I think Darkseid is a largely overrated and not particularly exciting villain.
There, I said it. I feel better now.
I may well get pounded for this, but really, how excited am I supposed to get about a villain who spends an inordinate amount of time with his hands clasped behind his back?
Seriously though, there are only three instances in which I truly enjoyed ol' Stone Face as a villain. The rest of the time I have found him to be not very compelling and quite a bit less enjoyable than Thanos, or even Mongol (Morgol? Whateverthehell his name is -- okay, at least Darkseid's name is more memorable, I'll grant you that).
Am I mad? Have I lost my senses? We'll see...
So the three instances in which I thought Darkseid was a crackerjack villain (in order of coolness):
#1: The Great Darkness Saga, Legion of Super-Heroes.
Duh. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had never even heard of the guy before this story arc (alas for those halcyon days when five issues packed with a main plot -- including huge amounts of action *and* multiple subplots! -- that came to a definitive conclusion was a major story arc).
To me he was just this very mysterious, powerful villain with equally powerful and mysterious minions. He was already one of the most exciting supervillains I had ever read -- and I didn't even know who he was! Given that I didn't know who the guy was, the big reveal didn't do much for me, but Levitz and Giffen did a superb job of selling it through Brainy's reaction and by ratcheting up everything about Darkseid's evil and badassness after the reveal.
Later on, as we'll discuss in a moment, I read most of Kirby's original Fourth World stuff, only to realize that Levitz's Darkseid really doesn't read like the King's Darkseid (I'd say the discrepancy is greater than the variation between Dr. Doom's by different writers in the 70's and early-80's). Still, Levitz didn't violate the spirit of the character or anything, and I think he's still Darkseid-ish enough to keep everyone happy -- especially when used in such magnificent fashion.
#2: Kirby's original Fourth World stories.
Darkseid is actually kind of hit-or-miss for me in these stories -- which is not surprising, given that the stories themselves are kind of hit-or-miss for me. However, like the stories as a whole, Darkseid is generally a whole lot more hit than miss. So the episodes where Darkseid is being deadly-dull hands-clasped-behind-the-back guy are countered nicely by the episodes where Darkseid flips out and goes into full arm-waving-loon Kirby Villain mode (nobody body-rants quite like a set-off Kirby villain!). In fact, there's almost a bipolar quality to the Great Stone One that's part of the fun, at least for me.
Anyway, the point being that while this Darkseid is presented as a brooding, planning, master villain, one who sends minions to do his dirty work and isn't afraid to Omega Beam 'em when they fail, he also isn't afraid to roll up his proverbial sleeves, Boom Tube down to Earth, and trade punches with anyone from the Man of Steel to Jimmy Olsen (okay, that last one's a stretch, but I bet Jimmy could tick Ol' Stoney off enough to forget about the Omega Sanction for a minute and go for the fisticuffs).
Darkseid -- like the whole pantheon of Fourth World characters -- is greatly aided in these stories by Kirby's frenetic, sincere, unpolished, unbridled, on-his-sleeve and on-the-nose storytelling. You don't need footnotes or annotations to grok Kirby's symbolism. Hell, most of the characters have torrid mid-battle mini-soliloquies where they *tell* you what they symbolize at one point or another. Anyway, it's clearly not as important (to the stories or to Kirby) as the good guys-versus-bad guys morality play being slugged out in front of you.
So as the Dr. Doom-meets-Professor X of Fourth World villains, I enjoyed Darkseid greatly -- although Kirby's storytelling is just a little too sprawling and a little too sloppy for me to enjoy him as much as I did in the Great Darkness storyline. But if someone wanted to swap 1 and 2 here, I would happily concede it as a matter of personal preference.
#3: Darkseid in "Superman: The Animated Series."
I have said many times that the "DC Animated-Verse" crew has been turning out the best superhero stories of the last dozen years, and this is a perfect example. Although their Darkseid is a little more stoic and a little more restrained than I'd like (I like Levitz's version, a villain who isn't afraid to laugh maniacally or get intensely threatening in a really emotional way -- in other hands Darky just seems too darned even-tempered, and what fun is having Omega Beams at your disposal if you're a basically dispassionate guy?), but with that said, the Ani-verse crew managed to perfectly capture the essence of menace and fun from the original Kirby stories, while (coincidentally or not) also hitting some of the same notes Levitz hit that I liked so well all those years ago.
Just superb superhero pathos in the Mighty Marv--er, that is, just the way I like it.
And other than those stories (and one of them isn't even from a comic book), I haven't liked a single instance of Darkseid that I've read, and have found myself actively disliking most. (Including, quite surprisingly to me, Walt Simonson's handling of the character.)
