Deimos and Phobos (DC Comics)
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| Deimos and Phobos | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Wonder Woman (volume 1) #183 (July 1969) |
| Created by | Mike Sekowsky |
| In-story information | |
| Species | Olympian Gods |
| Team affiliations | Children of Ares |
| Partnerships | Deimos:
Phobos:
Both:
|
| Abilities | Deimos:
Phobos:
Both:
|
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Deimos and Phobos are fictional characters appearing in DC Comics publications and related media, commonly as recurring adversaries of the superhero Wonder Woman. Based on the eponymous Greek mythological figures, they are the sons of Wonder Woman’s nemesis, the war god Ares: Deimos is the god of terror and dread, and Phobos is the god of fear.[1] In Wonder Woman's comic book adventures, they have served as Ares’ principal lieutenants in his multiple campaigns for universal conquest, and have also confronted Wonder Woman on their own as antagonists independent of their father.[2] They first appeared in 1969's Wonder Woman (volume 1) #183, written and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky, and have since been updated several times as DC Comics' continuities have been revised.
This Deimos is a distinct character from the wicked sorcerer of the same name who is an enemy of the DC Comics hero Warlord.
Publication history[edit]
Silver Age of Comic Books[edit]
Deimos and Phobos debuted in a Silver Age story written and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky in 1969’s Wonder Woman (volume 1) #183. Aiding their father (who was then known in DC Comics’ continuity as “Mars”) alongside their aunt Eris,[3] the brothers led a powerful demonic army known as the “Beast Men” in a bid to conquer the Amazons of Paradise Island and extract from them their secret of interdimensional travel. Attired in Greco-Roman robes and bearing human features, the somewhat sinister looking pair, along with Eris, served as Mars’ warlike legates. The brothers would make a reprise appearance, once again with Eris, in 1972’s Wonder Woman (volume 1) #198.
Modern Age of Comic Books[edit]
After DC Comics rebooted its continuity in 1985 (in a publication event known as the Crisis on Infinite Earths), Wonder Woman, her supporting characters and many of her foes were re-imagined and reintroduced. Deimos and Phobos were among the first of the hero’s adversaries to be updated for her Post-Crisis adventures, appearing in revamped forms in 1986’s Wonder Woman (volume 2) #2, written by George Pérez and Greg Potter, and illustrated by Pérez. Designed with monstrous physical appearances, and possessing more defined personalities than their Silver Age incarnations,[4] the Modern Age Deimos and Phobos posed a more menacing threat to Wonder Woman and her allies than in the prior continuity. Strategizing at Ares’ hest from the war god’s other-dimensional stronghold of Areopagus, the snake-bearded Deimos was presented as coolly calculating, while the hulking, troll-like Phobos was rash, petty and deceitful. Phobos’ jealous desire to win the approval of his father led him to create the nightmarish demon Decay,[5] one of the first overt threats the Post-Crisis Wonder Woman faced after leaving her home on the island of Themyscira.
Indeed, though Phobos’ personality was that of an insecure and scheming malcontent, he would prove to be the brother with more initiative, and the character with more staying power. Though Deimos was killed in battle by Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman (volume 2) #5, Phobos would survive and go on to make multiple appearances as a foil for the hero. He returned in 1988’s Wonder Woman (volume 2) #23-24 with the Gorgon Euryale and the colossal Ixion the Assassin as his accomplices, only to be defeated by Wonder Woman and the Olympian god Hermes.[6] Resurfacing again as a key figure in DC Comics’ 1992 company-wide crossover event The War of the Gods, Phobos this time allied himself with Eris (who, in the Post-Crisis continuity, is presented as his sister) and the sorceress Circe in a treacherous plot to kill Ares.[7] He would return yet again in 2000’s “Gods of Gotham” storyline in Wonder Woman (volume 2) #164-167, reunited with the whole of his malevolent family: a resurrected Deimos, Eris and Ares, to battle not only Wonder Woman, but Batman, Wonder Girls Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark, Nightwing, Robin Tim Drake, the Huntress, Artemis and Oracle. Here Phobos would again come to the fore as a vexingly deceitful figure, betraying his siblings and father by possessing Batman’s body and becoming an all-powerful fear deity. He was only defeated by the combined might of the Wonder Woman and Batman families, as well as Ares himself.
