Apokolips without Intergang

[Deniz Camp]

Which is my point. The New Gods were not magic based like the Olympians are, the New Gods were science based with items that simply 'looked' like magic to people who didn't understand the technology behind it.

Again, that's (a common) misreading of the text. It's not 'technology-looks-like-magic', it's 'magic looks like technology'.

It's no different from Zeus' magic, numinous powers manifesting as a lightning bolt, or Thor's as a hammer, or Odin's as a spear and two ravens. The ravens were his omniscience, but they were parsed as something entirely commonplace.

And what's more commonplace, today, than technology? In what better terms do we understand 'power' than technology? This is the force that drives, today, and so our gods wield weapons that look like technology. But their power is of a higher order, just as the power of the gods has always been.

[Nix Uotan]

Darkseid doesn't invade with a fleet of ships. Darkseid chills on your couch, embarrasses and humiliates you, and won't leave. And he drinks everything in your fridge.

Can I sig this? Cause it's awesome

[K. Jones]

Doing Apokolips without base modern human lackeys is a disservice to be sure. Not only is that original Intergang build-up pitch-perfect for showing why Darkseid is the most evil ... also the raw physical threat of Apokolips was never all that important to Earth, because he couldn't conduct a proper invasion of reality, due to the Pact. But the Pact didn't prevent him from manipulating, Satan-style. Kirby even makes a blatant point when he sends Big Bear back to Ancient Britian and he sees Godfrey preaching justification to the Roman Centurions - any time, any place there are brute thugs shaking down people, Darkseid is not far.

The abridged version depicted in Superman: The Animated Series was really well done, too.

And the notion that around any given corner in the city of Metropolis there is an enclave that is a cog in the wheel of Apokolips, inadvertently trading secrets about the Anti-Life Equation in exchange for sci-fi weapons, is genius. Superman's city can't just have regular gangsters, it's gotta have super-gangsters.

But that's the thing. Darkseid doesn't have to invade Earth for any reason. He just needs the Anti-Life Equation, and he takes over EVERYTHING. Why suffer losses for some paltry blue bauble? Why risk the peace with New Genesis that allows him to sneak around to his heart's content, when he can just enlist stupid humans to do the searching for him?

I'll reiterate, even though this isn't quite that thread, but Darkseid is not Mongul.

He's Satan. Corrupting man is easier than risking war with angels.

[t hedge coke]

Can I sig this? Cause it's awesome

Stick it up. Definitely.

If CBR has given me anything positive tonight, it's that Darkseid is the worst houseguest ever.

[Outside_85]

Again, that's (a common) misreading of the text. It's not 'technology-looks-like-magic', it's 'magic looks like technology'.

It's no different from Zeus' magic, numinous powers manifesting as a lightning bolt, or Thor's as a hammer, or Odin's as a spear and two ravens. The ravens were his omniscience, but they were parsed as something entirely commonplace.

And what's more commonplace, today, than technology? In what better terms do we understand 'power' than technology? This is the force that drives, today, and so our gods wield weapons that look like technology. But their power is of a higher order, just as the power of the gods has always been.

And this is where I continue to disagree:
Apokolips is armed with tanks, fighter-planes, spaceships, guns and explosives while receiving aid and information from a hyperadvanced pocketcomputer. This is no different than the kind of aresenal Mongul, Krypton, Brainac or any other alien invader would have unleashed in a fight with Earth, the New Gods are just better equipped than most of them.

Those are things that have nothing in common with the items you listed, because those of Apokolips are mass-produced, there is an actual science behind them that makes them work. Mjolnir by comparison does not contain a storm generator, it's a lump of metal with an enchantment on it. The only New God where this isn't true, is Darkseid, because he went somewhere else entirely to gain powers no New God had.

And there you invoke the deadly word: Commonplace. Thats also the problem here. That the New Gods use technology, it means it can be taken apart, it can be examined, understood, tested and eventually replicated. You can't do that with magic, unless you happen to be a powerful magician to begin with.

[FanboyStranger]

He's Satan. Corrupting man is easier than risking war with angels.

He's not, though. Satan is a metaphysical embodiment of total evil. Darkseid embodies a type of evil, but it's the evil of self-interest manifested through total control. Satan is many things-- a tempter, a rebel, a deciever, etc. Darkseid is the ultimate dictator and demogouge-- he is control personified, and that control is used entirely for his own personal gratification. It's a type of evil, to be sure, and a particularly nasty and powerful form of evil present in the 20th century that sickened/inspired Kirby, but it is not a broad conception of evil like those traditionally associated with Satanic figures.

[Gordonstar]

He is Jesus true self.

[colonyofcells]

Should be ok for Apokolips to have worshippers on earth like intergang.

[Johnny Thunders!]

