New Gods
1066 - The New Gods come into being on a higher plane of existence after Ragnarök, the fall of Asgard, occupying twin planets. The first is New Genesis, home of Izaya the Inheritor, the god of wisdom, his wife Avia, the goddess of building, Himon, the god of truth, and a brilliant young god named Desaad. The second is Apokolips, ruled by Yuga Khan, the god of evil. His wife is Heggra, the goddess of malice. Their sons are Drax and Uxas, and Heggra's brother is Steppenwolf, the god of the hunt. Metron, the god of knowledge, also comes into existence, but it is unknown if he was from Apokolips or New Genesis.
1102 - Metron invents / discovers the Mobius chair. He trades access to Boom Tube technology to Uxas to acquire enough Element X to construct his chair, and departs traditional reality to explore the limits of creation, sealing the technology behind him.
1107 - Uxas regularly visits Desaad on New Genesis, corrupting him until he leaves for Apokolips to become Drax's key scientist, secretly working for Uxas.
1157 - Yuga Khan attempts to descend from the New Gods higher plane into the material universe with his full godhead, and is absorbed into the source wall. Drax's attempt to fulfill his inheritance and take control of the Omega Effect is sabotaged by Desaad. Uxas kills his brother and steals the Omega Effect for himself, becoming Darkseid. Heggra is left the supreme ruler of Apokolips. Steppenwolf begins to travel to New Genesis to indulge his lust for hunting and killing. Suli is taken from her family as one of the best scientists on Apokolips.
1161- Steppenwolf brings Darkseid on a hunt to New Genesis and kills Avia, the wife of Izaya the Inheritor. Darkseid uses an invention of Desaad's, the Killing-Gloves, to incapacitate Izaya so he appears dead, but leave him alive, instigating the war between planets. Izaya leads New Genesis against Apokolips, confronting and killing Steppenwolf, but after avenging Avia he sees the destruction they have wrought, abandons his weapons and wanders New Genesis searching for meaning. He receives a message from the Source in burning words writ upon a wall, and becomes Highfather. He leads the Gods of New Genesis to end their war, and to rebuild their home as a paradise. Killroy becomes the new bodyguard of his aunt, the Queen Heggra. Her biggest threat is Darkseid himself.
1164 - Darkseid selects Suli for his laboratories. He falls in love with her, and she bears his son Kalibak. His mother Heggra has Suli poisoned by Desaad, and arranges his marriage with Tigra.
1166 - Doomsday's hyperspacial prison is triggered by the local arrival of a boom tube. Darkseid and Killroy are stranded on an alien planet, stalked by the creature. Darkseid defeats their attacker and launches it into space, it's prison now unstable, earning Killroy's loyalty. .
1167 - Darkseid stages a coup. Desaad poisons Heggra, and Darkseid becomes the new ruler of Apokolips, escalating the long antagonism with New Genesis into endless absolute war, giving control of the armies of Apokolips to Killroy, and making Desaad the head spymaster & torturer. He strips his wife Tigra of her rank and imprisons her. Brimstone is created by Desaad, a seed of artificially sentient super heated hydrogen plasma animated with magnetic fields that believes it is a fallen angel. Darkseid unleashing it on the battlefield against New Genesis. Himon learns of the coup and begins creating Boom Tube pathways across the planets that only he can control.
1195 - Kalibak, not part of the Apokalips war engine, begins to travel to New Genesis to do battle with other New Gods for sport and honor.
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 - Bernadeth is born among the elite of Apokolips, the daughter of Desaad. She is given over to Granny Goodness and the Terror Orphanages by her father, guaranteed a place among the Female Furies.
1511 - Glorious Godfrey is born among the Elite of Apokolips
1684 - Stompa is handed over to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages. She commits to her training, striving to be a Female Fury.
1703 - Lashina is born among the elite of Apokolips, and taken from her home to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages.
1726 - Big Barda is born on Apokolips, and taken from her mother Big Breeda to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages.
1742 - Orion is born on Apokolips, the son of Darkseid and Tigra, and eternal enemy of his half-brother Kalibak.
1748 - Big Barda becomes the new field leader of the Female Furies. Lashina, Bernadeth & Stompa are passed over.
