New God Flow - Navigating the Multiversity Map Part 3
Prior to navigating the fire-pits of Apokolips, the DC Universe Santa Clause also showed up in the pleasantly demented 'The Seal-Men’s War on Santa Claus' from 1978's Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2, a photocopied collection of leftover stories compiled from books cancelled due to the "DC Implosion" and published in a very limited run in order to secure copyright. Written by Michael Fleisher and drawn by Comics' King Jack Kirby of all people, 'The Seal-Men's War on Santa Claus' featured the 1970's Sandman traveling to the North Pole to prove that Santa was real in order to win a charity bet. The whole thing spirals into madness when the classic Wonder Woman villains the Seal-Men kidnap Santa for giving them bad gifts (like gloves for their flipper hands).
The Sandman reaches Santa Clause via “The Dream Stream, which Neil Gaiman would later repurpose as The Dreaming for his 1980's Sandman series (and Morrison would then slightly repurpose again as Dream on the Multiverse map). Fleischer and Kirby's conflation of Santa Clause with aspects of dream and fantasy would inadvertently serve as a forebearer to his placement here on the Dream plane of the Sphere of the Gods.
A slightly more grounded “historical” Santa showed up in Hellblazer #247 by Andy Diggle and Leonard Manco, where that hard-boiled Magic Detective John Constantine dug up the corpse of Saint Nicholas of Turkey and smuggled away his powdered bones to use in an occult ritual, where he would snort them. (Yes, DC published a comic where the protagonist ground up Santa’s bones and snorted them like cocaine)
As for the Easter Bunny, 1991's Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special by Keith Giffen, Alan Grant and Simon Bisley featured DC’s deadlocked, grey skinned, immortal, hard drinking, hard swearing, gun toting, mass murderer alien bounty hunter on a (space) motor bike taking on a contract for the Icon of Easter to put a hit on Ol' Saint Nick. Santa (aka “Crusher Kringle", a brutal sweatshop gangmaster) is eventually killed in mortal combat by Lobo, who then proceeds to use Santa's sleigh to bomb the world with explosive “gifts."
From The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special, art by SImon Bisley
It was that kind of story... (Somebody even made a 15 minute fan-film of it back in the day. You can see it here)
Giffen, Grant and Bisley would eventually pen a pair of hilarious sequels - 2004's The Authority vs. Lobo - Jingle Hell and 2006's Lobo/The Authority - Holiday Hell - where Lobo is brought out of his own comic book reality and into the Wildstorm universe by The Authority's Jenny Quantum. Jenny, a child with godlike powers, was upset at Lobo's mistreatment of Santa Clause in the Paramilitary Christmas Special, and brought him out of the comic book so she could kick his ass.
The Easter Bunny also made an appearance in the Lobo/The Authority books, living in a realm inside The Bleed. Ironically, in these stories he was portrayed as a Nazi.
All three of Lobo's misadventures with Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny were collected in The Authority/Lobo - Holiday Hell TPB. Whether these stories actually “happened” in mainstream DC continuity is a matter of debate given the spoofy nature of these books, but Lobo later swears he killed Santa and the Easter Bunny in 52 # 36 (in a scene from the Mystery in Space strand, most likely written by Grant Morrison).
From The Oz-Wonderland War, art by Carol Lay
Even in a DC Universe that embraces Ultra the Multi-Alien and the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny’s status as real or not has always been treated with this sort of mythic/tongue in cheek outlook. In Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's 'The Night Prowler' from House of Mystery #191 (reprinted in Roots of the Swamp Thing #3) Santa was mistaken for a sinister stranger in the night; and the Easter Bunny's appearance in the marvelously unreal Zoo Crew story The Oz-Wonderland War by Joey Cavalieri, E. Nelson Bridwell and Carol Lay saw him teamed up with Captain Carrot, Wonder Wabbit, Fawcett’s Hoppy the Marvel Bunny and - from Alice's Wonder Land - the March Hare & the White Rabbit. In any case, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny’s repeated appearances as “extradimensional’ or dream/myth-like figures jells well with Morrison's placing of them in the Dream realm.
