Lady Styx, Believe in Her

Whence came the Lady Styx is not known. The Guardians of the Universe recognised her armaments as Void technology and described her as approaching from “the eternal pit beyond the gates of space-time itself.” This is not dissimilar to the description given for the place where the Maggedon Warhead was chained. Wonder World once patrolled that border, but its destruction by Maggedon could have left the way open for Styx to approach. Her forces had already swept Sector 3500 clean of live in a process that had been called the Stygian Passover.

When the Stygian Passover reached the planet Vartu Captain Comet was waiting for it. He was a veteran superhero from the 1950s who had left Earth to adventure on other worlds. He had faced almost every conceivable foe, but even he was unable to stop the Stygian forces. Before he died he managed to send a final telepathic distress call.

I witnessed seven million minds fall apart when the unimaginable end arrived. I saw machines, the scale of which there no adequate words to describe, and armies…

Are you receiving me?

First of all, the Believer Cubes anchor themselves to a planet’s surface and shatter the ecosystem irreparably. Then the Glorifiers emerge in their billions. Walking dead men, chanting her creed, unstoppable. Where she passes, her armies grow, devouring all in their path as they spread the contagion, the living word of the Lady, the Lady Styx.

“Believe in her,” they say. “Believe in her.”

Are you receiving me?

The Green Lanterns Thormon Tox and Xax had been searching for the Lantern of Vengar when they heard Comet’s telepathic distress call. They came to Vartu, but found themselves abandoned when the Guardians ordered all Lanterns out of the occupied zones and cut power to any who remained. Tox,  Xax, and Captain Comet each fell to Styx’s Glorifier army (52 Week 31, 6 Dec 2006).

Starfire (Kory), Adam Strange, Animal Man (Buddy Baker), Lobo and the Lantern of Vengar heard Comet’s distress call (52 Week 31, 6 Dec 2006). They resolved to stick together despite the Earth heroes still having a bounty on their heads and finally reached the edge of Sector 3500, the Vega System (52 Week 32, 13 Dec 2006). As they searched through the rubble of Vartu Adam Strange recognised Lobo’s plan and made him confess that he was taking them to Lady Styx for the bounty she had placed on their heads – his way of getting past her security (52 Week 36, 3 Jan 2007).

Styx refused to pay the bounty and decided to take Starfire, Animal Man, and Lobo as her new soldiers. She baited Lobo with insults and finally made him lose his cool by calling him a coward. However, Lobo and Strange had deliberately timed their assault to coincide with the migration of the Sun-Eaters (powerful cosmic fauna that graze on stars). The Lantern of Vengar sacrificed himself and the Emerald Head of Ekron to carry Lady Styx into the mall of a Sun Eater where she was destroyed (52 Week 36, 10 Jan 1007).

Parting of the Ways

After Lady Styx’s defeat the group of adventurers went their separate ways.

Animal Man Buddy Baker had been wounded in the battle with Lady Styx and died on the bridge of her command ship. Before he died he asked Starfire to return his jacket to his wife on Earth (52 Week 36, 10 Jan 2007). Adam Strange wouldn’t take the risk that his friend’s corpse would regenerate as one of Styx’s Glorifiers. So, after Lobo had preformed a blessing from the Triple Fish God, they left Buddy’s corpse on an asteroid in deep space (52 Week 37, 17 Jan 2007). The Yellow Aliens who had remade Animal Man once before took notice of his death and restored him to life. They enhanced his existing ties to the morphological field so that he could draw on abilities of interstellar lifeforms like the Sun Eaters. In an instant he gained the ability to fly unaided through space at translight speeds (52 Week 43, 28 Feb 2007).

Animal Man met the Yellow Aliens again when he used the Sun Eaters’ ability to access “Space B”. From Space B a traveller could access any place or time in the Universe, this was how the Sun Eaters migrated between galaxies. The Yellow Aliens showed Buddy an image from one month hence of a man, Buddy’s best friend Roger, apparently making a pass at his grieving wife (52 Week 47, 28 March 2007). Ellen had actually given Roger the brush off, but it was the point of reference Buddy needed to jump back to Earth from Space B. Ellen and his children were overjoyed to see Buddy again – even if he was sat on the front lawn glowing from the residual solar radiation he had channelled (52 Week 51, 25 April 2007).

