Comic Book Questions & Discussion

Originally posted by DarkSaint85
Of course, not saying it's a good excuse.

But it still happens. Clinging to a specific interpretation to die on that hill shouldn't be done, imo, because tomorrow they can write that the GEB is really Batman's dad, and the Presence is Superman's dad, and they're the avatars of them.

Or to draw from the earlier example, is Death of the Endless just an aspect of death now?

Originally posted by Astner
But that only emphasizes the issue. How can we rely on works like Lucifer if it has been contradicted through and throughout? These aren't nitpicks, the original run makes no sense if we account for the recent retcons. There's little to nothing that can be salvaged from it.

Does it jive with Carey's or Gaiman's original interpretation of the character? Not really. Although per Watters-canon, their stories could have just revolved around one specific avatar of Lucifer. Watters himself, however, made Lucifer much more of an all-encompassing entity: quite literally the equal/opposite/antithesis of the Presence... And it seems like DC-proper has stuck with that concept(for better or worse.)

Originally posted by Astner
Or to draw from the earlier example, is Death of the Endless just an aspect of death now?

Originally posted by Astner
But that only emphasizes the issue. How can we rely on works like Lucifer if it has been contradicted through and throughout? These aren't nitpicks, the original run makes no sense if we account for the recent retcons. There's little to nothing that can be salvaged from it.

Or to draw from the earlier example, is Death of the Endless just an aspect of death now?

We..... don't? That's why we have characters like PR Beyonder or Classic Kingpin.

Originally posted by DarkSaint85
Classic Kingpin.

Originally posted by Galan007
Well if we go by Watters' series, then there are several different "avatars" of Lucifer that all seem to coexist simultaneously, depending on the 'need' of the story or whathaveyou: one is the ruler of Hell, one is the owner of a bar in LA, one is the Angel Samael, one is a crazed/bearded strandcast who is stuck in Hell, one is a demonoid goat-thing, one is GEB... and so on.

Does it jive with Carey's or Gaiman's original interpretation of the character? Not really. Although per Watters-canon, their stories could have just revolved around one specific avatar of Lucifer. Watters himself, however, made Lucifer much more of an all-encompassing entity: quite literally the equal/opposite/antithesis of the Presence... And it seems like DC-proper has stuck with that concept(for better or worse.)

Even if that were the case at one point, it seems to have been (re)retconned in far more recent continuity:

Lex: "The dead have come back to life! Several of them!"
Death of the Endless: "It happens! In the end, they ALL come back to ME."

Originally posted by DarkSaint85
We..... don't? That's why we have characters like PR Beyonder or Classic Kingpin.

Originally posted by Parmaniac
Kingpin is Kingpin

👆

Originally posted by Smurph
I just read the stuff Phil posted, not the rest of the comic yet, but my takeaway was that GEB is all the badness. It spoke in the first person whether as Upside Down Man or Trigon or Lucifer and notably, as Trigon, seemed to reference Raven in the father/daughter sense.

So my read wasn't that GEB = Lucifer per se but that Lucifer is ultimately one form (maybe the greatest/purest) of GEB.

Also the scene reads like a clear homage to that s7 scene in Buffy where the First Evil takes the form of all the Big Bads as it monologues...

GEB was said to be Presence’s equal or slightly less powerful. The same can’t be said about Lucifer.

After getting freed, superman looks different. Did he use the dream to power himself from the multiverse or the dream universe?

They're all different

superman fans might have a stroke

Originally posted by Smurph
I just read the stuff Phil posted, not the rest of the comic yet, but my takeaway was that GEB is all the badness. It spoke in the first person whether as Upside Down Man or Trigon or Lucifer and notably, as Trigon, seemed to reference Raven in the father/daughter sense.

So my read wasn't that GEB = Lucifer per se but that Lucifer is ultimately one form (maybe the greatest/purest) of GEB.

Also the scene reads like a clear homage to that s7 scene in Buffy where the First Evil takes the form of all the Big Bads as it monologues...

Originally posted by Diesldude
i agree with this interpretation as well.

GEB was said to be Presence’s equal or slightly less powerful. The same can’t be said about Lucifer.

I think Lucifer is GEB in the sense that GEB is all the darkness in DC and Lucifer is (now) the archetypal face of that concept.

I think Lucifer is not GEB insofar as GEB is also Trigon. And Upside Down Man. And... does GEB turn into Empty Hand after Trigon and before Lucy?

Similarly and conversely, as Galan/Qwerty pointed out there are aspects of Lucifer that may not 'overlap' with GEB.

Just seems like the great darkness is a concept that runs through all the badness in DC.

Originally posted by Diesldude
i agree with this interpretation as well.

GEB was said to be Presence’s equal or slightly less powerful. The same can’t be said about Lucifer.

A lot of posters assume this and maybe there are on-panel secondhand accounts that I’m missing but… when you read GEB’s original definitive portrayal in American Gothic… I dunno.

kinda interesting lucifer has avatars, just like darkseid

here's how i see it, presence was just an aspect of the dc supreme being

dc supreme should be the combine of presence, the source, the overvoid

so geb might equal to the presence but never the true God.

^ Interesting that Dan Watters suggested Lucifer can appear in different forms? You mean Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, the First Fallen, Old Nick, Mephistopheles, Ole Scratch, the Serpent in the Garden, the Great Red Dragon, Samael, the Adversary, the Great Beast, the Anti-Christ… that guy?

Starting to think there isn’t a literary character that has more avatars/forms than Lucifer in human history. His portrayal in Vertigo comics ain’t exactly revolutionary.

pretty much, every evil big bad villain could be aspect of the "devil"

since evil came from satan

it's pretty overplayed

Originally posted by Galan007
I was just rereading the most recent Lucifer series, and it occurred to me that Lucifer and the GEB were implied to be the same entity:
https://ibb.co/18B0D6j
Lucifer: "Without perversion, all is unified. All is one in nothingness. Have you ever considered that perhaps that's why he made me the way I am? He needed shadow to give his light definition. Without elements of each other, perfect light and perfect darkness are one and the same."

Moreover, when some of Lucifer's avatars were depicted alongside him, we see the GEB's hand present:
https://ibb.co/Rvg5CCV

Dan Watters(writer of the series) confirms that the hand was indeed meant to represent the GEB:
https://ibb.co/8gjrw0v

So at least in Watters' view, the GEB is just one of Lucifer's many avatars/personifications. Granted, I'm sure DC has retconned this little factoid in current continuity, but I still thought it was interesting...

Originally posted by MrMind
kinda interesting lucifer has avatars, just like darkseid

if we want to get technical and literal, in that image of Lucifer's other selves, it's only GEB's hand that appears... and it's his left hand... which, a little while ago, was also what Darkseid was supposed to be...

Or maybe Darkseid was the left arm. And TEH was the right hand?

This body metaphor should probably die now.

😂

Don't see how to reconcile GEB in Swamp Thing being the same guy from Ssndman, what with the two acting nothing alike.

Originally posted by ODG

A lot of posters assume this and maybe there are on-panel secondhand accounts that I’m missing but… when you read GEB’s original definitive portrayal in American Gothic… I dunno.

Idk I didn’t read much after that first instance where GEB merged with the presence.