CBR: Wonder of Wonders - Nov 17, 2009

[CBR News]

In this week's STAR-SPANGLED PANTIES, the concept of godhood in the DC Universe is examined, and some potential guidelines are laid down in order to help readers differentiate between superheroes and true gods.


Full article here.

[ClaudioPozas]

Eh.

IMHO, the only distinction between Ancient Greece's gods and today's superbeings was that the gods wanted/needed/demanded worship. But other than that, there was nothing inherently different between the two groups (you could even say Heracles was the first "superhero").

[Ceridwen]

These Amazons were set in Greece to bring the metaphorical sheep back to the fold. Can't you hear them now as they go door to door? "Hail, brother Leonidas! Have you heard the Good Word about Gaea's Way? Our head priestess has prepared a pamphlet we'd like to leave with you..."

Having done this full-time in my past (though for a very different deity), this made me laugh.

[Mars Getsoian]

I would say it's as simple as saying that gods (and similar divine beings, like the Spectre) are not people. They're personifications. The Joker could be sane, if the right confluence of events conspired to change him or if his one bad day had never happened. Given the right stressors, Clark could turn around tomorrow and set the planet on fire, despite his upbringing. But Darkseid is tyranny incarnate. He quite simply cannot be anything but evil. Athena can be momentarily swayed by her emotions, but she cannot stop being wise. Ares is pretty much going to be a fight-starting dick, no matter what. They're expressions of, and slaves to, their nature, in a way that creatures like us are not. They're elemental forces with a guiding sentience, not sentients with elemental powers.

They do have personalities, of course, and the ability to make choices, and they can even reinvent themselves when the need is dire (as Ares did when he expanded his portfolio from War to Conflict), changing their makeup while retaining their discrete personas and memories. And if they do change their own elemental nature this way, they can start to behave differently. Darkseid could, presumably, reinvent himself as the god of despots, and become an enlightened one, if he wanted to reform and get those annoying superheroes and New Genesis loonies off his back. But that's the only way he could do it - to change his nature, he would have to change his substance, his power source, his very essence. His abilities, instincts and imperatives would be altered at a really basic level, and he would actually look and feel different to people (like Diana) who have divine or magical senses. Like how Beast Boy can't change from a kangaroo to an elephant and still be able to jump, but on a more metaphorical cosmic forces level.

(The other New Gods are more dubious, but it's fairly clear the rest of them really aren't actually the same kind of thing as Darkseid and Highfather, at least not by default.)

Wouldn't work for Marvel in the least, but it does suit DC's canon fairly well, Diana's gods in particular (but not only; the Spectre and Eclipso and their need to be bound to mortals to have any control over their blind execution of their functions supports the distinction quite well too, frex). It's also real-world mythologically consistent for most of the deities Diana would have reason to interact with, if you care about that sort of thing (which many fans do).

[ClaudioPozas]

That's a good way to look at it, Mars (even if I peg Darkseid not as the ultimate Evil, but as the ultimate dictator... he's Lawful Evil incarnate, for all you D&D fans out there! ).

Re: the rest of the New Gods, they're more like Demigods, but you can assign some portfolios to them. Mister Miracle is the New God of Freedom, Big Barda is the New God of Love, Orion is the New God of War...

[Mars Getsoian]

even if I peg Darkseid not as the ultimate Evil, but as the ultimate dictator... he's Lawful Evil incarnate, for all you D&D fans out there!

Precisely. Hence "god of tyranny," rather than "god of evil" - if he wanted to reform, he could shift himself to "god of despotism" and become LN.

Not that there's a proper ninefold grid in this brave new 4e world anyway. :/

Re: the rest of the New Gods, they're more like Demigods, but you can assign some portfolios to them. Mister Miracle is the New God of Freedom, Big Barda is the New God of Love, Orion is the New God of War...

Hmn, I would call Barda Strength. Through Scott, she learned that love and companionship are a form of strength, and on the League she learned the proper use of strength, but her iconography and MO and personality are all about power, being both the irresistible force and the immovable object.

Barda as Love is kind of awesomely subversive, though.

[Sijo]

So what's your definition for how a god is distinctly different from a supercape? Or do you think there's an advantage to the two concepts existing on the same level?

OK, this needs multiple answers.

First, different cultures have had different interpretations of what is a "god." Despite superficial similarities, the Greek gods are distinctly different from the Hindu ones (who are part of the whole Buddhist karma/reincarnation concept) or from the Japanese Kami, who are more like spirits of people, things and animals that have grown in power, etc. About the only common link in all faiths is that deities are more powerful than human and receive their worship (but do not *need* it, otherwise people would've caught on and tried to 'blackmail' them over it- "give us what we want or we won't power you with our worship anymore!")

In comics, gods have been used only as superbeings, mostly because they're wanted as heroes or villains, and therefore are powered down to the heroes' level. Not to mention that following the classic myths too closely would make no sense given our current knowledge of the world (besides, if you have *several* pantheons coexist, some of their legends HAVE to be false- the world couldn't have been created in so many different ways, for example.) And some myths are just unacceptable to modern audiences (the Greek mythos alone includes instances of incest and cannibalism.) So you get just primitive tribes of immortals with power equal or superior to the average hero, but nothing truly world-shaking, much less universe-shaking.

