Today, we see why Superman freed Darkseid after imprisoning the villain in the Source Wall at the end of the storyline that introduced the modern version of Supergirl.
This is "Never Gonna Be the Same Again," a feature where I look at how bold, seemingly "permanent" changes were ultimately reversed. This is not a criticism, mind you, as obviously things are always going to eventually return to "normal." That's just how superhero comic books work. It's just fun to see how some of these rather major changes are reversed. This is differentiated from "Abandoned Love," which is when a new writer comes in and drops the plot of the previous writer. Here, we're talking about the writer who came up with the idea being the same one who resolved the change. This is also differentiated from "Death is Not the End," which is about how "dead" characters came back to life, since this is about stuff other than death.
In the 1990s, John Byrne briefly took both Highfather and Darkseid out of the picture and put them into the Source Wall so that he could concentrate on what would happen to the Fourth World if you removed the two main leaders on both sides, but Darkseid was back by the early 2000s and played a major role in the crossover Our Worlds At War. This led into the Superman/Batman storyline, "The Supergirl From Kypton" by Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner, which introduced a new Supergirl into the DC Universe (and through some nice continuity punching from Superboy Prime, no one else remembered a similar Supergirl existing before). The debut of a brand-new Kryptonian, and one who had not spent years already clearly being a superhero made Kara Zor-El an interesting target for Darkseid, which brings us to our story...
HOW DARKSEID ENDED UP TRAPPED IN THE SOURCE WALL
In Superman/Batman #10, Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman are on Themyscira with Kara when suddenly, an army of Doosmsdays attack the Island from a series of Boom Tubes...
While they were busy defeating this legion of killing machines, a second Boom Tube saw a contingent of Darkseid's underlings break in and capture Kara...
Of course, Superman and Batman then traveled to Apokolips to rescue Kara, but when Superman met his cousin on Apokolips, she was now under Darkseid's sway...
Luckily for Superman, Batman was along for the ride and Batman managed to essentially booby trap the whole planet and threatened to blow it all up unless Darkseid allowed them to leave with Kara and vow to never pursue Kara again. Darkseid reluctantly agreed...
Kara, for her part, felt awful about being basically seduced by Darkseid, but Superman forgave her. They returned home to Earth and while they were having a gettogether in Smallville, Darkseid showed up. He had vowed to leave SUPERGIRL alone, not Superman, and here he was to get revenge on the Man of Steel for messing with his plans. He attacked Superman with his Omega Beams, but Supergirl then flew herself in the way of the blast and seemingly disintegrated...
Superman then allowed Darkseid to at least FEIGN guilt over murdering Supergirl, but Darkseid just found it kind of funny, leading to Superman just cutting loose on the villain...
In the end, Superman trapped Darkseid as part of the Source Wall once more...
How did he get out of there?
HOW SUPERMAN FREED DARKSEID FROM THE SOURCE WALL
In the next storyline, Loeb was joined by Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino (boy, Loeb's Superman/Batman issues had some amazing artists on them) as suddenly the world had been altered and now Superman and Batman rule over the world together...
As it turned out, the Legion of Super-Villains had gone back in time and taken both baby Superman and post-Waynes murder Bruce Wayne in and raised them as their children, leading to this new reality where Superman and Batman are tyrants who rule over everything. Eventually, the two heroes are alerted to the fact that things are not how they are supposed to be, but not before Superman strangled Wonder Woman to death. This led to the heroes jumping through time uncontrollably in this timeline and ending up in the future, where Darkseid has conquered Earth...
Darkseid was willing to help them, as he didn't want to just waltz into Earth and take it over, he wanted a real challenge, so he helped them control their journeys through time in exchange for a favor...
Eventually, Superman and Batman put right what once went wrong and everything went back to normal. However, despite, you know, it occurring in a whole other timeline, Darkseid was able to contact Superman through Metron in Superman/Batman #24 (by Loeb, Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines) and call in that favor and his ask was for Superman to free Darkseid from the Source Wall...
So in the next issue (while Batman and Superman were dealing with a bunch of multiversal shenanigans), Superman freed Darkseid from the Source Wall...
Darkseid then promptly punches Superman back into the Source Wall himself, trapping the Man of Steel with the others...
Luckily for Superman, there WERE a bunch of Multiversal things going on and as a result of that, there were no less than FIVE Supergirls flying around and five of them teamed up together to pull the Man of Steel from the Source Wall (and luckily, none of them got sucked into the wall in his place)...
That storyline, by the way, was probably the first hint about what would eventually become Final Crisis a few years later, as Mister Mxyzptlk revealed to Darkseid that a Crisis was coming and it would be one that Darkseid would be heavily involved in when the time came.
If you have a suggestion for a future Never Gonna Be the Same Again, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com