Character Analysis: Zatanna

Not much is known about Zatanna by most people, both in-universe and out of universe. This is perhaps appropriate. Zatanna is the official Mage of the JLA, due to the high versatility of her magic. She is equally at home performing magic tricks at kids’ parties and fighting magical threats to the universe.

Why is she so versatile? Well Zatanna herself represents the boundaries between two worlds. And I mean that in as many ways as possible. Zatanna exists in both DC (She is a premier member of the JLA) but also Vertigo (Her boyfriend is the most famous Vertigo Mage, John Constantine). She is the child of the two schools of magic in the DCU (learned and innate). She does fake magic as her job and real magic as her career. Zatanna as a character likes to inhabit the realm between two opposite realms.

This is because Zatanna loves the realm of possibility. Her form of power is manipulation over words, because words have the possibility to be anything. It’s also why she has her soft spot for children, because children represent infinite possibility, they could be good, they could be evil, they could be magical, they could be mundane, they could be understandable, they could be mysterious. It all depends how they develop.

The stories of Zatanna are really stories about understanding the intersections between opposed axioms and concepts, and that’s what makes her really fascinating to me. That and she is hot. :P

Character Analysis: Yugi Muto

If you are most familiar with the English versions of Yu-gi-oh! You might find it odd that I am describing Yami Yugi (The Pharaoh) and Hikari Yugi (The Boy with the Puzzle) together. However this is because one point of note in the original Japanese is that the two Yugis refer to each other as 

“The Other Me”, because they together form one whole as two separate halves.

In Yu-gi-oh the personalities of their characters is generally reflected in their duel styles which I will be going over in conjunction with their personalities.

Yami Yugi is the Pharaoh and the “Dark” Half of Yugi. He is confident, assertive, competitive to the point of being willing to kill, judgmental, and full of natural Charisma. If you look at his cards, Yami Yugi uses cards that were powerhouses in the context of the original Series. 2500 ATK Black Magician and Summoned Skull. 2300 ATK Gaia the Fierce Knight. 2000 ATK Curse of Dragon as well as his special Ritual Monster the 3000 ATK Black Luster Soldier. The Dark Attribute assigned to him refers to his “Dark” nature…he uses deception like Magical Hats and Mirror Force to get the best of his opponents.

Hikari Yugi is the “Light” Half of Yugi. He is shy, sweet, sentimental, kind of a push-over and easily manipulated. However, his cards represent the potential within him. He has cards that aren’t particularly strong but are powerful when working together (like his 3 Magnet Warriors that fuse together to form the 3500 ATK Valkyrion) or cards that start weak but become stronger with time like Silent Swordsman and Silent Magician. The Light attribute assigned to him refers to his “Light” nature…he uses cards like Swords of Revealing Light and Eye of Truth to see the true nature of his opponents.

The Union of Yami Yugi and Hikaru Yugi allows them feed into each other and learn from each other, forming the separate halves of the human personality that are needed in the world, tying into the greater Egyptian Mythology themes of Ma’at (Balance), and the necessary balance of light and dark, life and death, order and chaos.

Yami Yugi begins the story unable to sympathize with anyone, seeing himself as the greatest and constantly competing to be the best. He judges many people in the first arc to painful penalty games because he views himself as a God, a supreme arbiter, just as an actual Pharaoh would. Yet he has difficulties with understanding the importance of smaller creatures. He initially didn’t even understand why Hikari Yugi’s Grandfather would put the pieces of Exodia in his deck, not understanding that though weak separate, together they formed the unbeatable monster. His development comes as he comes to realize the importance of all people from the lowliest to the highest working in unison. This comes up in the Final Duel against each villain of each arc.

Against Kaiba he had the problem with Exodia.

Against Pegasus, he found that his dark nature could not deceive Pegasus and so was utterly outmaneuvered, until Hikari Yugi suggested using both of their bodies and minds to duel and the climax of that duel is his mind being protected by Yugi’s connection with his friends, something Yami Yugi admits he doesn’t understand and proceeding to put all his trust in the last card Hikari Yugi played which wins him the duel. It is this duel we first see the development of his empathy as he offers to take the place of Hikari Yugi in the World of Darkness, seeing he could not handle it, but Hikari Yugi insisted on continuing their strategy. Seeing as he had never born the brunt of such power like that caused a newfound respect in Yami Yugi for someone to struggle so mightily.

