I Can't Escape

The second greatest Darkseid moment comes from The Forever People #4. (The greatest is his analysis of Weird Al Yankovic in the Teen Titans Go! episode Two Parter.) In it, the diabolical demiurge wanders around Happyland, his thriving amusement park that is most assuredly not Disneyland. While there, a small child sees him and is quite sensibly terrified. His grandfather tries to assure the child that Darkseid’s just some guy in a costume, but Darkseid rebuke’s the man’s efforts. Darkseid then explains that young humans can see monsters such as Darkseid for the evil that they are, but the adults of the world like to tidy up such things with “cock and bull stories” so as “to keep the premises smelling sweet.” Darkseid laughs maniacally whilst the old man takes the child away whilst calling the God a fool.

This is the nature of Darkseid at his purest. Not that of the paper tiger who occasionally gets punched in the face by Superman while having a side gig of sitting on people’s chairs. Nor a mere conqueror of worlds that wishes to dominate and control everything and everyone until they love him for it. Rather, what Darkseid is… what Darkseid represents (for characters such as Darkseid, Highfather, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman are metaphorical figures more than they are straightforward characters) is the willingness to ignore the suffering of others for our own gains.

Let’s start with Happyland itself. It’s a theme park like any other with rides and games for the people to play. But underneath, there’s a dark underbelly of abuse and cruelty including the torture of the titular Forever People as well as several humans unaffiliated with either side. In regards to non-comics worlds, there are the numerous sweatshops that exist in third world countries that build our smartphones, laptops, and clothes. There are the numerous disenfranchised people who are being beaten to death by the police solely due to the color of their skin. Then there’s homeless who starve slowly on the streets of our beautiful cities. And then there are the children we bomb because their nation has a resource we want.

There are so many other children of Omelas I could mention. So many horrors that fuel this utopia we call capitalism. And Darkseid is the voice in our heads that tells us to ignore the screams. “Worry not of the children of some backwards foreign country,” he’ll whisper in an insidiously calm tone with the voice of Tom Hanks, “there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no ethical consumption in capitalism, so it’s best not to think about it and enjoy what you have. Don’t listen to those people who claim what you have is wrong. Those “Social Justice Warriors” want to destroy comics. Thankfully users like Sledghammer1488 and MagaSpiderman are dealing with them and their ilk, so you don’t need to worry. Who cares if the tactics make those SJWs ask themselves

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

They deserve it for ruining your fun. They’re evil that must be stopped. Everything was fine before they invaded. Everything will be fine again. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Everything. Is. Fine. Obey.” And in ignoring the screams, they grow ever louder…

Which makes his ultimate fall in Mister Miracle #11 a bit… anticlimactic. Not to say that the issue itself is bad. Quite the opposite, it’s an amazing read full of wonderful, brilliant moments. From Scott Free slowly crawling over to the food tray while Darkseid’s shadow looms over his broken body (an apt metaphor for this his role within the series) to Barda’s interacting with Leilan before the main action begins being more akin to sorority sisters reuniting than representatives of opposing sides of the war to the third best Darkseid moment ever, where the villain remains stone faced while baby Jacob plays with his nose to Dessad’s “Misery Builds Character” monologue, and so many other little moments.

The art and structure of the issue remains brilliant as always. In particular the opening of the trade where it’s clear that the obvious way to depict the scene would be to combine panels, but by not doing so it emphasizes just how small and trapped Scott and Barda feel and how imposing Darkseid is. There’s the way Mitch Gerads draws the darkness of Dessad’s hood, always making clear how smug his smile is even when you can’t see his mouth. And then there’s the moment where Scott is stabbing Darkseid to death, finally getting the catharsis for his years of abuse, where the arm in one panel nearly perfectly connects to his body in the next. But the big, “Holy Shit” moment of the comic is of course the two-page spread of all the superheroes. And it is here where the comic feels the most… off. 

There are many pathways one could take with this spread. One could note that of the three superheroes of color, two of them have their faces obscured in one form or another. Someone could explore the implications of the phrase “There is another world” and how it ties into Grant Morrison’s final issue of Doom Patrol (another narrative about trauma). Alternatively, one could look at the placement of the “Trinity Heroes” and extrapolate the implications of Wonder Woman being in the center of them. Or one could write an extremely nerdy piece on the placement of Adam Strange on the “Heroes are a thing of wonder” spread and how it contradicts DC’s current MO of the character as “ADAM STRANGE MUST SUFFER FOREVER!!!!!!!”

But what I want to focus on are the two central figures of the spread: Highfather and Metron. Highfather’s relationship to the narrative has been, not necessarily negative per say. He’s not the surprise villain like Ozymandias or a villain the text treats as heroic like Dumbledore. Rather, Highfather is a character the story up to this point has treated with some mixed emotions. Most notably in the fourth issue, Scott has a monologue about his… issues with his father. He speaks of how Highfather was willing to give up his own son to stop the war (regardless of the traumas the son would experience) and his desire to have at least been given a name. There’s a sense in his words that there was never time to ask. Even in the first issue, when Highfather was alive, there’s a distance between Scott and his father in how they talk to each other.

At the same time though, it’s more complicated than that. Consider Scott’s “final” words to his son. In them, he remarks about the similarity between his situation and his father’s. He doesn’t remember what his father said to him and he admits he’d probably hate what it was. But at the same time, the feeling of those words was a comfort to him when he was in places he couldn’t escape from. He knew, or rather believed, that someone out there loved him. Someone who’ll be there when thunderstorms get too frightening or when the spinach needs to be eaten. Highfather, the person, could never be that for Scott. He’s too much of an idea, an abstract, a ghost in Scott’s life to be such a father. But the hope for someone like Highfather certainly was enough to keep Scott going.

Which leaves us with only Metron where the ending truly feels off. Consider his previous appearance in the second issue: a haggard old man screaming “YOU ARE NOT TO KNOW THE FACE OF GOD!” at Scott over and over again. Now, all of a sudden, he’s a younger, sleeker version of himself telling Scott to look into the face of God as if doing so in the sixth issue didn’t traumatize him enough. Furthermore there’s the paralleling on the final page itself, wherein the heavily distorted image of Metron is structurally paralleled with Darkseid’s corpse to imply a connection between the two. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Then again… The Jack Kirby narration on that last page talks of how easy it is to trap a man such as Scott Free. A man who has achieved a long sought out catharsis for his childhood trauma; a family man with a wife and son who love him very much; one whose friends will be there for him through thick and thin; a person who has seen darkness and cruelty, but who is at the end of the day happy. And indeed, it is easy to trap such a man: tell him that his happiness is a cage and the world that he finds himself in is wrong. Then laugh as the man calls you a fool while reinforcing the cage with cock and bull stories.

One more issue to go…

“Is someone behind it all, I wonder? Some Idiot-God… Some cruel audience out in the ether, taking joy in my downfall? A-And if there is? If… if you’re listening? You should know that I hate you. I hate you for building a world where I can’t escape what I am. I hate you for cursing me with the simple fact of my birth. I hate you for crushing me beneath the impossible truth that I… cannot ever overcome-- my destiny.”
-Simon Spurrier, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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