Why are the New Gods so weak??

[crimson red]

I remember reading Byrne explain their origins. They were created out of the energy of the Third World during Ragnarok...and supposedly, some of this energy also landed on earth which resulted in the Olympian Gods.

So how come the New Gods seem SO much weaker than the Olympians??
When I picture any Olympian God, I can picture whoever it is giving at least give Superman a lot of trouble. But the New Gods? er...most of them seem like a bunch of clowns with no real power...Granny Goodness, Desaad, ooh these people are just down right powerful...NOT.

Other than Highfather, Darkside, and maybe Orion (Takion isn't even a New God), none of these "gods" can compete with any of the Olympian Gods...what gives??? How come the inferior race that only received a small portion of the energy from Ragnarok seems so much more powerful?

[Spiffy]

I remember reading Byrne explain their origins. They were created out of the energy of the Third World during Ragnarok...and supposedly, some of this energy also landed on earth which resulted in the Olympian Gods.

So how come the New Gods seem SO much weaker than the Olympians??
When I picture any Olympian God, I can picture whoever it is giving at least give Superman a lot of trouble. But the New Gods? er...most of them seem like a bunch of clowns with no real power...Granny Goodness, Desaad, ooh these people are just down right powerful...NOT.

Other than Highfather, Darkside, and maybe Orion (Takion isn't even a New God), none of these "gods" can compete with any of the Olympian Gods...what gives??? How come the inferior race that only received a small portion of the energy from Ragnarok seems so much more powerful?
To me they seem to operate more like a DC version of Marvel's Norse gods. Who, face it, at least in Marvel's portrayal only seem to have 2 or 3 heavy hitters and the rest don't seem nearly as powerful.

[Jack Zodiac]

Gods...what gives??? How come the inferior race that only received a small portion of the energy from Ragnarok seems so much more powerful?

Because Byrne's stupid ass explanation for the Greek gods belittles both their mythology and the mythology Kirby crafted for the Fourth World. The New Gods were never meant to be impossibly powerful beings nobody could ever oppose. That would've been boring and counterproductive for the legendary melodrama he wanted to create around them.

Once again, it isn't until some half-assed writer comes along to try to explain another superior writer's work that everything falls apart.

[K-DoG7p7]

You are reading to much into the word "God"

In general the New Gods are powerful.. but no more then your regulat DC Meta..
there are some newgods that can hurt or even kill Superman (Orion, Darkseid and so on) but many of them have no real powers.. just a HUGE ego

[carabas]

It is mostly because ,originally, Kirby never intended the New Gods to be part of the DCU. Stricktly speaking, the New Gods and the Old Gods (Norse, Olympian...) can't even co-exist in the same time because the New Gods were born out of the demise of the Old ones. They were never intended to cross over with Wonder Woman's gods.

[niall mc cann]

Once again, it isn't until some half-assed writer comes along to try to explain another superior writer's work that everything falls apart.

Or a half-assed writer decides to make a career out of explaining superior writer's works, even.

[botch]

It is mostly because ,originally, Kirby never intended the New Gods to be part of the DCU. Stricktly speaking, the New Gods and the Old Gods (Norse, Olympian...) can't even co-exist in the same time because the New Gods were born out of the demise of the Old ones. They were never intended to cross over with Wonder Woman's gods.

That's what I was going to say. They don't seem so powerful because they were brought into the DCU. But now Morrison actually wants to makes them GODS for Final Crisis.

[Slaughter]

While they are usually at the level of the strongest metas of Earth, some New Gods have small power, and usually use technology to fight against inferior beings.

Actually, the average New God is pretty superior to the best human, at least in physical therms.

[berk]

It is mostly because ,originally, Kirby never intended the New Gods to be part of the DCU. Stricktly speaking, the New Gods and the Old Gods (Norse, Olympian...) can't even co-exist in the same time because the New Gods were born out of the demise of the Old ones. They were never intended to cross over with Wonder Woman's gods.Exactly. An important point the implications of which no one at DC seems to be understand.

As for power levels, I think one reason they seem underpowered to superhero fans is that superheroes are so ridiculously over-powered. Another, related point is that Kirby wasn't exactly writing the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasies most superhero readers expect, so he didn't concentrate much on quantifying or even indicating the power levels of his characters. He just made it clear that they were superhumanly powerful usually in a more or less vague, unspecified sense. That was a given, part of the premise of this being a story about gods.