Against Marik, having a much more closer relationship with Hikaru Yugi was what eventually won him the duel, as Yami Marik’s parasitic relationship with his host Hikari Marik ended up costing it when Hikari Marik took control again and surrendered.

Against Bakura, it was his again Yugi’s friends who finally returned to Yami Yugi his True Name which gave him the power to fuse the Egyptian Gods together to summon the Supreme God Horahkty which finally overcomes Zorc and save the world.

Conversely Hikari Yugi’s problems at the start of the series was his lack of confidence and his willingness to be pushed around. But after Kaiba manipulates him into losing by pretend he would kill himself if Yugi won, Yugi began developing a larger sense of confidence. In the duels against both Pegasus and Marik, the villain tries to win again Yami Yugi by doing damage against Hikari Yugi yet Hikari Yugi surprised both of them by taking the pain anyway and not crying for help or surrendering the will to fight. It is also shown again in the third arc when Jonouchi is possessed by Marik and Hikari Yugi asks Yami Yugi to duel Jonouchi instead, because he was confident that the bond of their friendship would release him of his brain control.

The climax of their character comes in the Ceremonial Duel at the end of the series, where Hikari Yugi and Yami Yugi duel each other. Yami Yugi has to play with all his heart but still lose in order to be set free and Hikari Yugi must defeat Yami Yugi in order to show his ability to become independent. And the way he does it is so brilliantly thematic.

Hikari Yugi uses Golden Sarcophagus, a magic card that lets you place one card in the sarcophagus and if your opponent plays it, it’s neutralized. The game is set to be win by anyone. Hikari Yugi has one last monster. Both have 200 life points. Yami Yugi uses Monster Reborn to summon Osiris the Sky Dragon, but Monster Reborn was the card in the sarcophagus. As the resurrection is ended, it is said by Ishizu that “The dead belong in the world beyond” talking about both Yami Yugi and the God representing him Osiris. Hikari Yugi beats Yami Yugi and the series ends on the note that though they are now separate, they will always be with each other in the change they have left on each other.

The Two Yugis represent the two necessary parts of the soul, the light half and the dark half and their development together. 

Character Analysis: Kratos

From both a versus and a character standpoint, I think of Kratos as one of the most underestimated characters I have ever seen. I know many have a low opinion on the Ghost of Sparta, seeing him as merely a male power fantasy and nothing more. But give me a chance to sway your opinion, let me try and convince you that this character has perhaps more depth then given credit for.

Let me start with a point that perhaps seems obvious but that is not often considered fully nor understood the depth of: Kratos lives in a world of violence.

It is obvious that Kratos fights a lot but this goes deeper. Kratos is a Spartan and for all his life has trained to be nothing more than a Soldier. Everything he does is violent. He opens chests violently, he gets through obstacles by attacking them, he climbs walls by piecing them with his blades. The God of War Games are notorious as well for having sudden attacks in the series where you must quickly react and realize the threat and mash a button or instantly die. For instance, when a Colossus suddenly slams down trying to crush you, or when a Hippocampi claw tries to skewer you. These don’t occur inside normal combat, there occur during level traversing. For Kratos, everything is understand through the realm of combat and warfare. Every moment he expects to be in a kill-or-be-killed scenario.

Let me present another fact to you about Kratos. He NEVER does what he does for himself. Kratos only ever has 2 goals:

1: Protection/Service of his People

2: Vengeance for his People

He lives in an analog state of combat, of defense and of offense. Everything he does, he does because he’s fighting for a larger group of which he is a part of. When his wife states that he is going to war for himself, it is legitimately horrifying enough to him to appear as a nightmarish vision, and when the furies create a lifelike illusion of him attaining glory for Sparta he easily breaks out of the illusion, not caring for glory.

In fact Kratos does not have a high opinion of himself. One of the illusions that appears before him when the Furies are trying to stop him is an illusory version of himself who yells “I lost EVERYTHING because of you!” and when Pandora in God of War 3 says “I trust you” he responds, “You Shouldn’t”. Kratos thinks of himself as the Ghost of Sparta, the Monster who killed his family and only lives with himself because in his view he is fighting for the protection/vengeance of good people against even worse people then himself, often monsters.

