Darkseid

• 1. A Name Nobody Agrees On

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  Darkseid, the stone-skinned tyrant of the planet Apokolips in DC Comics, has a name that fans have never fully agreed how to say. Mark Evanier spent several years as assistant to the character's creator, Jack Kirby. Evanier says the name is pronounced "As if spelled 'dark side,' as in 'the dark side of man's nature'". He adds that this was "how Kirby always pronounced it around me". Yet Evanier also recalls a fan who said "dark seed" while eagerly sharing his theories about the character. Kirby simply went along with it rather than correct the kid. That small kindness sits oddly beside the character himself. Darkseid is a ruler who wants to strip hope and free will from every thinking being in the multiverse. He is regarded as one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe. He is also one of Superman's greatest adversaries and the archenemy of the Justice League. How did a comic book creation come to hold that place? What does a god who already rules a world still want? And why does a being who has been killed so many times keep coming back?

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• 2. Kirby's Fourth World

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  Readers of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #134, published in December 1970, caught a first brief glimpse of Darkseid in a cameo. Jack Kirby, who both wrote and drew the character, planned him as the chief antagonist of a metaseries called the Fourth World. More cameos followed. His first full appearance came in Forever People #1 in February 1971.

  Kirby gave Darkseid the face of the actor Jack Palance. For the personality he drew on two real men, Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon. Darkseid was first conceived as the main villain of the New Gods. Over the years his reach spread beyond them and into the wider DC universe.

  His influence also crossed company lines. The creators of Marvel Comics credit Kirby's creation as the inspiration for their own high-profile villain, Thanos.

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• 3. Prince Uxas

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  Prince Uxas, son of King Yuga Khan and Queen Heggra, stood second in line to the throne of Apokolips. He plotted to seize the planet from his older brother, Drax. When Drax tried to claim the fabled Omega Force, Uxas murdered him and took its power for himself. His skin turned to stone, and he renamed himself Darkseid.

  Love came to him through Suli, an Apokoliptian scientist and sorceress. They had a son named Kalibak. Heggra believed Suli was corrupting the boy, so she ordered DeSaad to poison her. Grief made Darkseid colder, and his disdain for his mother deepened when she forced him to marry a woman named Tigra. Their son was Orion. Seeking vengeance for Suli, Darkseid ordered DeSaad to poison Heggra in turn, which finally made him supreme monarch.

  A peace treaty between the warring planets of Apokolips and New Genesis then upended his plans for Orion. Darkseid tried to force Tigra to eliminate the child. Instead the boy was traded for Scott Free, the son of Highfather. Orion grew up to value the ideals of New Genesis and became a powerful champion against his own father. A prophecy foretold that Orion would defeat Darkseid for good in a cataclysmic battle in the fiery Armaghetto of Apokolips.

  Scott Free endured a long and torturous upbringing on Apokolips. Darkseid and his training minion, Granny Goodness, never broke his spirit. He escaped and took Big Barda of the Female Furies with him, and he later married her. As the superhero Mister Miracle, he settled with Barda on Earth. Darkseid called the escape a betrayal and used it as his pretext to declare the treaty with New Genesis void. With the war back on, his eyes turned toward Earth.

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• 4. The Anti-Life Equation

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  Complete control over the thoughts and emotions of every living being is the prize the Anti-Life Equation offers its user. Darkseid has spent his reign trying to unravel this mystery. He means to take the place of the Presence as the Supreme Being.

  Earth drew his special interest because he believed humans collectively carry most, if not all, of the Equation's fragments in their minds. His plan was to probe the mind of every human and piece the Equation together. That ambition brought him into conflict with many of the DC Universe's heroes, most notably Superman.

  Other routes to dominion were tried first. His minion Glorious Godfrey could control people's minds with nothing but his voice. On Earth, Darkseid also sent superpowered minions to carry out his schemes. He worked through Intergang, a crime syndicate that uses Apokoliptian technology. Intergang later becomes a religious cult that worships him.

  Darkseid also saw rival gods as a threat. He invaded Themyscira to learn the secret location of the Olympian deities. He planned to overthrow them and steal their power. The Amazons refused to help and fought his Parademon troops. Half of the Amazon population died in the fighting. Wonder Woman answered by placing a portion of her own soul into Darkseid. The act supposedly weakened him, and he lost a portion of his dark edge.

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• 5. Omega Beams

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  Heated energy fired from both of his eyes is the weapon Darkseid uses most. These Omega Beams run on a cosmic energy source called the Omega Effect. They can strike as a concussive force, disintegrate organisms or objects, or make a target never have existed. They can also resurrect beings they have killed. Darkseid controls them with pinpoint precision, curving them around corners or passing them through matter and other forms of energy.

