New Gods / YMMV - TV Tropes

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Orion: Some fans consider spoiled pampered prince who was given EVERYTHING at the expense of Mr Miracle (who was exiled to a hell beyond all imagination by his father) and who whines over how "hard" he has it growing up in paradise (not that this makes any sense, because Orion grew up on Apokolips while it was being bombarded constantly by New Genesis), while treating everyone around him (most notably Forager and the JLA/Superman) like garbage. Barda calls him out on this in the New 52 Mister Miracle comic. Some of this is almost certainly intentional; the intent behind Orion is that he was not born good, but attempts to overcome his evil nature through great effort.
- Metron is a secret villain who exploits the war between New Genesis and Apokolips for his own amusement, or uses it to further his experiments in science via the war.
- Darkseid: God of Evil or a necessary evil, given how without him in charge, his minions plunge Apokolips into civil war.
Audience-Alienating Era: Return Of The New Gods - not for the series itself, which ranges between not-terrible to So Okay, It's Average, but for the wholly unnecessary redesign of Orion to look more "superheroic". He trades in his helmet and Astro-Harness for something resembling Geo-Force's costume with a big "O" on his chest.
Base-Breaking Character: Takion and Grayven, both Canon Foreigners who either distract from Kirby's creations or represent ongoing attempts to keep the original setting relevant.
Complete Monster: New Gods has these denizens of Apokolips:
- Darkseid, born Prince Uxas, is the Trope Codifier for Dystopia Justifies the Means. As ruler of Apokolips, Darkseid subjects its denizens to hellish conditions with the overwhelming majority of the population ill-treated slaves. His Elite fare no better as Darkseid is all too willing to subject them to hideous tortures or obliteration should they fail him. Darkseid detests all that is good in the universe and seeks to extend his influence everywhere he can. While he once loved someone, his mother, Heggra, wanting to make him evil, killed Suli, helping turn Darkseid into the Galactic Conqueror we know him as—but not before he had Heggra poisoned. During Final Crisis, Darkseid is dying, and so wants to destroy the multiverse and all life in it as a final gesture. He kills his son Orion to gain dominion over Earth. Once there, he enslaved the minds of everyone he could touch, turning them into savage parodies of themselves, intending to "murder their souls and take them to hell without end." His ultimate motive is to use the Anti-Life Equation to rob everybody of free will and turn them all into mindless zombies who worship him as a god while he tortures them eternally, all for fun. Just as bloodthirsty and monstrous as any of those who serve him, Darkseid combines urbane sophistication, limitless cruelty and insatiable drive for power, and is the one single villain who all the heroes despise and fear.
- Desaad, the God of Sadism and Darkseid's chief inquisitor, is a vicious sadist and one of the most wantonly cruel deities of all Apokolips. Having assisted Darkseid's rise to power, Desaad murdered Darkseid's first lover Suli before bargaining for his life with Darkseid by murdering his mistress—and Darkseid's mother—Queen Heggra. Desaad proceeds to enact ghastly tortures on a daily basis, basking in the pain and fear of his victims while never letting them die, even reaching across the cosmos to murder hapless mortals while basking in their helpless, terrified agony. Desaad keeps whole groups enslaved in twisted amusement parks of torture with intent to create countless more across the cosmos. Ever the opportunist, Desaad has been willing to let all of Earth die to get what he wishes, has tried to spark a war with New Genesis and has even tried to betray Darkseid himself to make himself the supreme deity with the Multiverse becoming his playground and all who live his playthings.
- Granny Goodness is the self-styled Evil Matriarch to all of Apokolips's children and one of the evilest people to ever serve Darkseid. Having clawed her way into the graces of Darkseid and killed any trace of actual goodness left in her, Granny raises the children of Apokolips in "orphanages" under constant, horrific torture, literally from the moment they're born; the few who manage to survive Granny's hellish teachings become nothing more than slaves who kill and die for Darkseid. Among Granny's children was Scott Free, Mr. Miracle, who was one of the few to ever escape Granny's vile clutches. Beyond this, Granny has death-marched slaves by the thousands into giant threshers to be ground up into raw fuel; manipulated the Amazons into a genocidal attack on Washington by posing as Athena; and nearly managed to destroy Oa during Final Crisis even after being reduced to a mere spirit. Endlessly loyal to her vile master's spirit-destroying ideals, Granny is DC's signature source of child abuse.
Creepy Awesome: When in the hands of a capable writer, Darkseid is utterly terrifying... but done in such a badass way that you can't bring yourself to look away. Mister Miracle (2017) does this particularly well, despite - or perhaps because - Darkseid barely appears.
