An Essay
“Darkseid Is” and the Problem of Evil
Jason DeHart
Editor’s Note: A bit of background is required concerning Darkseid, a character likely not known by many of the International Journal of Comic Art readers.
Darkseid is a supervillain created by Jack Kirby, in the guise of Hitler, Richard Nixon and Jack Palance. The character made its first cameo appearance in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #134, December 1970, before being fully introduced in Forever People #1, February 1971. Formerly known as Uxas, Darkseid is the tyrannical ruler of the planet, Apokolips, and one of Superman’s greatest adversaries. -JAL
In this essay, I explore Tom King’s portrayal of the DC Comics Darkseid character as featured in his 2019 work, Mister Miracle. In particular, I examine the ways that Darkseid is expressed as a continuing evil force throughout the narrative, though he is off-panel and expressed as an unseen force. This conversation is then juxtaposed with additional notions of what constitutes evil in literature. In King’s work, as well as in the wider comics canon, the character is an often-unseen and seen element that produces fear, doubt, and destruction.
The titular character (Mister Miracle) is aware of Darkseid, and the refrain “Darkseid is” acts as a reminder of this awareness. For the purposes of this analysis, I will juxtapose this text with a wider consideration of the implications of evil from C.S. Lewis’s nonfiction prose work, Problem of Pain (2015). While these two texts may be an unlikely link, they work in a unique pattern.
The Problem, Defined
Lewis discussed the human condition in a number of threads. The first he calls the Numinous -- derived from pneumos, linking to both breath and spirit. In theological terms, this concept may refer to a divine being. This notion of divinity or supernatural power is not completely removed from this engagement with comics and mythological characters. It is, at an essential level, an awareness of the spiritual or supranatural, and is experienced in terms of both fear and revelation. Some branches of religion focus on the work of spiritual beings and trace interaction with the spirit (the notion of being filled with or drunken with the spirit) as an experience that is made visible with certain signs (e.g., speaking in other languages or ecstatic physical responses).
Lewis contended that religion (Christianity, in particular) does little to settle all debate in the realm of religious discourse, but rather prods us with more questions, and the problem of pain is certainly at the center of that inquiry. This is certainly a synagogical form of discussion as questions create more inquiry for further discussion. We find in spiritual renderings an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being -- it is the kind of description a character like Marvel’s Thanos or DC’s Darkseid would crave. Coupled with this notion of being all powerful is the helpful complement of benevolence. If such a being exists, then we can only hope that such a being is benevolent. Otherwise, we have a new level of dilemma as explored in the work of science fiction authors such as Michael Crichton.
Yet, in spite of these enormous and numinous attributes, evil is a reality. Without this dichotomy between good and evil, there would be little purpose in superheroes to begin with. In their very design, superheroes are meant to enact a sense of ethic or balance on the world, often beginning with their own world. They are correctors and guiding rods for that which has been broken or led off-course. It is this sense of enactment that is sometimes located in the voices of religious leaders and advocates who cry for a “better world” in whatever terms such bettering is described.
There is, within this narrative development, the willing suspension of disbelief -- yet, apart from the reality of evil, putting on an elaborate costume would be superfluous, tangential, and a sign of mental instability (which, in the case of characters such as Greg Smallwood and Jeff Lemire’s Moon Knight, it may be anyway). Mister Miracle’s search for his true form and origin in King’s narrative points to this sense of existential uncertainty. Likewise, in Lemire’s take, the superhero identity is swallowed in questions of what is known and unknown. As we read the narrative journey, both Lemire and King may take us to a number of conclusions that we then revise, but that is part of the puzzle that we encounter as we consider these stories. There is an element of tenuous uncertainty. As Lewis writes, “The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast” (1940: 115). Lemire and King present us with characters whose roles of heroism are cast alongside unlikelihood, represented in realities where such claims would be considered a form of madness.
