War has come to the New Gods, and they must fight to hold onto everything they hold dear. What will they sacrifice to keep the dream of New Genesis alive? Join the fight in The New Gods #4, written by Ram V, drawn by Bernard Chang and Evan Cagle, colored by Francesco Segala and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
Last issue, I spoke of the fight. How most of the New Gods are trapped in it, and how Mister Miracle is trying to escape it. How what you are fighting for does not need to define who you are. I also talked about how The New Gods is a comic about examining who you are when what appears to be your final reckoning is finally coming for you.
In that vein, The New Gods #4 asks a new question: Who are you when youâve given up on your dreams?
In the Beginning
May we all be saved from patriarchs with a dream.
Guest artist Bernard Chang takes us back to where it all began, with the Highfather and Himon watching New Genesis being constructed. An idyllic moment – the kind where smug and powerful men can believe in the promises they make to bring about the future they envision. Where they can believe a single choice can be made that ensures the future they want to come to pass happens just the way they want it to – that that choice is a bulwark against all that is to come. One dream, against infinity.
Chang draws a beautifully smug Highfather. A man dressed for battle, who has just traded his scepter for a shepherdâs staff. Whose faith in the future allows him to believe that the wars heâs fought, the destruction heâs caused, is all worth it for the eternal era of peace he will now usher in. Though he holds his staff, this man has not entirely left war behind him – his armor is proof of that. He knows war will come for him again, and with a mother box built into the heart of New Genesis, Highfather has his backup plan ready for the worst that is to come. A weapon built into the heart of his new dream.
But you cannot build a weapon without knowing that one day, it will be fired. The mother box, for all its potential for hope, was kept at the heart of New Genesis as a weapon of last resort. Highfatherâs dream was poisoned from the very beginning. Be wary of powerful men who believe they have an answer for everything – for that answer is pretty much always for them to be able to use even more power against their enemies.
What we see here is just that sort of man. A man of war, not quite ready to give up his talents in the pursuit of a peaceful world. Itâs amazing it lasted as long as it did, and thatâs certainly to his credit – but all things come to an end. In that end, illusions are stripped away, and weâre left with a look at who the Highfather truly is. A man who turns to ever more power the moment things turn dark.
But more on that later.
POW! KRRRAASSSH! THOOOM!
The New Gods #4 is an interesting one. The series has proved to be less interested in action than it is its exploration of what makes its characters tick, but this is very much an action-heavy issue, and Evan Cagle is given full rein here to make each page sing. It is glorious. Watch, as Shadowfall rains arrows of light down upon her grubby, rust-colored enemies. Behold Big Barda, shrugging off bullets like the mere annoyance they are as she tears through the foolish men who wonât stop shooting them at her. Witness her husband navigate his way on the roof of a moving car to cheerfully bring it to a halt, then flipping gracefully over onto the road, his cape flowing after him like nothing less than poetry.
After three issues of dramatic setup and dreamlike exposition of legends long past, this issue is a visual feast. Cagle and colorist Francesco Segala have been working together beautifully from the start, but weâve only had glimpses of what they were really capable of when it comes to action. The two fights we see here – Big Barda and Mister Miracleâs skirmish on the roads outside Mangalore and the war on New Genesis – are both visually distinct but still bring the thrills.
The fight on Earth is fast-paced, fluid. The air around a punch warps around Orion as heâs knocked across a field. Figures are animated, and as lively as ever, they practically dance off of the page. Simple greens, yellows and all-white backgrounds keep you focused on the action and let individual moments shine.Â
The war on New Genesis, in contrast, is all in sunset colors. Suffused lavenders, oranges and reds. Instead of moments guiding us through a fight, weâre shown the big hits changing the tides of the war at large. Breathtaking moments meant to inspire awe the way that only gods can. Static ships and cannon fodder torn apart by all the power the New Gods have to bring.
If there is any dissatisfaction, it is there. We only get the biggest moments of this war, unlike anything New Genesis has faced before. It feels like weâre getting a summary of whatâs happening, a highlight reel of the godsâ desperate situation – because the war is not what the storyâs truly about. It reads like the war is not what the comic is interested in exploring – at least, not as much as the choices that are made because of that war.
One choice, in particular, that may prove to be the Highfatherâs ultimate undoing.
The God Surge
Mister Miracleâs seven days are up. Orion is here to kill the child – and heâs angry. His delay, and the fact that time passes differently on the Fourth World, means that New Genesis has come under siege while heâs had the chance to stop it – or at least, so he believes. See, Orion is not a man to ask questions. He doesnât know exactly how killing this child could save New Genesis – he doesnât even know that Highfather doesnât know either. Orion is just another one of Highfatherâs backups, a poison at the heart of the dream. Orion is an application of power. All he hoped for was that Mister Miracle could find a way for him to be more.
Both of Orionâs fathers – the one who birthed him and the one who raised him – are men who believe in the brute application of power to achieve their goals. Itâs what Orion has grown into – a brute who believes he has no value past what power he can apply in the service of his fatherâs dream. He loathes the purpose he has been shaped to almost as much as he loathes not being able to live up to it. He would do anything for the dream – without question, because he believes in a better world. What he may not believe is that he has any place in that dream.Â
Which makes Highfatherâs betrayal of that dream – or at least, its most hopeful, significant part – sting all the more. It turns out that the Highfather has been holding his children back all these years (as patriarchs who rely on power tend to do) with his shepherdâs staff. It reminds me strongly of a quote from Terry Pratchettâs Small Gods:
âThe merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.â
Not to say that the New Gods arenât intelligent, but the Highfather is a man who clearly sees them as people who need to be kept under control. Heâs never trusted them to be able to handle the full extent of their power, until this very moment, where he needs them to use it to do a very specific thing. He needs them to be his weapons, and through the staff, he drives them right back into a war heâs spent centuries dreaming would never come to pass. His dream of being a peaceful god is one he is ready to kill. One might argue – reasonably – that he has little choice in the matter, but this is a time of reckoning. What dreams you choose to abandon when theyâre put to the test says everything about who you are. These are superhero comics – if another way could be found, they would find it.
The Highfather has abandoned his faith to don the armor of war once more. For Orion, however, thereâs still hope for a miracle. Like any good Greek tragedy, in unlocking the true potential of his children, the Highfather has also unlocked the true power of the one person he has no influence over whatsoever – the very child he sought to destroy.
The New Gods #4 is a pivotal point in the series. Much of what it has been building up to has come to a head. Orion confronts Mister Miracle, New Genesis enters what may be its final battle, and the (still unnamed) prophecy childâs powers are now unlocked. Metronâs little butterflies have created their hurricanes, and at this point, anything could happen. When the dust settles, what dreams will survive?
Now is where things get interesting.
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Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.