I have gone back and forth in this for years, and ultimately, I think Kirby created Gods. Everything that old gods represent, the new gods came to embody.

However, his use of the word cloning, transmutation, genetics. Those aren't magic, the language is intentionally science based. I do think Kirby was suggesting that with advancing science, humanity was becoming more evolved and perhaps god like. That doesn't diminish their value as metaphors, but it suggests that with science, you can do god like feats. I think we go too far when we say the magic of science isn't obvious in Kirby's new gods. I see him reveling in technology for technology's sake.

[t hedge coke]

And this is where I continue to disagree:
Apokolips is armed with tanks, fighter-planes, spaceships, guns and explosives while receiving aid and information from a hyperadvanced pocketcomputer. This is no different than the kind of aresenal Mongul, Krypton, Brainac or any other alien invader would have unleashed in a fight with Earth, the New Gods are just better equipped than most of them.

Those are things that have nothing in common with the items you listed, because those of Apokolips are mass-produced, there is an actual science behind them that makes them work.

There is no actual science.

There's no more science behind the Boom Tube than there is behind Thor's hammer controlling lightning or a chariot that pulls the sun. There are engineering principles involved in chariots, but none that apply to pulling the sun, or using it as wheel. And, that's where New God technology is at. Their tools work like sun chariots and lightning hammers.

That's straight up from Kirby. Since then, others have taken it even further, so that we've seen New God tech coalesce out of garbage, or taken apart to reveal it's just cheap plastic and bits of wood, or that it can be manifested out of necessity for it existing. Even John Byrne, who loves depowering cosmic dudes, treated the New Gods as walking metaphors and the descendants of titans when he did an actual New Gods comic instead of Superman cosmic porn stories.

[FanboyStranger]

And this is where I continue to disagree:
Apokolips is armed with tanks, fighter-planes, spaceships, guns and explosives while receiving aid and information from a hyperadvanced pocketcomputer. This is no different than the kind of aresenal Mongul, Krypton, Brainac or any other alien invader would have unleashed in a fight with Earth, the New Gods are just better equipped than most of them.

Those are things that have nothing in common with the items you listed, because those of Apokolips are mass-produced, there is an actual science behind them that makes them work. Mjolnir by comparison does not contain a storm generator, it's a lump of metal with an enchantment on it. The only New God where this isn't true, is Darkseid, because he went somewhere else entirely to gain powers no New God had.

And there you invoke the deadly word: Commonplace. Thats also the problem here. That the New Gods use technology, it means it can be taken apart, it can be examined, understood, tested and eventually replicated. You can't do that with magic, unless you happen to be a powerful magician to begin with.

To cite Simonson's Orion:

Arnicus Wolfram: "The New Gods? The New Gods of what? Who made you Gods? Where are your worshippers? Who sacrifices on your altars, you pretenders to the ancient preorgatives of mankind? Who kills the fattened calf? No one knows, no one even cares!"

Orion: "The voice of the despairing cynic, crying out in the darkness against the great mystery he cannot even acknowledge. You've read too much fiction, Arnicus. Gods are not dependent on their worshippers; worshippers are dependent on their gods. And the New Gods? We're as old as time, constantly remade, constantly reborn with each turning of the wheel. No worshipper? Fool!!! Look about you! Each time a mortal turns on a computer, puts a piece of bread in the toaster, opens a door, strikes a match, or wonders at the stars... he worships at the altar of the New Gods."

Technology is an expression of the New Gods' divinity. It is not technology confused for divinity.

[Johnny Thunders!]

Those quotes imply to me that, man creates gods just like he creates technology. Both are expressions of science.

[colonyofcells]

Maybe the source is just a giant sketch pad.

[Gordonstar]

It's mans imagination.

[FanboyStranger]

Those quotes imply to me that, man creates gods just like he creates technology. Both are expressions of science.

That's actually the inverse of what Orion is telling Arnicus. It's the New Gods that inspire mankind's technology through their divinity, not that the New Gods are embodiments of human concepts. The Kirby/Simonson take is that the New Gods are universal concepts that shape humanity. Earth just happens to be another battlefield, and mankind is caught in the way. The echoes of their wars influence our theological and mythological stories, but just as we can't understand the true forms of the New Gods, we do not understand the whole scope of the true stories.

Also, to reduce the New Gods to just advanced aliens confused with gods (which as others have pointed out is the point of the superficially similiar, but thematically very different Eternals series) is to downplay all the deliberate theological reference-- specifically from Jewish tradition-- within the original the "4th World" books. It is not coincidence that Highfather is Izaya (Isiah) or that the Source (G-D) communicates via writing on a wall as in the Book of Daniel or that Darkseid's appearance manifests as graven idol, to cite just a few.