It's only appropriate that Jack Kirby's Darkseid is one of DC Comics' biggest and baddest villains, as he was created by the undisputed King of superhero comics. However, the lord of Apokolips didn't achieve this lofty status overnight. It took years for Darkseid to separate himself from DC's other villains.
In fact, DC's attempts at creating extinction-level villains have only reinforced Darkseid's status as the publisher's quintessential cosmic foe. It's not so much that Doomsday, Bane and the Anti-Monitor are bad characters; but they don't quite have Darkseid's mojo. Here we'll look at the history of Darkseid and his various competitors to see what has helped Kirby's creation endure.
Fourth World Fizzle
When Kirby introduced Darkseid in December 1970's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #134, the villain was the mysterious manipulator behind the high-tech criminal cartel called Intergang. Shortly thereafter, though, February-March 1971's New Gods issue #1 revealed Darkseid's real creation-conquering ambition. He sought the Anti-Life Equation, which would give him ultimate control over any and all living beings. This quest stretched across both New Gods and its Fourth World sister titles Forever People and Mister Miracle, but was cut short by the books' abrupt cancellations. New Gods and Forever People both ended after 11 issues (cover-dated October-November 1972), while Mister Miracle lasted until February-March 1974's issue #18.
Although DC revived the Fourth World characters in the mid-1970s, curious readers might have been hard-pressed to find them. Darkseid and company bounced around the corners of DC's shared superhero universe for just over two years, starting with a one-off appearance in April 1976's 1st Issue Special #13. The Kirby-free story was written by Gerry Conway and Denny O'Neil, with art by Mike Vosburg; and considering it appeared in the final issue of an anthology series, it hedged its bets. By emphasizing the cold-war nature of Darkseid and Orion's conflict, it allowed DC to leave the characters in limbo until it could find them a more stable home.
That didn't happen right away. Darkseid and some of his minions appeared next in the Conway-written Secret Society of Super-Villains; but the titular team only fought the Fourth Worlders until January-February 1977's issue #5. A few months later, though, DC restarted New Gods itself with July 1977's issue #12. Written by Conway and pencilled by Don Newton, it only lasted eight issues (through August 1978's issue #19), and still didn't finish the story. Instead, readers had to jump over to Adventure Comics, where Conway and Newton wrapped things up in issues #459-460 (September-October and November-December 1978). Described as "the epic ending of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Trilogy," issue #460 depicted Darkseid's final fate, as he was turned into a massive Promethean Giant and then blasted into bits by a misguided Apokoliptian uni-cannon.
So, that was it for Darkseid, right? Cut down after eight years of malevolence, and destined to be characterized as a "what might have been" episode for both DC and Kirby?
Eighties Evil
Not exactly. Darkseid was the main villain of the Justice League and Justice Society's three-part Fourth World expedition, in October-December 1980's Justice League of America issues #183-85. Written by Conway (JLA's regular writer, well into his multi-year run) and pencilled by Dick Dillin and George Pérez, the team-up used a group of Earth-Two villains to revive Darkseid. Even so, issue #185 ended with Darkseid apparently destroyed once again.
The dark lord appeared next as the lurking horror behind the "Great Darkness Saga" in August-December 1982's Legion of Super-Heroes issues #290-94. Written by Paul Levitz and pencilled by Keith Giffen, it saw Darkseid revived in the 30th Century to wreak havoc across the universe. More importantly, though, it established Darkseid's reputation as a truly terrifying presence. The JLA/JSA team-ups of the 1970s often visited odd corners of the DC multiverse to showcase seldom-seen characters like the Seven Soldiers of Victory or the Freedom Fighters. For example, while the JLA and JSA had teamed up with the Legion in 1977, but then battled a group of time-lost DC folk like Miss America and Jonah Hex (1978) before solving Mister Terrific's murder (1979). Thus, while the 1980 Fourth World trip didn't necessarily signal a Fourth World revival, having Darkseid take on the entire Legion of Super-Heroes was a big boost to his profile.
