#58: From The Outer Darkness (Part 4 of 4)

Previously, in JUSTICE LEAGUE…

Last time we saw them, the Justice League were in trouble! Laputa, their island headquarters, was in emergency lockdown, the only members left to operate inside being BATMAN, HAWKMAN and their tech-wizard ANGELA SPICA.

GREEN LANTERN’s power ring was compromised by a mysterious psychic virus hidden in the pages of a horror book, resulting in horrific constructs being generated that hunted the others across the dim halls, resulting in the loss of BATMAN!

After a long fought battle, HAWKMAN and ANGELA located JOHN STEWART-- de-aged, terrified, and with no idea of his future role as GREEN LANTERN-- and with him, the power ring, possessed of some inhuman consciousness, with nothing on its mind but their doom!

Meanwhile, BIG BARDA, BLUE BEETLE, MAJESTIC, MISTER MIRACLE and WONDER WOMAN journeyed into a bubble reality that appeared to be a fictional town that a horror writer conjured up, but when TED KORD arrived inside, the team was missing, leaving him to get to the root of the situation!

Outside of the pocket reality, CYBORG, DOCTOR LIGHT and THE GUARDIAN thought they would only need to act if the others failed, but with the arrival of the US military, headed by GENERAL SAM LANE, and standard protocol in this situation being the Muon-bombing of any invading reality, they really could have their work cut out for them!

With all this in mind, please join us now for the continuing adventures of the JUSTICE LEAGUE--


Chased by a writhing mass of emerald tentacles that lashed out and tried to claw at him every step he took, Hawkman managed to flap his wings, get some air, and as he began to tear through the air he grabbed Angie and John Stewart-- de-aged to his teens-- and the trio shot upward, toward the hole the Hawk Knight had carved into the ceiling minutes prior. They tasted the stale air that had mixed with the smoke from the explosion that they assumed Batman had triggered in an effort to buy them time, and soared as high as they could, the tentacles dragging the power ring that generated them up, outside the confines of Laputa for the first time.

“How long do we have until the shield comes down?”

“A few hours,” said Angie, trying to catch her breath. John was bundled up beside her, still sobbing, still asking for his sister. Whatever had happened to him had left him traumatised, trapped in his younger body, but maybe it wasn’t the experience that damaged him so badly. Perhaps it was this moment that he’d been dragged back to that was so painful. Only recently had he returned to the team* and they’d hardly spoken She knew nothing about him and that was now being used against them all.


With nowhere to go, Hawkman’s head darted back and forth, trying to figure out which location was left to them. From out of the aviary, the swarming masses of emerald constructs that hunted them were spilling out, falling to the ground numerous floors down. Some shattered, some were fractured, but there were always more. The ring itself, surrounded by the hard-light alien appendages it generated, was beginning to billow up in an attempt to reach the others, and it was gaining ground quickly. Not long until its tentacles, its clawed, razor-tipped tentacles, reached them.

“My belt, the back pocket, the one I haven’t opened,” said Hawkman. He flapped his wings, brushed up against the force field that separated Laputa from the outside world. He’d gone as far up as he could. That reinforced his next idea, his next plan of action. Angie nodded repeatedly, groped into his pocket and dragged out a small grenade, one of two left. “Can you make the throw?”

“Not going to be hard, considering it’s gaining on us.”

Hawkman continued: “Flip the lid off, press the button twice, then throw. Just hit it. That’s all we need. Then take a deep breath. Both of you. Deep, deep breaths.”

Angie did as she was told. Concentrated. Then threw-- and the grenade made impact on the edge of the writhing multi-limbed mass, exploding on impact. Hawkman watched as the constructs all around them fluctuated, ever so slightly, but didn’t vanish. Not that he was expecting them to.

But in that moment, he shot down, headed straight toward the waters that lapped on the inside of the shield, and plunged into them. With two heavy drags of his wings he pushed forward, heaved the three of them down-- and then up-- and they arrived in Aquaman’s entrance to Laputa, where a number of submersibles of numerous designs resided. They were in the hangar. Everything else, the things that hunted them, the ring, were up on high. He didn’t know if it would track them, if the things were already lurking down here, but it gave them time.

Up above, the ring began to drag itself across the distance between the two main towers on Laputa, toward the shattered ruin of an aviary where Batman had gone down in a blaze of glory. Thin, slapping limbs lashed onto one side of the building, and then another set of the appendages-- almost hind leg in nature-- pushed the central mass, ring included, toward the broken dome where smoke still rose up in billowing clouds.

Back at the base of Laputa, Angie staggered away from Hawkman, wringing the water out of her hair and clothes, while John dropped to his knees. Katar finally discarded his helmet for good. It was deadweight, same as the rest of his ruined armour. He contemplated the fragments left on him. He was the last of the true Hawk Knights. The rest had died at the hands of Despero*, years ago, when Katar first met the Justice League. His armour was irreplaceable and if this was the final battle for a suit that had held him in good stead for decades, then he accepted that. It wasn’t like he could return to Thanagar and replace it any time soon…


… And he smiled at that thought, some quiet voice in the back of his head convinced that he might still survive this day, even after everything they’d been through so far.

Katar tightened the harness around his bare chest, made sure his weapons were all still with him-- some were not, but he had his Nth metal mace, so that was okay-- then took stock of what he had in his utility belt. They’d used the majority of his medical supplies on Batman, before he sacrificed himself to give them time to escape. He would have declared the act of using them on him wasteful, both of resource and time, considering the end result was the Dark Knight gone in a blaze of glory. But the Caped Crusader was one of the greatest men he’d ever met. And now he was gone.

“Seven Hells,” spat Katar.

