Empire Strikes Back drastically changed the course of Luke's journey as a hero and Jedi. Star Wars' original trilogy then became a story about tainted legacy, with several elements that parallel Orion's debut series, New Gods. But despite the similarities between them, Orion's story has one crucial difference that makes his place within DC's New Gods much more complex than Luke's in Star Wars.
Originally appearing in 1971's New Gods #1 by Jack Kirby, Marv Wolfman, and Vince Colletta, device called a Mother Box, giving him a handsome face of New Genesis that masked his real heritage. But aside from his appearance, Orion could not escape the fact that he alone had special powers, thanks to a mysterious entity known as the Astro-Force, that no one else on New Genesis had.
Like Luke, Orion's heroism is shadowed by his father's villainy. But a crucial difference between them is that Orion's story, at its core, is about ing. Orion's ion for extinguishing evil in the universe, a value instilled in him on New Genesis, inadvertently causes his face to revert to its Apokoliptian form in the heat of battle. Even when he is fighting the good fight, and using his powers to stop his father, he is unable to escape the realities of war that have shaped the course of his life. As such, Orion isn't able to fully "" as someone from New Genesis because of the looming, physical truth about his parentage. In effect, Orion of the New Gods more adequately represents the "War" aspect of Star Wars, where even heroes are marked by the price of peace.
Orion Was DC's Luke Skywalker Several Years Before Star Wars Came Out.
Orion represents a type of comic book hero that emerged in the early-to-mid 1970s, one that Star Wars has only recently begun to feature in movies and TV with characters like Cassian Andor. While previous heroes of the Silver Age of Comics were well-meaning people with uncontroversial backgrounds, the revision of the Comics Code Authority in the early 1970s ushered in heroes with troubled backgrounds and sins they must atone for. At Marvel, Moon Knight was a violent mercenary who had committed war crimes. Shang-Chi's father was literally Fu Manchu, and Werewolf By Night was afflicted with a family curse. Orion embodied this new type of troubled hero with his parentage and changing physical appearance. These new characters had to first prove that they could be heroes, despite their capacity for evil.
This played out dramatically in Jack Kirby and Mike Royer's New Gods #5, when Orion battled a monster named Slig. During Orion and Slig's brutal battle, Orion got so enraged that his Apokoliptian face returned, prompting Slig to say, "Your love of destruction has forced your true face from hiding, Orion!!! The rumors about you are true!" before taunting him as "a mad, tormented animal." Thus, Orion's heroism comes at the cost of his perceived monstrosity.
New Gods Explores Many Similar Themes in Star Wars.
New Gods offers a more complex vision of the relationship between Luke and Vader in Star Wars, particularly in regard to Orion's powers. While Luke may have inherited his sensitivity to the Force from Vader, along with his prowess as a Jedi, the audience is never led to think that these abilities can impede his ability to do good (at least in the original trilogy). The audience's belief in Luke as a hero never wavers, even after he learns that Vader is his father, because they're never given a legitimate reason to think that he could ever go bad. As such, evil isn't a physical or cultural quality in Star Wars the way that it is in New Gods.
For Orion, having Darkseid as a father is a contradictory inheritance, because his powers as a hero are derived from a symbol of evil. He notes with anguish in Kirby and Royer's New Gods #3, after restoring his New Genesis appearance with a Mother Box, that no one on "New Genesis can wield the Astro-Force with [his] power." Unlike Luke, Orion's use of his powers comes at the cost of him suddenly resembling his father. While Luke can use the Force like any Jedi who doesn't have a Sith lord for a father, only Orion can access the Astro-Force, thanks to Darkseid.
Science fiction and fantasy stories are full of father-son conflicts, and New Gods and Star Wars are no different. Together, they have each explored the meaning of family legacy within a fantastical, world building-heavy context. They are both landmark stories that began in the 1970s, and continue to impact pop culture today. But above all, New Gods and Star Wars offer completely different visions of the psychological effects of war, likely due to the fact that Jack Kirby drew from his experiences as a veteran of the Second World War.
There are many aspects of the Star Wars mythos that can be traced back to elements from Jack Kirby's New Gods. The New Gods has a direct parallel to the Force in Star Wars, for instance. Whether or not these similarities were intentional on behalf of George Lucas, Orion of the New Gods emerges as the DC Universe's version of Luke Skywalker. But unlike Luke, Orion has not gotten the chance to be at the center of a sprawling epic since his New Gods debut. Though his father Darkseid continues to be a menace in the DC Universe, it is time Orion got the chance to lead his very own space opera on par with Star Wars.