  Few can stand against them. Superman and Doomsday can resist the beams, though Superman only with a great deal of pain. Orion and Diana were able to deflect them, and Firestorm once redirected them. In a crossover story, Galactus was unaffected. Darkseid sometimes fires them at servants who fail him but are too valuable to kill, then revives them when he needs them again.

  The Omega Sanction is crueler still. It traps a victim in a series of alternate realities in which they die. After each death the victim is revived in a new reality. There the death is worse and more painful than the last.

  His raw strength is just as formidable. He has broken a Green Lantern Ring with his bare hands. He has overpowered two Kryptonians at once and defeated the entire Justice League. Even without his full power, he has held his own against the Olympian god Zeus. He can enlarge himself, and his true form as a New God is almost incomprehensibly massive. He can teleport himself or others through time and space. He also has telepathy, telekinesis and the ability to create psionic avatars. Training in the art of war on Apokolips made him a skilled hand-to-hand fighter, and he is proficient with several weapons.

  The Great Darkness Saga shows his range at its widest. It is set one thousand years in the future, when Darkseid has been absent for centuries and is almost forgotten. He returns to face the Legion of Super-Heroes. After boosting his power through both science and magic, he transposes the planets Apokolips and Daxam. That places Daxam under a yellow sun and gives its people Kryptonian-like powers equal to Superman's. He takes mental control of an entire planet's population and tries to conquer the universe with them. The Legion and many allies eventually defeat him. In the same saga he instantly absorbs information from another mind, pronounces a curse, and brings other beings' worst fears to life. He also easily defeats Mon-El, Mordru and the Time Trapper.

  He is a god who has lived for several hundred thousand years, yet he is not invincible. He can drain the life force of other godly beings to rejuvenate himself, and demi-gods restore him slowly. Even so, he has been killed on several occasions. Despite his strength, he prefers to use his superhuman intelligence to manipulate others, and he rarely fights personally. As ruler of Apokolips, he also commands all of its military and technological resources.

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• 6. Boss Dark Side

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  Grant Morrison's 2005 Mister Miracle limited series imagined a Darkseid who had won. He had finally discovered the Anti-Life Equation and used it to destroy the Fourth World altogether. The New Gods fled to Earth and hid there. Highfather and his followers became homeless people. Metron used a wheelchair, and so did the Black Racer, now an old man. DeSaad became an evil psychiatrist, and Granny Goodness became a madam for the Female Furies. Darkseid himself was an evil gang leader known only as "Boss Dark Side". He had given the Sheeda North America in return for Aurakles, Earth's first superhero. His true goal was to get Shilo Norman, whom he considers the "Avatar of Freedom", in his clutches so he could destroy the New Gods.

  Elsewhere, the prophecy came due. Orion returned to Earth by boom tube for his final battle with his father. He killed Darkseid by ripping out his heart, and the wound left a firepit of Apokolips in Darkseid's chest. Orion walked away battered, having "won" at last. But Darkseid's life essence outlasted his body and fell back in time. There he was reborn as "Boss Dark Side", aided by his resurrected minions and the supervillain Libra.

  Bound once more to a human form, Boss Dark Side appeared in several titles before Final Crisis. In The Flash vol. 2 #240, he led an army of fanatics, their will broken by the "spoken form" of the Anti-Life Equation, to kidnap the Tornado Twins. In Birds of Prey #118, he ran the Dark Side Club, where superhumans fight to the death under the influence of drugs made by Bernadeth. In Teen Titans #59, he used the Terror Titans to capture the Teen Titans for the club's fights.

  In Final Crisis, he began taking over Earth and corrupting the multiverse. Libra converted much of the Secret Society of Super Villains with the Crime Bible and the Holy Lance. The souls of Darkseid's fellow evil New Gods joined him, in modified human bodies or in the bodies of other superpowered beings such as Mary Marvel. His Omega Beams gave Mary Marvel new power based on Anti-Life rather than magic. The detective Dan Turpin was lured into the Dark Side Club to become Darkseid's "final host", because the Boss Dark Side body had begun to mummify. Darkseid conquered Earth by unleashing the Anti-Life Equation on mankind. At that same moment, S.H.A.D.E. operatives shot Shilo Norman, the "Embodiment of Freedom", which signalled the "Victory of Evil". Turpin's mind stayed in control of his body, though corrupted. Darkseid still won control over Turpin, who was transformed to resemble him. His "fall" compressed and crumpled spacetime around Earth.

  Batman, after escaping captivity, shot Darkseid with the same radion bullet that had killed Orion. Darkseid hit him at the same moment with the Omega Beam. The beam sent Batman back in time and infected him with Omega energy that would make him jump forward again, with disastrous results on reaching the present. Darkseid was mortally wounded. But his Omega Sanction still teleported Batman into prehistoric times. Superman found remains believed to be Batman's, later revealed as the last of many Batman clones Darkseid had made. Darkseid mocked his old enemy for failing to defend Earth. In his fall through the multiverse he had created a doomsday singularity that now threatened all of existence. He told Superman he now lives inside the bodies of everyone who fell to the Anti-Life Equation, so killing him would kill humanity. Then he reloaded the gun to fire the bullet backward in time and kill Orion. Superman judged this suicide, since the bullet was already poisoning Darkseid to death.