But the themes he was interested in exploring weren't related to the power-fantasy aspect so integral to the superhero genre as it exists today. so with Granny Goodness, for example, the key was the twisted relationship between her and her "students", not what her powers might be. All the reader had to know was that the young children of Apokolpis were in her power, not where her power level ranked in the DCU scale of cosmic/divine beings. And so on for the rest of the characters.

and of course all this is just one more reason why the concept never caught on with the readership at large. They weren't ready for it then and, sad to say, appear to be even less ready for it now.

[botch]

what oher themes do you think are present in the new gods.

obviously the big one is mr miracle denouncing his godhood to live amongst mere mortals.

[Babylon23]

The underlying big theme in New Gods is free will vs. oppressive order. Darkseid and the Anti-Life Equation represent order through the supression of free thought and individuality. The Life Equation represents free will and the power of the individual.

As for why the New Gods are so weak, I think this basically comes down to writers having no understanding of the mythos Kirby established. For example:

1) Characters like Desaad, Granny Goodness and Glorious Godfrey don't need to be physically powerful, since they're more manipulative and strike at their targets on a psychological or emotional level. They destroy people from within so to speak, attacking their sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

2) The actual powerhouses were incredibly powerful in Kirby's work. Kalibak went toe to toe with Orion and constantly fought him to a standstill. He's a God of rage whose physical power is juust below Darkseid's. Unfortunately, like a lot of Darkseid's underlings, he's just a stepping stone these days, somebody for the heroes to beat on as they make their way to Darkseid.

3) Darkseid rarely lays a hand on anybody. Why should he when he's got a planet of underlings to do his dirty work for him. Unfortunately, writers these days can't wait to have their hero go teo to teo with him.

[botch]

The underlying big theme in New Gods is free will vs. oppressive order. Darkseid and the Anti-Life Equation represent order through the supression of free thought and individuality. The Life Equation represents free will and the power of the individual.

As for why the New Gods are so weak, I think this basically comes down to writers having no understanding of the mythos Kirby established. For example:

1) Characters like Desaad, Granny Goodness and Glorious Godfrey don't need to be physically powerful, since they're more manipulative and strike at their targets on a psychological or emotional level. They destroy people from within so to speak, attacking their sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

2) The actual powerhouses were incredibly powerful in Kirby's work. Kalibak went toe to toe with Orion and constantly fought him to a standstill. He's a God of rage whose physical power is juust below Darkseid's. Unfortunately, like a lot of Darkseid's underlings, he's just a stepping stone these days, somebody for the heroes to beat on as they make their way to Darkseid.

3) Darkseid rarely lays a hand on anybody. Why should he when he's got a planet of underlings to do his dirty work for him. Unfortunately, writers these days can't wait to have their hero go teo to teo with him.

I know that's the big theme but what other little things are in there. What do they represent, emphasize etc.

[Magneto Rocks]

Let's not forget Kirby himself used Superman in Forever People #1, and Darkseid's first ever appearance was in "Jimmy Olsen". There's an argument to be made that if Jack Kirby never intended the Fourth World to cross with the DCU, he has only himself to blame for opening that door.

In any case, it has been said that when the New Gods boom tube into "Real Space", they radiclaly reduce in size and power, which could explain why, say, Granny Goodness can't go toe to toe with Superman.

[carabas]

Let's not forget Kirby himself used Superman in Forever People #1, and Darkseid's first ever appearance was in "Jimmy Olsen". There's an argument to be made that if Jack Kirby never intended the Fourth World to cross with the DCU, he has only himself to blame for opening that door.Back in the day, there wasn't any Vertigo or Wildstorm or pretty much any non-work-for-hire at all. If DC wants Kirby to put his weird space gods squarely in the DCU, well, then that's what Kirby has to do if he wants to write about them at all.

[Magneto Rocks]

Back in the day, there wasn't any Vertigo or Wildstorm or pretty much any non-work-for-hire at all. If DC wants Kirby to put his weird space gods squarely in the DCU, well, then that's what Kirby has to do if he wants to write about them at all.

The fact remains that Kirby himself did it. I love Kirby as much as the next guy- probably MORE unless the next guy is Mark Evanier- but its unfair when people criticise other writers for doing what Kirby himself did.

[berk]

I know that's the big theme but what other little things are in there. What do they represent, emphasize etc. I've held off responding to this because the more I think about it, the more it seems to me both too big a question and too small.

