I'm low-key starting to hate Superboy Prime. This new comic run of his is just giving me second-hand embarrassment.
Breaking out Manchester Black to be a cheap strawman of people who don't adore DC or Superman again after all the interesting things Morrison did with him is eye-rolling, and every page it feels like Prime's one step away from going on some tangent about how James Gunn saved everything before shouting, "Cause I'm a le heckin' wholesome hopecore punkrocker yes I am!"
Will admit though, Chester's rebuttal to Prime's uninspired shpiel of a monologue about how there are no heroes in his world got a mild chuckle out of me.
Haven't seen The Odyssey quite yet. New job training is keeping me busy from that, but it's quite entertaining to watch the online right lobotomize itself over it.
If you've been reading my Fourth World posting, you might have noticed me mentioning Orion and Lightray's relationship. This is because they're in love and I'm obsessed with them. Please join me in grumpy/sunshine-but-they're-alien-demigods hell, with visual references below.
So Orion, as we know, is the son of Darkseid who was raised on New Genesis but has always felt different and monstrous compared to his peers. Lightray is his best friend, who thinks Orion is just the best thing since sliced bread and says so constantly.
This is literally how we're introduced to them, in New Gods #1:
Lightray: Don't be sad. Hug time!
Orion: Hugs are not for one such as me. But you're still my best friend.
Lightray: Please let me enter your chambers.
Orion: NO THEY ARE TOO DARK.
Lightray: D:
This panel, from #6, sums up their whole dynamic really well:
Lightray doesn't crave battle the way Orion does but he is determined to stay by his side, while Orion doesn't want Lightray to fight beside him because he thinks Lightray is too good and pure to be tainted by violence.
Zero personal space.
So one of the things about Orion is that his real face is sort of brutish and not traditionally handsome (the eyebrows are WILD), but he uses his Mother Box (like a living pocket computer that loves you) to make himself look more like the people of New Genesis. In #8, he gets into a knock-down, drag-out fight with his half-brother Kalibak that nearly kills them both, and Mother Box can't maintain the illusion (and also his face is, like, pulverized). And then this happens:
I WEEP. LIGHTRAY LOVES YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, ORION.
New Gods was canceled soon after this, but when Kirby returned a decade later, he went all in on the homoerotic devotion. So Orion goes to Apokolips to kill his dad and rescue his mom, and who do you think follows him?
That second panel makes me laugh so hard. "Here, honey, you forgot your Scooty Puff Jr!"
My favorite thing about this is that Lightray is playing dumb. He shot at Orion earlier and then said something vague about missing on purpose...but he didn't:
HE REALLY TRIED TO WOUND ORION ENOUGH TO STOP HIS SUICIDE MISSION. And the way he just shuts his eyes and takes Orion's anger because he doesn't care what happens as long as he saves his friend's life...! (Orion doesn't hurt him, they just touch each other a lot.)
Anyway they argue for multiple pages, with Orion insisting that Lightray go home and Lightray insisting that he stay, until finally:
This is so intensely romantic and also so unintentionally hilarious that I can't stand it. The homoerotic gazing into one another's eyes and then the stupid mutual thumbs up! Whatever is going on with that closeup of Orion in the second panel! I die!
...And you know who else dies? Orion! Or at least he comes very close (it's unclear), but is rescued by a freedom fighter named Himon and nursed back to health by Himon and his daughter Bekka. We get a little romance between Orion and Bekka, but we also get Lightray coming to visit:
That is some FULL CONTACT wrestling, boys. Orion pinning Lightray to the ground while telling him it's good to see him is so much, but the fourth panel is even mucher. My goodness.
And then things get serious, because they both believe they are going to die in the upcoming battle (they don't), so they bid each other farewell and Lightray leaves, and then:
Orion yells after Lightray how smart and funny he is and then collapses in despair because his friend is gone. "HOW LIKE A WANDERING STAR HE SEEMS." Oh my god, Orion.
That's it for Kirby, so I'll move on to other writers and artists, but I want to clear that I'm only sharing the most intense scenes between them. There are so many panels, from Kirby and others, of Lightray faithfully following Orion around, joyously welcoming him back to New Genesis, gently teasing him, and talking about how brave and noble he is. And of Orion only smiling for Lightray, going feral when he gets hurt, and telling him he's too good and pretty for battle. And of the two of them touching each other. A lot.
Literally just two random examples. THEY DO THIS SHIT ALL THE TIME.