This comes to ahead in God of War 3. At the beginning of the game Kratos says “My vengeance…ends here.” A statement that we as the audience think just refers to him defeating Zeus, but actually means far more at the end. During the game, he meets the Father and Daughter pair of Hephasteus and Pandora. Hephasteus pleads with Kratos to spare Pandora, comparing it to Kratos’s own daughter that he lost. Kratos comes to feel protective of Pandora as he did his daughter. This makes him realize that his people can mean more than just his family and his city but all people.

Then near the climax of the game, Pandora tries to sacrifice herself to free Pandora’s Box the weapon believed to be able to kill Zeus. Kratos holds her to stop her, not wanting her to die. Zeus yells at him “For once in your life don’t fail! Don’t fail her like you failed your family!”

This reminds Kratos of all the horrible things the Olympians have done to him and his family, how Ares’ manipulation cost him his family, how the meddling of Persephone and Helios cost him his change of being with his daughter in the afterlife, how they changed his mother into a monster, how they tortured his brother into a lunatic, all the nightmarish visions of his act that have haunted him for now around 25 years. And in one swoop he lets go of Pandora, symbolically finally letting go of his family and his own despair as he attacks Zeus brutally.

This ties into the climax and something which is very thematically close to the originally Greek Myth. We learn that Cronos tried to kill Zeus and became a tyrant because he feared him. And his father Uranus did the same to Cronos. And in fact Zeus became a tyrant and tried to kill Kratos because of his fear of him. The line of God-kings is cursed for this fate it seems, which is directly tied to Greek Mythology (Zeus did sentence Prometheus to endless torment for not telling him which of his children would threaten to overthrow him in Greek Myth for instance).  

Kratos has the power of hope which would allow him to become the new God-King….and eventually the new tyrant. Kratos and Athena, another child of Zeus speak and Kratos speaks sadly of the loss of Pandora, saying it was his desire for revenge that killed her, realizing that it his second desire, his desire for vengeance that costs him his first desire, his desire to protect his people, now the whole of humanity.

Athena asks for the power, and Kratos knows that if any child of Zeus, him or Athena had the power, they would be as Zeus was and so says the beginning line “My vengeance ends here” before skewing himself with the Blade, as an attempt to finally end the cycle of fear and patricide. The power of hope leaves him to be possessed by all mankind.

And where is Kratos now? Despite his attempted killing of himself, Kratos is set to re-appear in a new Norse Mythology game. We don’t know much yet, but we have seen one notable thing in the trailer for it. At one point Kratos gets clearly angry at his son but then….calms himself and speaks coldly but with restraint. Kratos is clearly trying now to not be who his father was. He’s put away his past, represented by his father Zeus, and is trying to be a better man.

Kratos was a man, then a monster, then a god, then a monster again, and finally a man again. And he decided being a man was the best of them. 

Character Analysis: Cardcaptor Sakura

Sakura Kinomoto is widely regarded as one of the cutest characters in fiction. Her show Cardcaptor Sakura has widespread acclaim from the anime community, even from those not usually fans of theMagical Girl Genre, and a good part of this comes from Sakura herself.

In the 90s a revolution had occurred in the Magical Girl Genre led by Sailor Moon, and followed by Wedding Peach, Clamp’s previous MG Series Magic Knight Rayearth, and others which questioned all the old roles of the Magical Girls before. Yet in this age of MGs so different from their predecessors, Cardcaptor Sakura arose as the exception, the last for a long time in the line of Classical Cute Witch shows, and widely believed to be their pinnacle, Cardcaptor Sakura embodied as a show and as a character of what being a Magical Girl traditionally meant.

Cardcaptor Sakura is seemingly a remarkable innocent girl. Well-liked by her peers, athletically gifted, good in some school subjects and not so much in others, she is your traditional well-adjusted schoolgirl but what sets her apart is her optimistic and hopeful personality. Sakura will never accept that things will end bad as her catchphrase “Zettai daijoubu da yo” (Everything will surely be all-right) attests to.

In the context of her universe it is her endless hope for the future, her belief in the infinite potential of the future to be whatever you make of it, that allows her to do literally miraculous deeds.

In the manga she was able to capture The Shadow, a card even Clow Reed struggled with, a collection of cards that it was supposed to be “impossible” to capture The Shadow with. She did it anyway, because she believed it could. And this really captures her character, she stands for the power of human progress, our ability to create for ourselves the future we want and in that way, she stands as the pinnacle of the old way of Magical Girls, for which the overarching theme was that the power of the heart’s desire to create a better world for loved ones could transcend the physical realm and enter the realm of magic.

