Seeing the Great Darkness cover in Back Issue reminded me of something..

Darkseid created five servants - The Guardian, Mallor, Kalibak, Orion and Superman mockeries.

But in the annual there's this one



Now, it's not got Superman's cape. It's not got the bulk or club of Kalibak. It's not using the Astro scooter like Orion, it doesn't have the long hair of Mallor and it hasn't the diminutive shape of the Guardian.

Also, Darkseid says that he then has to make another to replace it. So, who was it, if not one of the above?

If you had to pick a character it could be, who would it be?

Did Darkseid have to make an Orion when one of his original mockeries failed?

Anyway, I can;t recall if the one that hit the satellite appeared again, but I think the first one they captured was Mallor.

Great topic!

The key might be its feet. Do we know who / what would have similar toes in the 21st century? Etrigan? One of the Omega Men?

Wow. I don't even remember this LOL
My guess is that it is Tigorr of the Omega Men.
Yes, based on the legs

Looks like a Kirby parademon to me.

That makes sense.

It's Batman.

From the hands and feet, it looks like it could be a version of Comet Queen, although this admittedly doesn't make much sense.

"Crushed by a misguided hunk of metal" - sounds like this Servant isn't invulnerable. Then there are the claws and the somewhat odd shape of the eyes.

Wolverine!!!

While the feet are an unusual feature of the creature, they aren;t unusual across the servants.

Below we have the feet of the Guardian, Kalibak and Superman mockeries. As you can see, manicure time was at a premium when hunting down artefacts for the Dark Lord.

Would that aura around him be a clue? Maybe a GL clone? (I can't remember if the other 5 typically had auras.) I wonder if it was mentioned in one of the lettercols.....

yeah the servants were monstrous versions of the cloned original.

I'd say it was Wonder Woman. he he. Too bad we can't ask one of the creators. It is such a great question!

I bet it was no one per se though. Just a teaser.

I think the best guesses so far are Tigorr and a parademon.

Considering how the Servant basically got killed off like a star trek redshirt, while the other Servants were kicking ass and incredibly difficult to beat by several Legionnaires combined, a parademon may make sense.

I always assumed it was Orion v.1. It didn't cut the mustard so he remade it.

All the others were legends of Darkseid's last emergence. He had invested a lot of his remaining energy into their creation.

It would seem more fitting that this one was also a legend of the past.

Although it was taken out early in it's master's exploration of his surroundings, Mallor and the Guardian each had exploitable weaknesses. As had the Superman & Orion mockeries in the end.

Gawd, so you think it was...a Teen Titan?

(In-joke for how the Titans basically became redshirts for the Crisis-of-the-minute....)

My guess is Mog Yagor!

They really should have had him eaten by a space beast to make it clearer, though!

Even a weakened Orion is shown in his appearances to be able to survive such an impact though.

When I was posting this up I wondered if the replacement for this one was Orion, thus sowing the seeds for Darkseid's own fall later in the arc. He's very aware of his age having past later on, and that would have been an interesting little touch, to show that this was indeed the case.


Bearing in mind that this was written when Superboy Prime would have ran screaming from the Titans angst, they were my first thoughts. A legend of Tamaran? but there's no hair trail. I don't think you'd want to mess with the daughter of Trigon, even as a mockery.



My thought was that the mockeries are supposed to be some sort of Legend twisted in the same way the parademons were, hence the feet. It's my favourite too though. He first appeared in June 1981. There was some Giffen involvement in the Omega Men.

As an aside remember that v4 brought back Lobo, as a Darkseid drone? Lobo popped up early in the Omega Men too, although that would have been 1983 and this was 1982. It would have been a nice opening and closing to Darkseid and the Legion (well, before DnA anyway.)



That got me thinking about heroes with auras. The Omega Men's Auron was an early contender. Then I took the aura away, and you can't see the character at all as it's in space So, I think it's only there so you can see something other than space. It would have been another Byrne Alpha flight snow fight moment



Yes, I can see that. The legendary Yagor knows it's about to face it's death against the space beast. The trauma of that knowledge is so great it paralyses the mockery with fear. Anything approaching it in space is considered to be doom!

I was looking for a left field answer when some really obvious ones were staring right at me

Dev inquired to Levitz on Facebook. Paul doesn't remember, but he suspects he "...had someone in mind".