HEAVEN
The monotheistic Judeo-Christian God has always been a background presence in the DCU. While the setting has been a fantasy kitchen sink, the unspoken rule has been - arguably, until now - that the Judeo-Christian God was always there “above” the other ones.
Heaven, also dubbed the Silver City (though whether they are one in the same is somewhat questionable, Neil Gaiman has stated that the Silver City isn’t Heaven but the two are often conflated in several other stories), first showed up in the DC Universe in 1940 in a story by Superman co-creator Jerry Seigel and artist Bernard Baily from More Fun Comics #52 - the origin of the angelic super hero The Spectre. Originally, The Spectre was the ghost of murdered detective Jim Corrigan, who is barred from entering Heaven by The Voice, the first of DC’s various aspect of God. Reincarnated as a sort of nigh-omnipotent vengeful ghost tasked with judging humanity, The Spectre was eventually revealed (towards the end of John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake's 1990's Spectre series) to be the Angel of God’s Vengeance, Aztar, responsible for, amongst other atrocities, the Plagues visited upon Ancient Egypt. Aztar was portrayed as an angel who rebelled alongside Lucifer during the War in Heaven, becoming a Prince of Hell who later repents and is merged with The Wrath of God as penance. When Jim Corrigan finally passed on, the angel Aztar would be bonded to a series of other human hosts, including (then) former Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Gotham City cop Crispus Allen (though following the New 52 overhaul of the DCU, he's back with Corrigan).
From The Voice came The Word, spoken at the beginning of creation and based on the Christian concept of Logos ("The Word became flesh", tying the DC Universe to the various world religions that describe the Universe as a book, poem or song written or sung by the Creator). A character named The Word featured in Mark Millar's mid 90's Swamp Thing run (also starring an uncredited Grant Morrison on plot duties), essentially functioning in that story as a red-hooded Vertigo analogue to The Spectre (Millar was forbidden from using the various DC Universe characters he'd written into his scripts by editorial). The Voice is currently appearing in the current Phantom Stranger series as a Scottish terrier, in a rather obvious but amusing pun.
In the years following The Spectre's debut, we'd be introduced to other denizens of the Heavenly realms including, in Greg Rucka and Philip Tan's Final Crisis: Revelations mini-series, The Radiant, who embodied God's Mercy as The Spectre embodied God’s Vengeance. The Phantom Stranger, whose uncertain origin prior to the New 52 became almost a trademark, was posited as an angel who remained neutral during the War in Heaven in Alan Moore's story from Secret Origins #10 (one of four contradicting origins for the Stranger in that issue), Come the New 52, this uncertainty has been removed and The Stranger is now heavily implied to be Judas, cursed by God to eternally walk the earth in repentance.
Heaven and it's angels would also be used by Neil Gaiman (him again??) as a major setting in The Sandman, as well as in the Satan-starring spin-off Lucifer written by Mike Carey. The Silver City would be the setting for Gaiman’s Pseudo-Canonical “Murder Mysteries” story, detailing an investigation by the angel Raguel (who may or may not also be the angel who became The Spectre) into the first ever murder.
The angels of the DC Universe would come into further prominence in the 1990s, with Grant Morrison and Howard Porter's introduction of Zauriel in JLA #6, an angel who defected from Heaven for the love of a mortal woman (he'd previoulsy served as Guardian Angel to Cleopatra, Mona Lisa, and Joan of Arc - some track record...). Also introduced in that issue was Zauriel's nemesis Asmodel, general of Heaven’s Bull Host, one of the four hosts of Heaven who formed their army, the Pax Dei. The four hosts of the Pax Dei (Lion, Ox/Bull, Eagle and Man) were named for one of the chayot, the 'living creatures' associated in Hebrew lore with the books of the Gospel and the angelic visions of Ezekiel and John during the Book of Revelation. Introducing another DC Universe aspect of the capital G God, the Silver City was noted as the home of the Throne of the Presence; an empty throne, for God as the Presence is in everything. The Presence and The Voice would later be conflated with Jack Kirby’s 'Source'.