It was her hope and willing to preserve no matter the situation that allowed her to surpass the legendary sorcerer that controlled the multiverse, Clow Reed. It was this that allowed her to turn the Clow Cards into her own Sakura Cards, changing the very concepts of the world into her own conceptions, that earned her Clow Reed’s blessings as his heir.

It is her boundless hope that allowed her to go on when The Nothing itself erased every single Card she had and erased all her family and friends to make her feel the loneliness it had felt, and that same hope that allowed her to redeem The Nothing into her own greatest Card The Hope, which can overcome and nullify any magical power, even the power of The Nothing.

Because of my connection with the Magical Girl Genre, Cardcaptor Sakura serves as a pinnacle of not just the Magical Girl Tradition but of what it means to be a hero itself. She is the one who will never accept evil and will always believe in a better world. 

Character Analysis: Sailor Moon

When we are first introduced to Usagi Tsukino, she is made out to be the butt of all the jokes, that nobody thinks anything great will ever come off. Clumsy, Lazy, Gluttonous, Cowardly, Bad Academically, the list of her negative traits goes on and on. And yet even in the first chapter we see hints of what she will become such as the fact that when first transformed into a superhero and told to fight a monster, her first thought is for her dear friend threatened by the monster. That she overcomes her cowardice by remembering those dear to her is a common trope for her.

While her friends are the reincarnations of Soldiers, Usagi is not, she is the reincarnation of a princess, and as such she is far less used to warfare then the others. This is perhaps best shown in the end of the first season of the anime, with the doomed, desperate assault of the Sailor Senshi against Beryl’s palace to prevent the awakening of Metalia. As the Sailor Senshi die, Usagi is seen clearly freaking out, crying and trying to surrender and finally standing still in horror as the others give their lives for her, killing Beryl’s monstrosities in heroic sacrifices. This was even more shocking at the time, then it would be now. The standard conception of the Magical Girl show before was the Cute Witches of the 80s and earliers, cute girls with magical powers who solved everyday problems and got into hijinx with cutesy magic. Magical Warriors certainly existed by this point, they had existed since the 70s with Cutey Honey, but those were still light and fairly comical. Never before was it even implied that if the girl tried her best and still acted nobly….that things would not turn out right.

For most young girls seeing this, the sudden weight hit harder than can be easily explained. This is especially true, if you like me, identified with Usagi. With her ever-present incompetencies and insecurities, her lack of competence and confidence as a soldier, the kind of person who saw her friends and loved ones as amazing beautiful, strong, brave, warriors against the darkness that scared you, Usagi is a character I and people like me understand all too well. And this was so hard because you know you’d be exactly like Usagi, you knew what it was like to be the one who can’t do anything as your loved ones needed you. And yet, after the death of Mamoru her love, and his last words, when Beryl finally merges with Metalia and threatens the whole universe, Sailor Moon walked towards Beryl. And I…I knew I would too. Usagi knew she had to stand to protect her family, her friends, her home, all that she loved. And I felt that I would too in that same situation.

In the First Movie, we see Usagi from the Senshi’s perspective and it’s my favorite moment in fiction as the senshi first remember the terrible lives they lived before they met Usagi, where everyone judged them for their powers instead of who they were and then again their interactions with Usagi as she repeatedly cared about them not for what they could do, but for who they were. They cry and beg Fiore not to take Usagi from them saying that without her they would all be alone. And in the emotional climax of the movie Usagi as she is exerting all her energy into saving the world says again:

“I won’t leave anyone alone!”

This to me is the emotional crux of who Usagi is as a person, she is the one who will never leave anyone alone. Because Usagi does not see who others see us as, she does not see as we pretend we are, she sees past the false smiles and see when we hurt but don’t want anyone else to know. She sees who we are….and she still loves us.

There’s this great moment in the Fifth Season when she doesn’t know where Mamoru is, and she cries out that she needs him, that she’s not strong. This is despite saving the universe many times before, this is despite all the times she has stood alone against horrors and tragedies. I just wanted to tell her, to yell that she was so much greater then she thought she was, that everyone loved her because of all she did for them without even realizing it and as I thought that I paused the video and just sat back as I realized this is what other people tried to tell me…

Watching Sailor Moon was like seeing myself from someone’s else eyes, made me first feel like I might have some worth

And this leads to the ending of the SM Manga, where I see the final development of Usagi, in parallel with my own discovery through her. The Sailor Moon manga has Usagi finding the source of all evils, Chaos, the darkness from before existence. Her future self appears before her and tells her to destroy the origin of all stars where Chaos was in. This will destroy Chaos but will also lead to the universe eventually ending. She tells her to do this because in the future Chaos returns unstoppable and she is forced to fight Chaos forever, with everything she knows destroyed beyond repair, an endless torment of fighting for all eternity.