Maybe a dead Legionnaire!

Ferro Lad!

I remember thinking that when I read them.

Tigorr does seem the best bet, of the options listed. He doesn't seem as heavy a hitter as most of the others (or as Legion-centric as the Mallor ancestor), but being a character that Giffen was already working with might give him a leg up.

I would have initially thought one of the Deep Six, due to the Darkseid / Kirby association, and the look, but none of them have the same sort of gravitas or relevance as the others.

Very cool question, 'though, thothkins!

Tigorr would make sense, since the Servant was crushed so easily. Awesome detective work guys!

I had a thought that the Servants had been chosen at least in part because of who encountered Apokalips in the 30th Century

The first two in were Mon El and Shadow Lass. Darkseid rises from his slumber, in part because they have arrived.



Perhaps Superman would have been a mockery anyway, but it's a pretty close fit for the Daxamite.

While it could be her ancestor was a huge galactic heroine, the Mallor mockery could well have been chosen especially because of who made first contact.

Then I remembered that two other Legionnaires went across the planet before the storyline started.



Unfortunately the pods containing the Servants had already just been formed. The Legionnaires, Phantom Girl and Star Boy see the energy burst as the mockeries are sent on their way.

In the years following the Great Darkness saga, we saw Phantom Girl switched to the 20th century to become a galactic hero as Phase* while Star Boy would return to the 20/21st century to become the best Starman as Danny Blaine.

It was the Star Boy one I had in mind. It would have made for a lovely bit of retconning fun, had Darkseid used the 21st century legend because the same man was encountered over Apokalips 1000 years later. Alas, not to be.

Incidentally, here's the creatures who have just been formed.



I don't see a Mallor type one. So, ignoring my first couple of lines, could the Mallor one have been the weak link. Could she have been created only because the first Mockery got thumped?**

it's not as powerful as thinking that the Orion one was the replacement, with Darkseid therefore seeding his own doom. But the Orion mockery seems to be clearly standing in the middle.

* It turns out Phanotom Girl did actually die, and Phase was a relative, for some reason.

** When I first read this, many aeons ago I thought that the Mockery had been hit by the descendant of the JLA satellite. This would have been before said satellite got blown up in Crisis, and then blown up again in the JLA annual for good measure in an early plot snafu.

And there would come a clue...

well, when I dig the issue out there will.

I may be imagining things, but i seem to recall this being expained in the letter columns a few months later

I'll take a look.

Who says it has to be a hero? Shirley there are legendary villains with funny feet, such as Omega.

Chicken Lad - Legion reject with the power to sense fights and utterly avoid them. Plucked* from his time in some pointless mega crossover back to the 20th century. There he would become the template for a Darkseid mockery.





*sorry

When I grow up I want to be
Just like Chicken Boy
I want to build a perfect world
For every girl and boy
I want to play accordion
And fill your life with joy
When I grow up I want to be
Just like Chicken Boy
- The Chicken Boy Polka Those Darned Accordians


Listen to it here.



Chicken Boy Shop
5558 N. Figueroa Street
Los Angeles CA 90042

He's already a legend!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcQfy1SavdQ

There was one more panel relating to this in the annual, appearing a few pages before the others.




A millennium away a certain Kryptonian feels the chill of something evil. I had wondered about the date used. But this might be Superman and not Superboy. The chill presumably being as the Superman mockery has been born in #289.

Wow thothkins, Klar Ken, and JimGallagher; you guys really seem to know your chicken! So, I've got just the song for you at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COMWwwv_MTk In fact, it proves that Chicken Lad was, indeed, from the late 20th or early 21st century.

oh awesome, I loved their Sugar Water video when it came out.

I now think that the Chicken Lad mockery threw off Darkseid's evil and allowedhimself to get hit by the debris.

A highly plausible supposition. The only rubble I have with it is that its a bit too hard hitting, in my opinion.

Seriously, though, I love the Sugar Water video. In fact, I only came across Cibo Matto last week for the first time, and am absolutely entranced with their work-to-date.

I know what my entry in one of the music threads is going to be next week. Thanks for reminding me of them Mediocre Boy.

My pleasure. I'll keep an eye open for your Cibo Matto thread.