  Barry Allen and Wally West led the Black Racer to Darkseid, and its touch freed Turpin from his control. Wonder Woman, freed from possession by one of Darkseid's minions, bound him with the Lasso of Truth. That freed humanity from the Anti-Life Equation. Darkseid's essence made a last attempt to seize the Miracle Machine Superman had created. Superman destroyed him with counter-vibrations. Batman escaped the Omega Sanction as well. Later, Doctor Impossible manipulated the Crime Syndicate of America into helping him resurrect Darkseid with a machine that draws energy from the multiverse. The attempt backfired and produced a new being known as the Omega Man.

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• 7. Reboots And Rebirths

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  In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity, and a Parademon spoke Darkseid's name in Justice League #1. He was mentioned again in Justice League #2. In #3, Victor Stone saw him in a vision after an exploding Mother Box injured Stone. Darkseid himself appeared in the final pages of #4. In #5, the League confronted him and was overpowered. He severely hurt Superman with his Omega Beams and broke Green Lantern's arm. In #6, Cyborg activated the invaders' Mother Boxes and Superman forced Darkseid through a boom tube. That made him the first foe the newly formed League faced as a team. The same story showed DeSaad and Steppenwolf referring to Darkseid's daughter and their ceaseless search for her across countless worlds. She later escaped containment in Justice League of America's Vibe, after the dampeners on her cage were briefly disabled.

  In this continuity there is only one set of New Gods across the multiverse. As Darkseid invaded Prime Earth, he sent Steppenwolf to do the same on Earth 2, with greater success. The result was the deaths of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. It also stranded Helena Wayne and Kara Zor-L on Prime Earth. Five years later Darkseid invaded Earth 2 again, though it had never fully recovered from the first assault. It emerged that he and Highfather of New Genesis had struck a deal giving him the unchallenged right to do so.

  Darkseid #1 revealed a new background. Before he was Darkseid, he was a farmer named Uxas who hated the deities of his world. He climbed their mountain while they slept and tricked them into fighting each other. Once the war had weakened them, he killed them one by one with his scythe and stole their power. Then he destroyed his world and created Apokolips.

  Justice League: The Darkseid War came after the New 52 imprint was retired. Darkseid clashed with the Anti-Monitor, who is revealed to be a scientist named Mobius. Darkseid's daughter Grail led Mobius to Darkseid so that Mobius could kill him. Mobius believed that Darkseid's death would free him from being the Anti-Monitor. After an intense battle, the Anti-Monitor fused the Black Racer with the Flash and sent it after Darkseid. Using the fused Flash and his own powers, he killed Darkseid. The universe was left unbalanced, having lost its God of Evil. Lex Luthor later fused with the Omega Sanction and became the new ruler of Apokolips.

  Grail then killed the Anti-Monitor with an Anti-Life Equation-powered Steve Trevor. Afterward she resurrected Darkseid through the newborn child of Superwoman. The child had the same power-stealing ability as his father, Mazahs. Grail took the new "God" abilities of the Justice League, fused them with the child, and brought Darkseid back to life. He was under her complete control. Later she tried to redeem herself by seemingly killing him with the Anti-Life Equation. Instead she reincarnated him as a baby, intending to teach him differently.

  Some time afterward, Darkseid matured into a toddler who demanded to feast on the Old Gods to return to his original self. He and Grail killed A.R.G.U.S. agents who were hunting them. Then they began taking the life force of Zeus' demigod children, killing several, including Perseus and Hercules. Each kill let him grow, first to the size of a child. After recruiting Jason and luring Wonder Woman to him, he aged into a young man. He fought Wonder Woman and began draining her life force, until Jason betrayed him. Zeus appeared and transformed into his true form. The two took a Boom Tube to Manila, Philippines, where Zeus grabbed Darkseid and unleashed bolts of lightning on him. Darkseid revealed he had planned for this all along. His true target was Zeus himself, and by draining and killing him he was restored to his original self.

  In New Justice, countless alien planets held captive by Brainiac's race were freed and ventured into an unknown area of space called the "Ghost Sector". Darkseid remembered a prophecy his father had told him and noticed a crack in the Source Wall. He lured Cyborg, Starfire and Azrael to the Ghost Sector, hoping to use their powers to conquer the multiverse. He told Cyborg that a bond had formed between them when Cyborg merged with Darkseid's Mother Box. According to the prophecy, the alien worlds were hidden because of the Old Gods they worshipped.