One of these pictures is Asmodel by Howard Porter, the other is from an engraving of Ezeiel's Vision by Mathius the Elder. You work it out.
Morrison’s JLA take on the angels of the DC Universe was notably more extreme. Rather than the well-known robes and harps, it conflated the classic mad, exaggerated and revelationary imagery of Angels from the classical eras with the over-pumped and extreme comic book art style of the 1990s. Their nature was more Comic Book Cosmic as well, with Universal Solvent blood, heart beats with the force of atom bombs and swords that could sunder all bonds.
NEW GENESIS
There came a time the Old Gods died…
So began Jack Kirby’s’ wonderful saga of the Fourth World. After leaving Marvel Comics in 1970 due to issues with both frequent collaborator Stan Lee and the company itself, Kirby moved across the street to start his next epic at DC. Intended as a sort of pseudo-sequel to his work on Thor, the New Gods were a sci-fi pantheon forged in the fires of Ragnarok, the long-foretold battle that would result in the death of the Norse Gods. Of course, even while Kirby was still working for Marvel it's unlikley they would have been happy with him killing of Thor and his entire supporting cast, so the idea was repurposed as sort of “virtual backstory” to this new DC epic.
The New Gods were inspired by Kirby's many mythological, mystical and religious interests, with themes tying back to the future, youth, law, the origins of life, science and free will, all filtered through fantastical sci-fi technology like the Boom Tubes or the Mother Box. Rather than a single series, the saga was told through four interconnected books; Kirby took over the long-running Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, and launched three new series' - The Forever People, Mister Miracle and The New Gods
Ironically, Kirby would encounter heavy weight interference from DC editorial, resulting in him returning to Marvel before the decade's end. In-house artists redrawing Superman's face in every one of Kirby's panels was the least of it; and as the years went by and other writers' aligned the characters and settings of the Fourth World saga more and more with the DC Universe proper, DC became increasingly reticent to Jack's idea of a definite end to the series (a prophesized Final Battle between Darkseid and his son Orion) due to the lucrative and popular nature of the characters.
After Kirby left DC, his work on the saga was picked up by other writers, including 70's Marvel wunderkind Gerry Conway and Kirby's one-time assistant Mark Evanier. Ironically, in the late 90's DC launched an Orion solo-series by Walter Simonson who, at one point, had actually written a Ragnarok story for Marvel’s Thor.
Grant Morrison would use the New Gods and Kirby's Fourth World mythos as a backdrop to his JLA, Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis series. Grant had the Prometheus-esque New Gods gift mankind with fire, and create the first super-hero in Aurakles (named as “Oracle” in his original appearance in Justice League of America #100 by Len Wein and Dick Dillin), a Neanderthal empowered by their advanced science-magic.
Grant’s Final Crisis and JLA dealt with themes of change and succession. A major idea Grant picked up from Kirby's work was that, just as the Old Gods died and the New Gods rose, so too are the New Gods fated to fall away and create a Fifth World. DC's Earth and it's super-human populace would be the natal form of these New New Gods.
This idea would form the backbone of the original plan for Morrison's Final Crisis, which opened with Orion dying and Darkseid having “won” the final War in Heaven (yes, another one). We the readers wouldn't see the war itself, only the fallout from the final battle of this awesome conflict occuring on a higher plain of reality. This served to both give scope to the story and prevent Grant from having to actually write the battle, which he believed should have only ever have been done by the late Kirby himself (coming full circle to the unwritten backstory of the original Saga).
However, due to horrible editorial management, DC decided, as one last hurrah before Final Crisis would hit the stands, to showcase the New Gods by shoe-horning them into as many ongoing DC series as they could manage (the exact opposite of Grant’s wishes), and by publishing the absolutely abysmal Countdown (later re-titled Countdown to Final Crisis). This same editorial policy also saw DC commission a Death of the New Gods mini-series by Jim Starlin that was so convoluted and ridiculous the Universe itself forgot it. (Funnybook Babylon had anexcellent piece on this, and Linkara’s multi-part review is great if you’re into torture.) Starlin's take on the end of the Fourth World saw the Infinite Man, an agent of The Source and Darksied's brother, kill almost all of the New Gods before manipulating Orion into killing Darkseid in turn (you'll note this directly contradicts the beginning of Final Crisis - the book that these New Gods-centric series were all intended to lead into).