“Katar, I have… I might have an idea,” said Angela, approaching him tentatively. She’d located a large jacket that she’d pulled on to try and get warm, fully knowing that wet clothes under dry weren’t conducive to not getting hypothermia. “And it’s weird, and it’s ugly and I wish I’d thought of it before but it might not work, and Batman could have used it but… but it’s kept me alive so far…”

“I’m listening.”

Angela spoke quickly, with a heavy sense of urgency. “My blood is filled with nanites that are regulating my brain chemistry. Stopping my fear response. You want John to get over this? And fast? Blood transfusion.”

Katar began to understand. “It would normalise his behaviour? Calm him?”

“Yeah. In theory.”

Hawkman nodded. At this point, the risk would be worth it. “What do we need?”


“Mysterious stranger enters a mysterious town and nobody knows who he is except he’s mysterious and he’s got a mission but that mission isn’t one he’s sharing with anybody, because he’s a mystery. You know the rules, Teddy boy, so don’t play by them.”

Ted Kord didn’t know where to start, but he recognised that maybe, just maybe, his volition wasn’t his own right now. Quite clearly, he’d been pushed to go to the antiques dealer. To go to some shop in this nightmare town, and he didn’t know why. His team was missing, he was under the gun, and he was being led on a wild goose chase by a voice in his head. Another voice in his head, at least. He looked both ways before crossing the street, once toward the antiques shop, and then the other way, toward the incandescent lake, the lush emerald forests and the house across the way, on the hilltop. Something tickled his brain--

--But before Ted could enter the antiques shop, a man flew through the front window, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. He was thin, lanky, grey skin punctuated by patches of thick, shadow-black hair. He looked up with a wide, blackened eye that was already more black by genetics than facial punch trauma at Ted, then at the gaping wound in the window, then past it, as a woman stepped out, her fist clenched.

Wonder Woman, dressed in a pencil skirt, pure white shirt now splattered by flecks of burgundy blood-- not her own-- looked down at the man she’d punched through to the street and then to Ted. “He told me I was his wife now. That was clearly his first mistake. Touching me was his last. What took you so long, Blue Beetle?”

“Y-you shouldn’t be awake,” hissed the man, scrambling to his feet. He tried throwing a punch at Wonder Woman, but Diana kicked him in the knee and it sent him straight back down again. The man screamed, but the noise came out like breaking glass, like bottles churning through a recycling plant, wholly inhuman.

“You weren’t affected?” said Ted.

“I can feel the pulsing change energies all around us,” said Diana, tearing the side of her skirt to provide additional freedom of movement. “But by my nature, I know the truth of a situation. And I could see through this one with ease. Whatever this pocket dimension is, it wanted to change us to suit it’s means. I don’t feel like playing along.”

Kord took a moment to rummage through the man’s pockets. During his quick pat down he found something holstered under his armpit, and unbuckled it for his own use, just in case.

Looking down at the man who was currently squirming around on the floor gripping his injured knee, Kord recalled a story, early in the series of Godwyn books, where a meek woman was coerced via a series of letters from an admirer to travel to the town, but when she arrived he wouldn’t let her leave-- he coincidentally turned out to be the head of a local nest of human / insect hybrids. He’d wanted to impregnate her with his brood, expand the gene pool, but she’d escaped thanks to the local sheriff, who was revealed to be the leader of the clan. Were they being cast in roles? If so, what about the Frees?

Trying to think through the situation further, Ted glanced upwards and saw that the blue skies were swathed with red in different shades, crimson and scarlet, garnet and merlot, and Kord felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to tingle.

“Red skies. The walls between realities are getting thin enough to split open.”

“Then we best be moving. I’d really like to meet the man who tried brainwashing me.”

“Yeah, you and me both. He couldn’t lock you down, but he can blow a bubble reality up to a size big enough to overlap a section of our own? Maybe he only has limited ability to change those who aren’t from his fictional world. You still had your abilities, you just had to power through. My finger still hurts like the Dickens, so maybe the others have been cast in roles like you. But we don’t have time to find them, we need to track down Godwyn. We need to end this.”

“Where next, then?”

“To the house on top of that hill,” said Beetle, gesturing past the lake across the way, over the dense forest, and at the Edwardian-looking house at the top of a peak that overlooked the entire town. “We need to sit down with the author of this nightmare.”


“You came up with a plan to unleash a Muon bomb on American soil if something like this happened?” said Cyborg, incredulously. “You can’t possibly be serious!”

“Deadly serious,” said the Guardian. Cyborg, Doctor Light and himself were stood in front of the pocket reality the Justice League had vanished inside of, the only force between an invading bubble of evil and the American military. “Don’t be naïve, Cyborg. You’ve been in this business for a long time, just like the rest of us, but I promise you, I’ve been doing it longer.. I’ve seen things you haven’t, even in your nightmares. The stakes here are high, but they’re just as high as every other horror scenario I’ve been involved in.”

“Good to see you’re not completely addled by your time up in the clouds with these folks, Colonel,” said General Sam Lane.

Lane’s hair was close-cropped, high and tight, and his face resembled a granite sculpture more than anything else. How he managed to raise a daughter like Lois Lane boggled Harper’s mind, but then he realised that growing up with a man like the General and ending up the way she did made perfect sense. And to think he was the uncle of Chloe Sullivan, and had taken her in when her life had turned upside down when she was a kid… this was not a man of shallow depth. He had multitudes.

“I’ve got people on the ground in there,” said Harper, turning away from Cyborg and focusing his energies on Lane. “Good people. The best.”

“You know the rules, Colonel. Hell, I’ve already broken protocol standing here reasoning with you. That thing is a threat to national security, to our country, and I need to take it out of the equation.”

Lane began to head toward one of the command tents that had been erected during his conversation with the League.

