Glorious Godfrey
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Glorious Godfrey is a DC Comics villain created by Jack Kirby, originally as part of The Fourth World series of comic books in the early 1970s. He first appeared in Forever People #3 (1971). His sister is Amazing Grace who is also a member of Darkseid's Elite. Both siblings have similar powers. Whereas Glorious Godfrey's speciality is persuasion, Amazing Grace's is manipulation.
[edit] History
Glorious Godfrey was a relatively unimportant character until 1986 (he had a total of 3 appearances over a decade and a half), when the first crossover since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Legends was published. In it Darkseid attempts to deprive the world of its heroes, not only so that they would be ineffective against Darkseid, but also in the hope that the people of Earth would more willingly surrender to his rule.
The first phase of the plan consists simply of creating immense amounts of collateral damage by sending creatures to Earth to fight the superheroes. The public begins to resent the heroes in their midst, and therefore Darkseid starts the second phase of his plan by sending the master manipulator Glorious Godfrey to Earth.
Assuming the identity of G. Gordon Godfrey (the name being a parody of J. Jonah Jameson as well as real life personality G. Gordon Liddy), he starts a hate-campaign towards the superheroes that proves to be very effective, riling the public, ultimately leading to a presidential decision to outlaw any superheroic action.
The final phase of this plan, consists of the Apokoliptikan warhounds, cybernetic creatures that are bonded to human hosts, for which Godfrey is able to find an ample amount of 'volunteers' amongst his hypnotized public. He leads his charges to Washington D.C. only to be confronted by a cadre of assembled heroes.
The heroes are able to defeat the Warhounds and break up the public, and Godfrey makes one last ploy, where he tries on the helmet of Dr. Fate in hopes of obtaining his awesome might. Instead, Dr. Fate uses the helmet to mindwipe Godfrey, leaving him nothing more than an empty shell that is sent to the Belle Reve Prison, where he would later be broken out of by the Female Furies under the order of Darkseid.
Godfrey has subsequently made brief appearances in assemblages of all the Apokoliptian Gods.
[edit] Other media
In the Justice League animated series, Glorious Godfrey, voiced by Enrico Colantoni, is vastly different here. In it, he host a sensationalist talk show which he uses to attack the Justice League's credibility. It's unknown if he's connected with Darkseid or has his powers of persuasion. After the Justice League successfully prevented a total eclipse, his sponsors dropped him and the network moved his show to four o'clock in the morning. In this two-part episode titled "Eclipsed," the talkshow host Glorious Godfrey holds up a book called The Innocent Seduced and refers to its author, Dr. Frederic. This is a reference to "Seduction of the Innocent", an actual book written by Frederic Wertham which had great influence during the early 1950s and accused comic books of corrupting minors. The Justice League creative team have cleverly compared Glorious Godfrey's anti-superhero smear campaign to that of Frederic Wertham in the 50's, which led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority and a period of severe censorship within the comic book industry.
