So, Darkseid gets the Anti-Life Equation and can control the minds of all living things...

So, Darkseid gets the Anti-Life Equation and can control the minds of all living things. What does he use it to make them do?

Like, find the remote for him so that he doesn't have to get off the couch or something?

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Worship him I guess. In the same way Nekron wants to kill everyone he wants to rule everyone because he's a walking manifestation of tyranny. Worship also empowers gods, if everyone worshiped you, you would be nigh omnipotent.

He's basically Sauron in terms of motivation. Enslaving people is an end in itself, even if they can't do anything for him.

Through Darkseid, the multiverse will achieve perfection.

I've always had an idea that perhaps he could feel like the moral world is too chaotic and under the guidance and will of Darkseid, without any free will to oppose it, the multverse would peace.

Hive mind

Final Crisis showed that when he unleashed the anti-life equation onto Earth, it created a cosmic hive mind where all were Darkseid.

He will bring the universe to total ruin. He will foul the fields of paradise beyond repair, and when all of creation has been remade in his image, he will turn his gaze towards his work and see himself as if in a mirror, and then he will know fear.

Some comics have actually gone with this interpretation. This is the explanation he gives to Martian Manhunter in the Ostrander series.

Personally, trying to find some way to subsume Darkseid's actions under some altruistic noble intent to protect people from conflict and chaos just feels a bit clunky and inconsistent with everything else we know about him. It might work for other characters, but it makes more sense, given everything else about Darkseid, if he's just an evil bastard just because.

Yeah, this feels more "Darkseid."

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In Final Crisis, when he does it, it just plain ends the multiverse as a side effect, and he's okay with it, because he's just the current 3d intersect of an Nth dimensional entity, who can only be understood by 3d humans as an mythoideological representation of tyranny and endings. He doesn't "want" things in the same sense that 3d beings understand: he enslaves sapient beings, destroys free thought, and ends life, because: Darkseid Is.

>This is the explanation he gives to Martian Manhunter in the Ostrander series.
there was another moment in the spectre (the comic from the 2000s where hal was the spectre) where darkseid exiles one of his slaves from apokolips and says that freedom is the worst punishment he can give her

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No, he doesn't. That's a bunch of crap to make him seem meaningful and important. Take the page you posted. Written by a butthurt writer who shat on another franchise using a bunch of strawmen just to elevate Superman above it in a dumb comparison.

Hey Lex, gotta make this quick but
>Where in fuck Superman represent any freedom?
Probably in his constant fight to preserve justice and uphold a free world for humanity. One where they aren't assaulted by aliens every few days or torn apart by wars.
>If anything, he's an enforcer and a jailer.
Maybe sort of in Metropolis, but overall he's a protector.

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Who's justice?
And how will Superman uphold a free world for humanity by constantly spying and punishing them from a top his big weaponized satellite?
Oh, you mean the aliens that Superman is a part of? The aliens that he attracts like a beacon?
No, he's a protector of the status quo. For good or bad. I don't see him fighting to improve the world, only to keep it as it is.

Agreed. Honestly I really was lost on Superman once he said the following:
>Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear... until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice became the reality we all share I'll never stop fighting.
>Not really though. I'm out to travel back in time to before Krypton's destruction and live a normal life with some Kryptonian woman under a red sun. I deserve it, because I fought so hard and lost so much to stop Darkseid. Also, seeing the genocide of the Kryptonian species should be a cool experience- don't worry I'm not going to change anything because that would screw the current timeline over. Kal El out.
I'm glad true heroes like Captain America and Iron Man exist to show us the right way.

>No, he's a protector of the status quo. For good or bad. I don't see him fighting to improve the world, only to keep it as it is.
but thats not unique to superman, it's a problem inherent to comic books as a medium because writers and editors need to preserve a status quo to keep selling issues.

So? It still doesn't change the point that Superman represent none of those ideals as a character. Those spiels are only self-important crap to make Superman seem relevant and dignified.