Cyborg wasn’t having any of it. “What about the town the bubble has manifested over? You could be obliterating thousands of innocent people! At least with our--”

“You think you make the hard decisions, hiding out on your island in the middle of the ocean and popping up whenever something bad rears its ugly head?” growled Lane, turning and addressing the young man. “I make the hard decisions every single day. That’s my responsibility, when I put on this uniform. So when I say this has to be done, I’m not making that decision lightly, I’m doing it because it needs to be done, and I’ll live with the consequences, as per my orders.”

“But with our approach--” started the Guardian, but Doctor Light stepped forward and interrupted him.

“I can make it simple,” she said. Her eyes glowed in the dim dusk light. “If your men fire on that bubble, I’ll disintegrate the bullets before they impact. If you drop a Muon bomb, I’ll detonate it before it lands potentially sacrificing the three of us and you, but giving the Justice League,” she said the word with the weight that it deserved, “the chance to end this the right way.”

“Honey, you can barely stand,” said Lane, dismissive, but with a hint of doubt in his voice. He’d seen Superman. He’d followed the career of his daughter and seen wonders through her words and her life. He’d seen it all, and a girl who looked like she weighed nothing soaking wet was equally nothing to be impressed with and something to be terrified of.

“I’ll stand up just fine,” said Hoshi, taking a step toward the General. “Just like I have every time a bully who thinks he’s bigger than me tries to push me down.”

Cyborg and the Guardian looked at each other, shocked at the quiet intensity exuded by the Japanese expat. She had served on the Justice League and still demonstrated exactly why that was one of the best decisions they’d ever made. Cyborg, only in his first run, realised that this woman should not be messed with, and he smiled, even though he’d just been declared an acceptable loss.

After contemplating the barely veiled threat, Lane almost smiled, was almost impressed, but he fully believed she was capable of backing up her words. “Then we best hope your guys resolve this before that thing bursts,” he said. “You have your stay. Make it worth all our time.”


While Angela and John were barricaded inside one of the Atlantean tidal bombers, Hawkman moved through the lower floors of Laputa, below sea level, and searched for the medical equipment Angie requested. Needles, lines, IV bag. All stored in one of the side rooms near the sea-entrance chamber, all easily accessible.

Katar had positioned Angie in the cockpit of the tidal bomber, but they found that the weapons control console was as powerless as everything else in Laputa. If anyone but him was to enter the chamber after he’d left, she had an impact baton from Katar’s mini-arsenal, but the Hawk Knight didn’t have high hopes that it would dissuade ring constructs.

Hawkman found what he needed and began to slog back to the entrance. There was none of the skittering, hard energy plasma on metal clanging, that signalled that the emerald monsters were headed their way. The air was heavy, the large combines situated above their heads not circulating the air while the shield that surrounded Laputa was active.

Usually, the emergency forcefield would go up and the combines would activate, grinding metal allowing the sealed bubble not to fill with CO2. No luck today. It wasn’t like they’d suffocate any time soon, but there was smoke in the air from the firefight in the aviary where they’d lost Batman, and Katar was stuck wondering how they were going to get through this.

He entered the harbour entrance slowly and when Angie saw him he looked relieved, and began to roll up her sleeves. There was work to be done. Hawkman entered the tidal bomber, and she took the medical supplies off him.

With his back turned, Katar didn’t notice the bubbles beginning to rise up from the waters they themselves had swam through to get in here.

“The nanites are designed for my brain chemistry,” said Angela, glancing to where the de-aged John Stewart sat. “That’s why I’m… I don’t know if it’ll work. But at this stage…”

“I understand. Is there anything I can do?”

Angie handed him the IV bag that was now tapped straight into her vein. “Hold this.” She looked behind him, her eyes widened and she let out a yell. “Oh, no.”

Hawkman turned and saw emerald constructs rise up from the waters. He pulled the last grenade from his utility belt and flipped open the cap. There were a handful, but that wasn’t the concern. He pressed the timed detonator and threw it at the edge of the harbour, above where the entrance would be. It detonated loudly, the tinny reverb from the loud noise in such a contained, domed room, shot through their ears, but Katar gritted his teeth as he watched one of the supports drop-- and the girders above the underwater entrance buckle, folding down so that it was sealed.

Now all he had to contend with were the constructs that had made it through. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to return this,” he said, passing the IV bag that was rapidly filling with blood back to Angie. “Do the job. Get him back. I’ll handle this.”

Angela nodded but got no reciprocation. Instead, Hawkman exited the vehicle and, with his immense strength, sealed the back of the submersible manually. Content that Angie and John were safe for the time being, he turned and looked back at the monsters.

“Took your time, didn’t you?”

Flying into action, Hawkman swung his Nth metal mace at the construct at the head of the group, shattering its grotesque visage. The fear before now was due to their numbers. They’d been a horde, nearly unstoppable. He wasted so much time smashing them, breaking them apart, his mace an enviable weapon, but there was always so many more of them. He quickly grew outnumbered, and had to make hasty retreats.

With a limited number he could stop them, he thought. Hold them back to give Angela time. They tore at his flesh, and he grimaced, winced, but didn’t cry out. They didn’t deserve his pain. Blood poured from the wounds, down his arms, as he fought on. They finished the job on his wings that the others had started, tearing their metal sheets to shreds, rendering them nothing but scrap. Another part of his heritage, his life-before, destroyed. But even with that hanging over him, he could see the tide turning.

Within a matter of moments, the emerald monsters, previously unstoppable thanks to their number, were debris around the warrior’s feet. He looked back at the tidal bomber, where Angie had hooked John up to the now-full IV bag and then saw beyond her with disbelieving eyes-- to the other entrance to the area-- and the man who stood there, body covered in emerald tentacles, wounds glowing green and his face blank… Batman staggered forward.

On the Dark Knight’s finger was the Green Lantern power ring that had caused so much chaos throughout the night so far. His mouth opened and gibberish rolled out, along with dozens of small, maggot-like shapes that slapped hard on the floor at his feet. He was infested, his cape, cowl and body armour shredded in places, emerald stitches holding him together. There was no blood.

