A New God... Dead?

WYCKO, MN. - Citizens of this far-northern farming community were simultaneously proud and dismayed to find that a New God had chosen their home when it came his time to die. Identified as Stellar (a previously unknown and unworshipped New God), the dying super-entity's final words were (to paraphrase) "damn this sucks" and "dying... me! I'm a friggin' New God!"

"We didn't know what to make of it," said Heinz "Handy" Ostrobeck, a local farmer and merchant. "He was dying for what must've been half an hour out in Clancy Bright's field over there. Yelling and cursing and carrying on. I was tempted to take my old shotgun and just end it for him, you know? Our kids don't need to hear some space freak making a fuss like that."

The residents of Wycko had heard rumors that "some of them superfolk were getting killed off," Ostrobeck said, but "that's so far away from here, we didn't think it mattered much to us. Then this goofball from space shows up and dies and we're in the papers."

Reminded that the New Gods had, in fact, been getting murdered over the past year, Ostrobeck shrugged. "I can't expect to keep up with all them big city doings," he said. "When Superman dies again, let me know. Otherwise I'll just keep plugging along."

Other, better-informed folk admitted that they had forgotten entirely that the New Gods had been slain en masse, so that the revelation of a New God's death offered a certain novelty all over again. It certainly seemed nobody realized (or cared) that an entire civilization of powerful, benevolent beings had been annihilated, even though it had been heavily covered in national publications during the previous twelve months.

No funeral arrangements have been made, since there are no known next of kin (or anyone to pay for said arrangements). Clancy Bright said he might charge folks a dollar to view the remains, which are currently on display in his barn.

Artwork copyright DC Comics, all rights reserved