Creator's Pet: Takion. Stuck out like a sore thumb, completely overpowered, whiny, derivative, a retroactive addition (he's supposed to be the extension and guardian of the Source, but that role was already filled by the Infinity-Man)... so of course he gets to become the new Highfather and get Beautiful Dreamer as a girlfriend. Most fans ignore him or portray him as laughably ineffectual.◊ Notably, pretty much every post-Death of the New Gods appearance of the series puts Izaya back in the Highfather slot.
Cry for the Devil: While the originally planned ending for the Fourth World had both Darkseid and Orion die, Kirby’s revised ending for Darkseid in The Hunger Dogs is somehow even sadder. Darkseid destroys New Genesis but Supertown (the city of the New Gods) detaches from the planet and escapes to rebuild. Meanwhile, Darkseid laments that new technology he doesn’t understand is making his preferred methods for war and tyranny obsolete, his underlings are all hollow shells of their former selves thanks to the Omega Effect, Apokolips is on the brink of revolution, and his nemesis Orion has escaped with both his recently freed mother and soon-to-be wife in tow. While the epilogue makes it clear that Darkseid will eventually squash the revolution, it’s implied his continued existence as a miserable despot alone and unloved is his own personal hell. It almost makes you feel sorry for him.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Lashina was barely an afterthought in the initial run, but she's fetish material and was a regular in the Suicide Squad, which upped her profile dramatically.
- Living Aphrodisiac and Gadgeteer Genius Bekka's prominence in the series may vary, but her popularity with the fanbase is pretty solid.
Fair for Its Day: Among the roster of characters is a Japanese man called Sonny Sumo and two new gods of African appearance called Vykin the Black and the Black Racer... who don't wear any black. To be fair, non-white characters in comic books were few and far between when the New Gods series came out, and while their names are issues, the characters themselves aren't written as stereotypes or anything less than admirable.
Evil Is Cool: Darkseid, the Evil God who acts as the Big Bad of the entire saga, quickly became the series' most popular character, overshadowing even the protagonists when it comes to prominence within the larger DC mythos. This is largely due to his imposing design, impressive powers and complex personality.
Fanon Discontinuity: Anything not written by Kirby has at least some people who claim this (sometimes justified). Compounding the problem is that Kirby's work in canon is often treated with Broad Strokes, at best. Starlin's Death Of The New Gods in particular is often lumped in with Countdown as being this to Final Crisis. About the only successor works that people seem to have some acceptance for is Walt Simonson and Grant Morrison's takes (who at least seemed to have their hearts in the right place even if they didn't totally get it).
Hard-to-Adapt Work: Part of the reason why New Gods have never taken off as a mainstream name in superhero media despite their massive influence on the DC Universe is the difficulty to adapt it. New Gods has a lot going on, with a complex mythos spanning cosmic locales that only very occasionally graze against the more common superheroic fare of the rest of DC, causing most adaptations to only borrow a limited pool of characters for newer stories rather than actually trying to remake the lore of New Gods. This dynamic is part of why Darkseid is so monolithic as a Breakout Villain — it's just far easier to transplant the God of Evil as an enormous threat to more commonly-recognized groups like the Justice League than it is to establish the dynamic of New Genesis and Apokolips and the dozens of godly characters present.
Magnificent Bastard: Kanto is Darkseid's personal assassin and one of his trusted inner circle. Born Iluthin, Kanto was subjected in training to a brutal gauntlet which he survived in an unprecedented feat. Fleeing Apokolips to Renaissance Italy, his beloved was murdered by his predecessor Kanto-13. Iluthin challenged his enemy, poisoning him with a clever trick to disable him first before taking his name and place. The chief nemesis to Mr. Miracle, Kanto is ever able to challenge and trick the infamous escape artist while sharing a mutual respect. Kanto is frequently able to outwit and disable a multitude of heroes while still being so loyal to Darkseid that he refuses to ever take the throne himself even when Darkseid is indisposed.
Mainstream Obscurity:
- While the New Gods aren't exactly mainstream, many in both the American comic book industry and fanbase often refer to how influential the series was. Yet one gets the impression many of those people never actually read it, especially since a full collected edition of Kirby's series was only published in 2007-2008. Notable examples include Jim Starlin (Anti-Life as depicted in his Cosmic Odyssey does not work that way!) and John Byrne (Sleez, the New God of... porn?). Indeed, it took the DC Animated Universe to give a more Kirby-accurate approach and thanks to the latter's popularity, to the extent that people know the Anti-Life Equation (from the DCAU) it's one that is accurate to Kirby.
