Really tired of Darkseid

[Outside_85]

I really find the whole Darkseid is the ultimate evil of the DCU tiring
I'm ready for Nekron or the Anti Monitor to just take over and stop the needless Darkseid over saturation.

That it is, especially since it's not an entirely accurate description of him.
He's the ultimate evil amongst the New Gods, even in the New-52 where he and Highfather are basically two sides of the same coin.

If anything you can section the big villains ones up in categories of what vision they represent:
Darkseid is the embodiment of a living hell, where life isn't worth living, but you are too weak to escape.
Nekron is the embodiment of death, where nothing lives.
Trigon is the embodiment of hell itself, where even death is no escape.
Brainiac is the embodiment of science, a cold machine that sees you as nothing but data it has to collect and store.

[Starchild]

Despero, Grodd, Kobra & Queen Bee have potential to be huge threats for the Justice League. It doesn't always have to be Darkseid.

[Jon Clark]

Writers should be able to write Darkseid however they see fit, instead of doing it how Kirby did ages ago. Believe me, if I'm a comic book writer, I'm going on write the characters the way I want them to be.

But then why write those characters. If you want a total loon, you use the Joker not decide to remake some other villain into a Joker-wannabe. And if you want a giant sledgehammer to pound the heroes with or a giant mountain for the heroes to pound on- there are a ton out there without taking Darkseid and destroying everything that makes him a unique character. If you can't respect the characters the way they have been presented, then just create your own new characters to fill that role in your story.

[Starchild]

But then why write those characters. If you want a total loon, you use the Joker not decide to remake some other villain into a Joker-wannabe. And if you want a giant sledgehammer to pound the heroes with or a giant mountain for the heroes to pound on- there are a ton out there without taking Darkseid and destroying everything that makes him a unique character. If you can't respect the characters the way they have been presented, then just create your own new characters to fill that role in your story.

Agree to disagree. Never knew having your own vision could be so looked down upon. Thanks! This is exactly why I am grateful that fanboys have no say-so in this industry, because characters would never grow. They'll never evolve.

[Blind Otto]

I've enjoyed almost every appearance of pre-NU Darkseid. The Great Darkness Saga has to be the best, but even Morrison's handling of him was good - I can even ignore his defeat at the hands (belt?) of the Atom.
But he consistantly came across almost as a force of nature. The ONLY time I started to get tired of him pre-NU was when he was used to show just how big, bad and ugly Doomsday was. That irritated me.

Post Flashpoint, he's boring. The origin story, with that terrible cover and it's tight leather pants, COULD have had amazing potential. So, Uxas has stolen the power of practically every single old god?
Oh, the things the right writer could do with that. Here, we have the potential to move Darkseid out of the "big, powerful dictator" realm and into a truly mythic force. In fact, a new god.
A bad writer would give him power-of-the-week - something for every situation. That's not what I mean by amazing potential.
Give him things like enhanced awareness - possibly limited by only being aware of circumstances around his minions. Have him show up here and there the size of a solar system.
Make it extremely clear that this guy is in a class of his own, and the old tactic of hitting him until he falls down just isn't going to work - ever.

A recent issue of Constantine was on the right track, with John and a few E2 survivors trying to escape a gigantic hand that could reach across space and even dimensions. THAT is the power level Darkseid should be at, on his worst possible day.

Then, give him back his old personality - the stoic, condescending, overlord-of-all-I-survey dictator, with intelligence and forsight that makes Batman look like Ambush Bug.

Unbeatable? No. But certainly an enemy that takes everything a good writer has in him to defeat. Not just "Superman goes and sits in the middle of the sun for a week, and hits him" solutions.

If Darkseid is going to be the multiverse's god of evil, then make him exactly that. Transcend physical limitations, make him into something that even Parallax would be terrified of. Something... godlike.

[mathew101281]

Agree to disagree. Never knew having your own vision could be so looked down upon. Thanks! This is exactly why I am grateful that fanboys have no say-so in this industry, because characters would never grow. They'll never evolve.