Lobo Lobo left to return to his pilgrimage for the Triple Fish God while Adam Strange and Starfire turned towards Earth (52 Week 37, 17 Jan 2007). He returned to the Three Golden Planets with the Emerald Eye of Ekron. The Triple Fish God unwisely revealed that Lobo had been sent to retrieve the Eye as it was only thing in the Universe that could kill him.  Lobo’s reaction to this news was to try it out for himself (52 Week 51, 25 April 2007).

Adam Strange and Starfire Despite Styx’s defeat the bounty on Adam and Kory remained active. A bounty hunter called Molek the Hunter wrecked their ship, but committed suicide rather than accept defeat by them.  Starfire was injured during the fight with Molek and the blind Adam Strange had to carry her free from his exploding ship. Fortunately for them the flare from the explosion was noticed by Green Lantern Opto309y and their failing craft  was brought into a crash-landing on the planet sized Green Lantern Mogo (52 Week 41, 14 Feb 2007).

The Green Lanterns took Adam Strange back to Rann where Sardath was able to restore his eyes using copies of his daughter’s eyes laced with genetic improvements which allowed him to see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Kory didn’t stay on Rann, she took a few hours to absorb energy from Rann’s suns and then left for Earth. She still believed that Animal Man had died in space and was determined to return his jacket to Ellen. She arrived just in time to stop a final pair of bounty hunters attacking Animal Man and his family before collapsing from exhaustion on their front porch (51 Week 51, 25 April 2007).

Infinite Crisis Recap.

Alexander Luthor and Superboy Prime were survivors from the first Multiverse (from back before it was compressed down into a single Universe with a single Earth). They moved entire star systems to create the cosmic alignment they needed to engineer the return of their Multiverse. This caused chaos among the interstellar empires and spawned a war between Rann and Thanagar. Many other races were pulled into the Rann-Thanagar conflict, but it was dwarfed by the growing spatial anomaly created by Luthor’s manipulations of reality. Superheroes from the planet Earth and the Green Lantern Corps managed to stop his insane plans. Unknown to anybody at the time a new Multiverse of 52 Universes had been created, the revelation and the mystery of which would play out over the following 52 weeks.

Adam Strange (the human defender of Rann) tried to save the Earth heroes from Luthor’s collapsing space rift by teleporting them away using Zeta-Beam technology. There was an accident, a refraction of the Zeta-Beam with the spatial and temporal distortions, that scattered the heroes through space and time. Most arrived back on Earth with strange injuries (Hawkgirl was turned into a giant), but Supergirl was catapulted a thousand years into the future. Starfire (Princess Koriand’r of Tamaran or Kory for short), Animal Man (Buddy Baker of Earth) and Adam Strange were less fortunate.

Pursued by Devilance the Puruser

Kory, Adam, and Buddy managed to get to a small Thanagarian ship, little more than a life boat, but they were in unknown space and their craft was damaged. They set down on a beautiful alien world to allow Adam Strange to make repairs – a compromise made even harder as Strange had lost his eyes in the accident. Kory enjoyed the beauty of her temporary home, but she recognised the world from ancient myths. On this world the passage of time was determined by the position of the sun in the sky – as the sun set time slowed down until it stopped entirely during the planet’s night (52 Week 5, 6 June 2006). Despite their plight neither Kory nor Buddy were too concerned as their minds had been befuddled by local fruit which, unknown to them, was narcotic.

The trio were captured easily by Devilance the Pursuer, the evil New God of the Pursuit. They had seen into the anomaly and had witnessed things that mortals were not meant to see. During the same event the Red Tornado had recorded a map of the Multiverse and was being stalked for it by Mister Mind. Kory, Buddy, and Adam didn’t remember the same amount of detail, but Devilance did not want their knowledge escaping. He believed that knowledge of the Multiverse belonged to the gods alone. Devilance was not the only being who knew what they had seen and he revealed to them that every bounty hunter in the Universe was after them (52 Weeks 7-9, 21 June – 6 July 2006). It was Devilance who unwittingly supplied the heroes with the power to escape the alien prison paradise. They managed to escape from his cages and stole his signature weapon, his Lance. With it they were able to power their Thanagarian craft and blast free of the planet before time stopped there all together (52 Week 16, 23 Aug 2006).