Now you may say, "Okay, but that still gives the Browridge of Granite two stellar appearances, which is a pretty good track record." Yeah, but it really isn't. Arcade has two stellar supervillain appearances. Whiplash/Blacklash has three in Iron Man. And, of course, Dr. Doom has something like 24 stellar supervillain appearances (I said that to be a comical exaggeration, but I'm not even sure it is).
So whenever people start talking about wanting to see more of Darkseid, my reaction is: "What for?"
That said, yeah, you could write a screenplay where Darkseid would make a pretty badass Superman movie villain. :-)
I thought that Darkseid was pretty good in the X-Men/Teen Titans crossover too.
Like Dr. Doom, Darkseid needs to be used very sparingly, so that when he does show up you just know he's going to be a badass and the heroes are in serious trouble. But he shows up far too often.
Hey, Darth Vader does a lot of hands-behind-the-back-clasping and who doesn't love Darth Vader????
Dave: Yeah, I forgot about the X-Men/NTT crossover -- he was pretty good in that too, you're right. And he should definitely be used sparingly.
fil: Darth doesn't do *that* much behind-the-back-hand-clasping -- and besides, he does it between invading planets, choking his own officers, and threatening bounty hunters. He da man!
Dave and fil already made a couple of my comments for me. I was going to reply here, Chris, but it got so long and rambling that I put my thoughts up here instead. Thanks for getting me posting again.
Also, if we're going to exempt Vader on the hand clasping, what do you make of the persistent stories that one of Lucas's inspirations for Star Wars was the Fourth World?
Always glad to help. As for Vader, he really only does much of the hand clasping in Empire, where he compensates for it with his cruelty and obsessive drive (combining to form a truly proper menace anyway). So you can mix in some hand-clasping as long as you're brining some serious evil mojo with it.
As for Lucas riffing Darkseid (and other Fourth World concepts), that works perfectly well with my thinking -- I *like* Darkseid, overall, as he's used in the original Fourth World stories, which would have been the only material for Lucas to swipe from back in the early 70's, right?
My first exposure to Darkseid was JLA 183-185, when the New Gods figured into the annual JLA-JSA crossover. After the first issue, Dick Dillin died and was replaced by George Perez.
In the final analysis, it may not have been the bestest of all possible Darkseid appearances, but I like it rather a lot.
What do I think of Darkseid?
Well, it's saying something that his most obvious ripoff has been in more memorable stories than Darkseid every played a big part. Even Cosmic Odyssey.
I come to Bury Darkseid, and PRAISE THANOS.
After watching through the last 18 episodes of Superman: The Animated Series on DVD, I could really see them making "Apokolips Now" and "Legacy" as a live-action movie. And while I'm at it, I'd like a pony.
Like many Kirby creations, Darkseid works as a concept, but very few people actually get 4th World stuff right. My first exposure to the big guy was Teen Titans/X-Men which totally rocked, though I had no friggin' clue who this guy was.
DC TAS gets it right, though.
I don't think this is too much of a blasphemy. I pretty much agree with everything Chris says: those three appearances are by far Darkseid's best, and outside of those he's too often been mediocre at best. This is mostly because Darkseid is a relatively one-dimensional villain with fairly uninteresting motivations; without truly compelling creators to invest his actions with operatic, Kirby-scale panache, Darkseid often disappoints.
Thanos, as many others have pointed out, manages to eclipse his own progenitor simply by being more interesting. What he lacks in raw power he makes up for in wit and raw lunacy. You just can't beat a villain who's literally in love with death.
I would include Simsonson's ORION as using Darkseid very well. Darkseid only appears a few times, and for most of the time is believed dead.
One reason I believe Thanos fares well is that any portrayal of Darkseid is constrained by his connections to the New Gods. One can't understand the character without that, and he tends to bring in a lot of baggage accordingly. No hero can fulfill the role Orion must. In contrast, while Thanos has connections to the Titan Eternals, he is free to develop his own mythos.
I must say that I liked Mr. Morrison's take on Darkseid in his recent Miracle Man mini. In that series, Darkseid wasn't the all-powerful, totalitarian ruler of an entire planet. He exerted his will on one person at a time. He didn't use Omega Beams because the anti-life equation was the only weapon he needed.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy his traditional approach too!
Darkseid made a good showing in the Eclipso comic about 15 years back. I think it was issue 11, maybe 10. Basically, he and Eclipso parlay for a bit, trying to out evil each-other. Of course, I have not read that comic since it came out, so it may be less great than I recall.
Darkseid's good in Morrison's JLA "Rock of Ages" arc ... at least to my mind.