I agree that gods should not be used casually. If you're going to use a mythos, you should research it well, and have encounters with deities be more than just "weird superbeings." Depending on the source, of course. The Greek gods and demigods are actually good for comics because they were a very a down-to-Earth, rough-and-tumble bunch, perfect for the typical superhero story. On the other hand, Hindu deities should be foreign, even mystifying in their nature, abilities and purposes to the average western superhero.

One final note: worship. I do not believe that the gods in the comics should receive worship (not the true kind, which implies honest belief and devotion, as opposed to making deals with them) precisely because they're used as just characters in a story. My problem with Wonder Woman having been shown as so devout to her gods is that they've shown themselves to be no better than mortals over and over again (Zeus once tried to *rape her* dammit!) There's also the problem with using deities that are *currently* being worshiped. While I do not think being used in a comic story should be considered blasphemy (that way lies blind fanaticism) if you want to sell your comics, you do *not* want to insult your audience's beliefs. Better to limit yourself to dead religions, or those from places where your comics aren't sold. Or, just make up your own, like Kirby did.

[Leto]

My main problem with the depiction of gods in the DC universe it that there's the paradox that the gods are both real and yet modern society has very little to do with them.

With Marvel, the Norse gods left to Asgard and lost interest in earth for millenia. Thor is treated as a superhero and there are no religious orders of him on earth any longer. In the ultimate universe, Thor actually had a cult of hippie followers.

With DC the greek gods seem to have just popped out of existence for a few thousand years. I would just like a canon explanation. There was something about the Greeks getting fed up with their behavior and the gods creating the amazons to have devoted worshipers or something but it's still a bit off why they stopped appearing.

Marvel's approach was to make the gods heroes, Marston's approach was to make Diana the daughter of Hippolyta. I think we should see more uniquely DC godspawn running around.

[CarolStrick]

One of my questions about gods in the modern DCU is: how are they powered? We are told time and again that worship gives gods power. But who the heck REALLY worships gods in the DCU? In mass worshipper quantities?

The only one I can think of is Darkseid, whose people HAVE to worship him (does that count?) and I do NOT consider him a true DCU god. Kobra has a devout following, but not nearly enough to warrant any kind of real power.

We saw Diana convincing the Amazon nation to worship Darkseid in order to "jumpstart" him, but even that doesn't seem enough of a base population of worship to warrant godly power.

Maybe this is one of those interdimensional thangs, where the power comes from other dimensions or worlds. Even if the DCU is immensely smaller than the real cosmos, it's still a big universe out there for those folks.

[Peter Svensson]

There was a great bit in Walt Simonson's Orion where someone asks how the New Gods get power if they are not worshipped, and Orion's response is "every time a mortal turns on a computer, puts a piece of bread in the toaster, opens a door, strikes a match, or wonders at the stars ... he worships at the altar of the New Gods."

Which works for them. They're new.

[Javier Velasco]

But this is exactly what is wrong with the idea of Athena being the primary patroness of DC's Amazons in general and Wonder Woman in particular.

If the gods in the DCU gain strength by the actions (worship) of the sentient beings in the universe, example Ares being stronger when war is occurring. Then why would Athena, the goddess of battle strategy, champion a race of beings whose purpose was to eradicate war?

If Diana accomplishes her mission and brings peace to the world, Athena will become less powerful. Yes, she will still be the goddess of wisdom (and basket weaving and macrame, etc), but she will lose a great deal of her power. Athene is only a major goddess in a world at war.

Unlike Aphrodite, who is a major goddess in any universe where emotions exist, Athene's loses status in a peaceful world.

So isn't there a conflict of interest here?

I mean the greek goddess of peace is Eirene. Not Athena. Not by a long shot.

[Peter Svensson]

Heh. Ever wondered why Diana despite working her butt off for years hasn't made a dent in world strife? Athena doesn't want actual progress, just the illusion of such!

Man, that is such a metaphor for the DC Universe as a whole...

[Mr Prince]

What Mars wrote about resonated with me-that the gods are elemental forces and ideas of a sense.

That's one of the reasons I really loved the concept of the gods as Rucka portrayed them. They could appear modern or classical as they wished, yet the base of their power reflected the contemporary consciousness of society. There was a lot of fun in that idea to me and I like the shift in power it gave to Athena, Ares and Aphrodite over Zeus. A missed opportunity to me, not to play that up and then have the horrible segue into the Granny Goodness as Athena, AA and 52 stories.

It gave the opportunity for the gods to be updated as support characters in the story, be a little more parallel with Diana in Patriarch's World, and gave a lot of room for interesting god-meaning interpretations, new rivalries or alliances-new myth if you will.

Still though, keep Perez' crazy design of Olympus. ;)

All the best...

Scott

[Mart]

Double post - darn those gods of communication!

[Mart]

Carol, that was just brilliant; reasoned, funny and so, so sharp. DC Comics - oops, sorry, that's Entertainment - should copy your god manifesto onto their personal Source wall.

And great pics - obviously, the paper hearts Venus goes without saying, but I just love the Athena (?) with S-symbol. Someone should market that.