DC Comics General

Trigon has this thing where he's awful to his daughter by any metric, but compared to how he treats his other kids she's his favorite. Kind of like Darkseid and Orion, though much like Batman to the Joker both Raven and Orion only have pure hatred to their dads so it's this one-sided thing

At least Raven is still Trigon's number one nemesis. Orion really slipped down the ranks.

That's what happens when your Archnemesis Dad becomes a more universe-wide villain, while you aren't considered important enough. Even when Orion killed Darkseid in Final Crisis, that was overshadowed by Batman and Superman killing him again.

Orion is a prime example of how a weird number of comic writers claim to respect and love Jack Kirby's New Gods but actually don't. Guys like Jim Starlin and Tom King have the most rancid takes on him and actively shaft him out of his position as main hero of the New Gods while claiming they're staying true to Kirby's story.

Its cause Orion is an EASY character to twist into a strawman of Toxic Masculinity IE See that one wonder woman bit where she grabs Orion by the balls which is hilarious Orion is deeply devoted to his Wife the Goddess of love

-who they keep trying to bring a certain version of her into the main verse cause DC i a borg collective-

I mean He's the New God of War Ergo he must be some Meathead no brain asshole!

then again writer completely struggle with the New gods forgetting that in the end Their suppose to be the good guys and represent Chaos but end up just being Stagnant order to Darkseid's Oppressive Order

Remember when they tried to make Darkseid the Tragic victim of New God tyranny!

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Mar 28th 2024 at 1:31:57 PM

That Wonder Woman example is from Azzarello's New 52 WW run.

Like a lot of the characters, Orion takes a level in jerkass and is a machismo jerk leading to that moment where WW sexually harasses him to threaten him to shut up.

A lot of problems with some characters are later writers not understanding those that someone else made and bringing them down to their level.

Nuance in particular tends to be scarce.

and Yeah, that's a big part of what I'm getting at. And you're both highlighting a larger issue with how the New Gods are often handled where for some reason writers seem desperate to make them just as bad as Apokolips, or even seem to try and make Apokolips the more likable of the two sides. There's a very strange Draco in Leather Pants / Ron the Death Eater thing that goes on with the New Gods under writers who don't seem to get what Kirby was doing with them. Like, I get wanting stories to be more morally grey and I certainly know Rooting for the Empire is a thing (usually done in jest, mind you), but it seems like guys like Starlin and King project their weird hangups about certain subjects (such as religion) onto the comic and try to twist Kirby's world into something that it wasn't because of it. So you get stuff like the Highfather being an amoral manipulator instead of basically Space Jesus or Orion as a toxic meathead asshole who was spoiled unlike the "cool" people instead of a noble but flawed hero fighting to be something more than the weapon he was made to be.

The ironic thing about it all, is that these attempts to "darken" the New Gods are often infinitely less nuanced and mature than Kirby's original work, which had more than it's fair share of complex situations and intelligent characterization, which were almost always far more interesting and ripe for stories than the reimaginings. Orion is yet again a prime example of it, as Kirby's writing of him - as effectively a demon living in Heaven and trying to overcome his violent instincts - was far more unique and cool than just having him be a macho dickhead who gets Totally Pwned to show off how cool the authors' preferred characters are. Or how New Genesis, as you noted, represented chaos; imagine the armies of New Genesis and Apokolips going at it and the latter is just monochrome faceless goons while the former is a staggeringly diverse array of near-amorphous beings.

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 28th 2024 at 12:24:27 PM

I mean I was talking less about the New Gods specifically and more about DC and Marvel as a whole.

There are occasions where someone else does more with the characters than their creators ever did, but it happens less than it used to.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 28th 2024 at 2:35:53 PM

The recent Hawkgirl and Fire & Ice books are a good example of this kind of messy work.

I hate how Fire & Ice's author took one of the most longstanding female friendship/duos in comics and made them utterly toxic.