Too big in that it'd take me forever to try to tell you what I think it all means - an impossible task anyway, because like any really visionary artistic creation, its meaning is never exhausted, it never stops tallking to you, telling you new things.

And too small in that I believe straightforward equations like "character so & so stands for X, character such & such stands for Y, etc" aren't the way to look at it. The concept is much richer and more nuanced than that.

The best thing is to read the stories and pay attention to Kirby's writing, to the actual words he uses. He put them there for a reason and there are certain points in the various series where he'll encapsulate a certain aspect of a character's essence very effectively. See the recent Grant Morrison interview in the Kirby Collector for a couple examples.

Darkseid, for example, and his obsession the Anti-Life Equation, tends to be seen as a simple representation of tyranny, oppression, etc. And he is that, but not simply that, if you see what I mean.

Just to mention one other aspect - which should be even more obvious since it's contained in his name, but is somehow continuously ignored - is that he is literally the "Dark Side," including OUR INDIVIDUAL dark sides, everything we suppress within ourselves, all those willful, sometimes violent, sometimes manipulative impulses we mustn't give in to if we're to have a functioning society.

Another is how at the collective level he and Apokolips could be seen as our collective failure to control those impulses; so Apokolips is the industrial revolution gone mad, the ultimate degradation of the individual to an instrument to be molded, manipulated, controlled, exploited to further goals not his own. His goals doen't matter, he effectively has none, because his individuality has been taken away from him, he's just a cog, another machine to be used up and discarded when it fails to function. Apokolips is the ultimate distillation down to its pure essence of the kind of dehumanizing exploitation implicit in the capitalist project (to use a terminology Kirby himself probably wouldn't have gone along with).

This is barely scratching the surface, though, and I don't want to leave th impression that Darkseid is limited to what I've said here. I haven't even touched on yet another important aspect to the character, which is that of power, or more to the point the Will to Power.

Nor is Orion just a war god, let alone the one-dimensional brainless thug he's often been written as in JLA or Superman stories.He certainly does represent, in one respect, "war", but war in the Heraclitean sense - strife, conflict, contention, controntation, destructionnot only of human armies but of elementary physical particles, of philosophies, of everything. Motion, movement, change ... At the same time he's Jekyll/Hyde, Banner/Hulk (compare his brother Kalibak who I'd say is Hulk, Caliban, etc), Gilgamesh/Enkidu, Patroclus/Achilles, Hektor/Achilles, Achilles/Achilles, Lord Greystoke/Tarzan, and on and on.

And that is just acratching the surface of that.

The main point is that within the DCU as it now exists and especially as it is now seen by its owners and their consumers/customers, the concept cannot function artistically the way it was meant to by tis creator. Maybe it could have back in Kirby's day, at least as long as he was writing it, but as carabas pointed out, he didn't have any choice back then, he had to put it in the DCU if it was to be published at all.

[Magneto Rocks]

While berk has admirably summed up a great deal about the New Gods, and done so VERY eloquently I might add, the other thing I want to add to that is my own personal favourite theme of Kirby's which is very clear in the New Gods; Control vs Freedom.

It is NOT, as Starlin would have us believe, that New Genesis = Order = Good and Apokolips = Chaos = Bad, it's the opposite. New Genesis = the chaos of FREEDOM, of choice, of unpredictability. Apokolips is "order"- but it's total control, conformity and mindless devotion.

And the idea that Darkseid represents control- among, as berk said, many other things, is clearly present in Kirby's work. To some degree, every resident of Apokolips represents control and order in some way, with Darkseid combining them all into one horrific nightmare. Granny Goodness represents control through love, Desaad is control through torture, Vunderbar is control through discipline, Godfrey is control through propaganda and the "media" etc, and all of them have elements of control through fear. The residents of New Genesis on the other hand are free and chaotic and wild and independent. Their greatest warrior is an independent minded guy who takes orders from no-one but himself, they embrace culture and light, and they don't all represent a different facet of the same ideal because unlike the Apokoliptians, they are individual, unique- free!

...Sorry to rant, but berk didn't touch on that as much, and it's the #1 thing I really, really LOVE about the Fourth World mythology Kirby crafted. ;)

[carabas]

Godfrey is control through propaganda and the "media" etc, and all of them have elements of control through fear.Don't forget religion. In his first appearance Godfrey's clearly a minister or priest of some sort.

Also, kudos to Berk for a most excellent post.