Adam Strange’s plan had been to jump several parsecs out into space and then contract the nearest inhabited planet – of which there should have been many – but they found the Universe around them had been wiped clean of life. The planets had been reduced to rubble and they found themselves navigating through a particularly dense asteroid field. After weeks cramped up in the little ship the normally easy-going Starfire and Adam Strange were beginning to get on each others nerves. They still had Devilance’s Lance and the New God of the Pursuit eventually caught up with them. Surprisingly, Devilance disappeared at the last moment to be replaced by the bounty hunter called Lobo (who had killed Devilance whilst the humans weren’t looking). Starfire went out into space to negotiate with Lobo and he surprisingly agreed to lead them out of the space wilderness (52 Week 17, 30 Aug 2006).

Archbishop Lobo and the Emerald Head of Ekron

Lobo, the superhuman Czarnian bounty-hunter, had a reputation as the “Main Man” – the deadliest and most powerful bounty hunter in known space. He’d always had a fondness for space dolphins (“fishies” as he called them), but now as Archbishop Lobo he had found religion in the service of the First Celestial Church of the Triple Fish-God. Lobo had been on a pilgrimage in the wasteland of Sector 3500 – the area of space Kory, Buddy, and Adam had just escaped from – for the Triple-Fish God and was returning to the Three Golden Planets when he encountered the Earth heroes. Lobo took them back to a refugee camp populated by aliens from a hundred world – the last survivors of Sector 3500 who were bartering away their races’ last treasures just to survive (52 Week 19, 13 Sept 2006).

Lobo’s pilgrimage with several space dolphin attendants had been to retrieve the Emerald Eye of Ekron from the Emerald Head of Ekron. He kept that secret until he was killed by a swarm of carrion eaters that attacked the refugee camp. Starfire used the Eye to destroy the parasites before Lobo could regenerate his body from a drop of his own blood. He was livid that she had used the Emerald Eye as it would serve as a beacon to the Emerald Head. It was searching for the thief that had stolen its Eye and would home in on them. Lobo hitched their ship to his space bike and they fled before the Emerald Head arrived (52 Week 20, 20 Sept 2006).

The Head eventually caught up with them and they began a desperate flight to avoid its attacks. It was Starfire who recognised that the markings on the Head belonging to the Green Lantern Corps. A lot later Adam Strange learnt from Green Lantern John Stewart that the Emerald Head had been a prototype weapon from the early days of the Green Lantern Corps and had been missing for centuries.

The Emerald Head was piloted by the Green Lantern of Vengar, a planet from Sector 3500. He had been driven insane by the sight of the worlds he protected being reduced to rubble. Archbishop Lobo was bound by a vow of non-violence so he need Starfire, Animal Man, and Adam Strange to fight off the insane Lantern’s attack. Despite Adam Strange’s anger with Lobo for getting them into this mess, Starfire recognised that he, they, and the Lantern of Vengar may be the only people able to stop the Stygian Passover (the force that had wiped Sector 3500 clean of life) from reaching Earth (52 Week 28, 15 Nov 2006).

Next – The Lady Styx of the Stygian Passover

Mister Mind revealed (Ugly sucker ain't he?)

Booster still assumes that Skeets’s programming has been corrupted, but it only now that the full horror of his transformation is revealed. For the last 50 weeks the Venusian mindworm, Mister Mind, has been gestating inside of Skeets’s robotic body. Doctor Sivana’s experiments on Mister Mind removed the biological blocks that were keeping it at a larval stage. It needed a chrysalis to gestate in. Mind ate the real Skeets from the inside and kept its shell – a shell uniquely capable of surviving the ravages of time travel – as a chrysalis. Now, after 52 weeks its ready to reveal its full adult form. Mister Mind is a Hyperfly, a monstrous moth-like creature that feeds on dimensions and universes – this is how it was able to absorb the Phantom Zone during his last encounter with Hunter and Booster in the Fortress of Solitude.