1752 - Highfather's son is born. Darkseid accepts his pact of non-aggression, ending 600 years of shed godblood. He makes the exchange of their sons a cornerstone of the pact, both to torture Highfather and to poison the pact. Orion is traded to New Genesis and taken in by Highfather, who tries to help him control his fury, while Highfather's son is given to Granny Goodness to raise in the Terror Orphanages, tasked to give him twice the torturous training of her other charges. She gives him the mocking name Scott Free. Brimstone is deactivated as part of the non-aggression pact. Kalibak can no longer hunt on New Genesis, and Killroy's endless war is halted, leaving him near-mad for battle. As the war between the planets becomes a cold war, Himon spends more time on Apokolips, knowing that the blossom of hope can still be found within the people there.
1767 - Orion is attacked off of New Genesis by Kalibak, who is constantly looking for new ways to challenge his half-brother and prove himself the true son of Darkseid. Lightray is born on New Genesis.
1806 - Glorious Godfrey's ability to manipulate people manifests as Anti-Life, the removal of free will rendering the subject a mindless follower. Darkseid sees Anti-Life as the path to control all of creation. It is most abundant on Apokolips, where the people know nothing but Darkseid, but to further test it, Godfrey uses Boom Tubes to leave the higher plane of the New Gods for the material world. going to different planets to create his Anti-Life experiments, building regimes of Anti-Life devotees until the civilization collapses.
1911 - Mad Harriet is born among the Lowlies of Apokolips. She is taken from her home to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages.
1940 - Auralie is born among the Lowlies of Apokolips. She is handed over to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages.
1958 - Auralie is selected to join the Female Furies, her apparent fragility belying her graceful lethality.
74 years ago - Himon leaves New Genesis, building his hidden sanctuary among the Lowlies of Apokolips, teaching it's people how to foster hope.
69 years ago - Doctor Bedlam makes a major discovery of anti-life science, abandoning his body in favor of a life-essence he can transfer between android bodies
64 years ago - Metron, knowing that the fate of creation hinges on Scott Free, speaks directly into his mind, making him confront his own unfamiliar capacity to hope for more. Scott is slowly driven mad, but is driven to find the sanctuary of Himon, finding a voice for the feelings that have always lingered inside him. Himon begins to mentor him in Escapology and in building a Mother Box, teaching him how to have hope even on Apokolips. He slowly forms a bond with Auralie as soldiers of Apokolips hiding their capacity to hope.
61 years ago - Big Bear is born on New Genesis.
60 years ago - Himon's sanctuary is raided. Big Barda arrives early to pull Auralie out before she's found. Himon manages to phase most of his followers out to save them, but Scott Free stays to help others escape and is captured and imprisoned. Granny Goodness pays special attention to punishing him.
58 years ago - Big Barda and Orion race to recover a newly discovered artifact, but Barda is able to defeat him and escape. As a reward, Granny Goodness assigns Big Barda to the X-pit, giving her the task of breaking Scott Free of his will to escape.
52 years ago - Himon's wife is killed by Kalibak. His daughter Bekka joins him on Apokolips, her powers helping to keep them hidden.
42 years ago - Big Bear becomes the groundskeeper of the Academy of Higher Consciousness on New Genesis, first bonding with his Super-Cycle Kirbee.
39 years ago - Vykin the Brave, Serifan, Beautiful Dreamer & Mark Moonrider attend the Academy of Higher Consciousness on New Genesis, where they first meets Big Bear. Vykin & Mark become rivals.
38 years ago - Highfather hides a next generation mother box from the grounds of the Academy of Higher Consciousness. When Vykin the Brave discovers that Doctor Bedlam is hiding on New Genesis to steal it, Serifan & Beautiful Dreamer help him find the mother box, with secret assistance from the groundskeeper Big Bear. Mark Moonrider tries to stop them and find it for himself, but ultimately they all work together, and Vykin is able to bond with the mother box, Maya, and stop Doctor Bedlam.
32 years ago - Serifan chooses to undergo a dangerous ritual to relinquish his godhead and receive it anew, so his physical form aligns with who he is. Vykin the Brave, Beautiful Dreamer, Big Bear & Mark Moonrider all undergo the ritual with him, bonding them together as the Forever People.
30 years ago - Glorious Godfrey comes to Earth, continuing his experiments with Anti-Life, posing as Dr. G Gordon Godfrey and creating the first of his self-improvement cults.