The trouble is that superheroes always have to win.
"Right makes might" isn't truth and justice it's hypocrisy.
Superman Thought Robot is a dumb concept.

What makes good people good is that they have the humility to admit their faults, that they can be defeated.
The only undefeatable causes are the ones that are so bad that they cannot be improved.

Human superheroes are much better.

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god damn howard porter's art is ridiculous. i liked it at the time, but in retrospect every other panel is totally absurd.

Even if you do have Superman try to change the status quo (ala Golden Age Superman) instead of being this laissez faire hero who only steps in to prevent catastrophes, then one can just switch to the argument that Superman still doesn't represent freedom, because he's imposing his will and own ideologies on people.

It's kinda the I'mVerySmart "critique" of superheroes. They do too little? Tools of the establishment and preservers of current systems of power. They do too much? Symbols of fascistic fetishism.

>Who's justice?
Everyone. There are baseline moral truths that you have to adhere to just to function.
>And how will Superman uphold a free world for humanity by constantly spying and punishing them from a top his big weaponized satellite?
Superman doesn't constantly spy on humanity. In fact that's one of the biggest reasons why he doesn't just use his super hearing all the time.
>Oh, you mean the aliens that Superman is a part of? The aliens that he attracts like a beacon?
Sure, some of them. And a lot of the ones that he doesn't attract too. Besides, everyone creates the thing they dread.
>No, he's a protector of the status quo. For good or bad. I don't see him fighting to improve the world, only to keep it as it is.
I mean, keeping it as it is is much better than succumbing to worse threats. He's fighting to preserve our freedom.
I sort of agree and disagree with you.
TR Superman is exactly what your first line implies; you have to remember it's just a distillation of what the monitors observed Superman's grand purpose as in the large scale of the DCU. However, you're right in one thing: Darkseid is a stronger idea than TR Superman. Maybe in raw strength TR would've out-BSed Darkseid, but ideologically TR offers no counter to Darkseid's philosophy.

The problem with Superman is a very simple one: all the self-importance crap attached to him to wank the character as DEEP and MEANINGFUL character who MATTERS because of meta reasons because of historical and marketing reasons. It feels contrived, hollow, and cheap.

The more you push the idea that Superman represent this and that, and is oh so important because of this and that, the less genuine and interesting Superman becomes. He starts to seem more like a vapid propaganda whose purpose is to simple sell itself.

Give Superman to readers without all that crap and you get a much better character who is able to stand on his own two feet and actually mean something to someone.

And what is Superman's moral truths?
Superman has the means and many times the will to spy on all of us.
Superman's still the reason many of them invade Earth.
What freedom is there in many parts of the world? That's what Superman is fighting to preserve?

>Superman's grand purpose
Which is?

It seems like your understanding of Superman is based entirely off of a "greatest hits" list. Those are naturally what Superman fans would recommend you but it's better for them because those are the zeniths of the character's arc- when you see the hero you love directly confronting ideological challenges it's an awesome feeling.
However, you clearly have not read very much Superman if you think that the majority of his stuff is just wank due to meta reasons. Just pick up a regular run at some point (not the one going on right now, it's pretty bad) and you'll see that there's a decent amount of him just being a chill dude.

Most of them suffer from meta-wankery, though. Not all, but most.

I actually kinda agree. Superhero comics in general are usually better without the whole "SUPERHEROES ARE IMPORTANT" text running through them. Like, for me, it's enough that they are good people who are trying to use their abilities to help people. It can get cringe fast when the writers start wanking over how meaningful they are to society and how they are so inspiring and represent the best parts of us and oh god let's build statues to them and have all the civilian characters shed tears about how much superhero legacies mean to them.

I'm like... 90% sure that Red Son is Supernamn's best story because it shows the idea of Superman moving at a slightly different angle. Let's see how it's adapted, though.