Mind sensed that the events of the INFINITE CRISIS had created a powerful new power source for him to feed on, but he didn’t know the truth about it or where to find it. Only Hunter knew and that’s why Mister Mind was hunting him. Hunter and Booster grab the Red Tornado’s head from Morrow’s laboratory and dive into Hunter’s Time Sphere, leaving Morrow to escape on his own. Following on in Week #52, Hunter explains that they’ve travelled back one year into the past and that that they are inside the timestream witnessing a birth. Hunter relates the unseen events of INFINITE CRISIS which he witnessed from within the timesteam.

The Secret of 52 is explained (Week #52)

“It was during one of my strange adventures. I was traveling thought time investigating an anomaly when the time stream was ripped open. A survivor from a parallel Earth long dead had returned to ‘save’ ours from a self-perceived corruption. His name was Alexander Luthor. He split our Earth in thousands of divergent worlds, but the planets he manifested were unstable. Trapped in the time stream, I watched worlds live and die — until Conner Kent sacrificed his life to save our reality. ”

“The broken Earths collapsed back together, combining historical remnant to form one New Earth — one far too small to contain the energy within it. In a cosmic act of self-preservation, as you just saw, it began replicating. Unknown to anyone save myself, a new Multiverse was born in the wake of the crisis. 52 identical Earths in 52 identical cosmos.”

The Red Tornado witnessed the same event, but his vibrationally attuned technology was able to map the new Multiverse. Hunter needed his map so that his Time Sphere could vibrationally attune to the different universes and travel between them. The gestating Mister Mind sensed the change in reality, but wasn’t sure of the cause. How that the secret of the 52 is revealed he is free to feast on the energies of the new Multiverse, absorbing it and destroying it before it is fully explored.

Each of the Universes started out identical to the New Earth Universe, but Mister Mind’s feasting alters their history at a deep level. This isn’t unlike the reality ripples that Superboy Prime’s escape into realspace caused, but this time the effects are far more dramatic. Hunter describes the Multiverse as “52 Universes, moving in harmony like gears in some gigantic, celestial machine. He’s prefiguring the Orrery of World, the Monitor’s own conception of the Multiverse. Mister Mind’s rampage is altering the chronology of each world, creating divergent histories and natures. Like the butterfly from chaos theory, the flaps of his wings are having massive effects on each Universe.

With the help of Supernova (now Daniel Carter, Booster’s ancestor) Rip Hunter restores the Phantom Zone when Mister Mind tries using it as a weapon against them. Daniel had been trapped in a loop of 52 seconds – the 52 missing second Clock King had been complaining about. They then align the pieces they need to trap Mister Mind. Hunter steals a sample of suspendium from Doctor Sivana, but accidentally reveals to him that the Multiverse exists. Meanwhile Booster borrows Dan Garret’s Blue Beetle Scarab from the day after the first Crisis and inadvertently meets Ted Kord for the first time.

Hunter uses the suspendium to lure Mister Mind out of the Multiverse before he spawns and into realspace. They then trap Mister Mind back inside Skeets shell and hurl him backwards through the timestream. He devolves back into a worm as he travels backwards in time. Then one year ago, Sivana finds the worm in the wilderness just in time to start his experiments all over again. The perfect closed time loop.

There you have it, the secret of 52. When the New Earth Universe reformed at the end of Infinite Crisis 51 other Earths in their own Universes were also formed. These 52 cosmoses were momentarily identical until Mister Mind’s flight altered their causality and chronology at a fundamental level.

Personally I was quite surprised by the compact nature of the new Multiverse. By having a set number of universes DC could either be seen as limiting themselves or as forcing themselves to make every parallel Earth count. There is a throw away line from Rip Hunter about something called the Megaverse so I would not be too surprised to learn that there is a large multiversal structure outside of the 52 itself.

Oh and don’t worry about Skeets. Rip Hunter and Will Magnus were able to salvage a backup of his AI from before Mister Mind starting on him.

Next in this series I want to take a look at how the 52 played out in other comics, but I’m going to reserve COUNTDOWN and FINAL CRISIS itself for a later date.

