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.