>And what is Superman's moral truths?
Preventing death and pain outside of very extenuating circumstances. Ensuring that the greatest amount of people are happy at all times.
>Superman has the means and many times the will to spy on all of us.
The means, yes (as any other superhero/superhero organization does) but the will very rarely. At best he uses his super hearing selectively.
>Superman's still the reason many of them invade Earth.
And he's the reason why they get pushed right back out.
>What freedom is there in many parts of the world? That's what Superman is fighting to preserve?
More freedom than if everyone there was going to die to an asteroid impact, let' say. Also . If you think Superman should do everything and affect humanity on an enormous scale instead of preserve the status quo, you don't really want Superman do protect humanity. You want him to coddle humanity.
Beating the bad guy.
Most Superman runs? Really? I can understand isolated sections of runs (What's so Funny is one of them), but I doubt I've ever seen a run consist of majority meta wank. Prior to Bendisman we had two very solid runs with Superbro and Superdad going on and they largely focused on his social/personal relationships.

Tbh Final Crisis would’ve been more interesting if the comic focused more on the idea that Darkseid is just as in despair as everyone he’s enslaving, down to Dan Turpin, and his “plan” isn’t even some cosmic inevitability. Just the spiteful lashing out of someone who’s ultimately a victim of the same system he embodies and holds dominion over. You can have Darkseid still be perfectly irredeemable, and still emphasise what a miserable pathetic shell of a person he is because of how sincerely convinced the world works the way he thinks it does.

>turn darkseid into literally the most predictable characterization for a tyrant ruler ever
second most predictable actually if you count johns' "angry gray man" as an actual character

Those stories in itself aren't bad, especially for long-running characters whose stories did mean something to a lot of people and earned it over time. The thing is that those stories aren't supposed to be common, and if readers are getting introduced to or learning about a character through stories like that, that's a problem.

Preventing the death and pain of those he deem worthy, that is. And how does Superman ensure happiness to most people? By spying them? By being everywhere? By protecting them from everything deemed bad? By punishing those that step out of line?
And what about collateral damage? Those dead in their wake onto the path Superman set foot?
So Superman is just making sure the world keep on being as it is, both the good and the bad.

I’ve always found Red Son’s moral confusing at best because to me it’s always felt less like the story of Superman slipping into tyranny, and more the story of Lex Luthor bullying someone until they have no alternative but escalate into becoming what they’ve always hated. Like, I can’t help but think the moral falls flat when there’s a reasonable argument to be made things would have gone more smoothly if the US’ most competent consultant worked from a premise of cooperation instead of obsessive rivalry-and that’s what it is, the way he fixates on Superman makes it impossible to see Lex as someone motivated by legitimate concerns instead of petty oneupmanship like he is in every other setting.

I liked DC One Million just because instead of being a wankery thing, it just forecast the logical outcome of someone like Superman living in somewhere like DC for ages and ages after countless threats thwarted. It’s often hoisted up as one of the most Superman-wanky and I normally hate that sort of thing, but I give it a pass because it focuses on Superman as a person instead of an icon. And hell, he’s plenty miserably through most of it spending all that time locked in the sun because Lois ded

>Maybe in raw strength TR would've out-BSed Darkseid, but ideologically TR offers no counter to Darkseid's philosophy.
That's the thing though, there is an obvious one and it's bizarre more people don't remember it.
Superman literally is "The Man of Tomorrow."
His entire gimmick is that he's an alien from a planet at a higher stage of evolution than us (forgive for the moment the bad science that evolution goes upwards in one direction only or that better evolved is rather subjective, it was the 1930s.)

The counter to Darkseid is that one should fully expect and hope to be outdone and defeated by one's children and inheritors.
Although this can be taken too far into wantonly abandoning tradition and scorning the past.
I really think that there's something very important and profound in the idea that Heracles, the greatest hero of western civilization, is a rapist and a murderer and a total madman.

