New Gods #2 - O' Deadly Darkseid

This is one of those big cosmic issues of the Fourth World books, with a bunch of splash pages establishing New Genesis and Apokolips, their history and relationship. The double page spread of young gods playing on some sort of techno-cosmic device on the surface of New Genesis is gorgeous. There are also full pages plugging storylines that were appearing in FOREVER PEOPLE and JIMMY OLSEN.

The main storyline focuses on Orion's first adventure on Earth, bringing back the humans he rescued from Apokolips the previous issue, briefly confronting Darkseid and then foiling one of his schemes.

We also meet DeSaad this issue, one of several great villains among the minions of Darkseid. We get a nice Kirby extreme close-up of him here:



I kind of like the clues about Orion's true identity in this issue. By the time I first read them I already knew the secret, so I always wonder how quickly people reading it off the shelf picked up on the clues. I'm also amused by how one of the humans suggests that Orion use "O'Ryan" as a human identity. How exactly did he know that it wasn't "O'Ryan" having just heard the name?

Inks by Colletta. Yeah, I know...

Published May 1971