WHAT CRUEL FATE AWAITS THE DAINTY SPARTAN SKIRT OF DARKSEID…?!!
November 14th, 2011
PREPARING REACTIONS TO THE NEWLY REDESIGNED DARKSEID DOT DOT DOT
Darkseid Is… An inaction figure/A “21st Century big bad”/A redesign of a redesign of a real design/A quaint plastic monster farting out an unclean sun.
Darkseid Is… Straining for relevance/A big Depeche Mode fan/Dangerously indebted to the robust sartorial choices of a certain Lex Luthor.
Darkseid Is… A dullard’s idea of raw spectacle/Actually quite ripped underneath that hard shell/Pretending to be a pint man now, probably.
Darkseid Is… Representative of nothing/Reflective of nothing/Currently unable to smuggle meaning under his dainty little skirt.
Darkseid Is… Singing the Arkham City blues/A capitalist realist’s dream/Safe now for renewed consumption.
Darkseid Is… Honestly, pretty fucking dull in this incarnation.
November 14th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
The blandness of the costume is representative of the crushing banality of ANTI-LIFE.
November 14th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Not even anti-life can justify those shoulder pads.
Anyway, it just looks like Apocalypse and Anti-Monitor had a baby.
November 14th, 2011 at 10:47 pm
It looks like he’s wearing a dodgy 90′s tracksuit.
November 14th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
It’s a very busy outfit, isn’t it? Loads going on, but sort of adding up to something incredibly unforgettable and non-striking.
Has Jim Lee ever designed a good outfit (that’s a genuine question, I can’t think of a single good Jim Lee design, apart from maybe Spartan fae WildK.A.T.Z., though Sean Phillips did the best version)?
November 14th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
I mean ‘forgettable’, not ‘unforgettable’, indicentally.
Incidentally.
Nuurgh.
November 15th, 2011 at 12:43 am
Cracked skin = granite.
Cracked shoulderpads = eggshells.
At least he looks like a cheap version of Darkseid and didn’t get, say, the Amanda Waller treatment.
November 15th, 2011 at 12:46 am
And as is often the case with Lee’s designs, it’ll be another artist comes along and makes me like it somehow.
Though who it’ll be with the “Present Day New DCU” moratorium on the New Gods is a query for the ages. Someone of Grant’s liking in Multiversity, which’ll be fine. Maybe Metron’ll still be iWhite.
November 15th, 2011 at 1:10 am
Actually, now I look at it, Nu-Darkseid reminds a lot of the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle. Though I doubt that was the intention?
November 15th, 2011 at 5:00 am
Throw some tubes on him and he’s X-Men’s Apocalypse.
November 15th, 2011 at 10:49 am
Darkseid IS… no longer a withering old black man who traffics drugs and child slave labor while running trendy fetishist night clubs.
And yet… this is still somehow a downgrade.
November 15th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Don’t mind it meself
November 15th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
I don’t know, I have difficulty finding the FC incarnation of Darkseid (which, once he bonds with Turpin, is genuinely scary, btw) offensive given that he shares space with Obama Superman and a great many other ethnically diverse heroic peeps.
November 15th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
See, I actually think the Seven Soldiers incarnation of Darkseid worked as part of Morrison and co’s partially successful attempt at Afro Futurism. I mean, when you list Boss Dark Side’s characteristics like that it sounds like a severely clumsy characterisation, because it kind of was, but in a series about escape and elevation he was a suitably brutal and unpleasant antagonist.
Plus, like Amy’s said it’s hard to find that version of the character too offensive when he’s mixed in with so many other black characters (see that 4th Letter link above for information on how all of the characters in Mister Miracle were supposed to be black).
Botswana Beast was saying, on the Mindless mail, that he doesn’t think this Darkseid is too bad, plus that Jim Lee’s redesigns are normally worse, and he’s right but… well, you’ve all done a good job of tracing the variety of 90s stylings that are blurred together in this image, and that’s in line with the hurried 90s nostalgia of DC’s relaunch as a whole. Which… it’s weird for me, because I’ve enjoyed some of the retro-Vertigo stuff they’ve been putting out (Swamp Thing/Animal Man), and I’m worried about how much barely disguised button pushing is involved.
