Great Darkness

### Other Aliases

The Shadow Creature, The Original Darkness, The Primordial Darkness, The Ultimate Darkness, The Ultimate Evil, The Great Evil Beast, Shadow, Primal Darkness, Antigod, The Dark, The Beast, The Great Beast

## Origin

### Creators

Alan Moore, Stan Woch

The **Great Darkness** is the true source and the embodiment of darkness in the Omniverse. When the Creator said "Let there be light", the Darkness retreated and stayed inactive for unknown ages.

## History

### The Beginning

In the beginning, there was only the Great Darkness. It was so vast that the newborn The Light of Creation was unnoticeable in comparison. However, the Light expanded until eventually it became everything. In protest, the Great Darkness screamed, creating a flaw on the Light's immaculate perfection, beginning the birth of the Omniverse.

### Awakening

During the world-shattering event known as the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a cult known as the Brujeria wakened it, hoping to destroy God and re-shape the world. This was the culmination of a series of arcane machinations labelled as "American Gothic." John Constantine and the Swamp Thing worked for a long time to prevent the awakening, and chose to oppose the Evil. Siding with them was a gathering of supernatural heroes, as well as parts of the angelic and demonic armies of Heaven and Hell. Another faction of Hell, led by the Demons Three, sided with the Darkness. As the source of selfish impulse, Anti-Monitor himself was, in a way, under the influence of the Great Darkness.

The Primordial Darkness soon gained consciousness. Several heroes tried to battle it, but they were easily defeated and drawn into its almost infinite being. The encounters taught the Darkness a great deal. Etrigan told the Darkness that it was Evil, Dr. Fate explained that Evil was despicable, and the Spectre taught it revenge. All the encounters only served to further strengthen the Darkness and point its aggression towards Heaven. Finally, Swamp Thing entered the Darkness, and tried to explain his theory of evil—that good and evil define each other and that one cannot exist without its counterpart. The Darkness then reached its hand towards Heaven, and to the surprise of everyone, The Light reached out His hand as well. The two of them embraced. The world was never the same again. Good and Evil would still exist, but Light and Dark would remain locked in a truce, a truce supposedly contingent on the multiverse remaining limited to a single world.

### Fate

The event sparked a civil war in Hell, that ended with it being ruled by a Triumvirate, composed of Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Azazel. The realm of the Darkness has since become known as the Shadowlands, a power source for beings such as the Shade, Culp, Obsidian, and others.[*citation needed*]

### Deeds in the Dark

Some, like Doctor Multiverse came to believe that the Great Darkness cared not for good or evil, life or creation. All the Great Darkness truly desired is for the end of all things, for everything to be nothing once again, as it was before Creation. However, this was untrue.

The Darkness did not seek to undo the cosmos- it simply wished to engage with the light above, to participate and observe the great stories of the multiverse. In its own words, "your flicker is the only light I get."

In the ruins of Multiverse-2, Pariah made psychic contact with a portion of the Great Darkness, causing the fragment of the Great Darkness' power to be corrupted by his madness.

To this end, even as it slumbered, the corrupted fragment of the Great Darkness continued to exert its influence. As servants of selfish impulse, many beings unknowingly served its desire to spark conflict with the Light, including Gog, the Anti-Life Entity, Extant, Superboy-Prime, and Mister Mind. Eventually, its influence resulted an Infinite Crisis, resulting in the return of the multiverse, breaking the truce between the darkness and the light. The Source dispatched a new order of Monitors to contain and maintain this new multiverse, so that their efforts might slow the seemingly inevitable awakening of the Great Darkness.

However, Darkseid, one of the few beings aware of the true nature and existence of the Great Darkness, had other plans. Darkseid manipulated prophecy and destiny to trigger a Final Crisis, intending to draw out the Great Darkness so that he might control it. His plans succeeded, but at the cost of his own life, resulting in the shattering of his Godhead. At this moment, when the Multiverse was weakest, the Darkness manifested in Mandrakk, the First Monitor, who it had corrupted. However, his son, Nix Uotan, activated the multiverse's immune system against this Ultimate Enemy: Superheroes. Mandrakk was defeated, and the Miracle Machine healed the fabric of the multiverse.