In Week #26 Dr Sivana’s kids momentarily see a flash forward of the time traveller Waverider saying “I know who” and then being attacked. We see the actual event in Week #27, Evil Skeets catches up with the terrified Waverider. He had been organizing the time criminals, Chronos, Time Commander, Clock Queen and others into a new group of Time Masters to stand against the threat that Rip Hunter had discovered. However, Evil Skeets was too strong for them and had attacked/murdered each of them in turn.

Evil Skeets confronts Waverider (Week #26)

When Skeets finally comes for Waverider he calls him “The Seer of Hypertime. Keeper of the Divergent Timelines.” This may well be the last in-canon reference to Hypertime – the now defunct model of DC’s cosmology. In INFINITE CRISIS Alexander Luthor splintered the Universe into a infinite number of parallel universes before the heroes managed to collapse it back into a single universe, but something new was left in its wake. Evil Skeets can sense the change, but it doesn’t know exactly what it is. Only Rip Hunter knows and he’s beyond Skeets’ ability to track. By attacking Hunter’s allies, Skeet’s had hoped to find force Hunter out into the open. He kills Waverider while gloating this his own metallic body is actually made from metal taken from Waverider’s corpse.

Meanwhile the enigmatic Supernova is has been on a scavenger hunt through the DC Universe. By week #31 Ralph Dibny has deduced Supernova’s true identity and tells him as much. At the end of Week #36 and into Week #37 it is revealed that Rip Hunter has been hiding in the Bottle City of Kandor in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Supernova had been working for him, searching for a suitable power source for his Time Bubble, but nothing they’ve found is compatible. Hunter himself is having trouble saying focused in linear time and proclaims that “Broken! Is Time!”

When Evil Skeets finally tracks them down, Supernova is revealed to be Booster Gold, alive and well, and working with Rip Hunter. They joined forces in during Booster’s first visit to Hunter’s lab in Week #6. A bit of time travel allowed him to appear as Supernova alongside himself and to fake his own death. This part of the plotline sets up the BOOSTER GOLD series that spins-out of 52 and establishes Booster’s new job as Rip Hunter’s agent in the timestream. The powers of the Supernova suit were all based on technology derived from the Phantom Zone Projector. This is how Supernova was able to teleport thousands of people out of the chaos in Metropolis in Week #35 – by shunting them through the Phantom Zone.

Supernova/Booster and Rip Hunter try to imprison Evil Skeet using the original Phantom Zone Projector, but he starts to absorb the entire dimension. Its enough of a diversion to allow Booster and Hunter to teleport away with Hunter counting down “52… 51…”

Next: Whatever happend to the Red Tornado?.

The real Justice League had fallen apart before the events of INFINITE CRISIS. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were without their costumed identities and the Martian Manhunter, the usual heart of the League, was undercover in Washington trying to eliminate the last remnant of Maxwell Lord’s Checkmate. Elsewhere in the political system, Lorraine Reilly, the superheroine Firehawk and the first Firestorm’s sometime partner, is campaigning for election to the US Senate – to the seat formerly held by her late father. She needs a boost in the polls and thinks that organizing a replacement Justice League will give her a suitable PR boost.

Her four recruits are:

Jason Rusch, the second Firestorm. Together they had been part of Donna Troy and Alan Scott’s taskforce during INFINITE CRISIS and Lorraine’s actions had allowed/caused the death of Jason’s best friend. So he’s wasn’t particularly favourable to her, but a chance to join the Justice League was too big a opportunity to pass up.

The Bulleteer is Alix Horrower. She and her scientist husband Lance appeared to be a perfectly normal couple until Lance’s superhero fetish led to a bizarre accident that killed him and cursed Alix with an indestructible metal skin. She never wanted to be a superhero, but couldn’t kill herself and became involved with the sleezer side of the cape set more by accident that designed. She turned out to be the invaluable Seventh Solider, but her brief time with the JLA can only be described as passive.

