Did the Justice League actually beat Darkseid, or did they play right into his hands? Either way, the one-shot special DC All In Saga: Darkseid vs the World shows the consequences from this latest encounter, which includes the creation of the Absolute Universe.
Conquering the Omniverse
On Earth-Zero, the world’s greatest heroes celebrated what looked like a decisive victory over the Lord of Apokolips following the brutal King Omega tournament. But if you ask Darkseid, every swing of a fist and every stand was part of a script he wrote himself. By orchestrating that tournament, he accomplished something far more dangerous than destroying a few cities. He broke humanity’s faith in its protectors. That widespread fear and panic generated a massive surge of cosmic Omega energy. Funneled directly through the heart of Apokolips, that raw power gave Darkseid the fuel he needed for his true masterpiece.
Darkseid has never been interested in ruling just one Earth. Controlling a new Source Wall reinforced with the crushed bodies of slain gods, he began systematically conquering alternate realities across the omniverse. The heroes he crushed along the way assumed he was driven by simple hatred, but in his mind, his quest comes from a dark kind of love. To understand why a cosmic tyrant talks about love, you have to look back at where he came from.
The Tragedy of Prince Uxas
Long before he became the stone-skinned terror of the multiverse, he was just Prince Uxas of Apokolips. Raised in the shadows of his father, King Yuga Khan, and his mother, Queen Heggra, Uxas was bred for conquest. When his older brother Drax stood in line to inherit the primal cosmic energy known as the Omega Force, Uxas murdered him. He stole the power of the Omega Force and transformed into Darkseid.
Yet power didn’t bring him peace. That came later when he met Suli, a brilliant scientist who believed the Omega Force wasn’t just a tool for mind control, but the secret to cosmic harmony across reality. Together, they had a son named Kalibak. But Queen Heggra saw Suli’s peaceful influence as a threat and had her poisoned. Heartbroken and enraged, Darkseid killed his mother in revenge and closed off his heart forever, dedicating his life solely to the pursuit of absolute power.
The Clash of Alpha and Omega
Fast forward eons later. After countless battles against Superman across time and space, Darkseid reached a terrifying realization. Superman wasn’t just an enemy standing in his way; Superman was his opposite.
If Darkseid represented Omega (conquest, control, and absolute order), then Superman was Alpha (unbridled creation, hope, and freedom). Fighting under the old rules of reality meant an endless cycle of give-and-take that neither side could ever truly win.
So, Darkseid decided to break the rules.
He launched a new quest to free the Omega Force from its Alpha counterpart. He made some heavy sacrifices along the way, losing his hand and his son Kalibak, before forcefully binding his consciousness to the Spectre, the divine spirit of vengeance. When he staged a massive assault on the Justice League’s outpost, he did it to bait Superman and the League into using everything they had to sever him from the Spectre. They thought they were killing him. In reality, Darkseid let them kill him because dying freed him from the laws of the main DC universe.
The Birth of the Absolute Universe
Unbound by reality, Darkseid was reborn in a brand-new realm of his own making: the Absolute Universe.
In this new reality, Omega energy is the foundation of all life. Darkseid guided the primordial soup of this universe to ensure that its version of DC’s greatest heroes would be forged without the key advantages they enjoyed on Earth-Zero:
Absolute Batman grew up stripped of Bruce Wayne’s massive wealth and tech. He fights as a working class agent of chaos against terrifying monsters in a hopeless city.
Absolute Wonder Woman wasn’t raised on the paradise island of Themyscira, but in the depths of Hell itself. She spent her days forced to fight through constant bloodbaths and even lost her arm in the process.
Absolute Superman was denied the loving adoptive parents who taught him hope and humanity. Instead, he arrived on Earth as a hunted alien who didn’t feel the need to hide who he is.
The Omega Singularity
Darkseid’s ultimate goal is what he calls the “Omega Singularity”. He sees Earth-Zero’s universe as a place of constant suffering, aging, and loss.
His solution? To collapse all of space, time, and alternate timelines back into a single, black point where everything exists at once, forever unchanging. To him, the main universe is an open, empty hand that lets things slip away. His universe is a closed fist holding everyone together. To complete this singularity, he has captured the main Alpha Superman alongside countless alternate versions, using them as the focal engine to rewrite reality across all time.
Pandora’s New Assignment
While Darkseid builds his singularity, another ancient force has entered the board: Pandora. Reconstituted on Apokolips after she was seemingly destroyed, Pandora is confronted by Darkseid. Though he initially attacks her for speaking lies, he quickly realizes her unique nature as a living witness to shifting realities makes her useful.
Darkseid appoints Pandora as his new Harbinger. Her mission is to travel across the infinite multiverse, monitoring events, ensuring Omega energy flows back to Apokolips. Her presence means his enemies only have one choice: serve him or be destroyed. Darkseid even anticipates that many will fight back, which suits him fine, as their deaths will provide even more energy to feed his core.
Pandora pretends to go along with his orders but secretly, she knows Darkseid is hiding something. Resolving to use her travels to seek out anyone who can stand against him, she sets out across the cosmos. The saga closes on a haunting image of a battered, ancient cosmic structure drifting in the void, hinting that figures long thought lost to time are about to wake up.
This storyline sets up the dual initiative across DC Comics, bridging the main Earth-Zero titles with the launch of the line-wide Absolute DC books. What happens when these two fundamentally opposed realities collide will play out next in the pages of Superman and Justice League Unlimited in 2027.