“B-Batman?”

Katar was utterly horrified at the sight before him. Concentrating, zeroing in his enhanced senses on the shape that might have been his friend, Hawkman could hear the Caped Crusader’s heartbeat, steady and sure. He was still alive, but completely overrun by the rogue consciousness that had been trying to kill them all night.

“Batman, are you--?”

The Dark Knight’s head rolled back and then he raised his fists. Mindless.

Hawkman’s hand gripped around the mace. So this is what it came down to? Batman being worn like a pair of knuckle dusters, the last act of spite from this rogue intelligence that had taken control of John’s ring? The clock ticked down to zero, ticked down to the time when the shield would drop and the ring would be able to unleash its horrors, and all Hawkman had to do to stop it, was what?

Knowing he had no choice, Hawkman raised his mace. “C’mon then.”


Thanks to Wonder Woman’s god-gifted ability to fly, Diana and Ted arrived at the front of the Godwyn estate within a minute of leaving the edge of the lake. The gilded gates were closed, but the metal façade read, in exquisite detail, ‘GODWYN’, and the two Justice Leaguers hopped over so they were in the courtyard.

The duo moved slowly, unsure of what to expect. Monsters could spill out of shadows, but they were instead drawn to the front door, the wooden frame seemingly pulsing with every step they took.

Diana gestured toward something just out of Ted’s line of sight. “Wait-- look--”

Ted shifted toward what she was drawing his attention to, and he was appalled by what he saw.

A trail of crimson liquid from the fountain that sat at the front of house led toward the front door of the immense mansion. At the head of the trail, awkwardly, slowly, dragging themselves forward, were what appeared to be two stone angels, intertwined and melded together so that two bodies were one.

Shocking Ted more than anything was the fact that the angels bore a striking resemblance to Barda and Scott Free, and their pained expressions, the way their bodies were grinding at their articulated joints into ungodly positions, the hard crack and snap as something broke under their surfaces, was an absolute horror show to behold, even as they dragged themselves forward.

“What… in… what did he do to them?” asked Ted.

“Whatever happened to them, they were able to break the spell, same as us,” said Diana.

“And they’ve been dragging themselves forward, even transformed…”

Diana knelt before the statues. She could see that the two bodies had been merged together, so two had almost become one, but the act had left them monstrous, broken. Unlike the transformative spell woven on Diana and Ted, the duo were truly made out of stone, chipped and cracked in places, like they’d been at the front of the house for hundreds of years. Another antique in a world full of ancient monsters.

Barda opened her mouth but no noise came out of the cavernous grey concrete that was her throat.

“We’re here now, we’ll fix this,” said Diana. She looked back toward Ted then returned her attention to the Frees. “They could feel that something was wrong this entire time, they almost recognised what type of threat this was… and maybe the threat recognised them too. Some kind of deep enmity. Some aspect of the Fourth World, perhaps.”

Diana turned to get a response from Ted, but he was gone. The front door of the house-- suddenly open!-- swung shut dramatically and then the entire house began to shake-- began to sink.

Diana stood up, took a step forward, but the act of sinking was so fast, so abrupt, that before she could even think to fly the roof was gone, vanished into the vast and deep pit that formed beneath the Edwardian architecture.

When she took flight, the earth sealed up over the pit, leaving a blank space where there was once the Godwyn house, leaving Diana and the two petrified New Gods outside while some unknown event was taking place inside…


Hawkman looped his mace around his wrist and let it drop, instead throwing a skull-rattling blow with his fist that would have knocked sense into most men without breaking their skull open, but Batman raised his arm at the last moment and took the brunt of the impact and followed through with a rabbit punch to his opponent’s chin.

Katar took a step back, tasting blood. He spat a heavy globule of viscous crimson to the floor and reassumed his fighting stance. “Bruce. You need to fight this.”

Batman surged forward, a silent juggernaut. He punched left, right, got in close and broke through Hol’s defences, picking him apart with ease. The Dark Knight was fuelled by the ungodly consciousness in residence inside the ring, and his speed was off the chart, beyond even that of the half-Thanagarian warrior who fought to keep Angie and the de-aged John safe.

Hol felt a rib become mobile, but didn’t cry out. Batman sent a forearm smashing into the Hawk Knight’s jaw, staggering him, then pump-kicked him so hard in the chest that he slid across the floor.

Katar wasn’t given a chance to get back up. The Caped Crusader was on top of him, the emerald insects that had filled his body falling out of his mouth and eyes as he went about his business dismantling Hol. Up close, Katar could see all the wounds inflicted on his ally had been sealed by glowing green thread, but there was movement under the flesh-- presumably the same alien larvae infestation that was dribbling out of his orifices.

Hawkman tried his best to block the punches but Batman hit him again and again and again, without mercy. Eventually Hawkman’s guard dropped for a second, and the advantage was entirely the Dark Knight’s. Blow after blow landed, and Hawkman was dazed, felt something in his head go, and his arms dropped as his face became a shattered mess.

Through broken lips and shattered teeth the only thing he could think to say, before the unwelcome darkness of immense head trauma claimed him, was simply, “Kendra,” and then he was done.

The Batman stood, his gloves and chest covered in his blood and Katar’s, then considered the Atlantean tidal bomber. He trudged toward the sealed compartment at the back of the submersible and tore it open like it was made from construction paper, then walked silently toward Spica.

“B-Batman, you don’t have to--” spluttered Angie, but Batman grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up. She went red in the face as the life was squeezed out of her, while John looked up the two of them, his body covered in sweat and a pale pallor covering him, an empty IV bag connected to his arm. “Please,” hissed Angie. “This-- isn’t-- “

Hawkman spun Batman around and swung his mace down on the Dark Knight’s arm with such force that it shattered at the elbow and he released Spica automatically. “Get… away… from…”

Emerald light knitted the wound back together, reforming the broken bones in stop motion, and Hawkman couldn’t put up a fight in his current, battered state to stop Batman grabbing him by the skull and ramming it repeatedly into the hull of the ship.