Doubt and Inquiry in the Frame
In King’s Mister Miracle, Darkseid is the primary antagonist, and is depicted at times as an outside and invisible source. Is this an external being or the struggle of the hero himself, coming to terms with his darker nature, sense of fears, or fleeting sanity? Darkseid is not the garish figure of other books, but is more reminiscent of a psychological inquiry or shadow/double figure, a darkness that lingers at the corners of the narrative and, not unlike Lemire’s 2017 treatment of Moon Knight, may or may not be a figment of the main character’s imagination. Other characters surface and herald his being, but he is outside of the panels -- yet, always looming over the story. King’s Darkseid represents both presence and absence as a narrative dilemma and emotional burden; he may, indeed, but entirely fictitious in the mind of the main character. This evil is pervasive, and felt even when it is not tangibly represented and designed.
Darkseid links with fear and dread, which further connects with Ferré’s (1996) consideration of the nature of transcendence. In this commentary, Ferré notes that the nature of power is both “more and other” (Ibid: 15), and that this sense of power, or omnipotence, finds its ultimatum within itself. The extension and externalization of power contains a strange sense of allure and agony. Ferré notes: “Power works because in some sense it is” (Ibid: 15. Emphasis added in the original). This sense of power roots the concept in the world as an end in itself and as a means to attain. Ferré’s critique conveys this sense of power, further linking to the dynamics of strength and control that exist in language and media (Fairclough, 2013). The speaker utters an expression of definition and this movement in language becomes both existence and a means of dominance. Mister Miracle’s insistence that Darkseid exists reifies this claim and attempts to make the unseen apparent.
The nature and function of power finds its grounding in human experience and in a sense of interaction for the purpose of attainment, often with little regard for the benefit of others. Power is positional and arbitrary in many aspects of lived experience, and what we choose to allow to hold power or value directly relates to our defining set of conditions. This is a warfare of terms and negotiation of selfhood to community.
The individual ultimately surrenders most power, even in the search for control. Whose function is at play in Mister Miracle’s torment? To further interact with his origin as an escape artist, how does Miracle/Scott Free escape from his own prison of doubt? In historical framing, the dark periods of human history emanate most saliently from humans themselves. This is often the case, as the storms of nature cut a clear path and bring destruction, but the problems that humanity poses are profligate and inhabit multiple directions, often from the stance of oppression and often with some sense of hierarchical function at center.
As references, Mister Miracle/Scott Free was originally formulated as a character who can escape anything, a kind of super heroic Houdini. King demonstrates a resonating point as Miracle attempts to escape the invisible enemy, and the juxtaposition of heroic worlds and seemingly mundane daily life show that the extension of the enemy’s evil does not simply exist in the fictional world, but transcends that plain to punctuate daily life on the couch. As Cecil Castellucci suggested in an interview with the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Klaehn, 2021), King has a sensibility for depicting the experience of male characters, and the setting for the Mister Miracle story is quite domestic in scope. This is a story of a character who can escape any dilemma, but King points to the real truth that we cannot escape ourselves. Spirituality might be framed as a reprieve from this prison of individual making and the central role of redemption in the individual narrative reifies the notion of escape or freedom.
So, the question: How does a person escape the limitations of their own mind? To frame it slightly differently, how does one break self-imposed chains? Perhaps the chains others impose on us are sometimes easier to negotiate, or perhaps not -- that is certainly a question that depends on many circumstances.
Mister Miracle is noted as the “super escape artist” (Issue 2, page 5, panel 1). The story unfolds on other planets and in living rooms, pages apart. Defeat and death are embodied in this storyline as the “paranoid pill” (page 25, panel 7). It is an intrinsic war that is forefront in King’s rendition of this story and, so the question becomes, how does an escape artist leave the firmament of her/his own mind?
The answer may be transcendence, and theology, as well as the superhero narrative, certainly connect to that notion. Medication is another option, although I use the term medication to not only refer to the medicine, but a number of ways that human beings might act or react to soothe their conditions. Rather than take up the mundane and rudimentary surface of life, the person who is interested in spirituality delves into the unseen and seeks to describe the indescribable. The presence of medicine takes prominence in these narratives, as well, given their links to mental health.
