Is Darkseid The Most Powerful Villain In The DC Universe?

Comic books have given us some of the most iconic villains in all of pop culture, especially with how lucrative the medium has been as a source for cinematic adaptation. Characters like the Joker, Lex Luthor, and even the Kingpin have transcended the source material that birthed them, to become recognizable titans of film and television.

Now there’s another foundational comic book villain making the jump off the page, this time into the world of animation. Just recently, fans were gifted a first look photo from the upcoming Mister Miracle TV series, which will mark the first time that Scott Free and the rest of the New Gods have gotten a project focused specifically on them. And of course, if the New Gods are making their debut in James Gunn’s new DCU, then that means that Darkseid can’t be far along — and anyone familiar with him knows that the authoritarian despot of Apokolips is a big enough villain to pose a threat to the entire DC Universe.

Who Is Darkseid In The Comics?

While anyone who has seen the DC Animated Universe’s Superman: The Animated Series or Justice League knows the uber-powerful stone-skinned dictator, Darkseid didn’t initially start out that way. When Jack Kirby introduced him in the pages of 1970s Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #134, he appeared precisely as most people know him: an ambitious and cruel tyrant hoping to subjugate the galaxy, locked in a forever war with the utopian society of New Genesis. But before all that, he was simply Prince Uxas — the power-hungry son of King Yuga Khan and Queen Heggra — plotting to usurp the throne from his older brother Drax.

Prince Uxas got his chance when his brother sought the legendary Omega Force, a power that Uxas stole for himself after slaying his sibling. The power transformed his skin into stone and granted him the Omega Beams (cosmic energy blasted through the eyes and used to either remove someone from existence entirely or launch them backwards in time). And, as if prompted by the transformation, Uxas rechristened himself “Darkseid” and assumed Apokolips’ throne. Eventually Darkseid fathered two separate children — the first being Kalibak, born to an Apokoliptan mother (a sorceress named Suli who was eventually poisoned by Queen Heggra), and the second being Orion, who was the offspring of Darkseid’s forced marriage to a woman named Tigra.

Darkseid’s relationship with Orion is a crucial part of his character; while Kalibak was raised as a savage warrior beholden to his father, Orion was one-half of a trade of children between Darkseid and Highfather, the ruler of New Genesis. The trade was intended as the insurance for a peace treaty between the two warring planets: Orion was raised on New Genesis by Highfather, while Highfather’s own son Scott Free (the future Mister Miracle) was raised within Apokolips’ nightmarish society, subjected to all manner of torture and indoctrination in the hopes of breaking his spirit. The trade ultimately ended up becoming a bane of sorts for Apokolips’ ruler: Scott Free eventually escaped to Earth, his upbringing teaching him escape-artist skills that became crucial to his adventures as Mister Miracle, while Orion aligned himself with the virtues of New Genesis and became arguably his father’s greatest enemy, destined by prophecy to be the one to slay him.

Although he was introduced as a key part of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga (a series of interconnected sci-fi comics revolving around the New Gods, alien deities who emerged in the aftermath of a battle between the old gods) and was never really intended to have a life beyond that, Darkseid has slowly become the overarching villain of debatably the entire DC Universe, being seen as something akin to a literal God of Evil. Unlike other villains who dominate exclusively through raw power and displays of strength, Darkseid is a reflection of the authoritarianism and fascism that Jack Kirby observed in the world — his personality was modeled after Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon, and his plans to conquer the universe hinges on the Anti-Life Equation, a formula prophesied to subjugate any living creature by stripping them of their free will.

His villainy has brought him to blows with Superman and the rest of the Justice League multiple times, be it his attempts to corrupt Kara Zor-El and turn her into one of his Female Furies (Apokolips’ elite all-female death squad overseen by the sadistic Granny Goodness) or using Anti-Life to enslave most of the Earth’s population in 2008’s Final Crisis; most recently he’s even been responsible for the creation of the Absolute Universe, which tells you everything you need to know about how powerful he truly is.

Will Darkseid Be In The DCU?

If Mister Miracle is getting his own TV show, then it’s all but confirmed that Darkseid will be a part of it — after all, Darkseid and Granny Goodness are instrumental in the brutal conditions that turned Scott Free into a warrior of resistance, and Mister Miracle is a crucial ally to the forces of New Genesis against his kidnapper and abuser. He was also a key character in Tom King’s 2017-2019 Mister Miracle series, mostly as a psychological manifestation of the trauma resulting from Scott’s time on Apokolips. Considering how James Gunn has talked about his approach to the shared DC cinematic canon, it’s more than likely that whoever voices the character in the animated show will also portray him in live-action.

If Darkseid makes it to the big screen (which probably won’t be any time soon as Gunn has already confirmed that he won’t be the planned villain for the first phase of the DCU), this will be his second appearance in live-action, after being teased in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. There’s no doubt that he’ll inspire some comparisons to the MCU’s depiction of Thanos, but truthfully Darkseid predates the Mad Titan by a little over 2 years, and was a direct influence on the creation of the character. It’s impossible to overstate just how much Jack Kirby’s creation, who was intended to be the villain of a short-lived metaseries, has changed not only DC Comics but the concept of villains in comic books as a whole—– and if his foundation is already being laid in Mister Miracle, then at some point the larger DC Universe is going to find out exactly what is meant by the ominous phrase “Darkseid is.”