“N-no, s-stop it,” whispered John.

Batman didn’t listen to the boy. He continued to ram Katar into the interior of the ship, blood smearing across the metal.

Stewart finally stood, shaking, wobbly-legged, and looked Batman up and down. Finding some piece of courage inside him, some spark, he fanned the flames and felt something rise up inside him, some piece of his true self asserting itself. “Get-- off-- of-- him!”

Suddenly, the power ring on Batman’s broken arm jerked up and Hawkman slumped to the floor, no longer being held up by his possessed teammate..

Angie pulled herself across the floor to Katar, his thready breath sending streams of blood across the floor. He looked like he’d lost a fight to a food processor, his face a tenderised mass of meat and fragmented bone. How he could come back from this, she didn’t know.

Batman looked over at John and threw a punch, but the power ring on his other arm caught his fist before it could impact the young man. A confused expression formed across the silent Dark Knight’s face.

John began to speak slowly. “You… hurt my… friends…”

The young man clasped his hand around Batman’s wrist and the two of them were wracked by seizures, caught up by some force, and Angie opened her eyes wide as emerald light began to flood the room. With all her might, she dragged Katar away from the scene, terrified that her moving him in his current state would cause more damage, but ultimately fearful of what being exposed to the war of light inside that cockpit would do to the two of them.

“Did… it…?” started Katar, through shattered teeth.

Angie was completely silent as the hangar filled with the toxic light from inside the tidal bomber. Inside, John’s body began to stretch and crack as he was slowly returned to his actual age, his grip never leaving Batman’s wrist.

The ring slipped from the Dark Knight’s finger and arrived back on the Green Lantern’s, and a sickly, wet mass of squid-like tentacle formed between the two men as an immense war of wills took place. It spun in space, ichor wrenched from the chests of the two men, until it took shape-- a physical manifestation of the consciousness that had caused this commotion.

Fragments of emerald rubble began to drag toward the interior of the bomber, the broken remains of the constructs that the consciousness had generated were sucked back inside the ring and more ichor slipped from the surface of the weapon and into the thing that had caused so much horror inside the walls of Laputa.

“I am in control,” said John. There was a loud snapping noise and the inhuman mass between Batman and him fell to the floor and landed with a wet thump. Without hesitation, Stewart slammed a diamond-hard construct straight through it, spreading organic matter across the floor. The emerald light faded, Batman fell forward into the arms of Green Lantern, and the two hobbled outside to where Angie and Hawkman were hunched up on the floor.

“You’re you?” asked Angie, hesitant.

“I’m me,” replied John. As he held the unconscious Batman up, the Green Lantern coughed as his body rejected the nanites that had flooded his system, reprogramming his brain and normalising. The silver cloud drifted down from his mouth and hand, and he shivered. “Thanks for never giving up on me.”

“Yeah, well,” said Angie. “We had no choice, did we?”

“Thanks all the same,” said John. He placed Batman down next to Hawkman, and checked over the two men with his ring. “God. It stole my will, but I was still inside it, still able to stop it from..” He wavered, uneasy on his legs, but he propped himself up against the wall beside Angie. “The struggle was… was so…”

“You’re okay though, aren’t you? You’re all right?”

“Yeah, I think, I think,” said John. He checked his ring. A full systems check was in progress. “God, what a mess I made, Katar, are you--?”

Hawkman waved him away, the power ring encouraging his natural enhanced healing to knit his body back together. He grunted, wiped the blood from his broken mouth, and then made a hissing noise as his teeth grew back. “That… was you… helping…?”

Laputa roared into life as the shield finally dropped. Batman grimaced as the heavy vibrations riddled his body, but before anybody could speak, the Guardian’s voice filled their heads: {Communications are back up-- what’s going on in there? What’s the situation?}

Green Lantern placed a hand on Batman’s shoulder and spoke slowly. “Whatever took control of you put you back together but not quite right. My ring can see multiple fractures across your body. I’m going to accelerate their healing.”

“Dddon’t,” growled Batman. “I don’t…”

“Yeah, you really do,” said John. “You stand up now, you’ll fall apart. I’ll numb the process, it won’t take a second. Okay?”

Batman grunted then gave a nod of consent. He looked over at Hawkman, and the two shared a look. Katar extended a hand, and the Dark Knight took it, the two men acknowledging what they’d been through, how hard they fought each other, the damage done. They got past it in that moment.

Angie responded to Harper. {We made it. The guys are a bit messed up but they’ll get over it. Are you--?}

{I could use Green Lantern on-site if he’s able, we’ve got a massive problem where we are.} The Guardian downloaded the events of his day into the collected nanotelepathic headspace the Justice League shared, and Angie understood why they would need the back-up immediately. {We lost contact with the team. Glad to hear one time-bomb is defused but we have a rogue bubble reality here, and I think it’s about to burst.}

Hawkman pulled himself up, his face mostly returned to normal. “Go,” he said to John. “I’ll get Batman to the medical bay. Angela can call the support staff back in and the self-repair systems will rev up once the generators get up to speed.”

Green Lantern nodded in the affirmative. {I’m en-route.} “Don’t let Batman put any weight on his… body… he’s fragile right now. Needs bed rest.”

“I’m sure he’ll listen to me,” said Hawkman. “What about that?” He gestured into the Atlantean tidal bomber. Inside the cockpit, on the floor in a bloody, alien smear, was the physical form of the consciousness that had corrupted Green Lantern’s ring.

“Dead,” replied John.

Hawkman considered this and took a small tube from his boot. He flipped the top of it off and then chucked it into the interior of the submersible, and it went up in crackling, chartreuse flames. “Best to be sure. Dragonsfire will burn away whatever’s left.”