Lewis traces human history through the fall, the moment when evil enters the human spectrum, and the consideration he provides in The Problem of Pain culminates in a look at hell, the ultimate Phantom Zone into which those who perpetrate misdeeds are relegated in religious formulations. The notion of a hell is problematic in itself in a variety of ways. Mister Miracle’s movement to wholeness is continually disrupted by the outside forces which seem to dominate him, and the insistence within himself to continue, in effect, swallowing the pill. In effect, he is creating and disrupting his own hell.
The Notion of Persistence in Comics Narrative
In the world of comic books, we find a persistent sense of evil that serves as a narrative device. It is, perhaps, about hope -- a hope that good will ultimately prevail, that the election results will turn out in favor of humanity, or else that we arrive at the end of this journey to some reward (or at least some sense of reason, calm, and order). The role of heroic is a kind of entropic reification of an ethic that is found to be absent in the outside world; a sense-making of an illogical universe in which pains are inflicted by garish beings. Comics heroes are extrinsically and intrinsically monster hunters in their ontology. Contained within this narrative is the additional problematic question of our role in the way evil works in the world, and whether such an evil emanates from us. The story goes, of course, that evil originated in poor decision-making within a mythic garden, tantamount to the unfortunate laboratory accidents and combinations of fate that form the origins of so many nemeses in narrative.
There is also an inherent question of the will -- that is, the individual’s assertion to power and agency. Mister Miracle is essentially struggling for a sense of agency that allows him to exist wholly in one world apart from the other. He is keenly aware of the forces which are unseen to others, assuming these forces actually exist outside of his mind. Sometimes what is seen as the objective of a deity is mingled with the selfish sights of humanity.
To treat this question within the wider frame of literature, am I a reliable narrator in this story of God or the cosmos meeting humanity? It is tremulous work, and finds another outlet or expression in the Moon Knight storyline constructed by Jeff Lemire. Lemire’s Moon Knight is in a constant state of second-guessing, an unreliable narrator in his own story, and one of a myriad sense of self, an enactment of identity in diffuse forms. Concepts of the supernatural and divinity are mired in concerns about the character’s sanity and this sense of disorientation is sometimes conveyed in upside-down panels. Indeed, to align spiritually-oriented considerations with notions of traditional narratology, and the constant calling into doubt that belief and hope engage with as readers/viewers contend with story-threads that challenge assumptions of trope and genre.
How we take up this concept of evil balanced against hope, or vice versa, in matters of theology has some implications for the way we view the storying of humanity. Indeed, the way we treat our sense of cosmology is somewhat a delicate balance between prophet and mad-person. In the comic book world, an easy answer is often disrupted by a complicated set of ethics. Batman will not kill the Joker, even with all of the villain’s malevolent deeds, because of a creed to which the titular character adheres. This creed, or ethic, serves a central purpose in understanding the character, while also acting as a convenient narrative device that allows the conflict to occur and recur throughout generations of multiple narratives. With each new challenge, or level of darkness, the hero attempts to retain a sense of self, but the outside world depicted in the setting takes on a new fashion. Gotham is a much darker place today, in comic book lore, than it was in the 1940s and 1950s. The palette and style are decidedly different.
In King’s Mister Miracle, the face of evil is unseen, mirroring the conflicts we face in more direct ways. The presence of a direct and contradictory nemesis is not a narrative arch that is very common to daily life. For example, in most of our lives, we do not experience a singular figure, or even a gallery of rogues, who acts as our constant rival. Perhaps we have not faced an evil enemy who acts as a counterpart to our good, unless we count someone with an opposing viewpoint as such a figure. In fact, we either project definitions of evil onto a literary figure who is unseen, an Enemy force, or we find the source of evil also rooted in our very nature. It might be easier to manage the idea that our own evils are the result of an outside agent which we battle, rather than to accept those forces as an aspect of our selves.
