(Here, they’re Lokee and Wotan and an unnamed hammer-wielder, perhaps to avoid any messy corporate entanglement.) Having already met - and dispatched - Darkseid’s mother Heggra in the Kirby run, it’s only natural that Evanier and co-plotter Paris Cullins should introduce us to Darkseid’s father, the fearsome Yuga Khan.

In the last volume, we met the Dreggs, the zombified Old Gods confirmed by Evanier (and as implied by Kirby) to be the Norse pantheon. Yet Advent of Darkness does advance the plot and build out the world by journeying into the past. If it all sounds familiar, you’re not alone Kirby did it, Gerry Conway did it, and now Mark Evanier’s doing it. And so we return and begin again, with Darkseid resurrecting Desaad, Highfather continuing his optimistic crusade for peace, and Orion assuming the role of “superhero” in New York City. Put another way, Advent of Darkness is cosmically incomprehensible yet all the same driven to advance the narrative Kirby started, and while the end result might be nobody’s favorite comic book, I have to say it is just about exactly what one would need from a New Gods continuation.Īt the end of the last volume, Highfather had won the battle for the soul of New Genesis, Darkseid had vaporized Desaad and Kalibak for the crimes of ambition and free thought, and Orion had made a semblance of peace with his heritage and relocated to Earth to find himself. You may find yourself scratching your head on that notion, but that means you’re in good territory much of Kirby’s later output wrestled with the fundamentally ineffable (see also 2001, The Eternals, Silver Star, etc.) and it’s only appropriate that his inheritors would similarly tread upon unfathomable ground.

While the first post-Crisis trade collection of New Gods spent its time wallowing where Jack Kirby had gone before, New Gods Book Two: Advent of Darkness, collecting issues #15–28, moves a bit further forward, albeit by going back into the past. … I had always loved collaborating with Mark Evanier, so it was an easy decision.” - Rick Hoberg “I had loved The New Gods since the series premiered.

New Gods by Jack Kirby