Welcome to Smallville is an infuriating comic.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 28th 2024 at 12:39:00 PM

It might just be my autistic OCD brain but I am kind of annoyed that the rest of the New Gods gets underrepresented compared to Darkseid in the larger DC Universe as a whole. The DCEU doesn't even have New Genesis in it and for some reason adaptations like Gods and Monsters or the New 52 give Highfather the Adaptational Villainy treatment. Darkseid being this multiversal singularity despite all the contradictions is a commonly talked about fact yet it's barely brought up even in relation to him with the other New Gods, despite logically they should also be multiversal singularities (where's the hype for True Form Orion or True Form Metron, power scalers?)

I do wonder what would've happened had Jack Kirby got his wish and given the New Gods a decisive ending, and the characters were allowed to rest. Who'd have replaced Darkseid as the most recurring cosmic big bad? Maybe the Anti-Monitor because he feels like an Expy of the guy without any of the lore baggage

Good, someone else is voicing their gripes with Fourth World so I don't have to again. Okay, I can't help myself. I vaguely remember Orion showing up in Wonder Woman volume four, my first thought being "Why is the hunter still aliv...wait, him?"

Beyond how Orion was treated, I didn't even get the point of him being there in the first place. I don't recall Orion bringing anything to the Olympian power vacuum or First Born struggle. I know he brought The Worf Effect to the latter but Wonder Woman herself got taken down, so not even that justified Orion's presence.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:29:32 AM

I mean Dc has for years tried to reintroduce a replacement for Darkseid/ the anti monitor

Hell Monarch original intent was to be the New supreme bad guy...

The fact Darkseid always comes back is a testament to his staying power.. but then again so does Skyne... I mean Brother eye

I feel like this is basically would led to a long discussion of the issue of Big Goods and Writers not knowing how to write around them so they completely knee cap themselves

One of the lowkey worst parts of Snyder's Darkseid saga is that he apparently had no intention of involving the New Genesis Gods.

Its like he only got as far as reading about Darkseid and then gave up halfway there

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 28th 2024 at 8:07:35 AM

I'd say if it's like you had the Transformers, but decided to forget about the Autobots and have Megatron or Unicron go against Tommy Oliver and Leonardo.

x5 You are far from the only one to feel that way, I totally agree (and hey autistic OCD brain here too!).

x3 And yeah to that too. DC has kinda become littered with all these cosmic destroyer/conqueror villains who at best overlap badly with one another, at worst are painfully generic and forgettable.

DC could really use a Al Ewing (who gave a tidy explanation for there being so many "evil darkness entity" villains in Marvel) or John Barber figure who untangles confusing shit like this and gives obscure characters and lore major revamps. Geoff Johns used to be that guy, but he's left now and was already writing less and less for DC.

The lack of focus on the rest of the NG is disappointing. Like I recently collected the collections for Walt Simonson's Orion run and it was immaculate. Like Orion and Darkseid gets into a one on dual where they beat each other with power cosmic and makes some kung-fu poses, it was awesome.

Orion really deserves more play.

I nominate Phillip Kennedy Johnson for that role. He's been doing some pretty cool stuff with the DC cosmology.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 28th 2024 at 8:15:16 AM

It's funny that whenever writers adapt the New Gods, they only want Darksied and Apokalips.

None of that High-father and new Genesis stuff.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 28th 2024 at 11:14:28 PM

It ain't easy being the good guys.

People always think Evil Is Cool.

Never forget, Darkseid is.

Evil.

...I mean, I'd definitely watch that.

Yeah, but losing Optimus and crew would be a pity.

Darkseid and company are great villains to set the rest of the DCU against. The New Gods are really only good for fighting Darkseid. This is why we see more of Darkseid than the New Gods.

Edited by Robbery on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:20:07 AM

Snyder is not the first person to ignore New Genesis. Smallville featured only Darkseid and a few of his minions as the villains of the final season, with the only reference to New Genesis being Orion's Bow, a weapon that could destroy Darkseid. Like with a lot of stuff people criticize him for, someone did it first with less controversy.

As for focus on other New Gods, Mr. Miracle had a miniseries written by Tom King, the Female Furies had a miniseries by Cecill Castelluci and Tom Taylor's Suicide Squad run had the son of the Black Racer as one of the cast members.