Nice! I've never heard that one before. After all, it was Earthlings who possessed the Anti-Life Equation, right?
I'm glad that Kirby didn't explain everything, and--whether intentional or not--left at least some of it open to interpretation. I'm guessing that's one reason among many why these stories have aged better than more concrete, topical fare from the same period (for example, the GL/GA stories by O'Neil and Adams), and probably why many post-Kirby treatments of the same characters have been (to me at least, and to varying degrees) unsatisfying. Kirby's soaring imagination routinely opened the door to new worlds, but also provided our imaginations with some tantalizing open spaces to fill.
Right, Zonker is right, but more than saying it was meant as a "synthesis of dark & light" is a theatre where contrasting forces are balanced (Orion and Lightray visits to Earth are very significant, in this sense – they quite struck me as a kid).
On the contrary, I don’t think it’s entirely correct to see the characters as being on a stage: Orion and Lightray just speak in that "godlike" language (in pagan sense) because they are indeed not human, but most humans speak in an ordinary way.
Since I have been talking about here and there and never posted anything, here’s an excerpt from my interview with Jack Kirby from 1991. The female voice asking the question first is my cousin-in-law which graciously hosted me when I came to the US. The question revolves mostly around Orion and Darkseid’s relationship.
This clip is fantastic! Thank you so much for posting this! Is the rest of the interview available online somewhere?