DOTNG
The Death Of The New Gods, by Jim Starlin – This interesting DC comic revisits the world of Jack Kirby’s New Gods, the powerful beings of New Genesis and Apokolips, who are engaged in eternal war. It begins, Watchmen-like, with the mystery of “who is killing the New Gods off one-by-one, and why?” The book also includes a bit of Jimmy Olson and the Newsboy Legion (a tribute, perhaps, since they were there at the start of the New Gods tales), and they’re thankfully not to be seen throughout the rest of the tale. Great. Mister Miracle (the bizzarely-named Scott Free) and his wife (!!!) Big Barda jaunting around beating up thugs. Ah, those happy times – Barda is early to fall (while Scott Free is checking his email), and Free becomes a brooding Starlin-esque maniac. Nice. Too bad he’s also kind of annoying in his sulkiness – the world of the New Gods is ending, Scott, stop being so self-involved! He even changes his circus colours to “dark hues”, which “more fit these times”. O-kaaaaaay…
Superman decides to hang around and solve the mystery of these murders, and witnesses the weird transformation of Mister Miracle, while also having a silly fight with Orion. O-kaaaaaay… There are nutty encounters at The Wall, we learn about Darkseid and Scott’s varying control of the anti-life equation (which turns Scott into some sort of goofy, corny sparkle-monster), the death of Mantis and Kalibak in battle with Superman and Orion, the end of the Forever People (boooo!!!! I like the Forever People!!!!!). There’s Odin, Zeus and Jupiter (?!?), a freaky battle between Scott Free (as Anti-Life Equation Man), Superman and Orion, and the spectacular end of Orion. Wow – silliness and majesty in the same few pages. There’s the Source, there’s Metron, and all sorts of freakiness as the New Gods die. Talk about a cleaning house exercise! I wonder if Jack Kirby would have enjoyed this – the New Gods were always fighting each other to the death, without anyone really dying, and there were always so many stories, it all just seemed limitless. But perhaps a decision was made somewhere that there was this extra franchise lying around, that DC really just had one franchise too many. Bye bye New Gods. It’s a sad way for them to go. At least we hadn’t gotten attached to the heroes in The Watchmen – would DC have done this to The Justice League, or Marvel to The Avengers?
Of course, they’re not really dead, and a few things are left unresolved – the Source, the New New Genesis/Apokalips, Darkseid himself, and the real fate of Orion. And… what about the rest of the New Gods? Are they gone forever… really gone forever?
The book is full of great art – two-page spreads of the blissful New Genesis life, broad scenes of the hellish world of Apokalips, full depictions of atom-smashing battles, . Some scenes take on a vague Jack Kirby-ness, especially when recounting the history of the New Gods, and then others are just plain crazy, messy, dimension-spanning destruction. There’s also the wild scenes that I won’t mention that show the ultimate re-creation of the world of the New Gods that’s actually quite cool.
Ultimately, while the book is fairly silly (when it isn’t simply dark and overly-gloomy), it has a few redeeming points, mostly at the big-picture level – it also has some pretty amazing artwork! Nice one.