Humorously enough, Grant reconciled this horrible lead-in to his story by positioning both Starlin's Death of the New Gods conclusion and the final issue of Countdown to Final Crisis as apocryphal versions of the same unseen story. Morrison also subtlety implied that the conflicting tales could be the result of the Monitors' interference mucking up the entire Cosmic Multiverse (a damning commentary if I ever heard one...).
One area where Final Crisis and it's various contradictory lead-ins agreed was that, by the War's end, the New Gods were all dead. However, they soon returned, firstly incarnated in human form (as seen in Grant’s Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle, set just after the War's conclusion but published some time before it), before regaining their original godforms at the end of Final Crisis and becoming the new guardians of the Kirby-centric Earth-51. With DC rebooting it's universe with the New 52 in 2011, it looks like Earth-51 has remained a world populated by Jack Kirby’s concepts, and has now been joined by (and placed on the multiversal map in opposition to) a Stan Lee-centric Earth-6, a thematic counterpoint if ever there was one...
Supertown by Jack Kirby
So, back to New Genesis. Let's have a look at some of the individual New Gods that live (or have lived) there:-
The Forever People were inspired by Kirby's take on 1960's hippie culture. Debuting in 1971's The Forever People #1, they were flower children-styled sci-fi heroes who rode around together on a Super-Cycle like some cooler version of Scooby Doo. In a Captain Planet/Captain Marvel style fashion, they could call out "TAARU!" and together summon to their aid a mysterious being dubbed the Infinity Man. As we mentioned above, the Infinity Man was Darkseid’s good brother, grown massively powerful due to his connection to The Source.
The Forever People currently star in a wonderful series by Dan Didio , Keith Giffen and Scott Koblish (who previously worked together on the similarly Kirby-created OMAC)
Like most of the good New Gods, The Forever People hail from Supertown, the capital Celestial City of New Genesis. It floats in the sky above the planets massive surface.
The Forever People by Jack Kirby
The Highfather is the patriarchal leader of the New Gods of New Genesis, the Sky-Father pun being so obvious as to go all the way back around to awesome again. His birth name was Izaya (the Jewish Kirby’s play on the biblical Isaiah) and the beard robes and cane are steeped with that style of Old Testament patriarchal glory. Before taking up the mantle of leader of New Genesis he was the warrior Izaya the Inheritor, but the scheming Darkseid had Izaya's wife killed and plunged New Genesis and Apokolips into brutal war. When the carnage became too great, Izaya gave up his martial ways and communed with The Source, becoming the mystic patriarch who would lead the two worlds toward a peace.
The Highfather by Jack Kirby
Orion is the adopted son of The Highfather and the biological son of Darkseid. A hunter warrior god in the vein of the classical Orion, Thor or Ares; Orion was traded with The Highfather’s biological son, Scott Free, as part of a peace deal between Apokolips and New Genesis. Though morally centered, Orion is (often) gripped by an in-built, inherited anger that has earned him the title of “The Dog of War.”. Back in the 90's he was briefly part of both the Justice League International and Morrison's JLA, and was the star of his own (excellent) 25 issue series by Walter Simonson. The New 52 version of Orion recently made his debut in the pages of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman title, where he was sent to eliminate the threat of a Child of Zeus on orders of New Genesis..
