Granny Goodness
1175 - Goodness becomes one of Darkseid's Hounds, training her dog Mercy.
1222 - Goodness is commanded to kill her dog Mercy, but instead kills her commander. Brought before Darkseid for discipline, she defends her choice, saying that Mercy will always be loyal to him. He commands the dog to attack her as a test, forcing her to kill the dog. Impressed, Darkseid places Goodness in command of the Shock Troops and Terror Orphanages.
1451 - Granny Goodness is given ownership of Bernadeth, the daughter of Desaad, guaranteeing her a place among the Female Furies.
1752 - Granny Goodness is given control of Highfather's son by Darkseid to raise in the Terror Orphanages, tasked with giving him twice the torturous training of her other charges, giving him the mocking name Scott Free.
1940 - Granny Goodness is given ownership of Auralie, to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages.
60 years ago - Granny Goodness pays special attention to punishing Scott Free when he is captured and imprisoned during the raid on Himon's sanctuary.
58 years ago - Granny Goodness assigns Big Barda to the X-pit as a reward for defeating Orion in battle, given the task of breaking Scott Free of his will to escape.
22 years ago - Granny Goodness takes Gilotina from her home and places her in a new Brainwash Engine.
9 years ago - Granny Goodness discovers Auralie's love of dancing. She fits her with High Voltage Shock Boots and makes her dance in them before the Female Furies until she immolates herself.
7 years ago - Granny Goodness is assigned by Darkseid to recover Scott Free on Earth after the failure of Doctor Bedlam, and sends her Female Furies. Big Barda switches sides, helping Scott defeat the Furies and escape, leaving the them in chaos.
4 years ago - Granny Goodness leads the Shock Troops during Darkseid's Parademon wave invasion of Earth.
2 years ago - Granny Goodness sends the Female Furies to Earth to capture Supergirl, and attempt to brainwash her as a new recruit with Desaad's help. She overcomes them and returns to Earth.
The Fourth World is built, primarily, out of three different actual comic series; New Gods (starring Orion), Mister Miracle, and the Forever People. There are lots of shared villains that cross over through the whole narrative, but each of those three books did function independently, and in each case the book featured one particular villain specifically designed for the hero in question.
Of all the incredibly popular villains to come out of the Fourth World, Granny Goodness might be the most beloved. She is a completely insane invention, the evil Granny who tortures and brainwashes her charges while using language that makes everything sound like a loving act is terrifying on such a visceral level, and her design is one of the greatest piece of comic book alchemy in the medium.
Of all the incredibly popular villains to come out of the Fourth World, Granny Goodness might be the most beloved. She is a completely insane invention, the evil Granny who tortures and brainwashes her charges while using language that makes everything sound like a loving act is terrifying on such a visceral level, and her design is one of the greatest piece of comic book alchemy in the medium.
Granny Goodness's Comic HistoryGranny Goodness appeared for the first time in Mister Miracle #2. It was a pretty standard Scott Free story; as another denizen of Apokolips sets up shop on Earth in an effort to capture our hero. What really makes it stand out is Granny herself; she just seemed to explode off the page, fully formed. She would continue to appear in many issues of the series; we would learn that she was the caretaker of the Terror Orphanage where Scott and Barda grew up, and that she was the person responsible for breaking her charges of their pesky free will or self-actualization, keeping them all devoted to Darkseid by utterly stripping them of any desire for anything else. It's a really scary concept but is played with such deliberate humor. The most amazing thing about it, however, is that even though the idea is so conceptual and plays with so much metaphor, we still all absolutely get it. We completely understand what Scott and Barda underwent and what they had to do to break free, and what the stakes of Granny recapturing them are.
Even after the Mister Miracle series, Granny has gone on to be one of the most popular inventions of the Fourth World, appearing in every new presentation of the New Gods as well as in a ton of animation. |
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Our Granny Goodness StoryOne of the most essential parts of the Fourth World is showing how some characters had to break free of the control of their environment and find a way to be true to themselves, which is such a universal idea. the personification of that environment is Darkseid, but in practically every case, the person actually perpetuating that control is Granny. She's perhaps the most important enemy of both Scott and Barda, two of the most prominent New Gods characters, but she also plays a huge role in the stories of all of the Female Furies.
Outside of these incredibly vital roles, there are a few stories featuring Granny Goodness that we really wanted to include. There's a small story called Goodness and Mercy by Walt Simonson from a 1999 one-shot called Secret Origins of Super-Villains that tells how a young Goodness first caught the attention of Darkseid and earned her position in his regime, when she was forced to kill her dog Mercy. It's a very brief but popular story that is often referenced in descriptions of Granny Goodness's backstory. Perhaps most important to us is the graphic novel Barda by Ngozi Ukazu, which essentially follows events laid out in the original Mister Miracle series but reframes it all into an amazing story, and in doing so makes Granny so much more evil and insidious than she's ever been before. Ultimately we don't really change anything about her at all, we just use her as the fantastic villain she is. |
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