As it continued to slumber, Pariah's influence touched Doctor Manhattan and pushed the quantum life-form to steal time and history from the heroes of Earth-0, a change that would echo out through the rest of the Multiverse. Elsewhere, the Right Hand of the Great Darkness, the hand it had once used to make truce with the Light, became something new under Pariah's influence- the Empty Hand. The Empty Hand grew an army of Gentry from the carcass of the old Multiverse, Multiverse-2.

The Empty Hand made its base in the ruins of Earth 7, already destroyed at its behest, to construct the Oblivion Machine and end the never-ending tale of the super-heroes once and for all. Confronted by Superman of Earth 23 and several other heroes, it informed them that it would soon strike with legions at its command, and informed them it already destroyed "Multiverse-2" before banishing them back to Earth 8 so that it could complete its plans; they, in turn, formed Justice Incarnate and warned the heroes of 50 worlds in order to prepare against it.

Pariah's influence continued to spread. Soon, Barbatos attacked, and nearly suceeded in sinking the whole of creation into the Dark Multiverse, beginning the Metal Wars. Though Barbatos and its servants were defeated, this set off a chain of events that resulted in a drastic restructuring of the multiverse.

### Dark Crisis

Pariah drew power from the Darkness to create worlds of his own to act as tailor-made prisons for the Multiverse's superheroes. However everyone, including Pariah himself, assumed that the Darkness was controlling him and he was merely its "voice".

Following the recreation of the Multiverse by the Hands due to Wonder Woman's actions, Darkseid, his shattered godhead reformed, engaged in a renewed effort to steal the power of the Great Darkness for himself, utilizing a reborn Roy Harper, the Psycho-Pirate, and a brainwashed Barry Allen. After his plans were thwarted, he revealed to X-Tract that a great war was coming.

Under Pariah's influence, the Darkness manipulated Darkseid into obtaining a crack in the Multiverse and delivering it to the Empty Hand, the Darkness's one willing servant. The Hand used the crack to open a rift into Multiverse-2 and crossed over, daring Darkseid to follow him. Darkseid did so, and was captured and brainwashed by the Darkness.

While working as an agent of T.R.U.S.T., Slade Wilson received a visions from the Weird of the danger of the Great Darkness, and built a power base, vowing to use it to oppose the Darkness. To this end, he seized control of T.R.U.S.T. (in actuality a new form of the Secret Society of Supervillains) and began shoring up defenses against the coming Darkness. However, as a result of a scheme by Geo-Force, Deathstroke was killed, and in the process of being resurrected by his followers, Slade fell prey to the Great Darkness' power, and served it as Pariah's general on Earth during the Dark Crisis.

Justice League Dark realized that the Darkness, an elemental force which is neither good nor evil, was acting very strangely by recruiting and directing an army of supervillains. They sent a task force, including John Constantine, into the Starheart to try and investigate the Darkness. The Darkness pulled Constantine away from the others and told him that it had no intentions of destroying the Multiverse and was not responsible for the Dark Crisis. The others found Pariah's Antimatter Chamber from the first Crisis at the heart of the Darkness, and Constantine realized that Pariah had corrupted the Darkness rather than the other way around as they had assumed.

## Powers, Abilities and Skills

### Power Level

**High Outerversal**: Considered to be the darkness equal to The Presence's light, with their clash destroying all Creation

## Notes

* This character or object is an adaptation of Darkness, a character or object in traditional stories. These include, but may not be limited to religious texts, myth, and/or folk lore. More information on the original can be found at Wikipedia.org.
* The Great Darkness is not to be confused with the Legion of Super-Heroes storyline, "The Great Darkness Saga".

## Related

### Footnotes

1. ↑ *Justice League Incarnate* #4
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 *Justice League Incarnate* #4
3. ↑ *Swamp Thing* (Volume 2) #50
4. ↑ *Sandman* (Volume 2) #4
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 *Dark Crisis: The Deadly Green* #1
6. ↑ *Justice League: Road to Dark Crisis* #1
7. ↑ *The Multiversity* #2
8. ↑ *Justice League Incarnate* #5
9. ↑ *Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths* #5
10. ↑ *Dark Nights: Death Metal* #7
11. ↑ *Infinite Frontier* #6
12. ↑ *Deathstroke Inc.* #2
13. ↑ *Deathstroke Inc.* #7
14. ↑ *Dark Crisis* #1
15. ↑ *Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths* #4