27 years ago - Glorious Godfrey makes a breakthrough in his Anti-Life experiments, discovering that some people are able to perceive Anti-Life, making them immune to it. He believes that this is evidence that an Anti-Life Equation can be found on Earth.
25 years ago - Glorious Godfrey learns of the existence of Beautiful Dreamer on New Genesis, whose powers seem to strip away the effects of Anti-Life. Believing this to be a tool he can exploit, he has her kidnapped and brought to Earth. She is followed by her friends the Forever People, defying the commands of Highfather, who free her from Godfrey and choose to stay on Earth to help free it's people.
23 years ago - 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. He informs Darkseid that he believes an Anti-Life Equation is on Earth, because of their capacity to perceive and ultimately reject the effects of Anti-Life. Knowing that he had many other Anti-Life experiments across the galaxy, the Forever People venture into space to begin freeing those people. Forager is born among the Bugs of New Genesis.
22 years ago - Gilotina is born among the Elite of Apokolips. She is taken from her home by Granny Goodness and placed in a new Brainwash Engine.
20 years ago - Orion learns that his mother Tigra is still alive and imprisoned on Apokolips, He assaults the planet and inflicts massive damage before he is gunned down and nearly killed, saved only by the last minute intervention of Himon, who hides him while his daughter Bekka heals him. Lightray arrives and provides a distraction as Orion attempts again with Bekka hiding him with her powers. They free Tigra, and Himon helps them escape to New Genesis, telling Bekka that she's meant to be with Orion.
18 years ago - Glorious Godfrey begins a new Anti-Life experiment, this time on New Genesis itself, sewing discontent among the Bugs. 5-year-old Forager is one of the few to perceive the change.
16 years ago - Orion's mother Tigra is found and killed by Kalibak. Bekka helps sooth his rage, and he asks her to marry him. Himon travels to New Genesis to give his blessing for the marriage, which is performed by Highfather.
11 years ago - 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.
9 years ago - Granny Goodness discovers Auralie's love of dancing. She fits her with High Voltage Shock Boots created by Desaad and makes her dance in them before the Female Furies until she immolates herself. Heartbroken, Big Barda finds Himon, who gives her a motherbox. She tells Scott Free of Auralie's death and helps him escape the X-pit, not yet ready to free herself. Himon opens a boom tube for him to escape to Earth, but he is bombarded by Mass-Gravity, the weight of Apokolips itself bearing on him. Darkseid is certain he cannot muster the will to survive as he and Metron watch, but Scott makes it to the boom tube, upending Darkseid's plans for the non-aggression pact. with no capacity to accept that Scott has, in fact, escaped his domain. He tasks Doctor Bedlam with tracking and capturing him.
8 years ago - Killroy goes to Earth to invalidate the non-aggression pact by killing Scott Free before Doctor Bedlam can recover him. Desaad keeps his sabotage secret, forcing him to do his bidding.
7 years ago - Kalibak travels to Earth to defeat Scott Free on his own to earn the approval of his father Darkseid, but returns to Apokolips in shame. Doctor Bedlam's mission on Earth to recapture Scott Free is deemed a failure, and he becomes an Earth-based crimelord. His task is given to Granny Goodness, who sends her Female Furies. Big Barda switches sides, helping Scott defeat the Furies and escape, leaving the them in chaos.
6 years ago - 17-year-old Forager discovers Glorious Godfrey building his regime among the controlled Bugs. He barely escapes, managing to steal a mother box and boom tube to the most distant destination he can find, Earth. He finds Scott Free and Big Barda, and brings him to New Genesis with the Justice League. They fight Godfrey minions, freeing the Bugs, but Forager is killed. Highfather and the Gods of New Genesis descend from Supertown to assist them, raising Forager to Godhood. Godfrey is destroyed by Orion. Scott and Barda are married by Highfather, and they choose to retire back on Earth together.
5 years ago - Gilotina competes for leadership of the Female Furies, defeating all other candidates to become their new field leader.