Here is the ontological dichotomy, and the question of evil that is so rooted in Reinhold Niebuhr’s claim that selfishness is the root and cause of sin. Does that evil emanate from us, as a result of some long-ago fall? It is then that we begin to outsource evil and turn our attention to other problems in the universe. For example, we may point out the deaths caused by the pandemic, or to the injuries and loss of life sustained in a hurricane. We pinpoint part of this problem of evil to the human influence and choice, but also recognize that there is a natural force beyond our reckoning that has responsibility. It is then to the question of death that we may turn, and the notion that we all have a time to die.
The deus-ex-machina solution to the problem of evil would simply be to suggest that there is a future world coming in a traced eschatology in which pain will cease to be, while others who are offenders are cut off, and thereby experience the ultimate defeat. Their gauntlet will be removed permanently, to call to mind the image of Thanos, but this solution holds in itself a series of complications. This is a promise not yet fully revealed, and finds its telos in the conversations of a community whose framework is sometimes crafted in hope, and sometimes rooted in the weeds of judgment. In the face of the possibility of the afterlife, beyond attending to our own concerns for continuation and salvation, we face the decision to begin assigning placement in that reality-to-be, thereby evoking the role of judge in our daily lives. It is the marionette suddenly taking on the role of maker and pretending an insight into some radical cosmology that exists beyond the shop windows.
As Lewis suggested, the presence of a spiritual or physical location of enduring pain is problematic: “no charitable man could himself be blessed in heaven while he knew that even one human soul was still in hell” (1940: 126). The narratology Lewis locates in this concept is that the assignation to a hell serves as the end of one narrative and not the beginning of another. This is the antithesis of the recon/reboot narrative that Gavaler and Goldberg (2019) discussed in comic book story-threads. It is the end of the thread, and not a very promising one at that. Yet, for those considered righteous who have heroically endured and whose characteristics bear the marks of this coming world in some nascent form, the concept of revitalization and new earth is central. This is mapmaking of the invisible, and commentary on the unspoken. So much of what we encounter in eschatology is a set of sign-making that extends beyond our limited view, but contains hints of what it means to strive for decency in a selfish world. It is an ongoing heroic act.
In our heroes, we imbue a sense of hope, and this sometimes means that we do not want to let them go, in spite of the obstacles they face. In order for us to make sense of reality, we reconstitute them, remember them, and save them by drastic narrative means. We bring the Lazarus Pit back as often as we can for those we love, and we continue to speak to the dead and tell stories of those that have passed on. Jason Walz’s graphic novel Homesick is just such a commemoration of life, evidencing the role of the superhero in daily life. There are no costumes or capes, just a person trying to remember what is good, remark on what is noble, and pass on a story of what matters most in a person’s frame.
So, the problem of evil becomes a tangled question of how the story ends, and results in the problem of hell. We exist in a world that has pain, and this pain evokes in me a sense of desire for righting wrongs. I wish for a hero to sweep in with a cape and set of vigilante quips to set the world in order. Yet, I know that such work in the real world, beyond the panels of the comic book page, is complicated. Very few villains take on the binary that we note in characters such as the Red Skull.
Eschatologically, we are led to a consideration of a place that is devoid of pain. Medieval depictions of hell, both in narrative and image, convey the idea of a place of eternal punishment -- a clear juxtaposition to an eternal peace. These are Hieronymus Bosch paintings of constant suffering, and call to mind the times of plague and pandemic so relevant at the time of this writing. The character and nature of God is another difficult notion to balance alongside the idea of a place of punishment and exile. Where does the light exist in such a painting, seemingly obscured from view for all time?
I turn again to the narrative found in comics, and the ways that characters return to their respective codes. Characters such as Todd McFarlane’s Spawn exist in the tension of this dynamic in which angels are presented as warriors alongside avenging demonic characters. It is as though one side of the story shades the other, and these shadows are interlinked in a story where it is not always easy to determine exactly who the hero really is. There a sense of the tension we face in reality, as we discover elements that we love and abhor in figures who evoke images of opposition to our faith and values. We see the human being reflected in the face of the adversary on earth so much more so than in the garish nemesis of the comic book page. Such dynamics are not so easy in daily living. What happens when the nemesis is a dashed hope? Or, worse yet, what happens when the person who we thought would be a bastion of faith turns out to be the enemy, when the theologian themselves are a kind of devil?