Saganwohna, the Super-Chief, is an ancestral Iroquois hero who receives his powers from a Sky Stone, a superpower bestowing meteorite that the Super-Chiefs’ believe was sent to them by the great Manitou Spirit. It was passed down from father-to-son for protection and it passed to Jon Standing Bear on the day his father died (52 Week #22). Jon smothered his grandfather in his sleep and then took the Sky Stone for himself. Like many people he wanted to be a superhero and saw the stone as a quick route to the power he needed.

The last member of Firehawk’s Justice League is Ambush Bug. A man who may or may not be called Irwin Schwab. He is either delusion or he has the best grasp of the meta-reality of anybody in the DC Universe.

Firehawk and Firestorm (Week #24)

Their first case is to investigate a seemingly random temporal anomaly that was spewing legions of bloodthursty pirates and cyborgs onto the streets of Metropolis. However, this group of C-list heroes rapidly loses control of the situation when all the D-list wannabe heroes from Lex Luthor’s Everyman project descended on the riot.

The Evil Skeets had been behind the anomaly. Following Booster Gold’s death he had been acting increasingly erratic. He had sealed Booster’s ancestor inside Rip Hunter’s lab to protect his own secrets. The Metropolis anomaly was bait in a trap to draw out Rip Hunter, but his failure to show forces Skeets to up the ante. He unleashes a surprising arsnel against the spectators and decimates the heroes. Among those his kills are the young Super-Chief.

Skeet's unleashed (Week #24)

Checkmate had just been signed out of existence by the US President – J’onn J’onzz’s final victory against them – but it is immediately resurrected by the United Nations as an international meta-human watchdog in response to the riot in Metropolis.

Firehawk’s JLA was disbanded following Skeet’s attack and never reformed. She and Firehawk would continue working together and he would eventually become a member of the proper JLA when Lex Luthor’s Injustice League included him in their list of heroes to target. Bulleteer has appeared from time-to-time in collation of heroes. Ambush Bug is still waiting for Keith Giffin to finish his mini-series.

Next time – back to the 52, Skeet’s hunt intensifies

Recently Booster has been trying to use Skeet’s historical database to reestablish his reputation as a hero, but something has been causing problems – events and history does not appear to conform to Skeet’s records.  Will Magnus gave Skeet’s computer AI the all clear in Week #2, so Booster has been trying to find the time traveller Rip Hunter so see if there is a problem with time. The signs were there if Booster was smart enough to spot them – references to the number 52 and numbers that add up to 52 are scattered throughout this entire series.

Booster Gold in Rip Hunter Lab (click to enlarge)

Booster eventually finds Hunter’s Arizona Lab in Week #6, but it appears uninhabited. Skeets has to hold the security system off line while Booster goes inside so he doesn’t see what Booster finds. Inside are random notes and keywords about the future. Many of them are hints at future developments in the series. Some of them are ones we’re interested in. These include:

• “Time is broken” – something is wrong with history. This is Booster’s problem, but its a symptom of something larger.
• “Someone is monitoring. They see us. They see me.” – a reference to the Monitors. They appear briefly in 52: WORLD WAR III, but play a more central role in COUNTDOWN and FINAL CRISIS.
• 52 circles each with the number 52 inside – 52 worlds, the key is that Earth is shown as a circle
• “The Tornado is in pieces” – a direct reference to he Red Tornado’s accident.

Along with the references to 52 there is the message “His fault!” with arrows pointing to photographs of Booster. We’re meant to think something is Booster’s fault, but it isn’t. The arrows are actually pointing at Skeets.

Week #10 features the first appearance of Supernova, the hero that replaced Superman in Metropolis and supplanted Booster Gold in the public’s affection – particularly after Ralph Dibny exposed Booster’s rigged heroics. By Week #15 the failure of Skeet’s database has made Booster desperate to recreate his success at any cost. Booster tries to save the day when the Ballostro sea-monster attacks Metropolis, but Supernova’s more effective intervention enrages Booster. He finally redeems himself by sacrificing his life to fly an exploding submarine clear of the city.

With Booster dead, Skeets is left on his own. Three week’s later at Booster’s funeral Skeets recognizes Daniel Carter, an ancestor of Booster and makes contact with him. In Week #19 Skeet’s explains to Daniel that he hadn’t accompanied Booster into Rip Hunter’s lab and that he now needs Daniel to accompany him back there.