4 years ago - 23-year-old Jimmy Olsen track's Intergang's weapon supplier with 56-year-old Dan Turpin, and disappears through a boom tube back to Apokolips, surviving there for several days. He sends messages back to Turpin, and Himon helps him escape to New Genesis, where he tells Highfather of the coming Parademon wave invasion. Superman, Scott Free & Big Barda join the Justice League in fighting them, with the people of Metropolis rallying behind Turpin as he commandeers an Apokoliptan Tank and inflicts heavy casualties before he is killed by Darkseid. Highfather asks The Forever People to return to New Genesis to help navigate the Boom Tube inversion field around the planet, and is able to bring the warriors of New Genesis to Earth to fight the Parademon wave. He names Earth a protectorate of New Genesis, making the invasion a violation of the non-aggression pact by Apokolips. A new non-aggression pact is made, with the stipulation that Scott & Barda can return to Apokolips to earn their freedom. Darkseid gives them an impossible opponent, Brimstone. Scott uses a series of lasers to disrupt Brimstone's magnetic field so Barda can destroy the techno seed within.Doctor Bedlam is brought back to Apokolips to suffer Darkseid's wrath.
2 years ago - Highfather is warned of the coming of Mageddon by Metron. He asks Orion and Big Barda to assist the heroes of earth on the Watchtower to help them prepare. The Female Furies kidnap 19-year-old Kara Zor-El to Apokolips for Granny Goodness. Desaad attempts to brainwash her, and she is put through a training gauntlet against the other Furies. She defeats them all, as well as Granny Goodness, destroys Desaad's labs, and and returns to Earth.
1 years ago - Orion battles General Wade Eiling of the Injustice Gang, sending him into Null-Space. Orion, Big Barda & the Watchtower fight Mageddon. Scott Free, Michael Holt & Buddy Baker repurpose Mageddon's planetary signals through the floating city of Superbia to temporarily empower everyone on the planet to join the battle. Orion returns to New Genesis, while Scott and Barda join the new Justice League after Barda gives birth to their son Shilo Free. Doctor Bedlam is sent back to Earth, secretly monitored by Desaad as he joins the Legion of Doom. The Forever People travel into the territory conquered by Lady Styx to bring help to the people there.
The Gods
Apokolips
Female Furies
New Genesis
The Forever People
It is not hyperbole to say that Jack Kirby's Fourth World is one of the biggest stories that comics have ever tried to contain. Kirby, without the restraining voice of Stan Lee, was free to just unload with concepts that seemed too epic to come from one person's imagination. It was a whole new frontier of what the concept of Superhero comics could be, as though Kirby simply couldn't help but live on the cutting edge of the medium. Nothing less than one of the most grandiose and bombastic works of fiction ever would have done for one of the boldest creative minds comics has ever had.
|
The New God's Comic HistoryTrying to find a way to summarize Jack Kirby's Fourth World is a daunting hill to climb. Kirby left Marvel in 1970 and made a heralded leap over to DC. He started his work by taking over Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (which had no regular creative team), and then he started three series of his own; New Gods, The Forever People, and Mister Miracle. They all wove together around one central narrative, which honestly doesn't seem as complex to comic readers today who are used to constant crossovers, but it's almost impossible to make any comparisons to the scope of the story Kirby was weaving. It would have to be works like Lord of the Rings, Foundation, or Dune. I use the word Mythology on this site a lot, but It's never been more appropriate than here, as Kirby built a narrative of absolutely unprecedented scope. This was the first auteur work in comics history.
Putting it very simply; Kirby's innovation was to create a group of superheroes, framing them as a pantheon of gods. While the stories played like regular superhero adventures, they were also building mythology. This was more than just a thematic choice; his deliberately eclectic stories were filled with real lessons that would feel absolutely at home in a real religion. Jack had fought in World War II, was a devout practicing Jew, and had some very real and profound feelings about right vs wrong, about the inherent nobility of ever person, and about the importance of self expression, especially in the face of tyranny. You can read these books as just fun stories about Mister Miracle outsmarting Doctor Bedlam, but there were clearly some very broad concepts at play if you decided to look for them. |
|
I don't want to just constantly fanboy about the Fourth World. It's not perfect. Jack followed the same method that had worked at Marvel; he's go in with a rough idea of a story and let it come to him as he drew, writing the dialog right into his original art. As stylish as he art was and as huge as the idea that fueled it were, the resulting product is weird as hell and really asks a lot of the reader to take it all in. The fact that the real strength of the story, the expansive mythology behind everything, was spread across multiple stories and not really told in a linear way makes it all feel like a story you're chiseling out of bedrock, and I have to imagine it was way harder in the seventies where you couldn't just read it all in one sitting. What's more; some of the concepts at play really ran contrary to the tropes that had fueled superhero stories forever. The idea that teaching people to want something beyond what their told is ultimately a more powerful weapon that punching a tank so hard it explodes was a tall order to ask the readers to process.
