At the recently concluded WonderCon 2018, DC announced a new Justice League series from writer Joshua Williamson and artist Stjepan Sejic. Titles Justice League: Oyssey, the big surprise from the announcement is that Darkseid will be a member of this new Justice League. It's such a completely unexpected turn of events, Williamson joked about how shocking the news was by saying he originally wanted to call it JL: WTF.

Besides being a shocking addition to the team, Darkseid is also sporting a brand-new look for the series, presumably designed by Sejic. Darkseid has gone through a number of different looks since he was first introduced by Jack Kirby in the pages of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen back in 1970. Read on to see the evolution of Darkseid's style over the decades.

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When Darkseid made his first appearance in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #134 (by Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta), you really could not even tell that what he was supposed to look like, since he appeared just as a head on a screen, sending off ominous threats...

Even an issue later, where we began to get some sense of what Darkseid is supposed to look like, it's still pretty darn vague, as Darkseid is shown through a video screen....

Amazingly enough, even as Kirby and Colletta move over to the official launch of the "Fourth World" line of titles (after introducing the concepts behind the Fourth World in Jimmy Olsen, a book Kirby took over because he didn't want to displace anyone from a gig and there wasn't a regular creative team on Jimmy Olsen, leading to Kirby taking it over and forever leading future generations to think, "Wait, Kirby moved to DC and the first thing he did was take over JIMMY OLSEN's comic book? Huh?), Darkseid remained in shadows in New Gods #1...

By now, we already were quite familiar with that awesome helmet, but that's the only thing that we could see of the big guy.

That changed in Forever People #1 (by Kirby and Colletta), when Darkseid showed up to face off against the Infinity Man, who was actually Darkseid's older brother. Anyhow, when we first see Darkseid, he's rocking not only a cape, but a lined design down his pants...

Otherwise, this is pretty similar to his iconic look, which would officially debut the next month in New Gods #2...

This has it all. The high boots and what looks like he is not wearing any pants, but just high boots covering his legs.

Despite Darkseid being under Kirby's auspices, he actually showed up in other titles pretty much right away, as Robert Kanigher, Werner Roth and Vince Colletta had him guest-star in Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #116, where it looks less like an independent design and more like Roth just sort of haphazardly tried to copy Kirby's design and just didn't do a very good job...

Roth would come closer in Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #118, but the end result was still something that didn't really look like Kirby's design.

In the last issue of the original New Gods series, with inks now by Mike Royer, Kirby sure went out of his way to make it clear that Darkseid IS wearing pants, but just that his pants, I guess, look a lot like the same color as his flesh?

It's an odd color scheme, to be sure.

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The New Gods were brought back from comic book limbo in 1st Issue Special #13, and Mike Vosburg was very free with the costume re-designs, including a shockingly different look for Orion, who now looks like a very traditional superhero, even rocking a giant O on his chest. However, in a move that will look quite familiar over the years, everyone looked at Kirby's original design for Darkseid and said, "Eh, who can improve on this?" So it remained the same...

Even when the New Gods got their own series again, the costume remained the same. The only even slight difference came in New Gods #19 (by Don Newton and Dan Adkins), when Darkseid rocked a cape again....

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Heck, even in a thousand years into the future, in the pages of the classic Legion of Super-Heroes epic, "The Great Darkness Saga," Keith Giffen and Larry Mahlstadt kept the costume the same as Kirby had in the past in Legion of Super-Heroes #293...

Honestly, by this point, the costume seems to have become as iconic as the character itself. People would go out of their way to not change it. All the other New Gods characters would routinely receive makeovers, but not Darkseid.

The first real makeover of Darkseid came for a very good reason. When Jack Kirby signed with DC Comics, the deal was the same one he had at Marvel Comics. In other words, he was strictly a freelancer. So he did not own any rights to the Fourth World characters that he invented. In the early 1980s, however, the higher-ups at DC felt bad about the fact that he didn't get paid anything extra for those characters by having him re-design all of his Fourth World characters for their Super Powers action figures. Kirby would then be paid an extra fee for the new designs and the fees were substantial. The best part about it was that Kirby did not even have to dramatically alter the designs for DC to count it as a "new" design, since they were specifically looking at this as a way to get Kirby some extra money. So his Darkseid re-design was basically "add a gold medallion to his chest with a cape."

That new design showed up in the third Super Powers miniseries in 1986...

In that same miniseries, Darkseid lost his powers and ended up on Earth where he was forced to steal some human clothes to get around...

Later, he had his entire body transformed so that he could infiltrate the heroes as a new hero by the name of Janus...

That plot was never actually resolved. He ends the series still looking like Janus. I guess we can just assume Crisis on Infinite Earths wiped those stories away (if they were ever in continuity to begin with, actually) and so after Crisis, he popped up in his same old school Jack Kirby design in Action Comics #586 (John Byrne seemed to love drawing Darkseid, but he always made sure to stick with the original Kirby design)...