Skeet's meets Daniel Carter (Week #19)

Daniel sees the the notes about “Its his fault” and tell’s Skeets. The robot realizes that Hunter knows about him and seals Daniel inside the lab. The Evil Skeets reappears in Week #24 when he ambushes a wannabe version of the Justice League.

Next: 52 interlude – who was that JLA?

[the-series before="<p>Series: " separator=", " after="</p>"]
	

	
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Short review: Booster Gold #33
				
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The 52 in 52 – Part IV: Skeet’s Hunt For Rip Hunter
			
		
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		Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:42:45 +0000
		Jason Kirk
				
		
		
		

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Related Posts:
		

				
The 52 in 52 – Part V: The return of the Red Tornado
				
The 52 in 52 – Part VI: The Truth
				
Missing from the collections
			
		
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			Following on from our quick look at the publishing history of DC’s Multiverses I thought I’d go over the discovery of the 52 Multiverse in the series 52. Following the conclusion of INFINITE CRISIS the internal chronology of DC’s superhero titles jumped forwards by one year in a stunt called “One Year Later.” The idea was that this missing year would be chronicled in a weekly, year-long series called 52 written by the cream of DC’s writers – Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. It was originally meant to connect the stories published before and after the missing year, but it became something greater and more cohesive.


Many of the events and threads that led up to the FINAL CRISIS were planted in 52. There were a number of different subplots that wound through 52 including the personal journeys of Ralph Dibny, Black Adam, Animal Man, Steel, and Rene Montoya. However, its the journey of Rip Hunter, Booster Gold, and the Red Tornado that are relevant to the central mystery behind 52 – the meaning of the number itself.
Sivana (Week #1) - Red Tornado (Week #6) - Morrow (Week #10)
From Week #1 we are shown that somebody is kidnapping an assortment of mad scientists. The first genius we see being kidnapped is Thaddeus Sivana, the Captain Marvel villain. He’s kidnapped from his lab and leaves behind a tube containing a caterpillar that he had been studying – this is Mister Mind a telepathic alien worm who was also one of Captain Marvel’s foes.
There is a throw away line in Week #2 when Will Magnus (the creator of the Metal Men) says that this mentor Professor T.O. Morrow (the old JLA foe) is in Haven, the super scientist prison, “for attempting to start a war between two parallel worlds”. That’s our first mention of parallel worlds. Later when Will Magnus meets Morrow he passes on the news that his creation, the heroic Red Tornado, has once more been destroyed protecting the Earth. During their conversation Morrow is shown pinning a notice about Sivana’s disappearance to a notice board. The last image of Week #3 is of Mister Mind’s test tube in Sivana’s abandoned lab and we see that the caterpillar has created some sort of cocoon or chrysalis around itself.
Weeks #4 and #5 are when the heroes that have been lost in space Zeta-Beam back to Earth. Green Lantern Alan Scott, Donna Troy, and the rest were caught in the chaos surrounding Alex Luthor’s rift in space. They tried to escape by Zeta-Beaming through a portal created by Mal Duncan, but something went wrong. The reality distortion refracted the Zeta-Beam scattering some of the heroes through time and space. The Red Tornado was blown apart, a piece of his shrapnel blinded Alan Scott and his voice box was embedded in Mal Duncan’s chest. When Duncan awoke on Earth the voice box kept repeating the Tornado’s last words, “It’s coming! 52! 52!”
At the Week #10 Will Magnus is back at Haven visiting Morrow again. He’s discovered Mister Mind’s coccoon from Week #2 in Sivana’s lab, but whatever was inside had pupated and escaped. The next time Magnus visits Haven, he finds that Morrow has vanished as well, but not before leaving behind a note revealing the secret of artificial intelligence. Later in Week #23 we discover that it is Intergang who have been kidnapping mad scientists and evil genius from all over the world to work on their secret Oolong Island. Sivana was one of the earlier ones, then they got Morrow, and finally they kidnap Magnus.
Next, Booster Gold and Rip Hunter’s Lab.
	

	
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The 52 in 52 – Part V: The return of the Red Tornado
				
The 52 in 52 – Part VI: The Truth
				
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