Some characters, though, do suffer a syndrome of IMPORTANT MAN/WOMAN. Superman is one of them. Most of the times even Superman's "humanity" is turned into a gift itself and the reason he's so much better than the rest of us... humans. I get it, writers want to sell him as a great and swell guy. But it gets excessive.

Well...yes? How’s that a bad thing? If you go back to the Kirby era the New Gods as a whole are “predictable characterisations” of all kinds of fictional stereotypes from the wise old mentor, to the cheerful sidekick, to the broody lone wolf warrior, and from what I hear a lot of people love it for playing those archetypes to the max. I don’t exactly see anything to be gained from making Darkseid UNpredictable and if anything think it would add nuance to the actions he canonically undertook in Final Crisis, unless you also support BvS’ versino of Lex Luthor.

Oneupmanship is the basis of capitalism, though. We get gud through competition because we're trying to get ours. Things evolve from said conflict. The story idea is that Superman's ideals, that is, of communism, was always going to end badly when faced with said oneupmanship. Because while Lex thinks of himself, or of US of A, Superman thinks of everyone, or as it is... the world.

>is a rapist and a murderer and a total madman
Well the Marvel version of him played with that idea (and yes, I know the DC version does too). It’s just kind of drowned out by the things the Avengers, Illuminati and X-Men do on the regular.

Also considering how many people hate zoomers I can’t help but think Darkseid is kind of winning the argument about youth not being worth jack shit.

It’s gotten really weird recently where DC now says humanity is one-half (and implicitly the more important half) of a superweapon species designed by Perpetua to murder the Source and the rest of her kind.

Oh yeah, no. 100%. There's even a line or two in the final issue where Lex is just looking at Superman's writings and he goes, "Well shit, this all actually makes sense." Then he quietly integrates a significant portion of Superman's methods into his new world government. The entire purpose of the series was that if Superman and Lex could work together, they'd easily achieve true utopia. But Superman was too focused on doing "what was right for Russia" and Lex was too focused on "beating Superman." The moment they both took a step back from one another, utopia was formed.
Which is also an underlying element of the silver age comics. Superman and Lex could have fixed every problem that ever touched the planet if they weren't so busy one upping one another. Red Son is something like a compressed 30 years take on a character.

Sorry, but see here the analogy falls flat for me not because I can’t see it as capitalism vs communism. I just see it as Lex Luthor picking on a slow kid. Like, Lex alienates and repels people close to him like Lois in that story so it’s very difficult to see him as representative of capitalism instead of his own offbrand lunacy. I just-I can’t help but think if JFK was the actual villain the story would have been a lot less confrontational and had a lot less alien tech being hijacked. You can’t portray a war of ideals if one of those ideals well if one of those ideals is being frontlined by a blatant sociopath, because it rather presumes the typical capitalist is the kind of idiot who would send messages like “why don’t you just put the whole world in a bottle?” To the superhuman flying brick and expect not to get punted into the stratosphere for their insolence.

That isn’t a clever observation about idealism versus cynicism. That’s just plain old plot armor.

Huh, never looked at it this way. As I guess it makes more sense as a study of Lex vs Clark than capitalism vs communism.

See, i feel the same way about DC One Million, because in many ways is less about Superman being the most important hero ever and the reason everyone else do what they do, and more about the horror of immortality, and how if you stretch that enough with its struggles and all, how maybe one day you can get to a very bullshity point where you can sorta hack shit to get a better life. Eventually. It deals more about Superman the man, who's a victim of his immense powers, and less about... all the wanky shit. Superman is still shown as the biggest hero, of course, but that's shown as more of a consequence of living so long and doing so much, and not simply because he's Superman.

>So Superman is just making sure the world keep on being as it is, both the good and the bad.

Superman is probably one of the heroes that is more often portrayed saving people from accidents and natural disasters, saving people from that and violent criminals don't keep the status quo, he is literal saving people that would otherwise die if he didn´t lend a hand.