Just because a character is changing doesn't mean its growing. I'd argue that many of Darkseid's appearances don't progress the character at all, but rather kind of dumb him down. As created he was meant to be ultimate evil, not just on of many cosmic tyrants or strong men that Superman could beat just with force. Superman has characters like Mongol and Doomsday for those kind of brute force stories. Its not a matter of limiting the character, its a matter of using the best tool for the job. Using Darkseid for run of the mill beat em up stories is like using a chainsaw to slice bread. My view of darkseid is if you can swap Mongol into the story and the concept doesn't change all that much then it isn't the best use of Darkseid.

[Double 0]

Agree to disagree. Never knew having your own vision could be so looked down upon. Thanks! This is exactly why I am grateful that fanboys have no say-so in this industry, because characters would never grow. They'll never evolve.

Turning Darkseid into Mongul is not an evolution in any sense of the word. It's quite literally the opposite.

[Patrick_C]

Agree to disagree. Never knew having your own vision could be so looked down upon. Thanks! This is exactly why I am grateful that fanboys have no say-so in this industry, because characters would never grow. They'll never evolve.

Having your own vision is one thing. Messing on a character concept is another entirely. If you started to write Superman and redesigned him to be a kryptonian supremacist with an axe to grind with scientists, you would be destroying Superman, not making him bigger. This is not fanboyishness.

[Dataweaver]

Having your own vision is one thing. Messing on a character concept is another entirely. If you started to write Superman and redesigned him to be a kryptonian supremacist with an axe to grind with scientists, you would be destroying Superman, not making him bigger. This is not fanboyishness.

Or if you rewrote him as a guy with electrical powers. Incidentally, they did do a story arc in the late 80s where Superman was portrayed as a Kryptonian supremicist — of course, that was because he was under the influence of the Eradicator, as part of its introduction into the comics.

[FanboyStranger]

Writers should be able to write Darkseid however they see fit, instead of doing it how Kirby did ages ago. Believe me, if I'm a comic book writer, I'm going on write the characters the way I want them to be.

In general, I agree, but with Darkseid, it seems that most writers turn the character into some kind of generic big threat. So, basically, you're reducing the character's impact rather than adding to it. Darkseid can be many things, but generic shouldn't be one of them. As someone else mentioned, there is evolving a character, then there is devolving them. I have little interest in a character becoming less than what it was. (That's been my problem with The Spectre over the past 15 years.)

[Double 0]

In general, I agree, but with Darkseid, it seems that most writers turn the character into some kind of generic big threat. So, basically, you're reducing the character's impact rather than adding to it. Darkseid can be many things, but generic shouldn't be one of them. As someone else mentioned, there is evolving a character, then there is devolving them. I have little interest in a character becoming less than what it was. (That's been my problem with The Spectre over the past 15 years.)

The Spectre is another character that definitely needs to be revised. Or at least in how he's used.

[nopunin10did]

The Spectre is another character that definitely needs to be revised. Or at least in how he's used.

Do you not like Gotham by Midnight? I'm enjoying how they use The Spectre there.

[JasonTodd428]

In general, I agree, but with Darkseid, it seems that most writers turn the character into some kind of generic big threat. So, basically, you're reducing the character's impact rather than adding to it.

Yeah, that happens with Darkseid a lot of the time, which is a shame. The problem with him is that he is such a BIG threat and there aren't that many other threats as large as he is in the DC universe so he's become a kind of go-to guy for writers who need some big threat to make their story feel important. Maybe what DC needs to do is shelve him for a bit and either work on elevating a few other characters that may be close to his level of threat but not used as often or else create a few newer threats for the JL and others to face. Personally, I'm not tired of Darkseid but I do think he is used a bit to often just for the sake of making a story important.

[Patrick_C]

Or they could stop trying to write cosmic emergency stories all the time. If there's one thign that I hate, is the Dragon Ball power creep in which each month a new villain is introduced, which then proceeds to wipe the floor with the preceding one, just to show how serious the threat is.

It's tiring.

[JasonTodd428]

Or they could stop trying to write cosmic emergency stories all the time. If there's one thign that I hate, is the Dragon Ball power creep in which each month a new villain is introduced, which then proceeds to wipe the floor with the preceding one, just to show how serious the threat is.

It's tiring.

That is a third option and one that I was just about to edit into my post. Seeing as how you already mentioned it though I guess I don't need to.