DC Comics Has Changed Darkseid’s Arch-Enemy and It’s Going to Enrage Kirby Purists

DC Comics is cooking and Darkseid has been one of the key ingredients. There’s a certain joke going around the DC fan community right now: Darkseid is the greatest writer in comic history because of how great his Absolute Universe has been. DC has been creaming Marvel in sales for the last few years and the God of Evil has been a catalyst for some of the best parts of the company. He’s the big bad of what is being called the “DC All-In Saga”, acting as the main villain of 2025’s DC K.O. While the heroes were able to defeat him in that story, you can’t keep a bad god down, and DC All-In Saga: Darkseid vs. The World #1 brings him back. It also does something else that is going to cause the Darkseid fandom to lose their minds.

Jack Kirby created Darkseid when he came back to DC Comics in 1970, creating him as the center of the New Gods saga. Kirby loved mythology – just look at his work on Thor – and he used the New Gods to create his own cosmology for the DC Multiverse. One thing that has always been rather important to mythology is prophecy. Prophecies have always played a big role in the legends of humanity and Kirby made one the core of the New Gods – that Darkseid would fall in battle with his greatest enemy, his son Orion. However, DC All-In Saga: Darkseid vs. The World #1 changes all of that, which is definitely going to cause an uproar.

Darkseid Has Found a New Opposite Number and It Goes Against Everything We Knew

Kirby understood that the whole point of mythology was to allow humanity to make sense of a universe that often makes zero sense. Mythological characters are representations of various things, from elements to concepts. Darkseid is the God of Evil, giving him a place at the top of the cosmology. He’s the chief evil god and in all myth, there’s always a prophecy about the chief evil god’s loss. In Darkseid’s case, Kirby went in an Abrahamic direction, making the son of god (of evil) the one who defeats the “devil”.

Kirby meant for Orion to be Darkseid’s opposite. The entire point of Orion – and honestly the story of the New Gods – is that even those who were born evil don’t have to be that way, that evil is as much nurture as it is anything. Orion is the son of the most foul being in the multiverse, evil is in his very genes. He fights against the evil nature that is a part of him as the son of evil. Orion’s battle against Darkseid is, in a lot of ways, the battle that every human fights with the darkness inside of himself. Kirby might seem on the nose, but he’s more subtle than you realize.

Orion as the opposite number of Darkseid is the point of the New Gods, which is why DC All-In Saga: Darkseid vs. The World #1 is going to anger the purists. This issue sees Darkseid attack Earth-3, while ruminating on his current mission. He’s been working behind the scenes, conquering other Earths in order to take their Omega energy for his own. He has a new obsession now – instead of wanting to get his hands on the Anti-Life Equation, he wants to create the Omega Singularity, smushing together all time and space, so that everything and everyone exists all in the same moment.

While this is a change that will certainly make the Kirby purists, it’s not one that undoes anything major, because the issue tells us that the Omega Singularity is basically the ultimate evolution of the power of the Equation. However, as Darkseid battles Ultraman, he starts to think about Superman, a hero that he has been battling a lot more, and he makes a statement that is going to shock longtime fans – that Superman is his opposite number and his greatest enemy.

This is a huge change to the character and it’s one that has been in the making for a long time. Darkseid has become DC’s main villain in a lot of ways. While Batman is the most popular DC hero, the most important one, the leader of the rest is Superman. If you’re going to be fighting the entire DC superhero community, like Darkseid does, you’re going to fight him a lot. However, that’s not the same as calling Supes his opposite and ultimate foe.

One of the things about DC in recent years is that the company has established that Superman, being the first superhero, is the being that powers the rest of them with Hope, capital h. “Superman energy” is what makes up the DC Multiverse. Meanwhile, Darkseid has always been after the power of Omega, the ultimate darkness, the end of all things and the opposite of hope. In a very real way, Superman has been made into Darkseid’s opposite. They are diametrically opposed to each other and DC is making it text in the DC Multiverse.

Darkseid Has Gotten Bigger Than Ever and Can Have More Than One Nemesis

If you spend any time online in DC fan spaces, a conversation that you see a lot is about Superman and Darkseid. Many DC fans are purists and they want Darkseid to only be a New Gods villain. While they don’t have a problem with the overall New Gods story taking center stage in DC for a time, they don’t want the central narrative to change – Darkseid vs. Orion, evil vs. good, the ultimate proof that evil is as much a choice as anything else and we can all fight our worse natures. They’re a minority in the fandom, but they can get kind of loud.

However, the thing about it is that Darkseid battling Superman is the exact same story – it’s about the ultimate evil battling someone who could have become the greatest conqueror the universe ever saw, but chose not to. I get wanting to keep something that Jack Kirby created unchanged; he’s the King after all. However, Darkseid saying Superman is his opposite number isn’t that. Orion is still Darkseid’s arch-nemesis and a character that represents the opposite of the God of Evil. So is Superman. Darkseid is the God of Evil; he’s big enough to have two arch-enemies.

What do you think about Superman and Darkseid? Do you think that Supes should be Darkseid’s opposite number or should they keep it Orion? Sound off in the comment section below.

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