When Mike Mignola drew the New Gods characters in the classic miniseries, Cosmic Odyssey, he gave his own unique spin on the designs, but he still kept the basic Kirby design for Darkseid, just Mignola-fied...

Another trip to the future, however, saw a notable change for Darkseid when Keith Giffen and Al Gordon did a sequel to "The Great Darkness Saga" with "The Quiet Darkness Saga," as Darkseid has grown tired of his long life and now wants to die. Mopey, emo Darkseid rocks a brand new ensemble in Legion of Super-Heroes #22...

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When we first see young Darkseid in the classic Kirby New Gods story, "The Pact," Darkseid looks the same as he does when he is an adult. However, it is logical enough to figure that he must have worn a different outfit in the past at least here or there and thus, in a flashback story in Jack Kirby's Fourth World #14 (by Ron Wagner and Ray Kryssing), we see Darkseid wearing a suit of armor...

Darkseid made a quick appearance during DC vs. Marvel, and when the DC and Marvel Universe combined together to form the Amalgam Universe, you better believe that Darkseid was involved. Also, as you might imagine, the character that he was merged with was Thanos, who Jim Starlin plainly based on Darkseid (Roy Thomas famously told Starlin, when Thomas saw that Starlin's first version of Thanos was skinny and looked more like Metron than anyone, "If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!" So, in Bullets and Bracelets #1, Gary Frank gave us Thanoseid...

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Another major Darkseid design change occurred in another future storyline, the "Rock of Ages" arc in JLA, when Howard Porter and John Dell showed what Darkseid would look like in JLA #13, after he took over the Earth. He is now sporting an all-black version of his classic outfit, with an Omaga symbol on his chin....

During Walter Simonson's excellent Orion series, he had Darkseid and Orion fight to the death (Orion won). For this epic fight in Orion #5, Darkseid showed up ready to rumble with a spiky version of his regular outfit...

In another future storyline in the rebooted Legion continuity in The Legion #29, Darkseid is now more rock than New God, as he calls his own younger self from the past so that he could steal his own past body to keep on living forever. Chris Batista, Chip Wallace and Robin Riggs delivered this unique look...

If ever there was an artist that you would expect to see give Darkseid a revamp, it would be Michael Turner, who revamped many characters in his Superman/Batman arc that introduced a new version of Supergirl to the DC Universe (in a revamped costume by Turner). The Female Furies all got revamped looks, but his Darkseid design stayed pretty darn faithful to the original Kirby design, although now the sort of toga look is more like a specific draping over his groin in Superman/Batman #11...

Grant Morrison revamped Darkseid dramatically in the last decade of the DC Universe before Flashpoint led to the New 52. First off, he had the various members of the New Gods end up in human bodies for Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle, which ended up being a sort of prologue to Morrison's later Final Crisis series.

In Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #2 (by Freddie Williams III), we meet Boss Dark Side, who is Darkseid in human form...

In Final Crisis, we see Darkseid get a revamped look by JG Jones...

But in reality, his new look is mostly due to the fact that he has possessed Dan Turpin and is transforming Turpin's body into Darkseid, hence his strange look...

Darkseid is ostensibly killed in Final Crisis, but we know how "final" these things really are (not very).

However, before too long, there was a whole other deal with the DC Universe, as the whole deal rebooted with the New 52...

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With the continuity of the DC Universe rebooted, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee got to re-tell the origin of the Justice League. Now, if you're telling the Justice League's origin with all options available to you, you probably tie it into Darkseid and that's precisely what Johns and Lee did, with a group of superheroes being forced to form the Justice League to take on Darkseid.

As part of the new continuity, Jim Lee gave Darkseid his most drastic revamp yet...

Surprisingly enough, Jim Lee's take on Darkseid was used very consistently throughout the New 52. Darkseid showed up fairly frequently (in Earth 2, in Batman and Robin, in his own one-shot during Forever Evil), but Jim Lee's design was used for all of them.

That changed with the final arc of Geoff Johns' run on Justice League, with "The Darkseid War." Jason Fabok came up with a new design for Darkseid that we first saw in full in Justice League #43...

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Darkseid is then killed, but brought back to life in the body of the infant son of Superwoman and Ultraman an in Justice League #50, Fabok gives us another version of Darkseid...

At the end of the story, "baby Darkseid" is reverted once more to infancy, so we get to see him as a baby at the end of the issue...

Recently, the "baby Darkseid" story has continued in the pages of Wonder Woman. We get to see Darkseid returned to adulthood and rocking a new look in Wonder Woman #37 (by Carlo Pagulayan and Stephen Segovia)...

In the pages of Tom King and Mitch Gerads' current Mister Miracle series, we got a BRIEF look at Darkseid in Mister Miracle #6 and he looked basically like his classic Kirby design...

Finally, here is the design of Darkseid for the upcoming Justice League: Odyssey series, which is definitely a major departure for the New God...