{"id":1176,"date":"2017-09-29T23:30:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-30T03:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2017-09-29T08:08:53","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T12:08:53","slug":"great-darkness-great-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"Great Darkness, Great Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the fall of 1982.\u00a0 An early childhood captivatingly watching Superman<\/em>, Wonder Woman<\/em>, and Batman<\/em> on the television had done little to shape my comic book choices.\u00a0 By my early teens, I had decidedly fallen into the Marvel camp for my reading pleasures.\u00a0 But here in the fall of 1982, I haunted the local newsstands looking for one title more than any other \u2013 The Legion of Super-Heroes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I had always had a soft spot for the Legion.\u00a0 One of the earliest comics I owned was Superboy<\/em> #210 (which eventually is renamed Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes<\/em> and then, finally, just the Legion of Super-Heroes<\/em>).\u00a0 The lead story, which was Legion of Super-Heroes tale, was one of my favorites.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the series just didn\u2019t stick.\u00a0 Sure, I bought issues from time to time, but it just didn\u2019t capture my attention every month.\u00a0 That was until Paul Levitz (script), Keith Giffen (pencils), Larry Mahlstedt (inks), and Carl Gafford (colors) started their Great Darkness Saga<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the risk of using an old clich\u00e9, this storyline has it all \u2013 fun, action, horror, nobility, drama, tension, and style.\u00a0 The storyline ran continuously from issue #290-294 with a small prolog in issue #287.\u00a0 In the space of those 5-plus issues, the creative team delivered one of the best storylines in the history of comics.<\/p>\n

The storyline centers on the re-awakening of cosmic villain Darkseid<\/a> after a sleep of nearly a millennium.\u00a0 The brainchild of Jack Kirby, Darkseid was the evil lord of the planet Apokolips<\/a>, which was continuously at war with the noble New Gods<\/a>.\u00a0 Their struggle formed the central theme of Kirby\u2019s Fourth World<\/a> family of titles that ran from 1970 to 1973.<\/p>\n

However, neither the Legion nor any but the most careful and astute reader knows who the bad guy is until nearly the end.\u00a0 The creative team manages this feat by adroit writing and cleverly conceived and implemented visuals.<\/p>\n

All the reader knows at the beginning of issue #287 is that\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An investigation by two Legion members (Mon-El and Shadow Lass) triggers a reaction from powerful defensive systems capable of staggering even Mon-El\u2019s Superman-level of strength.\u00a0 Reluctantly forced to flee, they fail to witness the stirring of their mysterious enemy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the story unfolds in issue #290, the Legion quickly find themselves facing off against Darkseid\u2019s Servants of Darkness, beings whose appearance is obscured<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

and yet who are<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

strangely familiar.<\/p>\n

Each servant is tasked with retrieving mystical objects such as one servant stealing a wand<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

while another takes the legendary sword Excalibur.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All these items serve to fuel Darkseid\u2019s ever-growing power.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Legion is barely able to keep themselves from being killed in their encounters with the servants, as the latter all boast Superman-level power.<\/p>\n

Eventually, they capture the weakest servant<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

and only then do they begin to put the pieces together to understand that the servants are corrupted clones of some of the most powerful entities who ever lived.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even armed with this knowledge, the Legion can\u2019t stop Darkseid. \u00a0Once fully revitalized, he learns of Daxam<\/a>, a world inhabited by a splinter group of Kryptonians who were vulnerable to lead not kryptonite.\u00a0 Realizing he can sway an entire army of supermen to his will, Darkseid invades.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bending all 3 billion inhabitants to his will, his first command is for them to terraform their planet into a monstrous monument to his godhead<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It is only at this point, as the planet is silhouetted against the red sun of Daxam (the final pages of issue #293), that the reader becomes privy to the fact that the villain is Darkseid.<\/p>\n

Charged up by the magical artifacts he\u2019s consumed and commanding a 3-billion large army of supermen, Darkseid is on the verge of defeating the entire galaxy.\u00a0 Barely able to divert the least part of his assault, the Legion\u2019s future is bleak.\u00a0 Their only hope lies with a small child summoned to the thirtieth century from the depths of time by a band of sorcerers.\u00a0 The child quickly ages to maturity, revealing that he is none other than Izaya<\/a>, the High Father of the New Gods, who had kept Darkseid and his minions in check.<\/p>\n