Indeed, a couple of years later (and some ten years after DC published Kirby's last issue of New Gods), it began reprinting the series in six double-sized issues (June-November 1984), complete with a new "Chapter 12" from the King himself. The miniseries then led into Kirby's own conclusion to the New Gods' saga, the 1985 Hunger Dogs graphic novel. Intended as a pretty definite ending, the new Kirby material ignored all of Conway and company's work from 1st Issue Special through Justice League. Regardless, DC realized it couldn't quit Darkseid and company (not least because he was featured in the "Super Powers" toys, comics, and cartoon); and re-edited Hunger Dogs to allow the characters to continue.
The Hunger Dogs was published in February 1985, right when DC was starting the cosmic housecleaning of Crisis On Infinite Earths. Like "The Great Darkness Saga," COIE also teased a mysterious bad guy seen only in shadow. This time, though, it was a new villain called the Anti-Monitor, created by Crisis overlords Marv Wolfman and George Pérez to be the evil counterpart to their other new character, the all-knowing Monitor. At the time Darkseid was off the table. Except for his brief appearances in COIE issues #8 and #12, and the Forever People's cameo in issue #10, the Fourth Worlders were largely absent from Crisis. DC just wasn't sure what it could do with them.
That all changed dramatically in 1986, when Darkseid became the lead baddie in DC's first post-Crisis crossover. Because Legends came out not long after the John Byrne-led reboot of Superman, it allowed Byrne and company to reposition Darkseid as one of the Man of Steel's main adversaries. Although Superman had fought Apokoliptian allies already (in Jimmy Olsen, Forever People and Justice League), this time he had Darkseid's full attention.
Legends also brought Darkseid more fully into the DC Universe. Over the next few years he showed up in Firestorm, Swamp Thing, Suicide Squad and Justice League International. He challenged the Olympian pantheon (and Superman and Wonder Woman) in 1988's Action Comics #600, and went on to star in 1988's prestige-format Cosmic Odyssey miniseries. New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle all got revivals in the late '80s and early '90s, and by the mid-'90s Darkseid was fighting everyone from Wonder Woman to Anarky.
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You Had One Job
Meanwhile, COIE and Legends showed DC that it could succeed with regular Big Events. Naturally, these required villains of appropriate threat levels. Sometimes these were existing bad guys, like Millennium's Manhunters, Invasion!'s alien armada, War of the Gods' Circe, Eclipso: The Darkness Within's headliner, The Final Night's Sun-Eater, Day Of Judgment's Asmodel or Blackest Night's Nekron. Infinite Crisis even turned Earth-Prime's Superboy and Earth-Three's Alex Luthor into villains.
Often, though, the events introduced new foes, with mixed results. The central mystery of Armageddon 2001 was the evil Monarch's real identity, which DC infamously had to change once alert fans figured it out prematurely. Monarch showed up three years later in 1994's Zero Hour as the time-bending Extant, but it didn't make him any cooler. Likewise, Bloodlines' alien parasites existed pretty much to a) "activate" the superpowers of the miniseries' new characters and b) give the new folks something to fight. Along the same lines, the demon Neron of Underworld Unleashed offered to upgrade various DC villains' power sets in exchange for their souls. A couple of times, the new baddies joined returning favorites, as in DC One Million (Vandal Savage and Solaris the Tyrant Sun) and Our Worlds At War (Brainiac and the Galactus-esque Imperiex).
You'd think all of this would have given DC a pretty deep bench when it came to creating widespread panic; but by and large the newer characters didn't hit it big. It took the Anti-Monitor 22 years to return (a brief appearance in an alternate Flash future notwithstanding); and that was as a scary footnote in Green Lantern's "Sinestro Corps War." Extant was killed off in a JSA storyline, Bloodlines got a 2016 sequel which nobody read and Imperiex showed up on the Legion of Super-Heroes animated series. Solaris and Nekron were moderate hits, with the former appearing in All Star Superman and the latter showing up in JLA, Flash, Wonder Woman and the Reign In Hell miniseries. For the most part, though, these characters were introduced for one story-specific purpose; and once that was done, so were they. That doesn't quite make them disposable, but it comes pretty close.