DC Rebirth[edit]
In 2017, as part of DC Comics' Rebirth continuity reboot, new versions of Deimos and Phobos were introduced to the Wonder Woman mythos by writer Greg Rucka in Wonder Woman (volume 5) #16. Now identical red-haired twins dressed as steampunk dandies, the airish pair blackmailed pharmaceutical tycoon Veronica Cale into helping them locate the hidden island of Themyscira, where their father Ares was imprisoned by the Amazons. Presented as elevated, patronizing and smilingly cruel, this Deimos and Phobos also precipitated the circumstances that turned Cale’s best friend Dr. Adrianna Anderson into the post-Rebirth Doctor Cyber. However, Cale and Cyber turned the tables on Deimos and Phobos, enlisting the sorceress Circe to transform the twins into doberman pinschers, whom Cale subsequently kept as pets and guard dogs.
The twins were eventually freed from their canine forms and appeared again as key figures in the origin of the Rebirth-era Wonder Girl, Yara Flor in several issues of Joëlle Jones' 2021-2022 series Wonder Girl (volume 2), beginning with issue #1. Clad in shadowy Greco-Roman helmets and armor, they assisted their brother Eros in murdering Yara's mother Aella.
Creation and Concept[edit]
Golden Age and Post-Crisis Parallels[edit]
Though Deimos and Phobos, along with Eris, together functioned as a coterie of generals in service to Mars/Ares in Wonder Woman stories during both the Silver Age and Modern Age of Comics, they were, in fact, the second trio characters to do so. The convention began in Golden Age stories written in the 1940s by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, who penned three other figures to serve as the war god’s chief operatives: the Duke of Deception, Lord/Count Conquest and the Earl of Greed. (A fourth figure, General Destruction, makes a single brief appearance as Mars’ aide-de-camp in Wonder Woman (volume 1) #2, but is never seen again.)[8] Though neither Lord/Count Conquest nor the Earl of Greed bear any similarity to the Post-Crisis Deimos and Phobos, the Golden Age Duke of Deception draws multiple parallels. When the Post-Crisis Deimos first encounters Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman (volume 2) #5, he introduces himself as the "Master of Duplicity," acknowledging a series of deceptions that led her into his clutches. And like the Duke of Deception, who broke away to become Wonder Woman’s most frequent single foe during the Golden and Silver Ages, the Post-Crisis Phobos too became an independent recurring Modern Age antagonist, during a protracted period in which the Duke did not exist in DC Comics’ continuity. Additionally, the Golden Age Duke of Deception and the Post-Crisis Phobos share a number of common visual characteristics: both wear somewhat oversized gladiator helmets and blue Greco-Roman armor, and both have bent, toothy countenances that are at turns eerie and comical.