Izaya\u2019s first act is to restore one of the servants to his uncorrupted form; the form of Orion<\/a>, the son and prophesized assassin of Darkseid himself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Because this Orion clone is not a complete copy of the original, Darkseid is able to defeat him, but at great cost.\u00a0 Sensing that the tide is turning as much of his energy is now drained, the Legion presses Darkseid.\u00a0 In these last hours, even Superman and Supergirl find their way into the battle<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

enhanced by Izaya with the ability to be a threat even to the dark god.<\/p>\n

Despite the pounding he\u2019s taken, Darkseid is still defiant<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

until he realizes that he has lost his control over the Daxamites and that an immense, super-powered army was heading to destroy him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Aware that he can\u2019t win, Darkseid retreats from the galaxy, beaten back for the foreseeable future but always lurking on the edges of thought and nightmare.<\/p>\n

Well crafted and nimbly paced, the core narrative is enhanced by the side arcs and personal dramas that add the human facets.\u00a0 The Invisible Kid\u2019s apprehension of his first assignment in the face of an enemy so powerful, the ongoing shame of Chameleon Boy\u2019s trial and imprisonment, the impending birth of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, and the ongoing rivalry between the members running for election to the head of the Legion are just some of these side arcs that remind us that there are real human beings (or alien beings) whose lives are being affected by this cosmic melodrama.<\/p>\n

The creative team added a number of visual details that enhanced the mood.\u00a0 For example, until the final reveal, Darkseid and his servants are always seen in an orange and brown shadow surrounded by pink and magenta and blue coruscating energy fields.\u00a0 This common theme trains the reader to associate the terror of the servants with this look-and-feel much in the way that the moviegoer was trained to associate the \u2018dum-um, dum-um\u2019 sound with the presence of the shark in Jaws<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Specific physical acts are also used to convey the brutality of servants and their master.\u00a0 On at least two occasions, the villains, using the ability to warp spacetime, come up behind members of the Legion and execute an attack out of nowhere<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not content with focusing solely on the bad guys, the creative team added visual perks to the Legion\u2019s look-and-feel.\u00a0 One of the more interesting and visually pleasing ones was the Mission Monitor Board, which allowed the member on monitor duty to have a situational report of the various teams.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The green background with cyan iconography becomes almost as interesting to look at as the rest of the storyline and offers the interested reader a sort of puzzle-book activity trying to associate each icon with the corresponding Legion member.<\/p>\n

The members themselves were also treated with loving care in their physical appearance.\u00a0 Perhaps the most notable was Dream Girl, whose physical appearance was, shall we say, spared no expense.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, the creative team left small clues, both verbal and visual, as to the identity the identity of the major villain; clues that rewarded the careful reader who tracked them down.\u00a0 Most notable were the subtle indications that one of the servants was Orion.\u00a0 First, Levitz makes a point of slipping in one (and only one) mention of the Astro Force<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

a power only wielded by Orion.\u00a0 Second, in one small panel, we see the same servant stripped of all the shadows.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The familiar profile of Orion is there to see if one knew what to look for.\u00a0 One more detail, in the same panel, is the use of the \u2018PLOINK\u2019 sound effect.\u00a0 In the original Kirby Fourth World and subsequent comics, this space warp makes a characteristic \u2018BOOM\u2019 sound and is called, as a result, a boom tube.<\/p>\n

These clues were lost on me in 1982 as I had never seen or had heard about the New Gods.\u00a0 Subsequently, I\u2019ve tracked down and acquired back issues and have tried to stay current on new storylines involving the conflict between New Genesis and Apokolips.\u00a0 And, while each of these is interesting, none capture the shear excitement and appeal as does The Great Darkness Saga<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the fall of 1982.\u00a0 An early childhood captivatingly watching Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman on the television had done little to shape my comic book choices.\u00a0 By my… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1178,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}