Green Lantern said nothing and headed off toward the city limits of Whilkirk, where the US military and Justice League waited.

Angie considered the mess in the hangar, then looked over at the two men who’d fought tooth and nail to save her this day. With a smile she said, “let’s get you upstairs, shall we?”


Kord had been dragged by some immense, invisible force through the front door of the house. He imagined the squirming, almost formless lengths of rock-hard matter that lined the exterior bubble that had lashed out at the Justice League hours earlier, but their caress was gentle and they held him fast as the world scraped upwards as the house fell into the earth. When the catastrophic shaking petered out, and the house was quiet once more, he began his exploration.

Nearly immediately he found himself in a grand library, where a man stood at the fireplace that filled the room with shifting, twisting shadows. The man looked Ted up and down and smiled. “You aren’t what we expected.”

“You must be Enos Godwyn,” said Ted. The man said nothing. He went over to a drink’s table and decanted himself a short glass of scotch. “Or do you prefer Bert Hanley?” He juggled the names around in his hands. “Either, or. I’m easy.”

“Call me Enos. We’re all friends here, aren’t we? And you’re a fan. I can tell.” He took a sip and smiled, and inside his mouth there was movement, obsidian matter like flesh but unlike anything human that Ted had experienced. “I do love a fan.”

“Well I was, before the crap you’ve put us through today. Infecting a Green Lantern with a memetic virus? Smart. Manifesting this pocket dimension in our reality? Clever. Trying to transform my teammates to fit the rules of your world? Brilliant. But it’s all going to end now. You’re going to end this.”

Enos wandered back toward the fireplace. “Wouldn’t if I could. Besides, today? You’re the one who’s brought ruin down on humanity’s heads. It was you, wasn’t it? Who gave the book to the… Green Lantern, you say? The imagination weaver?”

“Yeah, I’m a right patsy, but now I’m here to shut you down.”

“Your decisions aren’t what I expected,” said Enos, sipping brandy from the tumbler as he stood in front of the roaring fireplace. “Counterintuitive to our expectations. Your wills were so immense, the changes we inflicted didn’t stick... you disrupted the ritual by sheer force of personality. Fascinating. Sad, but fascinating.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Certain choices are required for this act to progress and you’ve not made the right ones. I’m disappointed… after so long, after being asleep for so long, whispering in my dreams, they’ll be born dead, and while everyone will die… it will be for all the wrong reasons… maybe that’s why they couldn’t force your friends into the roles they needed to play…”

“Speak sane, crazy guy. I’m walking around in your world, I get that, but that doesn’t mean you have to unleash this verbal diarrhoea into my ears.”

“I hated this town. The banality of it was driving me mad. In fact, I think, maybe it did just that. Maybe I did go mad. The doctors seemed to think so. I left here in a straitjacket, and when I got out, I came back and found my true calling.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ted. Through Cyborg’s research earlier, Ted knew that Godwyn used to be a man by the name of Bert Hanley. In 1979 Hanley vanished and in 1983 Godwyn’s first book was published.

“I saw beyond time and space and the things that lived there looked back down at me. They empowered me. Made me large. Bigger than what I was before. After the doctors stuck an icepick in my brain and rummaged about, they said I was cured, but instead, something took up residence in the broken nest of my brain and made me better.”

“You’re insane,” snapped Kord. He knew such a comeback meant nothing in this situation, but he found himself lacking wit, lacking a sense of humour in the face of the immensity backing Godwyn.

The mad author simply laughed. “An entity from out of time contacted me. Filled the gap in my brain full of seed. The seed grew big and tall and I wrote the results down on paper. I wrote worlds. Published them. Spread the good word across the planet. My readers made my worlds real. Every time I wrote a novel, their influence grew. They pushed up against the membrane that separates it from us.”

“Like a thought form. A tulpa. We made it real again by reading it.”

“Yes, yes. And then your friend-- the Green Lantern?-- I had no idea, none whatsoever, that his reading my work would accelerate their entry into this world, but I opened my eyes this morning and the world was truly mine, and the whispers were shouts and my gods are so close to entering the world. And the only thing left to do... is invite them in. Or it would have been, if you’d done as you should have. Green Lantern will manifest the herald, ushering in the new age, while your actions here will bring the storm itself… dead… but unrelenting…”

“What are you talking about? I’m no puppet and you don’t need to do this.” The gun holstered under his arm was heavy, calling to him, letting him know that it would finish the job he couldn’t. “They’ll end the world. They’ll kill everything.”

“Yes, they will, but not for the reasons they should have. Not in the ways they wanted,” said Enos. He pulled a lever by the side of the fireplace and the library shuddered, the floor grinding down and taking them into a deeper level within the house. Ted took advantage of the momentary distraction to rush across the room, grab Godwyn and drag him toward the desk, but the man didn’t stop speaking. “My-- my gods require the anointing of a purely rational being, the mythical ‘sane man’, to be allowed entry back into reality--”

“And what, didn’t I live up to expectations?”

With the scruff of Godwyn’s collar bunched up in his fists, Ted heaved the man up and across the desk, scattering papers and pens across the floor. There was a ticking clock. There was the world at stake. There was this little, grinning man, with all the answers, and he had to know them too. The room stopped shuddering and the two were face-to-face in the dark.

On the floor was an open book, ink smudged, names recognisable. Kord could see his own name, and the story it told, in the split second his high-functioning mind absorbed the information, read ‘With the scruff of Godwyn’s collar bunched up in his fists…’ “What-- what does that--”

“Get your hands off me,” spat Godwyn, slapping Kord’s hands off him. The movement rattled Ted’s bones and aggravated his already aching finger joint. This guy was strong. “It doesn’t matter now, none of what happened before matters. Just what’s coming next, what’s coming now, that’s all that matters. You were chosen, you insect. But you rushed face first into danger, you didn’t consider what was here. You were supposed to be smart, but you were ruled by your gut!”