Right from the beginning of Kirby's Fourth World saga, it was foretold that Orion was destined to face his father Darkseid in a climatic final battle. This battle has been teased and played upon many times but, as we said above, after the New Gods (and Darksied in particular) became popular mainstays of their universe, DC apparently didn’t want the series to ever reach that final conclusion. Kirby’s planned ending for a 1984 reprint of his New Gods material (one in which Darkseid and Orion die in the Biblically-inspired final battle zone of Armagetto) was instead replaced with a lead into Kirby's original graphic novel (and final word on the New Gods) The Hunger Dogs, where Darkseid is overthrown by the slaves of Apokolips. Likewise, Orion was removed from a crowd shot in the final episode of Justice League Unlimited (and grand finale to the original DC Animated Universe) 'Destroyer', as featuring him in the Darkseid-centered final episode would have forced them to portray that final confrontation. Eventually, *two* moribund “final’ final battles would be shown within months of each other in the afformentioned Countdown and The Death of the New Gods. But even that wasn't enough to finally underline the Orion-Darksied conflict, as DC Universe #0 showed Darkseid’s god-spirit falling back through time, tearing apart the space-time continuum and eventually incarnating as the human “Boss Dark Side” (featured previously in Morrison’s earlier Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle), taking over the world with an Anti-Life Equation (more next time on this), and finally shooting a bullet back in time to kill Orion the first time around...
Phew, got all that? Take a breath and we'll carry on...
Orion by Jack Kirby
Lightray is an Apollonian-esque Sun God and Orion’s more chill best friend. He's mostly been used as a supporting character in the various Fourth World-centric series. He too was killed in the abysmal Death of the New Gods, and like the rest of 'em shows up in Seven Soldiers in human form.
Avia was the Queen of New Genesis and the wife of Highfather. Darkseid got his uncle, the evil General God of Apokolips to kill her, and thus provoke the war between the two realms that was ended with the pact of the exchanging sons.
Big Barda is the warrior goddess wife of Mister Miracle; based physically on Jewish American singer-actress Lainie Kazan and personally on Jack Kirby’s wife, Roz Kirby. Barda was raised on Apokolips by evil matron Granny Goodness to be the ultimate warrior. She would come to rebel and fall in love with escape-artist super hero and Jesus of the New Gods Scott Free (aka Mister Miracle). Following their escape to Earth they would eventually marry, with Barda serving alongside Mister Miracle in the Justice League whilst living in the suburbs. She also died in Death of the New Gods. Aw man, from this point onwards, can we just forget that Death of the New Gods ever happened? Good.
It's OK Superman, we all feel that way about Death of the New Gods
After DC’s reboot Barda was seen fighting in the ruins of Gotham alongside her husband Scott Free in DC’s Earth 2 series, in the wake of Apokolips’ invasion of that earth. She's currently appearing in the future-set DC comic Future's End, operating undercover as a charity worker named 'Roz Kirby'...
Scott Free is the son of Highfather who traded places (like Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd), with Darkseid's son Orion. After a hellish childhood in the Terror Orphanages of Apokolips orphanages, Free escaped (as Darksied knew he would, giving him cause to reignite the war with New Genesis) and hooked up with the rebel cell of Himon, the Smith God responsible for the New Gods iconic do-anything tool, the Mother Box. With Barda's help, he used a Boom Tube to escape to Earth and trained as an escape artist under the original Mister Miracle, Thaddeus Brown, and his assistant Oberon (no relation to the Shakespeare guy, but probably named and modeled on him). After avenging Brown’s murder, Scott would take up the mantle of Mister Miracle himself and continue his escape-artist act while dealing with the God War re-started by his escape, eventually joining the Justice League International and going through all of the Countdown/Death of the New Gods rigmarole (yeah, didn't happen...).
Kirby’s original Mister Miracle series often juxtaposed Scott Free’s skills at escaping with the slavery and domination of Darkseid. Miracle's suit and his proficiency in escape-artistry were inspired by famed comic book artist and graphic designer (as well as Kirby's Marvel colleague and artist on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.I.LD.) Jim Steranko.
Scott Free's successor as Mister Miracle, Shilo Norman would become a key player in Grant’s own Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle series, where the fall of the New Gods to Earth was first hinted at...
The New Gods by Jack Kirby and Greg Theakston, from Who's Who
-----------
Next time around, Skyland, Apokolips, Hell... in the meantime, if you have any questions, comments, ringing endorsements or damning critiques, let us know!
Stay tuned!
Jim Harbor is a story analyst with an extreme fondness for Comics, Hip Hop Music and Cartoons. Follow him on Twitter. Thanks to Tone Milazo for the original clips!