Dialectic of Feminism, Misogyny and War[edit]
The first comic book featuring Wonder Woman hit newsstands in October 1941, slightly more than a month before the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor.[9] It made a splash for many reasons, but significant among them was its function as a “piece of flag-waving propaganda”[10] for a wartime United States. Indeed, the implicit American patriotism of Wonder Woman’s star-spangled costume aside, the character’s early exploits were steeped in an address of war, both as a concept (the heroine’s most significant looming adversary was the god of war) and as a concrete concern (her reason for leaving Paradise Island was to help the United States defeat the Axis[11] and almost all of her early adventures were framed as aiding the Allied war effort.[12])
Harvard historian Jill Lepore has pointed out that, as a personification of war, Deimos and Phobos’ father Mars would have been perceived by an early 20th century American comics readership as a natural foil for the avowedly feminist Wonder Woman, citing examples such as the deity’s recurrence as a stock figure in suffragist print media starting in the 1910’s, “shackling women to the misery of war.”[13] In ancient folklore, Mars was consistently depicted on the battlefield flanked by Deimos and Phobos, who were understood as his perpetual accomplices.[citation needed] Their indivisibility from the war-god positions them too as fundamentally anti-feminist figures in the 20th century worldview, an implication not lost on William Moulton Marston in the arch misogyny of his characterizations of the Duke of Deception and the other lieutenants of the Golden Age Mars who served as progenitors of the DC Comics Deimos and Phobos. [14] Additionally, Mars and his hordes were frequently depicted as close cronies of Adolf Hitler in political cartoons appearing in early-1940s Allied newspapers. .[15]
Following 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, as well as after DC Comics’ more recent 2017 Rebirth, Deimos and Phobos (occasionally accompanied by Eris) have been consistently presented as Ares’ principals,[16], continuing a dialectic dating back to Wonder Woman’s Golden Age stories equating classical personifications of war with maleness and misogyny.[17]
In other media[edit]
Deimos (without Phobos) appeared in the 2009 Warner Bros. Animation film Wonder Woman, voiced by John DiMaggio. In the film, he is presented as an agent of Ares sent to kill Wonder Woman. Like his Post-Crisis incarnation, this Deimos has a beard made of snakes, although he is a more hulking, brutish figure than his comic book counterpart. He is defeated by Wonder Woman, but destroys himself (by having one of his beard snakes bite him) before she can interrogate him using her Lasso of Truth.[18]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ Beatty, Scott (2003). Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Guide to the Amazon Princess. DK Publishing Inc. p. 132. ISBN 978-0789496164. Search this book on
- ↑ Beatty 2003, p. 70.
- ↑ Jimenez, Phil (2010). The Essential Wonder Woman Encyclopedia. Del Rey. p. 108. ISBN 978-0345501073. Search this book on
- ↑ Sandifer, Philip (2013). A Golden Thread: An Unofficial Critical History of Wonder Woman. Eruditorum Press. p. 186. ISBN 978-1493566723. Search this book on
- ↑ Beatty 2003, p. 101.
- ↑ Jimenez 2010, p. 326.
- ↑ Beatty 2003, p. 70.
- ↑ Jimenez 2010, p. 156.
- ↑ Strickland, Carol A. (2021). Star-Spangled Panties: A Guide to the World’s Greatest Superhero. Carol A. Strickland. p. 2. ISBN 978-1941318393. Search this book on
- ↑ Daniels, Les (2000). Wonder Woman: The Complete History. Chronicle Books. p. 25. ISBN 978-0811831116. Search this book on
- ↑ Ormrod, Joan (2021). Wonder Woman: The Female Body and Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 31. ISBN 978-1350191648. Search this book on
- ↑ Daniels 2000, p. 33-34.
- ↑ Lepore, Jill (2014). The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 225. ISBN 978-0385354042. Search this book on
- ↑ Currie, Erin. “It’s a Man’s World: Wonder Woman and Attitudes Toward Gender Roles.” Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth. Travis Langley & Mara Wood, Eds., Sterling Publishing, 2017, p. 216 . ISBN 978-1454923435
- ↑ ”Minhinnick Wartime Cartoons.” New Zealand and Australian Comics and Cartoonists, 21 May 2015, http://www.pikitiapress.com/blog/2015/5/19/minhinnick-wartime-cartoons. Accessed 28 June 2022.
- ↑ Jimenez 2010, p. 125.
- ↑ Berlatsky, Noah (2015). Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948. Rutgers University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978- 0813564180. Search this book on
- ↑ Barrientos, Alex. "Deimos, A Most Terrifying God." Classical Wisdom Weekly, 6 May 2020, https://classicalwisdom.com/mythology/deimos-a-most-terrifying-god/. Accessed 8 June 2022.
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