Fictional Character Biography
This being is outside of The Presence's creation. This is no fallen Angel or Leviathan, this is the soul of darkness itself. A complete absence of divine light. This being is in every way equal to the power of the Presence, but his opposite who existed before Creation.
When the earth-shattering events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths struck, a group of mystic madmen calling themselves the Brujeria attempted to conduct a mystic ritual to contact the Great Darkness; unsurprisingly, it went awry and instead the entity awoke as a furious beast, unknowing of its own power and confused about its existence.
It ended encountering a number of mystical heroes (Etrigan, Doctor Fate, the Spectre), who unwittingly angered the being and directed it against Heaven, leaving only the defeated heroes behind. They did this unknowingly, despite their best intentions; Etrigan taught it Darkness was Evil, Dr. Fate told him that Evil was Despisable, and the Spectre instructed it with the concept of Revenge. Infuriated, the being sought to assault Heaven to demand answers from the Presence as to its existence, trampling all it crossed paths with. This power was so huge, it caused Hell's main three figures - Lucifer, Azazel and Beelzebub - to form a triumvirate to defend themselves should the Great Darkness decide it wanted Hell as its realm. A different faction, led by the Demons Three, banded together to follow the Darkness, whom they saw as the ultimate sin and evil.
However, before the Great Darkness reached the gates of the Silver City of Heaven, it encountered Swamp Thing, who taught it the concept of evil and good, life and death, intertwined so that one could not survive without the other. The Great Darkness then extended its hand, and something happened that nobody had foreseen; the Presence extended His. When both Hands touched, both the ultimate light and the supreme dark merged, forming the perfect balance as a form of Yin/Yang.
The realm of the Great Darkness, an expanse of complete and utter darkness known as the Sunless Sea or the Shadowlands, has been referred to as the power source for shadow-manipulating characters like Richard Swift (the Shade), his archenemy Culp, Shadow-Thief, Nightshade, Ian Karkull, and Alan Scott's son Obsidian.
Read more about this topic: Great Evil Beast
Famous quotes containing the words fictional, character and/or biography:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)