Orion
1752 - Orion is traded to New Genesis to seal their non-aggression pact, and taken in by Highfather, who tries to help him control his fury.
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.
58 years ago - Orion and Big Barda race to recover a newly discovered artifact, but Barda is able to defeat him and escape.
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.
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.
6 years ago - Orion and the Gods of New Genesis descend from Supertown to assist the Justice League in freeing the Bugs from the minions of Glorious Godfrey. He destroys Godfrey when he kills Forager. He meets his counterpart Scott Free for the first time, and attends his wedding to Big Barda.
4 years ago - Orion and the Gods of New Genesis, alerted to the Parademon wave invasion by Jimmy Olsen, travel to Earth to extend their pact to include Earth.
2 years ago - Orion and Big Barda join the Watchtower at the request of Highfather of New Genesis to help prepare for the coming of Mageddon.
1 years ago - Orion battles General Wade Eiling of the Injustice Gang, sending him into Null-Space. He helps defeat Mageddon & returns to New Genesis.
Of all the New Gods, Orion might be the most complex. He's clearly the central hero of the story of the New Gods, but he's so outside of what you might expect that hero to be. The abandoned son of Darkseid, he has every bit of his father's power and evil brewing inside him, and the only thought keeping him from acting on it is to twist it all into the singular purpose of destroying his father. He's not a redeemed villain, or even seeking redemption, because he knows in his heart that he is unredeemable. He is rage incarnate, and he has no hope of ever being anything else. Watching that character drawn out to a godly scope is perhaps one of the best parts of the New Gods.
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Orion's Comic HistoryOrion was star of 1971's New Gods, one of Jack Kirby's three series detailing his epic Fourth World. While the book essentially involved Orion going to Earth to fight whatever his evil father's latest plan was, The real meat of the series was found in all the small moments and themes that arose just in the telling of the story. Kirby's writing was big and bombastic, but he could find clever thematic moments and lace them inside his big superhero punch-up stories like you wouldn't believe.
The New Gods, along with the other Fourth World series, were prematurely cancelled, and Orion was last seen in the middle of a massive assault on Apokolips, building to what looked like his final battle with his father, but in the last moment he sees his mother bound to a massive Kirby-tech machine, and is distracted enough to be gunned down, leaving on a cliffhanger about what will happen next, and the New Gods, as depicted in comics ever since, have been perpetually hovering within that unfinished narrative. Other writers have created their own New Gods stories, most notably Gerry Conway and John Byrne, but ultimately there is this sense that the end that this mythic story seems to be building toward (Orion's defeat of Darkseid and taking his throne) is the ultimate fate that will always be pending. |
Our Orion StoryWhile Orion's earliest adventures in the New Gods actually took place on Earth, we really want to try to keep from having the fourth world interact with the material world. there are exceptions, of course; Orion does absolutely go to Earth to assist in stopping Darkseid's invasion, and again to join the Watchtower to prepare them to face Mageddon, but as much as possible, we want Orion and the New Gods confined to their own reality.
The biggest Orion story we've adapted is the one told in the cliffhanger of the New Gods, when he finally makes his assault on Apokolips. This story is picked up in the Not-As-Well-Received story Hunger Dogs, showing Orion meeting his future wife Bekka and escaping with his mother. While this is played as a climax to is battle with Darkseid, we are instead just making it a chapter in his story, letting it continue to be told. |
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Orion's CostumeEveryone needs to stop thinking they can do better than Jack Kirby. The man designed pretty much all of the classic Marvel costumes, and any time someone tries to alter his designs (I'm looking at you, Mike Deodato Jr's mid-90's Thor redesign) it is invariably not as good, because Jack Kirby is the reason we have the phrase Comic Legend.
Generally speaking, people seem to have that fairly well worked out. With the exception of Darkseid who at this point is in every third comic book, the rest of the New Gods seems to be allowed to keep to the relative outlier status their story deserves, but when Orion does get taken off the shelf the artists seem to have the utmost respect for Kirby's near-perfect design work. There was a major exception in the pages of Wonder Woman at the beginning of the new 52; when Cliff Chiang brought his incredibly clean character design to Orion, creating a version that looked well-formulated and executed with an aesthetic that fit in beautifully with the world... and I hated it. Jack Kirby characters are a two-handed Captain Kirk punch to the cleanliness of your world design. They need to be gods and demons, because the rest of your world can't handle them. |
Orion's FutureUnlike many other characters in the DC Lexicon, Orion and the New Gods are all creatures that feel driven by prophecy. Orion, being essentially the protagonist of their pantheon, is clearly meant to be the hero, and he is meant to eventually challenge and kill his biological father Darkseid, and take his place as the new ruler of Apokolips.
This actually means two things for the overall story of the New Gods. First, it means that until the day comes when that final battle between Darkseid and Orion happens, these two characters are essentially immortal. this isn't exactly news; the New Gods occupy a higher plane of existence, their story shouldn't really interact with the stories that happen on Earth. Just what form this final battle will take is unknown; I happen to like the idea that it happens during some sort of major cataclysm that brings about the end of the entire Fourth World and ushers in whatever new existence the New Gods will take. Second; Orion is going to be the new high Deity over whatever form the Gods take in their next evolution. The Fourth World features two families of Gods, one good and one evil, and what we know is that this next form will have Orion ruling... but over which family? What is that going to LOOK like? We've seen versions of this play out in a lot of different adaptations, and the only thing we know for sure is that the scale of that story will be gargantuan. |
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