Damien Darhk
69 years ago - Damien Darhk is born.
51 years ago - 18-year-old Damien Darhk goes to college.
47 years ago - 22-year-old Damien Darhk gets his bachelor's degree & begins grad school.
44 years ago - 25-year-old Damien Darhk earns his masters degree, begins his doctoral work.
42 years ago - 27-year-old Damien Darhk earns his first doctorate.
39 years ago - 30-year-old Damien Darhk earns his second doctorate.
35 years ago - 39-year-old Damien Darhk finds a hidden alien ship & murders the occupants, stealing the ship technology.
28 years ago - 41-year-old Damien Darhk publishes his book on the inherent moral righteousness of science, creating a small revolution in the scientific community, and then disappears from the public eye.
26 years ago - 43-year-old Damien Darhk creates the global think-tank H.I.V.E. bringing together like-minded scientists to work without moral restrictions, selling many of their creations as weapons.
23 years ago - 46-year-old Damien Darhk takes Regina Darhk as his concubine.
17 years ago - 52-year-old Damien Darhk is killed by Regina Darhk, usurping control over H.I.V.E. to use it more directly amassing her own power base.
8 years ago - 18 (61)-year-old Damien Darhk's cloned body reaches maturity. He begins to rebuild H.I.V.E. dealing heavily with Ra's Al Ghul.
6 years ago - 20 (63)-year-old Damien Darhk frees several old allies of H.I.V.E. from prison.
4 years ago - 22(65)-year-old Damien Darhk almost defeats the Titans when they battle H.I.V.E., but his organization is defeated, and his clone body is destroyed.
Now - 18(69)-year-old Damien Darhk's new clone body is awakened by Ra's Al Ghul, a candidate for the league.
We imagine that most people's awareness of Damien Darhk comes less from the comics and more from his television appearances, but the character as he appears in the CW Arrowverse doesn't really have much in common with his comic counterpart. This really isn't a problem, because his influence on comic continuity is minimal at best, but he does present us with some tools we can use to help tell a larger story not just about H.I.V.E., but about the nature of the scientific community in the world of DC as a whole.
Damien Darhk's Comic HistoryDamien Darhk, as he appears in the comics, has made a grand total of seven appearances. Almost all of them are in the pages of Devin Grayson's 1999 Titans series, the only exception being a single appearance in the "Robin 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular", in a story also by Grayson set during the aforementioned series. Much like the H.I.V.E. in the 80's era Teen Titans, the revamped organization served primarily as a convenient plot contrivance to give the heroes a faceless army of bad guys to punch.
Darhk was introduced as a person with knowledge and experience in the criminal underworld that belied his apparent age. He was also a very obvious late 90's attempt at a youthful character, depicted as constantly answering his cell phone, and wearing lots of gadgets on his belt. Theoretically, the invention of smartphones would make most of his modus operandi obsolete, but it didn't much matter, since he essentially never appeared in comics again. In the meantime, a character that at least used the same name became the season baddie in the live action tv-series Arrow, and then became a recurring character in the spin-off show Legends of Tomorrow. He's played by Neal McDonough, who is one of those actors who tends to create a character simply by showing up, which was probably a big part of his appeal. |
Our Damien Darhk StoryWe're actually sticking closer to the original comic book version of Darhk, primarily because his completely unexplained backstory works really well for us as we try to create a history for H.I.V.E.. We're going to use that organization as a plot device to explain the surge in mad scientists in the past 30 years. To make that happen our version of Darhk will be a sort of Ayn Rand / Andrew Ryan character that created H.I.V.E. as a place where the pursuit of science was inherently morally righteous, inspiring a generation of scientists to follow him, explaining the proliferation of evil and/or mad scientists.
It was never actually stated during Grayson's Teen Titans run, but I alway assumed that Darhk's young body was a clone of his older, more experienced self.. That does some cool stuff with the character, implying that he has clones in vats waiting to be decanted if he ever dies again. There are also some obvious ties between H.I.V.E., the largely faceless, punchable minion factory, and the alien forces of Queen Zazzala. We all just love the idea that Darhk, the man who espoused a philosophy of scientific objectivism, actually didn't invent anything at all, but instead stole it from a crashed alien ship. It just makes him that much easier to dislike, and more fun to watch him get punched. |