Sailor Moon refuses.

Usagi to me is the ultimate subversion of the traditional hero archetype, not because she is some gritty selfish antihero, but because she defines a purpose of existence opposite that of the traditional hero. The Traditional Hero sees an external cosmos at odds with their internal psyche and changes the cosmos to fit in. Look at every story ever and you will find some variation of that. The world doesn’t fit me so I will change the world. It’s what we always do, try to shape the world to ourselves.

And yet Usagi operates on the opposite paradigm, she changed her psyche to her cosmos. She does not force others to become something new, she accepts all things for who they are, her boundless acceptance and love for the cosmos is why she is bestowed with the Lambda Power, the power of all the Cosmos working together, because she accepts all that is, and so her psyche unites with it. Her acceptance of even Chaos, is what allows her to surpass even Chaos.

Usagi’s willingness to fight forever, not because there is a chance to change the future, but purely there will be existence and she loves existence, is a statement of courage and love unbounded and almost unfathomable, to willingly face an eternity of her worst fear…

Usagi is said to be the universe’s immortal and most beautiful star, reflecting the concept that the moon is the one light that can stand alone in the infinite night sky. I hope to be like her, and yet I know internally that I am…and that truly is why I love her as a character so much.

The Relative Power of DC God Tiers

This came up and as someone who has a pretty darn good grasp on DC Comics cosmology, I wanted to share my current positions on various DC Characters. I will be going over all the usual big-named characters and explaining how they relate to each other.    

Let me start by saying that DC is written in various styles and their are 2 that their God Tiers are written in, and much of the confusion of how strong characters are come from comparing these two styles.

Theological/Occult: Most well known from Neil Gaiman's Sandman (Of Father Time and Mother Night are born the 7 Endless; Death and Destruction, Dream and Destiny, Despair and Desire, and of course little Delight....I mean Delirium) and Mike Carrey's Lucifer (For God's Domain is split into the two sons of God, the Archangels Michael who is the Power of God and Lucifer who is the Will of God and who together formed the cosmos), this style of DC is about Angels, Demons, Concepts, and other such Mystical Ideas. The Top Tiers here are generally ranked based on how they relate to The Presence.

Metafictional: Most well known from Grant Morrison's works (Superman becomes Cosmic Armor Superman, the Concept of Heroism to battle the Dark Mandrakk who sought to destroy the story of DC Comics), this style focuses on the 5th dimension...Hypertime, AKA the Reader's mind and the aspect of the story as story. The Top Tiers here are generally ranked based on their metafictional position in the story.


However this does not keep us from forming a cohesive internal structure of power, and if anything I think these two subtly reinforce each other.

The Presence and the Over-Void (Primal Monitor)





Discussing who is stronger between these two was what actually sparked this.

 The Over-Void is commonly mistakenly called the Over-Monitor, yet I can find no official DC source that refers to it as such. It is always the Primal Monitor or the Over-Void.

From a metafictional standpoint The Presence is clearly supposed to be the writer. However it's not just any writer, when Mxyztplk meats the "Supreme Being" in Superman: Man of Steel he finds it's Mike Carlin, the writer of Superman: Man of Steel:



Yet when the writer is Grant Morrison in Animal Man.....



The Presence from a metafictional standpoint stands for the presence of the writer, who is omnipresent in a story. Every story has a "presence" to it, that Presence being it's writer, and The Presence in DC being the Presence of the DC Writers in total.      

This is why more then anything else the trait of The Presence that is emphasized, even by his name is his omnipresence. It is impossible to escape his will, which is the driving force of Lucifer Morningstar's character, because he is everywhere:    





The Power of the Presence, Michael Demiurgos is needed to maintain every atom of it's existence.


As you can tell, The Presence theologically is the "God" of the DC Cosmos. He is the Creator and the Supreme Being.