So: my issue with this redesign is that, on a purely visual level, it communicates nothing – it’s just MORE COMICS!, with a little bit of maybe a bit like the ones you enjoyed fifteen years ago thrown in for good measure, you know? Maybe the stories themselves will prove me wrong on that front, but as first impressions go, this is just really uninspiring.
November 15th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
That’s quite persuasive, actually: “it’s just more comics”.
This
he was a suitably brutal and unpleasant antagonist.
isn’t all. Surely the point is that Darseid is precisely the kind of guy that like to perpetuate stereotypes? Rigid roles; conformity; harmful, limiting ideas of self are par for the course when it comes to Moz’s bad guys, esp the Ruler of Apocalypse.
November 15th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Hmm, yeah, I’d considered saying something like that, but I’m not sure how close that comes to…. making excuses, you know?
I mean, I agree with you, I don’t think it’s an excuse, but I can see how it would sound that way to someone who wasn’t convinced.
November 15th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Well sure it’s a tiny reach, but to anyone with a more than passing familiarity with Moz’s work it kinda obviously fits a pattern.
November 15th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
TOTAL AGREEMENCE!
November 15th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
I should note, i’m incredibly fond of the 7S/FC version, so much so i’m surprised to see it go. Also, long time reader and huge fan of the work you guys are doing here.
November 15th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Also, i hope my snark about the new look being a downgrade didn’t come off as any kind of insult to the previous version. Boss Dark Side gave me that crawly feeling i got reading the first arc of the Invisibles. The cronies over at… what was it called, Harmony House? I got that feeling from Boss Dark Side. Not a bad way to handle the character.
November 15th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
Position well and truly clarified, Jason
November 15th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
With those shoulder pads Darkseid could play for PennState.
November 15th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Aye Jason, no need to worry about insulting Boss Dark Side – we just thought you were making a slightly different/harder criticism, your position is definitely much clearer now.
I’m glad you posted anyway, because it made me clarify my position slightly, and I think that works well as a footnote to this shortest of short posts!
Should probably clarify that by “90s” above, I think I’m actually referring to a mess of things from the 80s and 90s – I mean “shit that was made in my lifetime” there, basically.
I was looking at this Spice Girls themed tumblr a couple of months back, and it struck me how alien the girls now look. With all those garish colours and shiny fabrics, browsing the archives there is like being punched in the face by an earlier decade.
Which is strange, because I couldn’t really gee a fuck about the Spice Girls at the time (my idea of “the 90s” is more Sleater-Kinney, The Invisibles and the Wu-Tang Clan), but… I guess my point here is if the Spice Girls seem like they would be a more exciting source of inspiration for your new version of the god of all evil then you’re probably in trouble.
November 16th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Darkseid at Penn state?
Darkseid IS
Sorry he showered and horseplayed with those boys.
Darkseid IS
Not a peddaphile.
That’s a joke for news-watching Americans.
November 16th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Darkseid IS…
drawing your eyes to his crotch with his new belt buckle.
November 17th, 2011 at 2:50 am
I keep getting reminded of the episode of Seinfeld when George gets the Gore-Tex Jacket, and a few characters just start wailing on him, asking if he can feel them hitting him, and he can’t. He also can’t put his arms down completely.
It looks like Mr. Seid has the first part down pat, but the reverse of the latter problem. “The Tiger-Force at the Heart of All Things… can’t get the damn Chex Mix from the top shelf. KALIBAAAAK!”
November 17th, 2011 at 11:14 pm
Blue Lantern Hannu …
December 14th, 2011 at 5:05 pm
[...] DARKSEID IS…Not exactly flaunting the skirt, but he doesn’t look like the type to hide it here either… [...]