“Sorry, mom,” said Ted, but his flippancy angered Godwyn more, and he was sent flying backwards into the shadows by an impossibly strong backhand. He landed against something soft and sticky, and when his eyes adjusted to the dark he was horrified by the mass he’d been sent into. “M-Majestros?”

You couldn’t call the Kheran known as Majestic a man anymore, nor was he the glorious embodiment of a dead world’s virtue. Instead he was a nest of things, slathering tentacle and moist meat in a vague, anthropoid outline. His head was octopoid, feelers and suckers slapping out of where a mouth should have been, while his scaly, black body had the resemblance of seal-hide, wet and pitch, a dozen or so yellow and green eyes with various-shaped irises blinking in unison-- and in pain-- after the impact of Ted Kord’s body against its own.

“Do you like what I did to your friend?” asked Godwyn. His movements into the dark were awkward, like his body was suspended by string, the limbs moving like they were operated by a poor man’s puppeteer. Was that all he was now? A ventriloquist dummy for something so much bigger than the world?

“Majestros, can you hear me?” Kord gripped the alien-visage with both hands, even though he could hear Godwyn approach behind him. Alien eyes dilated. Held their gaze into Ted’s own. An acknowledgement? A yes?

Godwyn grabbed Kord by the shoulder, and the man known on the outside of this reality as Blue Beetle grabbed the hand and twisted the fingers back, a sickening crack filling the air, the kind of clarity provided by a heatwave allowing the sound to travel in such a way as to flow through Ted’s head. He had hoped the spike of pain would allow him a chance to regroup, but Godwyn’s fingers latched down against his collar bone-- gripped!-- and without effort, Kord was flung backwards, skidding across the floor, a sharp, grating pain in his shoulder. A break. Bone to debris and any advantage gone.

“Thanks to you, my gods’ physical immensity cannot be reborn. That’s not to say the body will not emerge from the void, but the immensity will be without a guiding consciousness. Born dead after so long alive and sleeping.”

The fireplace was still lit, and in the shadow cast by Godwyn, darkness surged and swam, licking and clawing at the edges of Enos’ silhouette. Something wanted out of the dark. Something wanted to flow over Godwyn and replace him. And it made him a hard man to look at. There was a revulsion, the arachnid reaction when you look upon something so awful that your whole body revolts, your brain seizes, and it was Godwyn, standing there, and Kord wanted to vomit so badly but he knew that he couldn’t. He couldn’t curl up and die, no matter how much he wanted to.

“You-- you-- are a mad-- god damn-- lunatic,” said Ted, his clipped words followed by intakes of breath that sent stingers of pain down the side of his body. He struggled to his feet, knees shaking, but he was able to keep a steady distance from the prowling marionette that was Enos Godwyn.

The author chuckled. “My sanity doesn’t come into it. My gods’ body, so large and so beautiful, will emerge and this world I’ve built will burst. Ugthothlhem will spill across the Earth, the universe, the entirety of reality, and the corpse will crush all of humanity.”

“Better dead than enslaved by whatever it is you’re selling,” spat Kord. He didn’t believe that. There had to be a conclusion that allowed humanity to live, to thrive, for some possibility to present itself that would allow the summoning of the elder things lurking behind Godwyn to fade away once more. He only hoped that the others on Laputa had found a way to save Green Lantern, to stop this two-pronged assault from stabbing the world and bleeding it out.

“If only you’d played the game. My gods would have been born with body, instead of body without brain. And the psychic immensity of it, instead of just me, it would have touched the entire universe. Converting everybody… now it’s just me.”

“Please stop this. I’m asking for the last time. If they’re going come into the universe only to die-- it’s a waste-- just-- please, stop--”

“They didn’t waste this long, sleeping in the darkness, hyper beings borne of the First World, burning in defeat after the war between light and dark, to simply stop. Rather become physical than suffer immaterial any longer!”

“Then you leave me no choice,” said Ted. The holster containing the Webley revolver he’d lifted from the owner of the insect man in the antique’s store felt heavy in his interior pocket and even heavier in his hand when he aimed it at Enos. If the link was between Godwyn and the outer dimension, if that’s what drew them here, then severing that link-- killing Enos-- might be the only option left to him.. “And I’m sorry that it’s come to this.”

“Do your worst.” Enos opened his arms wide. He wasn’t afraid of this situation. But the thing behind him, that writhing mass that was part of his silhouette, grew more intense, it flowed freely about the back of his arms, neck and head.

“Godammit. God damn you for making me do this!”

Kord’s broken finger screamed as it twisted around the trigger, and for a split second he thought he might miss, that the pain of bone grinding against bone might cause his aim to fail him. But with an intensity he’d never really felt in himself before, he stepped forward, and with each footfall pulled the trigger, until he’d emptied the entire clip into Godwyn’s chest.

Black blood flew out of the author, but his malicious smile didn’t fade. Instead of falling dead, he stood tall, brushed himself off and continued to move toward Kord.

“I’m more than what I was before, since they started whispering to me. It’ll take more than bullets. You’ll have to take away my story.”

Kord flipped the Webley around in his hand so he held the barrel, and he slammed the butt into Enos’ nose, causing the author to double over-- more in shock than pain. More black blood spilled out of him like liquid shadow, and Ted darted around the man and grabbed the book that had his name in, that told the story of what was happening in the here and now. He threw it, without hesitation, into the crackling fireplace. Cerulean sparks flew from where the ink and flame met, and while it burned and an ungodly sound rang out, the world didn’t change back. The day wasn't automatically saved--

Godwyn leaned back to standing, black blood staining his mouth and laughed. “The power isn’t the book.” He continued to laugh. “The power is in here,” he tapped his temple, “the power is-- in-- me--” His bloodstained mouth opened wide in a gap-toothed grin, and something began to pour out. Slick serpentine tentacles, licking and lapping at the open air, each one with a mind of its own. His bloodshot eyes-- suddenly liquid-- dribbled out of their sockets, replaced by yellowing, fetid baubles, blinking at an inhuman rate, his eyelids sliding side to side, not up to down and meeting in the middle. “If-- I-- imagine-- it-- all-- I-- know-- all-- I-- believe-- becomes-- real--!”