To say that such an idea is impossible is to refuse to acknowledge the pain and grief that are sometimes made palpable by members of the church community. It is not uncommon to find those who have been wounded by faith communities, and this is part of my story as well. As a young minister-to-be, I encountered critics and those who turned opportunities to potentially minister into unusual tests seemingly to prove their own worth and thinking.
It was within the system of working with church groups that I found the presence of agenda, manipulation, and artificial barriers for those who meant well to serve. Such findings are not uncommon, and point to the childish worldview I once held that imagined a group of heroes fighting the villains of the world. It is the simplistic view that now imagines the political landscape in the United States as only those who are liberal and only those who are conservative, with no inclination to highlight those spaces in between. It is through the pain of this false duality that we so often press, and that so many voices are lost or misunderstood.
Of course, inviting others into the construction creates the space for co-construction, and it is this assembling together which represents community and the exchange of ideas. The mere offering one idea signals the possibility of its antithesis, to draw a parallel to Hegel’s dialectic. What is the solution to this problem? I doubt there is one easy fix or answer, and blind faith of the kind that we experience in Candide is hardly attractive, either in terms of thinking about intellectual community or in any community where ideas are taken up with serious measure, and where real life and relevant topics must mingle with questions of faith. A growing spirituality continues to ask questions.
To that end, like so much of life, I offer some points to continue considering:
1. How are we heroic examples in life, and how does redemption and heroism line up with our individual and collective spiritual formation?
2. In what ways do reading and writing as lived practices continue to inform our identity and reflection in every area of life, including but not limited to the spiritual?
3. What is an ethic, informed by both religion and the narratology we encounter in the stories we value most?
4. In what ways does such an ethic shape our communal and individual practices?
Perhaps the greatest hope exists in the notion of a heroic character who is, bearing all the marks of empathy and compassion we hold dear, able to conquer and reframe all of our conceptions of death, hell, and punishment. That would be a very good ending to the story of life, or at least my limited view of the world tells me that this may be so. In any case, all of this points to questions of what we do as readers and writers with the invisible, and how we make sense of the world around us, including our roles and function in it.
References
Crichton, Michael. 1987.Sphere. New York: Knopf.
Fairclough, Norman. 2013. Language and Power. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Ferré, Frederick. 1996. Being and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics. New York: State University of New York Press.
King, Tom, Mitch Gerads, et al. 2019. Mister Miracle. New York: DC Comics.
Klaehn, Jeffery. 2021. Cecil Castellucci Interview. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 12(3: 271-277).
Lemire, J., et al. 2017. Moon Knight: Lunatic. New York: Marvel Comics.
Lewis, C.S. 1940. The Problem of Pain. Shreveport, LA: The Centenary Press.
Sims Bishop, Rudine. Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors. Retrieved from https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf.
Smallwood, Greg, J. Lemire, et al. 2016. Moon Knight vol. 1: Lunatic. New York: Marvel Comics.
Voltaire. 1947. Candide. New York: Penguin Classics.
Walz, Jason. 2016. Homesick. Denver: Tinto Press.
Jason D. DeHart is actively engaged in finding what works for connecting readers with literacy practices. DeHart earned his Ph.D. from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2019. He served as a middle grades English teacher for eight years, has worked at the university level at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, as well as at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Appalachian State University, and currently works with high school students in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. DeHart’s publications include Building Critical Literacy and Empathy with Graphic Novels (NCTE), as well as a number of edited volumes for Routledge and IGI Global.
Editor's note - this essay was accepted for IJOCA 27-2, and edited by John A. Lent (JAL) and Mu Lin.
