We’ve now reached Day 23 of this year’s Jack Kirby Tribute Month, and today’s prompt is Granny Goodness.
Granny first appeared in Mister Miracle #2. She runs the Orphanage on Apokolips; the twisted, iron institution where the young were progressively beaten down (mentally and physically) to shape them into troopers who always sought Granny’s “love” and were more than willing to sacrifice themselves for Darkseid. The walls of the Orphanage were covered with 1984-esque slogans like “You’re not a liar–if you lie for Darkseid!”
During Jack’s Mister Miracle run, we got occasional flashback glimpses of the brutal formative experiences the young Scott Free experienced on Apokolips in Granny’s Orphanage. Those events went a long way towards building his need to escape, to find a better world.
Interestingly, when Warner Bros decided to introduce Granny Goodness in Superman: The Animated Series, they chose to cast Ed Asner as her voice. You’d think that would be a strange choice, but somehow it worked!
That’s Granny. You’ll have to come back again tomorrow to see who’s up next, if you’re curious.
Ed Asner was a FANTASTIC Granny Goodness. Andrea Romano’s genius voice casting wins again!
I also loved her casting Arte Johnson as the pint-sized German-esque Virman Vundabar … he even said, “Verrry interesting”(!)
Agreed. Andrea Romano did a great job with her voice casting on so many of the WB Animation projects.
What a “flay care” mom she is/was. Having had our first child go to a daycare from a parent’s point of view (and that is to understate it to some degree) is a concern until you know it is going to be okay. And right about the same time as the book’s release, more young ones started their day care experience, which is sociologically interesting. But I once again digress. You capture her dominance well. It still amazes me how well Jack is at science fiction world-creating, character by character and bit of storyline by bit of storyline. Thanks Mark.
“Flay care.” I like it. It definitely fits Granny Goodness!
And point taken about Jack’s abilities. He built a lot of worlds, concepts and characters that took the comics industry years to catch up to. In some cases, they still haven’t caught up!