  In Infinite Frontier, Darkseid is trapped on Earth-Omega after the multiverse is restored. He regains his original form by fusing with his alternate universe counterparts. His former henchmen reunite with him there, and he gains a new follower named X-Tract, Cameron Chase's Earth-Two counterpart. He battles the Justice League Incarnate but is defeated by the Great Hand. He is sent to a mysterious place where Pariah and the Great Darkness control him. Nightwing fends off the Great Darkness, freeing him, and he returns to Apokolips.

  In DC All In, Darkseid bonds with the Spectre using the Miracle Machine. Then he allows the Justice League to kill him in battle so he can become unbound from time and space. He travels to another universe and corrupts it with his influence, turning it into the Absolute Universe. His death upsets the balance of the universe and leads to the events of New Gods (vol. 5).

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• 8. Screen Villain

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  Smallville's tenth and final season gave Darkseid a mostly non-corporeal form. He had superhuman strength, telekinesis and the ability to turn into smoke. Carter Hall says Darkseid was present on Earth during many of humanity's darkest hours, including the Spanish Inquisition and the Third Reich. Granny Goodness claims that Kali, Hades and Lucifer are all names Earth has given him. After awakening from a rift in the universe, he started an anti-vigilante movement and corrupted countless humans, including Gordon Godfrey and General Slade Wilson. His aim was to pull Apokolips toward Earth. In the two-part finale he bargained for Lex Luthor's revival in exchange for possession of Lionel Luthor's body, so he could confront Clark Kent. Clark seemingly destroyed him, but the comic book continuation reveals that Darkseid survived and restored his physical form.

  In animation, Frank Welker voiced him on Super Friends, and Michael Ironside voiced him in the DC Animated Universe. In Superman: The Animated Series he defied the peace treaty with New Genesis by searching for the Anti-Life Equation. After his underlings failed repeatedly, he personally defeated Superman and killed Dan Turpin. He came close to conquering Earth until forces from New Genesis declared the planet under their protection. In the series finale, he had Superman brainwashed into believing he was Darkseid's adopted son. Superman broke free, confronted him on Apokolips, and defeated him, but Darkseid survived as his servants came to his aid. In the Justice League episode "Twilight", he worked with Brainiac, then betrayed him. He was killed when Brainiac's base was destroyed. In the Justice League Unlimited episodes "Alive!" and "Destroyer", Lex Luthor accidentally resurrected him while trying to revive Brainiac. Later, Luthor used the Anti-Life Equation to absorb himself and Darkseid into the Source Wall. In Teen Titans Go!, "Weird Al" Yankovic voices him, and the character even mentions his voice actor by insulting him.

  In 2014, Bryan Singer revealed that early development of the scrapped Superman Returns sequel had considered Darkseid as the main antagonist. The DC Extended Universe first alluded to him in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In a Knightmare sequence, Bruce Wayne sees a future where Darkseid has taken over the Earth and used the Anti-Life Equation to make Superman his servant. The 2017 theatrical release of Justice League only mentioned him. Zack Snyder's 2021 director's cut finally showed him, portrayed by Ray Porter. In that version, he gives his disgraced lieutenant Steppenwolf a chance at redemption. Steppenwolf must use three Mother Boxes to xenoform and conquer Earth in Darkseid's name. After the Justice League defeats Steppenwolf, Darkseid vows to extract the Anti-Life Equation from Earth himself. He was also set to appear in New Gods before its cancellation.

  Animated films gave him a long run. Andre Braugher voiced him in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, where he brainwashed Kara Zor-El into replacing Big Barda as commander of the Female Furies. Tony Todd voiced him in later appearances in the DC Animated Movie Universe. In Reign of the Supermen, he is revealed as the mastermind behind Doomsday and the Cyborg Superman. In Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, he fills his army with "Paradooms", hybrids of Parademons and Doomsday clones, and conquers Earth. Years later, Superman and the other survivors strike back. Using the connections to the planet, Cyborg sacrifices himself to send Darkseid, Trigon and Apokolips into oblivion.

  The games and crossovers are more playful. In Superman 64, Michael Ironside voices him as an underling of Lex Luthor. After he loses to Superman, he is taken to a jail cell meant for ordinary humans without powers. In Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, he fuses with Shao Kahn to create Dark Kahn. After Dark Kahn is destroyed, Darkseid is imprisoned in the Netherrealm. In the crossover comic Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe, He-Man kills him. He is then transformed into pure knowledge and claimed by the elders of Grayskull. In the crossover comic series DC x Sonic the Hedgehog, he arrives in Sonic's universe via the Ragna Rock to seize the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds.

  IGN ranked Darkseid the 6th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time. Wizard magazine placed him 23rd on its list of the Greatest Villains of All Time. Darkseid will appear in the DC Universe series Mister Miracle.

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