Orion: The Gates of Apokolips

by Walter Simonson, with Jon Bogdanove, Dave Gibbons, Klaus Janson, Frank Miller, and Bill Reinhold

I've never been as big a fan of Jack Kirby's Fourth World characters as most DC comics readers appear to be, but I have heard a lot of good things about Walter Simonson's run on Orion, and have been a fan of his work since his tenure on The Mighty Thor.  When I saw this trade at a very low price a little while back, I decided it was time to give this series a try.

I found I had mixed emotions about this comic.  Simonson's art is as great as it's ever been, and he excels at portraying gigantic super-being conflicts, like the massive fight between Orion and Darkseid that takes up the entire fifth issue collected here, but I found that a lot of the standard silliness that has always marred The Fourth World for me brought the book down.  The inclusion of the Newsboy Legion served no purpose other than to pad out the story, and generally irritate me.

Otherwise, this is pretty standard stuff.  Orion is angry that he might not actually be the son of Darkseid, and decides to defend his mother Tigra's honour by tracking him down and challenging him.  Of course, Darkseid is back on Earth looking for the Anti-Life Equation.  There's lots of fighting, which leads to the aforementioned large confrontation at the end.  I'm not sure how long this series lasted beyond these original five issues, but I would hope that there was a little more substance to them.

I did really enjoy the 'Tales of the New Gods' back-ups, which featured some terrific artists like Miller and Gibbons, although I think that the best one was the Granny Goodness origin story by Simonson and Janson.