Justice League Odyssey #24 just gave the sinister Darkseid a massive power boost and brought back his most powerful weapon in the process.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers about Justice League Odyssey #24, by Dan Abnett, Cliff Richards, Rain Beredo and Andworld Design, available now.
In the pages of Justice League Odyssey, Darkseid been gathering strength in order to create his new haven outside of reality the Perpetua and Lex Luthor have altered. Known as Sepulkore, Darkseid’s been plotting to rewrite reality his own way after the explosion of the Source Wall removed Apokolips.
In Issue #24, his full plan comes to fruition as Darkseid gets an upgrade that basically makes him a time lord, and in the process, he brings his deadliest weapon back: Apokolips — and its bigger and badder than ever.
The last issue found Darkseid killing the Eskaton and going after Epoch’s time machine, the Revision Mechanism. This would allow the villain to recreate and edit the Multiverse the way he wants, and thanks to Arla Hax’s betrayal, he gains access to the device. For the sake of self-preservation, she helps the villain stitch existence back together. His big play is to place Apokolips back in the Sphere of the Gods, and when it returns, its influence will have spread across many planets.
In other words, Darkseid will have a legion of war worlds that revere him as a king, similar to when he wielded the Anti-Life Equation in Final Crisis. Darkseid takes the time crystals of the device, forces Dex-Starr and Gamma Knife to help him and starts the procedure. It’s all about staying on Darkseid’s good side: if Gamma doesn’t obey him, he’ll edit her out.
He does have resistance, however, as Jessica Cruz, Blackfire, Orion and Co. dive into the past to get help in the form of the dead Justice Leaguers. While they’re preoccupied, time elapses in the Reef and Darkseid works his temporal shenanigans. The result is that Sepulkore breaks and the planets in the Ghost Sector are littered back out, including Tamaran, but with Apokolips as a template. Darkseid is ecstatic because he can feel all this power running through his veins. Both entities are intrinsically tied, after all, it’s believed he actually powers up his planet’s fire pits with his sinister aura and villainous energy.