The 25–issue Walt Simonson series was designed to follow the continuity of the original Fourth World series and was published after John Byrne's "Jack Kirby's Fourth World" series ended. To flesh out the series, characters such as Fourth World stalwarts Lightray, Darkseid, Desaad, and Kalibak were used in addition to lesser used characters such as Orion's mother Tigra (early on in the series), Mortalla, and the Newsgroup Legion (an update of Jack Kirby's 1940s Newsboy Legion). A collection of all of Walt Simonson's Orion stories is scheduled for publication in July 2018.