The other aspect of Darkseid I find interesting–or maybe it’s not Darkseid so much as the forces of Apokolips in general–is the theme of false individuality being used to subvert true freedom. The various Apokoliptians are assigned names, costumes, powers, and seemingly even personalities by Granny Goodness in her orphanage, and they cling to these identities no matter how ridiculous they are. Granny, unlike Darkseid, seems to have a sense of humour about this stuff, but she’s still serving his will by transforming people into puppets of Darkseid–but instead of simply making them into faceless, brainwashed footsoldiers (that’s Glorious Godfrey’s job) she’s doing something more interesting, and something that serves the needs of a comic book story better. She’s taking away their dignity and making a mockery of the concept of “individuality” by seemingly giving them vibrant, distinctive identities. But those identities ultimately are simply tools for Darkseid to use.

Rather than identifying “individuality” with simplistic non-conformity, Kirby went the other way, to show how distinctiveness can be a trap in and of itself. This makes even someone as ridiculous as Virman Vundabar rather poignant and tragic–he’s an actor in a play whose author (or perhaps “financier”) has nothing but contempt for him. In fact, it gets rather chilling when you realize that even Scott Free had his identity assigned to him by Darkseid–and he was meant to escape. Even the great escape artist and avatar of freedom was serving Darkseid’s purposes. You can cling to the hope that Scott’s Mr. Miracle persona is at least his own, but still…

In that regard, I always found it interesting that Apokolips, for all its barbed wire and flaming hell-pits, isn’t really a totalitarian regime; in fact, once you’re out of the orphanage, it seems to operate on a principle of near-total anarchy, with constant fighting between the supposed troops. Darkseid doesn’t care; he’s still got them under his control.