The New Gods #11 [1972]

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In “Darkseid and Sons” Kirby is forced to quickly wrap up part of the saga of the New Gods, confirming that Orion and Kalibak are half-brothers, both sired by Darkseid, along with some details about their past and the history of betrayal and assassination in the royal family of Apokolips.

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The story sees Kalibak escape from where he was held by the authorities and head straight for Dave Lincoln’s place to confront Orion. Lightray decides to take a crack at him first, but proves fairly ineffective, so Orion attacks. The battle stirs the spirit of the Black Racer, who senses and impending death and rides to do his duty. The battle goes poorly for Orion until Darkseid realizes that DeSaad is feeding Kalibak energy while feeding off the emotion of the combatants, earning death by the Omega Effect. Orion and Kalibak face off for the final time, with the Black Racer ultimately taking Kalibak, and Orion finally accepts his birthright as son of Darkseid and vows to confront his father and end the war….

And then the last panel is an ad for KAMANDI. Go figure.

I’m pretty sure Kirby was aware that the series had been cut short while he was working on this issue, and it’s pretty remarkable that despite that he’s still fills it with a lot of energy and interesting character bits while bringing the story to as satisfying a conclusion as we have any right to expect under the circumstances.

Mike Royer inks the 22-page story and the cover.

One thought on “The New Gods #11 [1972]

  1. RAB

    My assumption — based on nothing more than subjective observation and willfully ignoring anything said by people who were in a position to know the facts, so take this with a big dose of salt — is that Kirby became aware New Gods was endangered while he was working on issue #10. The page count abruptly drops from 26 to 22…and not incidentally, the “Bug” storyline that started with breathtaking epic sweep and the promise of major revelations to come suddenly gets wrapped up with a deus ex machina involving Lightray and a laser cannon that happens to be handy. There’s even a subtle change in the art on the last few pages, as if Kirby was well into the issue and changed his mind about where he was going with it. At least that’s my wild speculation and I’m sticking to it!

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