I mean, not to hammer the point home, but the final issue, iirc, also has the reveal that Lex and Superman were literally playing a nigh endless game of chess against one another via some sort of early internet, which Lex completes as one of the final pages, as his victory.

Yeah, but I like this as the canonical ending of the DC universe.

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And when you put it like that, it makes the recent ideas about Superman being some kind of cosmic keystone all the more repellant because...they miss the point of the character. Superman WOULDN’T WANT to be the direct line to Ahl, the pinnacle of the metaverse Dr. Manhattan is doomed to be punished by or whatever dumb status the narrative is giving him. He just wants to go home to his family like a lot of people at the end of the day. Honestly my favourite part of Superman Beyond is that at the end of it, the Thought Robot fucking collapses just like the Monitor Sphere and Superman goes home to fix Lois. That’s all it is to him, a glorified Alice in Wonderland adventure. For all the wank it gets I never got the impression the Thought Robot is something Superman is particularly proud of so much as a desperate measure he needed to fight an insurmountable foe, any more than his power to shoot little supermen out of his fingers is.

>thread starts out about being about what Darkseid would do if he got the ALE and progresses to why Superman is a shitty character
>thread ends being about why Superman is a great character when written right

Hypercrisis?

If Anti-life equation is the ultimate proof of meaningless of life and Life equation is the ultimate proof of life being meaningful then how can they exist at the same time?

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The fact that the Superman Thought Robot exist and is literally a plot-armor who's existence and purpose is to defend all of fiction sorta ruin a lot of that story, because at its heart the meta-wankery is up to eleven.
It's literally a gigantic monument made in tribute to Superman that is piloted by several Superman and is able to defend all that was ever created because Superman is just that important and good.

It's the only way for him to exist and not be told that futa is gay.

No that’s Captain America’s cross to bear

Because math is for nerds and the secret of DC is you don’t have to listen to nerds

When the Anti-Life Equation is completed, all hands will move as Darkseid's, all mouths will speak as Darkseid's, and all life's works will be as Darkseid's. In this glorious future, Darkseid will devote all the universe's resources and all the universe's labors to the creation of one singular thing: a very comfortable chair. And when that great task is complete, Darkseid will look upon it with contentment and then sit in that chair.

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"Life has no meaning," "life has meaning."
Seems to me that life only has the meaning you give to it.

it's mostly an issue because the people in charge at DC and Marvel mistakenly believe that their audience wants their universe to have a heavy resemblance to our own, when trying to do that almost always hampers a book's quality

Maybe it's because I've not been keeping up with current Superman and most remember reading stories spaced out over eras, but I've gotten a completely different impression over how Superman's character has been handled over time. I don't blame you if you don't like Superman depicted and treated like that by authors. Heck, it's not even why I like the character myself.

Holy shit, I'd give so much money to read a weekly series about a comic book universe that has consistently maintained its continuity over the course of 60+ years.

Like an user said above i always liked the idea of Darkseid doing everything because of Suli. Darkseid grew up in an awful place within shitty upbringing that pretty much pigeonholed him to forever be a shitty person, but by a miracle he found a pretty a nice and pretty dame who gave him happiness, happiness that could have saved Darkseid from being like his environment, that is... until his mother snuffed that happiness out so Darkseid could remain as intended. That broke him and made him double up on awfulness. Now he hates everyone and everything, but specially himself. So he wants for everyone to experience how it is to be like him. It's a punishment where everyone gets fucked. His hate demands it.

I’ll give DC credit for, even as misguided as it sometimes is, rolling with how fucking weird a world where Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman live next door is. Sideways and New Super-Man are fun examples of “normal” characters suddenly endowed with superpowers react to a world where Metal is canon and you could be abducted by an interdimensional giant any day of the week, I think.

It took me a while to put it into words why I don’t like how Marvel does it, and then I realised: It takes the modern values for granted across the whole setting too damn much. Case in point: America Chavez’s lesbian dimension being literally the creation of a future version of a 616 character, Loki trying to be “hip” like a desperate boomer and the social media shoehorning into everything everyone does.

