Batman V Superman: Who is Darkseid?

Warning: Minor spoilers ahead for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

"He's coming!"

Those chilling last words are the last we hear from one character in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, which stormed into theaters and overcame poor reviews to earn more than $400 million around the world this weekend.

Who's coming?

Well, the safe money is on Darkseid.

Created by comics legend Jack Kirby in 1970 after his defection from Marvel Comics, Darkseid is in many ways the ultimate evil in the DC Universe.

As the merciless dictator of a world called Apokolips, you can pretty much guess that his gray, craggy visage isn't going to bring very many people very many good days. And it doesn't. He's the leader of a group of evil gods, locked in an eternal struggle with the gods of a neighboring world called New Genesis.

As you can imagine, either by looking at them, or if you know even a little bit about Judeo-Christian scripture, New Genesis are the good guys, while Apokolips...not so much. Darkseid is relentless in his quest for something called the Anti-Life Equation, which can rob all sentient beings of free will.

Influenced my religion and mythology, Jack Kirby's original New Gods stories featured a healthy dose of ominous prophecy -- something we saw a little bit of in Batman V Superman.

And, if you haven't put it together yet, Darkseid being the ruler of Apokolips and facing off with New Genesis, there's a whole "the beginning and the end" thing going on here. So the giant omega symbol you see carved into the scorched Earth during Batman's nightmare/fantasy/prophecy sequence?

Yeah, that's a pretty clear indicator that Darkseid is involved.

So, too, is the appearance of winged creatures known as Parademons, who make up the disposable first line of Apokolips's offense whenever they go to war. Those were the things that flanked the men in the Nazi-influenced uniforms bearing the crest of the House of El on their shoulders.

In recent years, Apokolips nearly succeeded in taking over the DC multiverse in Final Crisis. After that, when the universe was rebooted following the events of Flashpoint, it was revised to where Darkseid was the threat that brought the Justice League together in the first place.

In Justice League: Origin, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee told the story of the League coming together -- and in Justice League: War, an animated feature film pitted the team against Darkseid and his Parademons.

Currently, Geoff Johns is wrapping his fifty-plus issue run on Justice League with Darkseid War, which sees the villain square off against The Anti-Monitor, another of DC's most powerful and dangerous threats.

Have you seen Dawn of Justice yet? If so, go rate it in the ComicBook.com Movie Database for a chance to win your very own Armored Batman figure!

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is now playing in theaters.