"Now what does the Primal Monitor represent metafictionally? Grant Morrison Explains:  

What happens if the page is a bit pissed off at the story that’s drawn on it? So I thought of the page as God. The idea being that the Overvoid – as we called it in Final Crisis - of the white page as a space is sort of God. And it’s condensing stories out of itself because it finds inside its own gigantic white space, self-absorbed pristine consciousness, it finds this little stain or mark, this DC Multiverse somebody has 'drawn'. And it starts investigating, and it’s just shocked with what it sees, with all the crazy activity and signifying going on in there. It then tries to protect itself from the seething contact with 'story' and imagines a race of beings, 'angels' or 'monitors' (another word for angel, of course) to function as an interface between its own giant eternal magnificence and this tiny, weird crawling anthill of life and significance that is the DC Multiverse."

In other words, it represents the blank page, the infinite possibilities. It is that which is not which perceives that which is, in confusion. 

You might be surprised but it actually does have a theological equivalent. It's called Mother Night, the empty blackness from before creation

Here is a description of Mother Night from her son Dream  

Now theologically, it doesn't make sense for a being to be stronger then The Supreme Presence, though there is no direct comparison of power between The Presence and Mother Night. 

However as shown in the above depiction of Michael's power, should the power of the Presence cease to exert on the cosmos, it would disappear again into Mother Night suggesting that the Presence is maintain the Cosmos against her will.

Metafictionally we have something similar that pretty much cements Presence is stronger then Over-Void

So when Over-Void tries to consider Creation and study it, it's part, The Monitor is split into 2

Despite it's immense size, The Primal Monitor cannot understand Creation, cannot existence. The Presence imposed it's will on the Void, and the Void responded.

To me it seems pretty intuitive that the writer is stronger then the paper they wrote upon, and DC comics seems to support this view.  

Let's quickly overview some other big names you may have heard being tossed around: 

The Archangels (Michael Demiurgos and Lucifer Morningstar):

These Two are the strongest beings in Creation itself (before Elaine). Michael is God's Infinite Power, able to create infinite energy and reduce things to complete nothingness, but has no will as represented by him viewing himself as merely an extension of The Presence. Lucifer is God's Infinite Will, able to transmute anything into anything but has no power, no ability to create or destroy, represented by his realization that everything he does is predestined and he has no ability to really cause things to happen. 

Together they have powers equal to The Presence himself: 

Synnar:

Synnar has the title of "Demiurge" the same title as Michael. This is because he basically served the same role as Michael but is from the First Age (Lucifer and Michael are from the Fourth Age, the current one). He's about as powerful as Michael, although where Michael doesn't have a will, he seems to lack a brain ;) Sorry, just a joke. 

Elaine Belloc:

 

Elaine is a little girl who is also the daughter of Michael Demiurgos and inherited her father's power. Not kidding. Then Lucifer gave his beloved niece HIS power too. So now she's basically as strong as The Presence, albeit not as experienced at all, nor does she have his omnipresence for some reason. It's implied she may become The Presence of the Fifth Age, representing the writers of DC Comics' future. 

Great Evil Beast (GEB):

The Great Evil Beast is the dark opposite of The Presence, from an occult standpoint the Yin to his Yang, equals which define each other. Just as you can't have North without South, Cold without Hot, etc. you can't have light or darkness without each other.

GEB most notably defeated all the Angels at once and it meeting the Presence threatened to destroy all creation. 

The Presence though saved the omniverse and all creation by absorbing and assimilating with GEB, so that light and dark existed in all things. This is part of a larger thematic point in DC Comics of abstract concepts defining their opposites. The Sandman is a great example of this. 

DC Brother:

(DC Brother is the Blue One). Basically the DC Creation, animate. Appeared in Marvel vs. DC. Pretty Big Name though not actually the strongest in the same way that a living universe wouldn't be the strongest if there was universe busters inside of it. 

Kismet:

The Main DC Universe. She is alive. She is a Lord of Order and like all lords of order has a champion just as Lord of Order Nabu has Champion Doctor Fate. Her Champion is Superman. 

The Source:

The Source is one of many many aspects of The Presence, the most well known. The Word, The Voice, etc. are other aspects. 

Empty Hand

One of the latest DC Cosmics, Empty Hand is a villain from Multiverse-2 (which it destroyed) that has the power to manipulate the 5th dimension, living inside the mind of the reader and using that to manipulate it's world. Think of it as a meme gone wrong. 

There's a lot of DC Cosmics, these are just some of the big names you've probably heard being thrown around.