As the Lord of Apokolips, Darkseid isn’t above stooping to incredibly low depths to accomplish his goals. And when one of his underlings generated a smear campaign against the heroes of the DC Universe, dread Darkseid was all too eager to watch things play out.
After the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the DC Universe’s next great threat came in the form of Darkseid himself in the pages of Legends by John Ostrander and John Byrne. Determined to destroy the heroes of Earth, the dark deity commands his followers Dr. Bedlam and Glorious Godfrey to bring the planet to its knees. And when their anti-superhero subterfuge works all too well, these evil New Gods are nearly the death of DC’s greatest heroes.
With Darkseid’s monstrous entity Brimstone weaving a dangerous path of property destruction, Bedlam and Godfrey work to discredit the heroes of the DC Universe on a political and psychological platform. After the hero Shazam — then called Captain Marvel — is framed for killing a super villain created by Bedlam, Godfrey rallies the citizen populace against all superheroes in his identity as famous psychologist G. Gordon Godfrey. Heroes like Batman, Blue Beetle, and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner find themselves on the receiving end of public unrest, and this movement gains enough traction that even the President of the United States is forced to bend to the will of the people and issue an executive order criminalizing superheroes. Eventually, Godfrey’s movement is defeated after the heroes confront his virulent protests and armed soldiers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Though the vast majority of the crowd basks in Godfrey’s anti-capes rhetoric, the unyielding faith of one child causes the demagogue to reveal himself for the villain he is, discrediting his entire movement just as the President rescinds his executive order. Darkseid’s goal was to weaken Earth’s faith in its heroes, thus paving the way for faith in him. But the one thing the malevolent Uxas never counted on was the people’s innate faith in the Justice League and their allies. But while Darkseid’s forces were some of the first to try and discredit DC’s greatest heroes, they wouldn’t be the last.
Anti-superhero smear campaigns are something DC Comics fans have seen a lot of recently. Whether it’s the Magistrate’s onslaught against the reputations of Batman and his family in the ongoing Fear State, or the U.S. and Atlantis’ anti-Superman agenda resulting from his recent actions against their military, superheroes are always going to have their fair share of public detractors. And while these detractors exist both in comics and even among general audiences, what makes superheroes truly indestructible is the faith that their fans place in them.
Though the forces of Apokolips may have tried and failed to discredit Earth's heroes, they underestimated just how powerful an inspiration they really are. And with the way things are looking for DC Comics' heroes, villains like the Magistrate are soon to learn the same lesson. Darkseid wanted the world to believe in his legend rather than that of the Justice League, but his greatest scheme was ultimately just one more failed gambit
