so he's often pitted against DC's number 1 hero, but I would never classify him as Superman villain.
I always found it weird that a once Superman only villain became the big bad of the whole DC universe. I mean, if Superman was good enough to beat him once, why do you need to bring in the rest of League?
Hopefully they don't try to connect him to Superman too much in the DCEU. Although I guess it's too late, considering that scene with Luthor and Steppenwolf.
Hopefully they don't try to connect him to Superman too much in the DCEU. Although I guess it's too late, considering that scene with Luthor and Steppenwolf.