Otherwise, it's hard to picture too many of the aforementioned adversaries being big enough to stand next to Darkseid in DC's roster of ultimate menaces. In this respect it's useful to gauge whether any of them could be adapted successfully into a DC movie or TV series. Vandal Savage and the Dominators have already been on The CW's superhero shows, and we could see the Manhunters, the Sun-Eater, Solaris and/or the Bloodlines parasites joining them. We also wouldn't object to Circe being the main villain of a Wonder Woman sequel; and of course Brainiac is often teased as a potential cinematic Superman foe.
To be sure, Darkseid has had his time in the Big Event sun. After Legends, he had minor roles in 1991's War of the Gods and 1994's Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey before ushering in a nightmare future in the 1997 JLA arc "Rock of Ages." Written by Grant Morrison and pencilled by Howard Porter, "Rock" showed Darkseid and the other Apokoliptians at their most treacherous, having planted a continent-sized firepit in the middle of Europe, driven Superman to suicide, and enslaved just about everyone on Earth. It was enough to make readers forget that the Fourth World had just gone through a near-incomprehensible crossover of its own called Genesis.
We'll get back to Darkseid in a minute, but we can't leave the list of "disposable" bad guys without discussing two of the most successful: Doomsday and Bane. By now even casual superhero fans know what these two did, because each has done it in a recent big-budget movie. Doomsday killed Superman in 1992's Superman #75 and did it again in 2015's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice; while Bane broke Batman's back in 1993's Batman #497 and did it again in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises. They have returned over the years in slightly different forms and with slightly different purposes, but by and large they were created for specific jobs. Of the two Bane is arguably more successful, if only because Doomsday was never part of as entertaining an ensemble as the Gail Simone-written Secret Six.
None of this is meant necessarily to demean Doomsday, Bane or any of the other non-Apokoliptian antagonists. Rather, it's to point out that only Darkseid has the power and smarts to back up his megalomania. In a very real sense, Darkseid just has one move, namely universal domination. We've seen in "Rock of Ages," Final Crisis and the carnage of the New 52's Earth 2 what that would look like; and it is ten times scarier than any other villain might manage. Circe might turn your neighbor into a pig, but maybe she'll spare you. Brainiac might shrink your city into the size of a milk jug, but you'll still be you inside that milk jug. Heck, you might not even realize that the Anti-Monitor or Nekron have killed you until it's too late.
You don't get that degree of wiggle room with Darkseid. With him you only get what he wants.
Darkseid Is
The great irony in all of this is that Darkseid, like the rest of the Fourth World, was never intended to continue beyond the conclusion that Jack Kirby had dictated for him. Uncertainty about the characters' collective future kept the Fourth Worlders out of Crisis On Infinite Earths, and when he did appear it was as an all-too-brief rival of the Anti-Monitor. That villain sought to eliminate every parallel universe except his own, a goal which Darkseid could appreciate if not endorse. (Writer Geoff Johns and artist Jason Fabok revealed the pair's shared history in the 2015-16 Justice League arc "The Darkseid War," a story which made the Anti-Monitor cooler by association.)
However, Darkseid is more than just an engine of destruction and/or conquest. As Kirby so memorably put it in June-July 1971's Forever People issue #3, Darkseid isn't a mere "revelationist," happy to anticipate the glorious days to come. Instead, Darkseid is the "revelation" itself – "the tiger-force at the core of all things! When you cry out in your dreams – it is Darkseid that you see!"
Jack Kirby knew that real villainy came from such insidious dread. Darkseid endures because he personifies the twisted megalomania which threatens each of us at our very core. Darkseid doesn't want simply to rule the universe, he wants his subjects to cheer their captivity because they think they're better off without the crushing demands of freedom. Kirby had seen firsthand how scary that mindset could be, and he distilled all of its horrors into an omnipotent despot whose only goal was Anti-Life.
In the wake of Crisis and Legends, Darkseid could have become ubiquitous as a sort of all-purpose adversary; but DC chose instead to spread around the big-event villainy. While a mix of old and new foes have bedeviled our heroes over the past thirty years, Darkseid has been content to stay in the background. Except for Genesis, it's made his event-series involvement that much more effective. Other baddies from the Joker to General Zod have risked overexposure, even in other media; but Darkseid's relative restraint has made him the kind of pants-wetting bad guy who can live up to the hype. Yes, Darkseid has only one ultimate move, and it's the last one any of us would ever want to witness.