Over six issues, Ram V’s The New Gods Vol. 1: The Falling Sky only moves by inches. The slow pace is fitting, even precedented, for Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, with Falling Sky often more concerned with exploring the mythology than dealing with Darkseid’s death and marauding hordes of otherworldly invaders. This provides even more time for the audience to enjoy pages upon pages of fantastic art — series artist Evan Cagle, but also Jorge Fornes, Riccardo Federici, Andrew MacLean, Filipe Andrade, and more. New Gods is already shaping up to be another masterpiece from Ram V following his The Swamp Thing triumph.

[Review contains spoilers]

At Falling Sky’s outset, we’re in a very capable New Gods story that feels of a piece with Tom King’s Mister Miracle. In the wake of Darkseid’s apparent death in the DC All In special and everyone going a little mad, Orion is charged with killing a Source-powered child, and torn between duty and mercy, he gives Mister Miracle Scott Free seven days to stop him. Marital hilarity ensues as Scott tries to leave his wife Big Barda and infant daughter Olivia “Liv” Free behind, only for Barda to insist they set off together. Meanwhile Fourth World stalwarts from Desaad to Metron to Serifan (plus Max Lord, playing the Morgan Edge role?) conspire behind the scenes.

But it’s in the third chapter where Ram V’s New Gods really opens up. Not just one or two pages are given over to co-artist Federici, but nearly half the issue, as Ram V weaves together new and established lore from Kirby but also John Byrne’s New Gods work and more. Notably, the story is told to Metron by the Chronicler, a one-note character I predicted we’d never see again after his initial appearance in James Tynion’s Dark Knights: Death Metal: Rise of the New God. As the story continues, we also see Grayven, son of Darkseid, who debuted in the 1990s in Ron Marz' Kyle Rayner Green Lantern run, and also the New God Shadowfall, not seen since her first appearance in the New 52 Green Lantern: Godhead crossover.

Which is to say, first, we come to find that Falling Sky will be far less straightforward than the initial chapters would suggest, with guest artists and side stories — Lightray’s friendship with the Black Racer, the “genesis” of the Mother Box — taking up increasing pages. The Byrne-era New Gods series were rife with backup stories; here, Ram V has his backup stories blended in, and beautifully rendered by the artists at that. And second, that this is a New Gods series where Ram V has done his homework beyond expectations, utilizing not just Kirby’s Fourth World but the apocrypha that came after, even nodding to pieces more easily overlooked.

Toward the end of the book, Ram V brings in the new Justice League Unlimited, in the process of saving the New Gods at the book’s cliffhanger. Even despite the mythological gravitas of the third chapter, Falling Sky begs the question, in a DC Universe full of exceptional beings with amazing powers, what are the “New Gods” anyway? Even if the old gods Arbor Struta, Parzurem, and Nyctar had some world-building powers, what has Highfather built of late? To what creation myths do the New Gods correspond, and who, if anyone, worships them?

Commingled with the grandiose language is the simple idea that, with Darkseid dead, a scavenger force now comes to pillage Apokolips and, after that, New Genesis. The Genesians would likely balk at one conclusion, that perhaps Darkseid has been a necessary evil, warring with New Genesis but also deterring from it greater threats from the cosmos. But also, with Darkseid gone, the truth of the Fourth World seems laid bare, that the New Gods are just very powerful aliens, able to be routed by even more powerful aliens, and though Genesian technology may rival Earth’s, there may not be that much difference between the New Gods and the superheroic gods of the DCU.

I’ve been impressed with how many DC All In titles have as a basis Darkseid’s death in the All In special; I encountered a miniseries the other day that I didn’t expect would have that content, and I appreciate the line-wide launching point. A book about the New Gods obviously deals with all of that, though having read Question: All Along the Watchtower, it’s clear that just because something stems from All In, that doesn’t ensure it will ultimately have relevance (this is comics, and we all understand the point is just to get the reader’s foot in the door).

Ram V certainly shows he cares here, and The New Gods Vol. 1: The Falling Sky is exceptional. That’s not a guarantee that it will matter, though, that there’s anything in the New Gods miniseries that will affect or be relevant to the inevitable DC event that wraps this all up. I hope so, though; there’s plenty fine potential here that deserves not to be wasted.

[Includes original and variant covers]