Last week, we looked at the penultimate volume of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World omnibuses—breaking down the different directions the story was going and how much he had begun to set up in terms of the incoming climactic battles between Orion and his half brother, Kalibak. But there’s an odd wrinkle to that planned fight and all of the consequences of it—it doesn’t quite happen in the way any of us expected, least of all Kirby himself. What we find in The New Gods #11 is an ending of a kind as this would be the final issue of that particular series.

In “Darkseid and Sons” we see the final battle between Orion and Kalibak after the numerous interruptions that have delayed the inevitable for so long. But even the inevitable has some foibles to it. While we’re seeing this final fight directly after the police had captured Kalibak using most of Metropolis’s power grid, we’re also seeing a Kalibak that isn’t quite himself. Deep in the depths of Darkseid’s lair, we find DeSaad in his lab, beaming energy to Kalibak to tilt the fight in his favor. This wasn’t for Darkseid, though, but for himself so he could better feel Orion’s hopelessness during this final fight. After the discovery of his plot, though, Darkseid, watching his two sons fight to the death, disposes of DeSaad and lets Orion claim his final victory as Kalibak is reduced to his original state. 

As is customary of these The New Gods stories that focus more on the familial side of things, we see the breadth of how Kirby envisioned these characters as the gods of a new mythology. Darkseid is a cruel, callous schemer that will see cities burned to obtain the Anti-Life Equation. But when two warriors fight to the death, none must interfere under penalty of the Omega Effect. Orion has been hiding his reality as one of the sons of Darkseid, but after Kalibak is taken by the Black Racer, he admits it for the world to hear in the final panel of the issue. We see him as a character at his lowest point, but we know that the lowest points are only there to contrast against the meteoric rise of a character that is meant to fulfill a destiny started from his first appearance. 

What was meant to be the start of the coming war was to be met only with silence after Orion’s final panel. From here, the Fourth World saga would continue forward in the last eight issues of Mister Miracle before coming to its premature conclusion. I do keep harping on that point in the past few articles, but it’s hard not to see the dwindling pages of these collections and not feel the stunted conclusion that would come. But, considering Kirby and all he originally had planned, at least he was still able to provide us with a kind of conclusion much later. One we’ll be taking a look at on its own. 

Get excited. Get on the road.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.