It’s been obvious every writer since Kirby has been as keen to get away from Suli and the very idea of Darkseid having an adolescence and into having always been a cosmic dictator asshole as possible so I doubt we’ll ever see the idea or even really Suli as a character realised. Even in Simonson’s run, which has one of the most “human” Darkseids, he’s primarily characterised as an antagonist to Orion. The exception is the new Female Furies which is...the new Female Furies, ‘nuff said.

I wish I could remember more of modern Loki beyond that one America panel where he praises America and then tries to find bacon, like a 2000s webcomic character.

>And hell, he’s plenty miserably through most of it spending all that time locked in the sun because Lois ded
I like how it's implied that Superman literally stormed the gates of heaven and hell to reunite with Lois again but then found out that she wasn't there and it broke him. Fucking elevates the ending where they finally get together again. Dude loves his wife very much.

That's bad. I always found that characterization compelling. Kinda like Macbeth sorta of deal.

Same, really. Earlier it was why I was talking about reconciling Final Crisis Darkseid with a Darkseid who’s just sick of it all and a good match for his host Dan Turpin in sheer misery despite his determination and ego.

Trust me, your memories of Agents of Asgard are the best ones you can cling to for modern Loki. Elsewhere he’s tainted by Aaron’s Dr. Strange run (which pits him against Steven for reasons even he is compelled to admit are stupid), Aaron’s Thor/War of the Realms shit (which leaves him involved in a bunch of overhyped, easily avoidable bullshit) and an Infinity Gem event I don’t bother remembering because it was blatantly there to tie into the MCU movies.

I really think the guy shines best when he gets a solo run to himself, but after the stupid shit he’s been involved in I’ve a hard time seeing him come back in the upcoming one.

And hell, good for Lois. Heaven was a bunch of ASSHOLES in old school DC to the point where angels invaded that one time and Superman had to wrestle an archangel himself. And well, they never really STOPPED being assholes. The Carey run which is pretty much the definitive portrayal of DC’s heaven has them somehow come off as pathetic and bullying in comparison to the main character, who is literally Lucifer. There was that Constantine run that ended with them bailing out of an earth where Darkseid actually won and parademons were wrecking all the metaphysical realms. The new Lucifer comic has them going back to celestial stormtrooper role. Honestly, it comes to a point where you start to feel bad for every christian character in DC because of what a heap of shit they are and what an amazing, impossible asshole the Presence is.

>Holy shit, I'd give so much money to read a weekly series about a comic book universe that has consistently maintained its continuity over the course of 60+ years.
Astro City is pretty close to this overall

My headcanon is that dialetheism (the position that contradictory statements can both be true at the same time, or that a statement can be true and false at the same time) is true in the DC Universe. There are some facts that, even though they contradict each other, are true. The Anti-Life Equation and the Life Equation may be examples of this.

What led me to this belief about how the DCU operates is how every religion and myth and pantheon seems to be true in the DCU, even though different religions contradict each other. Somehow, Christianity is true, Hinduism is true, Greek mythology is true, etc.

Sandman #18 shows how the beliefs and dreams of sentient things literally affect reality in the DCU, even retroactively. In the story, a bunch of house cats realize that the reason they are domesticated is that, at one point, they were the dominant species and hunted humans, but then humans all dreamt that they were the dominant species, and the power of their collective dreaming changed reality retroactively so that they were always the dominant species.

So, I extend that ability of beliefs and imagination and dreams to alter reality, even retroactively, to the sphere of gods, and the reason the religions and myths are true are because mortal minds created them, even though the existence of these gods predates the existence of mortals (retroactive reality-changing effects). And if enough people believe contradictory things, contradictory things will be true.

Maybe the authors of the Multiverse realized that, counterintuitively, a self-sustaining universe MUST be dialetheic in order to be stable, or else it runs down and deflates like an old watch.