Kirby's relationship with DC didn't prove to be as fruitful as you'd hope. They wanted him to keep churning out new intellectual property and artwork, while he wanted to introduce his epic concepts and slowly pass them off to other writers and artists he could supervise. DC was in the habit of scrambling to try new series and canceling them just as fast. Kirby went on to introduce other new concepts like Etrigan, Kamandi, and OMAC, but his New God epic ultimately ended on a series of cliffhangers a few years later. |
|
|
While Kirby returned to Marvel, he would later come back and work on these characters again in the 80s, when DC used lots of the Fourth World villains in their toy lines. Jack updated their designs for animation, and also worked on the comic book tie-ins for the line. It's really here, in toys and animation, where the concept of Kirby's ultimate badguy Darkseid really took off conceptually as the "final boss" of the DC Universe.
The mythology of the New Gods has absolutely been revisited several times. There have been multiple new series that continue their tales by the likes of Gerry Conway, John Byrne, Mindy Newell and Jim Starlin, all of which have found interesting ways to explore Kirby's mythos, often treating the events of those original series with the reverence of a religious text. Perhaps the most interesting return to the Fourth World was by Kirby himself in a single issue of the series DC Graphic Novel, telling a story called Hunger Dogs that effectively reframes the conflict of the New Gods from the perspective of the Cold War, and seems to find a new way to address that conflict that I don't believe many other stories have wrapped their heads around. The characters and worlds Kirby spun into existence continue to play roles throughout the worlds of DC, but actually rolling up your sleeves and digging into their actual mythology at play reveals one of the highest concept comics ever put to paper. |
Our New Gods StoryThis is the biggest timelines we've ever done, but that's mostly just because there is So. Much. Content. The pages of those original comics were DENSE with unfolding layers of narrative, and it honestly became a challenge to wrap our heads around just how much we wanted to include. We do go well out of our way to not have the New Gods interact with Earth TOO much, since they do tip the power balancing scales quite a bit, but even still there are plenty of stories that bring them among us.
We'll have to get to the specifics on the individual character pages, but we can at least address perhaps the biggest change we've made. Modern readers regularly see the New Gods, and Darkseid in particular, depicted as being absolutely ancient, having been part of creation practically forever. This actually feels incorrect to us, going right to the first pages of New Gods that depict the cataclysmic end of the Old Gods, and the creation of the new. The original concept of the New Gods, when Jack shared the idea with Stan Lee back at Marvel, was that the Asguardian Gods would be destroyed in Ragnarok and reborn. Since our project is a timeline first and foremost, we can actually find the date of the birth of the New Gods. The generally accepted end of the Viking Age is 1066, with the defeat of King Herald III at the battle of Stamford Bridge, which I'd argue must also be the date of Ragnarök, the final battle of the Asguardian Gods... and the birth of the New Gods. |
|
|
The Future of the New GodsThis is a very interesting question, because while the mythology of the New Gods was originally conceived as an ongoing series, the fact that Kirby was unable to finish the series and left it on so many cliffhangers has actually given this story an even more epic feeling... like they've built up to this titanic status quo. We inherently understand that a final battle between Apokolips and New Genesis is coming, and that it will come down to Orion confronting his father in a final battle. This final battle has even HAPPENED in some of the other series, but never in a way that seemed to override that classic status quo.
Perhaps that's because the actual end ISN'T what we expect. In the Hunger Dogs, as Darkseid is building to the cataclysmic final solution, Orion appears as he escapes Apokolips with his rescued mother and with Bekka, the woman who has shown him that he is actually worthy of love. Orion rejects the idea that they must battle and Darkseid is left to his impotent rage with no more enemies, destined to consume himself. I honestly can't sit here and say that this could really be how this story ends, but knowing that this future is possible somehow makes it feel like the most inevitable. It's the only end that manages to live up to the biggest story comics have ever told. |