Yes, I think we have a definitive answer owing to Evanier’s Kirby citation, but I’m as interested in what fans consider proper as I am in what is correct.

It seems likely to me that Kirby intended the character to be called “Darkside” but spelled it “Darkseid” because the original spelling was too on-the-nose … but in doing so, he created unintended confusion, leading a generation of fans to mispronounce his villain’s name.

With movies and TV shows setting a standard it isn’t too hard, these days, for fans to figure out how to pronounce names … but in an era where most communication was written, it is easy to settle into the wrong habits. Superhero cartoons and (especially) movies were a lot less common in the 1960s and 70s.

This is one of the values of attending lectures in an academic setting … I am a history student, and I am largely self-taught. My university education has been on-line and I have attended relatively few live classes and so I have not had the opportunity to hear professors pronounce the names of foreign leaders and battlefields in person. Short of catching historical documentaries on television I have little chance of correctly pronouncing the names of most French generals or Napoleonic battles. I’m educated in that I know about these things, and can talk about them, but could not help but sound ignorant the first time I tried to pronounce “The Battle of Jena-Auerstedt.”

And so it goes …

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