The next really big moment comes in New Gods (1995), where the Source (basically God/Heaven) becomes corrupted and Lightray goes evil and Orion has to beat him up to stop him and I will never ever ever recover from these pages:
"You want the beast? Do you like it?" on its own is...hoo boy, SOMETHING. But it is eclipsed by the tremulous "Maybe...maybe if I can just hold him" and Orion gathering Lightray up in his arms while telling him he loves him. LIKE. THIS IS SO MUCH. (P.S. Lightray's fine don't worry. And yes, he does want the beast.)
Then we get to Orion (PLEASE read this comic) and the biggest smile Orion has ever smolt:
Look at how happy he is!!! You need to understand that his mother died in his arms ten minutes ago and he's still like "Lightray! Omg hi!!!" (To be fair, his mother was terrible.) Plus bonus unnecessary touching, Lightray's love language being gifts, and Orion giggling and twirling his hair while going "Omg you're so smart."
(Also, when Lightray mentions his "brief but troubling visit" to Apokolips in the second panel, what's not saying is that he put on a silly disguise and went to see a fortuneteller to try to figure out if Orion's mom was lying about Darkseid not being his real dad (she was; again, she was terrible), and when the fortuneteller is like "You DARE come to Apokolips?!" he goes "I would dare anything for my friend!" I know you would, honey. I know you would.)
The next bit requires some explanation. So, as briefly as possible: Orion kills Darkseid (or so he thinks), takes over Apokolips, and tries very hard to change it for the better. He also accidentally gains possession of the Anti-Life Equation, the formula Darkseid is always searching for that eradicates free will, and gradually is driven to use it to FORCE everyone on Apokolips to be good. And Earth. And New Genesis.
Eventually, Orion is seemingly killed, but actually he's been teleported somewhere unfathomably far away, where he realizes what he's done and sinks into suicidal despair. In the midst of this, he manages to both destroy the Anti-Life Equation AND save all of reality (and nearly die in the process), but he still thinks that because he used the Equation, he's irredeemable and doesn't deserve to exist.
So when he's teleported back to Earth and captured by a human who blinds him and rigs him up to a torture device so that he can drain Orion's life force and use it to be eternally youthful, Orion just...lets it happen. Because he thinks he deserves it. For SEVEN MONTHS.
But eventually he's like "Wait...I deserve this, but probably whatever is being done with my energy is not good and I should stop it." He tries to escape but only manages to let out a single scream.
Luckily, Lightray has been searching for him nonstop for those seven months, despite the face that Orion is supposed to be dead. And then we get this:
To be clear: this is sweet, gentle Lightray absolutely obliterating the men who kept Orion in the torture device.
Nakey.
Lightray gives Orion the crushed remnants of his wrist cuffs, and Orion does a magical girl transformation about it:
For everyone playing along at home, that's the second time Orion has canonically told Lightray that he loves him.
Anyway, Orion goes off to get revenge on the guy who did this to him (it's very satisfying, please read Orion), and then he's depressed some more until he has some brotherly bonding time with Scott and finally feels well enough to go back to New Genesis. His last line of dialogue in the series is "For it is late, and the sunrise and friend Lightray await us in the gleaming city of the gods." OKAY!
Tragically, almost every New Gods appearance after this is complete dogshit, although there is a great moment in Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps (a Rebirth series) where they need information from Orion but he's comatose so they bring in a telepath and the only word he can get out of Orion's mind is "Lightray." I'LL BET.
IN CONCLUSION: Orion and Lightray love each other so so much and I believe it is honoring Jack Kirby's legacy to think about them smooching. It's what the King would have wanted!
Thinking HARD about Orion going to an Earth therapist like "The profound rage within me is all-consuming...unsated by battle...stoked fiercely and at odd times...a curse given to me by my father." and the therapist is like "listen we inherit all sort of things from our parents, but our day-to-day emotions are something we can control" and then he shows her a picture of darkseid and she's like "listen (1) yeah i can't fucking help you (2) jsyk we don't take your co-pay"
lightray: they don't take your insurance? RIDICULOUS give me your motherbox i'm calling themtruly obsessed with how Orion's Mother Box is just a cell phone that is also an anti-depressantlike when Orion got extra SAD and therefore MAD when he was a teen was Highfather like Ya We Need To Get Him On Mother Box
A rare 22-degree solar halo appeared above Devils Tower in Wyoming.
The ring formed as sunlight passed through millions of tiny hexagonal ice crystals high in the atmosphere, creating one of nature's most beautiful optical displays.
It lasted only a short time before the clouds changed and the halo faded away.
