Orion
1752 - Orion is born on Apokolips, the son of Darkseid. he is traded to New Genesis to seal their non-aggression pact.
6 years ago - Orion first meets the Justice League when Big Barda & Scott Free come to New Genesis to be married by All-Father.
4 years ago - Orion and the warriors of New Genesis arrive on Earth to battle the Darkseid's Parademon assault, declaring the planet under New Genesis protection.
2 years ago - Orion joins the Watchtower at the request of the All-Father of New Genesis to help fortify against Mageddon.
1 years ago - Orion battles General Wade Eiling of the Injustice Gang, sending him into Null-Space. He helps defeat Mageddon. & returns to New Genesis.
Of all the New Gods, Orion might be the most complex. He's clearly the central hero of the story of the New Gods, but he's so outside of what you might expect that hero to be. The abandoned son of Darkseid, he has every bit of his father's power and evil brewing inside him, and the only thought keeping him from acting on it is to twist it all into the singular purpose of destroying his father. He's not a redeemed villain, or even seeking redemption, because he knows in his heart that he is unredeemable. He is rage incarnate, and he has no hope of ever being anything else. Watching that character drawn out to a godly scope is perhaps one of the best parts of the New Gods.
Of course, Orion died along with the rest of the New Gods in the pages of Final Crisis, but we're not using that story because the DC Universe that came out the other end of it just wasn't something we recognized anymore. We'd much rather have a DC that features the Orion and the New Gods as we remember them; bold, colorful explosions of character that live just outside the world as we know it.
Of course, Orion died along with the rest of the New Gods in the pages of Final Crisis, but we're not using that story because the DC Universe that came out the other end of it just wasn't something we recognized anymore. We'd much rather have a DC that features the Orion and the New Gods as we remember them; bold, colorful explosions of character that live just outside the world as we know it.
Orion's Comic HistoryOrion was essentially the protagonist of Jack Kirby's Fourth World, a story about the New Gods. They actually appeared first in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, but were almost immediately stars of their own series.
The story was obviously meant to be a limited series, but Kirby was essentially forced to extend his narrative and bring his characters into contact with the rest of the DC Universe. His epic was never really allowed to reach its conclusion, and the New Gods, as depicted in comics ever since, have been perpetually hovering within that unfinished narrative. Other writers have created their own New Gods stories, most notably Gerry Conway and John Byrne, but ultimately there is this sense that the original ending of the story (Orion's defeat of Darkseid and taking his throne) is the ultimate fate that will always be pending. Orion has, like many of the heroes of the Fourth World, been an ongoing part of the larger DC universe. Our favorite appearance is his short membership in Grant Morrison's JLA, but any time the New Gods are involved you can usually expect to see Orion leading the way. |
Our Orion StoryWe REALLY want to avoid overusing the New Gods as part of the DC Universe proper. They have their own story going on, and the levels of power at play in that story are so completely gamebreaking that their interaction with the the rest of the DC universe needs to be kept on a tight leash.
In the case of Orion, whose power levels are even more gamebreaking, we've kept his involvement almost entirely to JUST his tenure with the Watchtower in preparation for the coming of Maggeddon. This is not to say that his own stories aren't playing out in his life on New Genesis. Quite the opposite, the story of the New Gods needs to be one of the grandest contained stories in the whole of DC. It just needs to be happening on New Genesis, not on Earth. |
Orion's CostumeEveryone needs to stop thinking they can do better than Jack Kirby. The man designed pretty much all of the classic Marvel costumes, and any time someone tries to alter his designs (I'm looking at you, Mike Deodato Jr's mid-90's Thor redesign) it is invariably not as good, because Jack Kirby is the reason we have the phrase Comic Legend.
Generally speaking, people seem to have that fairly well worked out. With the exception of Darkseid who at this point is in every third comic book, the rest of the New Gods seems to be allowed to keep to the relative outlier status their story deserves, but when Orion does get taken off the shelf the artists seem to have the utmost respect for Kirby's near-perfect design work. There was a major exception in the pages of Wonder Woman at the beginning of the new 52; when Cliff Chiang brought his incredibly clean character design to Orion, creating a version that looked well-formulated and executed with an aesthetic that fit in beautifully with the world... and I hated it. Jack Kirby characters are a two-handed Captain Kirk punch to the cleanliness of your world design. They need to be gods and demons, because the rest of your world can't handle them. |
Orion's FutureUnlike many other characters in the DC Lexicon, Orion and the New Gods are all creatures driven by prophecy. Orion, being essentially the protagonist of their pantheon, is clearly meant to be the hero, and he is meant to eventually challenge and kill his biological father Darkseid, and take his place as the new ruler of Apokolips.
This actually means two things for the overall story of the New Gods. First, it means that until the day comes when that final battle between Darkseid and Orion happens, these two characters are essentially immortal. this isn't exactly news; the New Gods occupy a higher plane of existence, their story shouldn't really interact with the stories that happen on Earth. Just what form this final battle will take is unknown; I happen to like the idea that it happens during some sort of major cataclysm that brings about the end of the entire Fourth World and ushers in whatever new existence the New Gods will take. Second; Orion is going to be the new high Deity over whatever form the Gods take in their next evolution. The Fourth World features two families of Gods, one good and one evil, and what we know is that this next form will have Orion ruling over the evil gods. What is that going to LOOK like? I'd love to see that happen and have someone really confident with reinterpreting classic tales of gods design something completely new, all over again. |