Are you ready for the new New Gods? Coming in December from DC Comics, writer Ram V and artist Evan Cagle are presenting a cornerstone book for the DC Universe in the All In era, one that seeks to redefine Jack Kirby’s creations in a universe where their greatest adversary — Darkseid — is dead.
“It fundamentally shatters the status quo of the New Gods, right?” Ram V told Comic Book Club over Zoom about how the death of Darkseid changes the book. “This is a piece that has been built over time through constant conflict between the two pillars of this Fourth World that is Highfather and Darksied, or New Genesis and Apokolips, or Orion and any one of Darkseid’s many, many heirs. Taking away one of those pillars suddenly puts the entire thing into this [new] balance.”
In the series, after Metron (you know, the guy in the chair) is granted a terrible prophecy by the Source Wall, Scott Free, aka Mr. Miracle, and Barda find themselves caught in the middle of a brand new conflict that could change the cosmology of the DCU forever.
That’s big stuff, but for Ram V a lot of it is about tackling things from a small, intimate perspective… All with a side of Cagle’s bombastic, stunning visuals. To find out more about the series, some teases for what’s coming, and a preview of pages and covers from the issue, read on.
Comic Book Club: When you’re tackling a title like New Gods, you’ve got so much material to work off of, plus you’ve got the overarching story of DC All In, which this obviously ties very heavily into. So when you’re trying to tackle something enormous like this, what do you start with? What is the first step with this title?
Ram V: So the first question I ask, regardless of the scale of the story, is: why do people care? And I think that’s a good way to ask yourself, what the fundamental focus is, right? Because you could be telling stories about two people at a bus stop breaking up, or you could be telling stories about two planets at war. But fundamentally, if you can answer why people care, that’s a good place to start. And in this case, I said people care because the relationships between these characters, because Kirby set up these characters to be so beautifully and dramatically entangled with each other that it made sense to start off there.
This is a story about two brothers, coming at things from opposing ends, but also who need each other. It’s the story about a kid who is born into difficult circumstances and needs to be raised by people we consider to be heroes or villains of the DCU. So these are the fundamental character questions that I start with.
It’s almost a trope at this point that people throw around the phrase “modern mythology” when you’re talking about superheroes, right? But this is mythology. What is the difference here between New Gods, and say, the Justice League?
People throw around the term modern mythology without truly understanding what mythology is. The Justice League, for example, while a great comic, is essentially about established characters and their drives and ambitions and personalities and powers falling into either teams with each other or in opposition to some great threat. And largely these are stories that center around this idea of very literal conflict, whereas the things we describe as mythologies really are stories that are very clearly not real and yet are meant to reflect our reality in some way. Hence the myth, and hence why we have mythologies with these almost trope-ish characters, or archetypal characters that are meant to reflect our own concerns and considerations. And believe it or not, before we invented religion, we invented gods so that they would be emblematic of our troubles or our victories or our fears. Framing the New Gods characters as reflections of more mundane human considerations, but now with their drama amped up to cosmic levels, that’s a useful way of thinking of this as mythology versus any other sort of dramatic story, if you will.
This is obviously something that you spend a lot of time thinking about it. It plays out in a lot of your work, and thinking specifically the BOOM! Studios work, not to call out another publisher, but what is it that fascinates you about gods and their relationship with humans in particular?
It’s using the big to look at the small [through a] lens, right? It’s very difficult to talk about grief and loss and death when you’re talking about personal experiences, and perhaps a little bit heavy to talk about it. Somehow, almost counterintuitively, as soon as you personify death as this big god-like character who is now entangled with human concerns, things become much easier to talk about because it’s not real. It’s myth… When you are two half siblings, and one sibling feels like they were betrayed in favor of another, it’s hard to have that conversation without it getting heavy and traumatic and all of that. But as soon as you say these are two gods and they were raised on two different planet, it’s suddenly okay to talk about it.
To move on to the art you’ve worked with Evan Cagle before, but he seems like an atypical pick for this. And I say atypical just because I think what you expect, when you think of New Gods, is Jack Kirby. While Evan’s not on the opposite end of the spectrum, he’s certainly a different part of it. So what made him the right pick for this book? And how has your working relationship developed over time?
To go back to the whole it’s not Kirby, I want to push back slightly on that. It’s not Kirby in the most literal visual sense, but it is Kirby in that I think Kirby’s success was in transmitting the spectacle, the scale of things. You know, there were impossible giants tethered to asteroids floating through space while two characters on a planet in a meadow [are] talking to each other about giving up the war life and becoming peaceful people. And that difference in scale is very hard to transmit as an artist. Kirby was very successful at doing that. And I think in that vein, Evan is very successful at doing the same thing, transmitting that these are characters who move from planet to planet at whim and have seen the rise and fall of civilizations. And yet he’s also very good at transmitting the emotional nuance of two brothers sitting on a park bench talking to each other. So I think in that sense, it is very much like Kirby, and this has been a hallmark of what I’ve tried to do in the past with my collaborators, is understand the core of why something works, without just replicating the aesthetics of why something works. So yeah, Evan’s art is very much of the now, he understands scale, but not in the same way that Kirby understood it; in the way that European sci-fi understands it, or Japanese manga understands it. And you can see his Moebius, Akira, Otomo influences all come in. While he’s atypical, that part is what makes this new take super exciting.
And you also have Jorge Fornés doing pages. How does that work? Is that every issue?
I’m actually super excited to talk about this, because no one’s actually asked that question. Yeah, Jorge Fornés is one of several guest artists doing four-page sequences in each of these issues, and these are guest artists that, in conversation with my editors, we thought these are the people who are doing something Kirby-esque without just replicating Kirby. And so I think Jorge Fornés has that sort of Kirby-esque style in his repertoire. And then issue two is going to have Jesse Lonergan, who’s going to do four pages. Then there’s a guest issue with Ricardo Federici. And then at some point, we’re hoping to involve other artists who, as soon as you look at their work, you’ll go like, “Oh yeah, this makes sense as to why… This is Kirby evolved to 2024.”
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Darkseid is dead in the DC universe, which means the biggest, most prominent villain is off the board. How does that change the storytelling? How does that change how you approach the New Gods?
It fundamentally shatters the status quo of the New Gods, right? This is a piece that has been built over time through constant conflict between the two pillars of this Fourth World that is Highfather and Darksied, or New Genesis and Apokolips, or Orion and any one of Darkseid’s many, many heirs. Taking away one of those pillars suddenly puts the entire thing into this [new] balance. What is Highfather’s purpose now? Is New Genesis still at war? What happens when the rest of the cosmos discovers that? This thing that they feared for eons is now suddenly gone. Do they then look at everyone else and go, “Oh yeah, the rest of these guys are weaklings. We can step in now.” Those questions will start to get addressed. Obviously, this is a big impact for the villains and the new, New God protagonists that we introduce in the story. The villains, are they harbingers of doom? Have they come because they feel like Darkseid is no longer a threat? Or have they come because they feel like this part of the cosmos has fallen out of balance, and it is their job to hit the reset button, if you will? And so we introduce these new villains called the Niktari. They show up because Darkseid’s gone. And then there’s a new, new god who is awakened on Earth, who might be the greatest hero we have never seen, or could be the second coming of Darkseid. We shall find out.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The New Gods #1 hits stores on December 18, 2024, from DC Comics. Check out Cagle’s designs for Orion and Highfather below, as well as multiple covers for the first issue. You can click to view larger versions.
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