Darkseid #1

You don't see this often enough in comics: a sudden attack of diarrhea in the middle of battle.

I'm almost certain that Darkseid shits himself every time he lets loose with an Omega Beam. It's just too powerful to not have a built-in flaw. No respectable Role Playing System would allow this kind of attack without a major penalty. And I think being the Would-Be Conqueror of the Universe would be a bit adverse to shitting himself on the battlefield. Although now I've just realized what Desaad's Number One job is. Or should I say Number Two job! Ha ha! Poop jokes!

I hope this issue follows the Tristram Shandy model and tells about Darkseid's conception. Except maybe not take as long to get to the birth because I want to see Baby Darkseid explode out of his mother's alien vagina with his fists pumped in the air and yelling "It's all mine, bitches!" as he blasts the doctor in the face with his Omega Effect and shits all over his mother's blown out poonanny.

What is the etymology of "poonanny?" Is it because the vagina watches over the asshole in a motherly way? Do vaginas do everything in a motherly way? I know my penis does everything like some asshole Junior High School football coach.

I'm not going to talk about Darkseid in this commentary. Y'all know Darkseid. He's a stupid looking motherfucker that's supposed to be some kind of a bad-ass. He actually looks much better in his modern version than back when Jack Kirby was drawing him. Now, now. Don't get your kittens in a twist over me criticizing The Kirbyman! But his Darkseid just looked like a balding tourist lost in the Ginza while looking for the Red Light District and practicing how to say "Do you give handjobs?" in Japanese.

Japan is a pretty awesome place to visit because people hand you tissues on every single street corner. They understand that you're going to masturbate quite a lot during your visit. Not because you're foreign and not because Japan is some super pervy jerk-off station (although every other video game in the arcade was a puzzle game where you uncovered a naked lady. So I could be wrong about Japan not being a pervy jerk-off station) but because they get that masturbation is going to happen. It's that whole idle hands thing. Sometimes you don't even know you're in the mood and you suddenly think, "Whoa! Hey hand! What are doing down there?" And the next thing you know, you're thinking about that girl walking in front of you in the sundress that was almost but not quite flipping up enough to see her ass. Or the guy in the tight whatevers you people that are into men look for to make you hot. Maybe a dick falling out of a flyhole? Broad shoulders with a long penis? It's a mystery to me! Although I like asses and men have asses! So it's probably the same thing except most men don't wear sundresses. Oh but if they did, amirite, manlovers?

Did you know Darkseid and Highfather were Amish?

Darkseid's career choice on Old Genesis was mud-grubber. I think that's a euphemism for shit farmer. He wanders around New Genesis picking up the gigantic turds and pools of semen which the Old Gods fling all over Old Genesis. He uses the waste as fertilizer for their Oddish crops.

Old God sex right over the village! Cha-ching!

Darkseid gets sick and tired not of grubbing mud but of listening to his stupid brother-in-law praise the stupid Old Gods of stupid Old Genesis. So Darkseid decides to whisper in the ears of the Old Gods as they sleep and that's all it takes to set them at war on each other. Good thing the Old Gods were full of self-doubt and low self-esteem! I often wake from dreams where my cat was pissing on my pillow, find that it was just a dream, and then go punch my cat in the face anyway. "You stupid jerk! If my subconscious decided you were capable of such a betrayal, it must be true! Asshole!"

Oh, don't worry! I'd never actually punch my cat in the face! I usually go for the kidneys.

I think the word you're looking for, Greg Pak, is "worship." The Old Gods feed on worship. This scene has nothing to do with faith. Idiot. This is my first inkling that my friend J.T. was right about you and your stupid writing!

Sometimes I go outside and I look at the tree in the backyard and I say, "Tree. I don't believe in you." Because I lack faith. I suppose if you want to be really idiotically philosophical, you can say that I'm taking the images of the tree that the light brings to the biological function provided by my eyeballs and the interpretation of that sense data by my brain is an act of faith in the existence of the tree. But I'm not into philosophical masturbating. So I don't perceive everything as "an act of faith."

Somehow Darkseid takes his little scythe and goes about killing all of the Old Gods. I think Greg Pak has been playing too much God of War recently. Or else this story is entirely metaphorical. Because it's just stupid to think that a lowly little mud grubber could kill one Old God, let alone them all, even if the Old God's were weary from fighting each other.

So I'm not going to be taking this story literally at all. And DC eventually will realize how fucking stupid it is too and let a better writer rewrite Darkseid's past. But if it is a metaphor, what really happened? I believe Darkseid and Highfather and all the other residents of Old Genesis did believe in Gods. But they were Gods that did not exist. The scene where the village was destroyed? It was just a natural disaster which Highfather and his wife believe they survived due to their praying and their faith. But Darkseid decided to delve into the realm of science to understand why things happened the way they did. And he learned that the answer to "how" or "why" was never "The Old Gods." There was always an explanation even if they didn't know what that explanation was yet. And he brought science to the people of Old Genesis and they learned to disbelieve in the Old Gods. So Darkseid "killed" them with science and technology. But he soon began to use that science and technology in ways that were dark and troublesome to the people of Old Genesis. His brother, Highfather, grew worried and decided that science still needed a moral and ethical compass behind its uses. He tried to get his brother to stop designing weapons and dangerous materials simply because science allowed for their creation. And war erupted between the two brothers. Old Genesis was nearly destroyed by this war and the mighty weapons that Darkseid had created. The planet became nearly lifeless; unlivable.

With his technology, Darkseid created a new planet called Apokolips where he ruled brutally. Highfather developed technology to take to the skies on what he now dubbed New Genesis (as seen in Wonder Woman!). And that's they way it really happened although most people tell the myth of creation as the Mud Grubber versus the Old Gods.

After all this preamble and prologue, Greg Pak gets to the part of the story that ties in with what he's writing over in Batman Loves Superman.

Coyote! I mean, Kaiyo!

I know we all purchased this book to learn about Darkseid but Greg Pak has added some bonus material! Let's learn about why Kaiyo fled Apokolips and headed to Earth 2 to get the Earth heroes ready to kill Darkseid because Darkseid won't let Kaiyo laugh! Oh, well, I just spoiled it. That was all there was to learn. That there was no laughter on Apokolips. So Kaiyo left. And Darkseid followed. Which is why everybody on Earth 2 nearly died. And everyone on Earth Prime as well. And, I imagine, Darkseid made an assault (or will make one) on all of the other Earths too.

Oh, I got ahead of myself. Apparently Kaiyo bounced from Earth 34 to Earth 49 to Earth 26 until she finally settled on Earth 2 and then Earth Prime where he was finally defeated handily. Yes, he was defeated on Earth 2 as well although just barely.

And that's how Darkseid built up his collection of Supermans. But he's still trying to collect them all! He's not done yet.

Darkseid is building some kind of composite Superman on Apokolips made from pieces of Supermen from across many dimensions. Maybe it'll be a better Bizarro Superman than Lex Luthor's Bizarro Superman! Or maybe it'll just be Doomsday. Or Harvest!

Darkseid #1 Rating: This was a decent enough take on Darkseid's history as long as I continue to believe the first part of the story is just that metaphor I described. I'm also a bit surprised that I didn't hate the Kaiyo explanation for the Boom Tubes and Darkseid discovering The New 52 Universes. Although I am a bit weirded out by Darkseid's Superman collection. How many Earths had a Superman and now don't because of a Darkseid invasion? I hate the idea that possibly a dozen or more have all experienced the same basic war and defeat. Also that so many Earths had the same version of Superman. Where's Rabbit Superman? Or Superwoman? Or Reverse-Superman? The pile of dead Supermen all look the same!