- The other problem is that the stuff Kirby influenced are so much more famous. It was, for instance, one of the inspirations of Masters of the Universe, to the point where the movie was originally intended to be a New Gods story before falling into Development Hell. It inspired Thanos who on account of the insane popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now far more famous than his inspiration, Darkseid.
My Real Daddy:
- A contentious example. Some think only Kirby's work is really worth reading. According to Mark Evanier, Kirby himself was rather open to other artists using his concepts and ideas, and he initially hoped that the New Gods would be its own genre that others contribute and build on, and was okay with Darkseid becoming the Greater-Scope Villain to the DC Universe, even if he ideally wished he could complete his series.
- Most agree that Walt Simonson's Orion and Grant Morrison's work probably represents the best use of the characters outside their original series.
- The DC Animated Universe animated incarnation is also seen by many to be definitive version outside the comics medium. It was also the first version to make Darkseid a firm part of Superman's rogue's gallery, with the comics following after. And of course being the DCAU, it features possibly the definitive voice cast for the characters.
- Paul Levitz is responsible for propelling Darkseid to his universe-threatening Big Bad status in the '80s with The Great Darkness Saga.
- The Giffen/DeMatteis team successfully revamped Mr Miracle and his supporting cast as a sitcom.
- Despite the fact that Jim Starlin and John Byrne have written extensively for the characters, their work is usually not held in as high a regard. Tom King's Mr Miracle mini-series, while commercially and critically acclaimed, falls in with Byrne and Starlin's run in the eyes of Kirby purists, due to him using interpretations of the characters that originated under Starlin's run. Despite this, many feel that King's largely absent, barely comprehensible Lovecraftian entity depiction of Darkseid is the best version of the character anyone has written since Kirby, or at the very least since Justice League.
Narm Charm:
- With a character named Granny Goodness, you'd think you wouldn't be able to take a villain with that name seriously. But then you learn that her purpose in the story is to raise unlucky children into mindless slaves and soldiers for Darkseid. Now that you know this, her name is suddenly creepy as all hell.
Turpin: So you wanna tell me why my missing kids trail leads right to you?
Boss Dark Side: How could it not? As for the children ... I gave them to Granny.
- The Black Racer is Death on Skis◊. But he's still the goddamn Grim Reaper, his form meant to represent how he's always pursuing you and will eventually catch up sooner or later.
- In general, the fact that the New Gods are Physical Gods from beyond mortal comprehension of time and space but have names like Darkseid, Mister Miracle, and Big Barda is incredibly silly, but it gives them a unique and endearing flavor and no DC writer would dare try to rename them.
- Specific to Darkseid is his habit of chilling on people's couches. It's silly for a God of Evil to make himself at home like that, but it's iconic nonetheless. Plus, it adds a touch of Evil Is Petty to the Nightmare Fuel of coming home to find Darkseid waiting for you.
Older Than They Think: If you were born after 1977, it can be pretty easy to dismiss New Gods as an uninspired Star Wars knockoff. In fact, the series began in 1971, six years before Star Wars hit theaters—and it's likely that it was one of George Lucas' primary artistic influences. You barely have to squint to see Kirby's fingerprints on Lucas' world: there's a metaphysical life-giving energy field called "The Source", a malevolent galactic conqueror in a dark helmet whose name sounds like "Dark Side", and even a hero who finds out that the dark-helmeted Big Bad is actually his father. More broadly, Kirby's idea of merging pulp sci-fi with Classical Mythology may have influenced Lucas' idea to put The Hero's Journey IN SPACE.
Once Original, Now Common: The Forever People get a lot of ribbing for being more or less space hippies, but back in the day, making a book that was unapologetically in favor of anti-war activists was seen as incredibly daring—it was only a year after 58% of Americans blamed the Kent State Massacre on the students, and only three after Brother Power, The Geek was cancelled in its second issue. Nowadays, they're often dismissed as Fad Supers.
Only the Creator Does It Right: There's no small amount of fans who consider Kirby's work to be the "main" part of the franchise, and everyone else's contributions to be secondary at best. This isn't helped by the franchise's Mainstream Obscurity meaning that many of those other contributions outright contradict the themes and general lore and characterization of the original series.
The Scrappy: The Forever People; Kirby's idea of space hippies was a complete flop with fans and the series is considered (along with the Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen installments of the original Fourth World Saga) the weakest and least liked part of the franchise.
WTH, Costuming Department?: Black Racer is a black guy who skies through the sky in a suit of armor adorned in primary colors◊.

YMMV / New Gods

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