Beautiful Dreamer
56 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer is born on New Genesis.
39 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer attends the Academy of Higher Consciousness on New Genesis, where she first meets Vykin the Brave, Serifan Mark Moonrider, and Big Bear.
38 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer & Serifan help Vykin the Brave find the hidden next generation mother box Maya when they find out Doctor Bedlam is hiding on New Genesis to steal it. The groundskeeper Big Bear secretly gives them some help. Mark Moonrider tries to stop them and find it for himself, but ultimately they all work together to find it and stop Doctor Bedlam.
32 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer, Vykin the Brave, Big Bear, & Mark Moonrider all undergo the ritual for Serifan to relinquish his godhead and receive it anew, so his physical form aligns with who he is, bonding them together as the Forever People.
25 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer is kidnapped by Glorious Godfrey to help him track the Anti-Life Equation on Earth. The other Forever People defy the commands of Highfather, coming to Earth to save her. Seeing the effects of Anti-Life on the planet, they choose to stay on the planet, helping free it's people.
23 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer and the Forever People stage a giant concert, helping enough of Glorious Godfrey's followers to turn away from Anti-Life to force him to abandon the planet. Knowing that he had many other Anti-Life experiments across the galaxy, they venture into space to begin freeing those people.
11 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer and the Forever People help refugees from Despero's campaign of interplanetary conquest band together and find a new home, becoming the gods of a new religion.
4 years ago - Beautiful Dreamer and the Forever People return to New Genesis at the request of Highfather to help navigate the Boom Tube inversion field around Earth. They lead the way for the New Gods to confront the Parademon wave invasion
1 year ago - Beautiful Dreamer and the Forever People travel into the territory conquered by Lady Styx to bring help to the people there.
The Forever People, as they appear in their own comic stories, were really about the group as a whole more than about any one individual. This isn't to say they weren't complete characters, of course... in fact, I would say that there's something almost magic in how minimally these five were focused on while still each being so loaded with personality. Maybe that's part of what Kirby was deliberately aiming for, to emulate something vibrant about the people of the 60s he was celebrating.
Beautiful Dreamer's role in the Forever People was way more important than she might seem to the casual reader. Rather than playing the traditional kind-of-an-afterthought role of early female superheroes, she manages to very much be the center of their whole dynamic. It's not specifically said out loud, but I think it's just understood that the main thing that bonds them is that they all love the same girl, and Kirby manages to make her a girl for whom that totally makes sense.
Beautiful Dreamer's role in the Forever People was way more important than she might seem to the casual reader. Rather than playing the traditional kind-of-an-afterthought role of early female superheroes, she manages to very much be the center of their whole dynamic. It's not specifically said out loud, but I think it's just understood that the main thing that bonds them is that they all love the same girl, and Kirby manages to make her a girl for whom that totally makes sense.
Beautiful Dreamer's Comic HistoryWhen the Forever People first appeared in their first issue they weren't actually all together yet. They'd come to Earth to save Beautiful Dreamer, their fifth member, who had been kidnapped because her mind could fathom the anti-life equation. This means that we're introduced to her in a state of sleeping beauty-style damseling, but also that she's set up to be set slightly apart from the others.
Of course, this was pretty normal for comics of the era, and this IS Jack Kirby we're talking about. In so many of the classic superhero teams he made with Stan Lee, there was a lone female member who looked great and dynamic, but who the other members of the team treaded as being useless or a burden. Beautiful Dreamer of the Forever People has that same sense of being a bit of an outsider, but rather than being a burden she's perhaps the most powerful of all of them because she's in touch with something of vital importance to them, and the other characters all seem to cherish her for it, treating her like someone they all have real affection for. It's a pretty big contrast, and does suggest a big difference in Jack & Stan's writing. For her part, Beautiful Dreamer was embraced by her fellow Forever People, just as vital to their adventures as anyone else. In fact, her particular awareness, as well as her illusion-casting ability probably made her the MOST useful member of the team. She was clearly romantic with Mark Moonrider as they were often depicted holding hands... although the later DeMatteis series actually paired her with Big Bear. |
Our Beautiful Dreamer StoryKirby's concepts for Anti-Life are probably most successfully realized in the character of Beautiful Dreamer. It was never meant to be that thoroughly defined, but it was understood that some time in her past, she was actually taken by Apokolips and implanted with Anti-Life, which made her function like a divining rod as Darkseid and Glorious Godfrey hunted the Anti-Life Equation on Earth.
We aren't specifically saying that her connection to Anti-Life is the result of having been kidnapped at some point. Frankly, once you wrap your head around the unknowable and actually benevolent nature of Anti-Life as it was originally conceived, the less defined you want it to be. So Beautiful Dreamer is just going to have a mysterious connection because of her unique ability to connect with peoples dreams. The other core element of Beautiful Dreamer as depicted in the comics would be her relationships with the other members of the Forever People. The way she was depicted always holding hands with Mark was honestly really sweet, but so too was her relationship with Big Bear in the later series. I know not everyone is going to agree with this, but we really do think that the best way to create a modern equivalent of their original series celebration of the 60s is to imagine them all in a relationship together as a group. |