The voice was an unholy cacophony, shards of high-pitched vocals smashing up against bass thunder strikes. The world was ending-- Enos Godwyn’s horror reality bubbling upwards and out, threatening to overwrite everything real in the world, and it was simply Ted… against the apocalypse.

“Nnnno,” said Majestros through the shredded hole he’d been given for a mouth as he pulled himself up from where Enos had planted him. Webbed veins and unspeakable roots tore from his body and remained stuck fast to the floor, chunks of what Ted could only assume were his bodily matter laying stinking on the floor. “Nnnot nnnowww…”

Enos gazed steadily at the shattered and mutated figure of Majestros, who was being propped up by Ted. Godwyn’s skin was falling away in dead, grey sheets, revealing a grotesque, lumpen form underneath. Ted squinted and could see different shapes rutting together under the quickly dissolving skin of the former man. There wasn’t one unspeakable horror forcing its way out from the other dimensions Godwyn had tapped into, there wasn’t just one monster forcing its way from the outer dimension, through Enos and out into their world, but many. How could one man imagine such horror? And what would happen when they arrived? How big would they get, coming out of this portal that was once a man?

Ted froze as the lightning bolt of realisation struck him. Imagine. Was there still time?! He dropped to his knees beside Majestros’ bloated, webbed form and spoke quickly, no breaths taken as he ranted. “They changed our bodies but they didn’t take away what we had before, our pain, our powers. Diana proved that. You still have access to your powers, you just don’t know it. Majestros, you need to use your Zoom Vision, find the points of most activity in this bastard’s brain-- his imagination centres -- and burn them out before it’s too late-”

Majestros blinked with every eye Godwyn had given him and then focused. There was an aura of energy around each one and then Enos cried out pathetically, all the Sturm und Drang of his previous declarations sapped away in one swoop-- and then the world snapped back to normal! The house was gone and they were stood on top of a bare hill, the town below twisted and reformed into Whilkirk, and the army cordon surrounding the bubble reality went on high alert, even though a wave of relief washed over the Justice Leaguers at the cordon, just as Green Lantern arrived.

Standing over Enos Godwyn’s wide-eyed, comatose body, Blue Beetle, back in costume, shook his head. “Imagine your way out of that, Bert.”

The rudimentary lobotomy had caused the ground to stop shaking, the crimson skies to return to blue and the blood red rain to peter out and evaporate to nothing. There was no more thunder or lightning, just an odd tranquillity that belied the last few hours of the Justice League’s lives.

The team were dazed but back to normal. Majestic was uneasy on his feet but steadied himself against the wall as Blue Beetle checked on Enos Godwyn, who lay still on the floor. The author was comatose, dribble falling from his mouth, his right eye stained red and a thin trail of blood lining his cheek.

“He’s alive,” said Ted. “It worked… we stopped it…”

“What did you do to him?” asked Mister Miracle, rubbing his arms to get feeling back after his transformation. Big Barda and Wonder Woman approached behind the master escape artist.

Beetle manipulated the tiny gears on the side of the lenses on his mask, and tutted as they fed him information from across different spectrums of vision. “The rudimentary deep scan unit in my mask isn’t precise but I can see minor burns to the occipital, front and posterior parietal, precuneus--” Ted looked up at the others, who were staring at him. “At my request, Majestros inflicted enough brain damage so that this man will never imagine again.”

“The outer beings were tethered to the world via Godwyn’s imagination,” said Majestros, “cutting those parts out severed the link.”

“You lobotomised him,” said Mister Miracle. “I don’t know how I feel about this. I--”

“This conversation can wait,” said Wonder Woman. “Prepare Godwyn for transport to S.T.A.R. Labs.” She put her finger to her ear. {Guardian, we have Godwyn in custody. What’s going on with Laputa?}

{Everyone’s fine,} replied Green Lantern. {Beaten up, but alive. We’re going to have a long debrief, I imagine.}

Wonder Woman looked at Blue Beetle. Godwyn was in Mister Miracle’s arms. {More than you can imagine.}


Alone in a private ward in the medical bay of Laputa, Bruce Wayne was unmasked, contemplating the numerous new scars and barely-healed wounds that riddled his already-addled body. He looked like a brand new kind of mess, but at least he had survived. The damage was mainly to his central area, chest, torso, nothing that would belie his nighttime activities when he went about his business in the light of the day. He went to get out of the bed but winced, groaning audibly as his body tried to operate after everything he’d just been through.

After surviving the explosion in the aviary, the possessed Green Lantern ring had stitched him back together to use as an instrument of destruction, but as it was being piloted by an alien consciousness at the time, the repair job hadn’t been the most conscientious. John had to reset his broken body after the fact, but he was still sore as all hell.

That said, he wasn’t in a mood to stick around much longer in the building they’d been trapped in for hours. Now that the situation had been resolved on Laputa, Gotham City called.

“I heard that.”

Shifting his aching body as he sat on the edge of the bed, Batman turned to see Wonder Woman standing in the doorway, looking unimpressed. “Heard what?”

“That pained groan, Bruce. You need to rest.”

“I have work to do.” He went to pull on his shirt but the wounds across his torso screamed. Wonder Woman placed a light hand on his side and moved in close. “Diana…”

“Quiet now,” she said. She helped him get his shirt on but brushed her fingers down his chest as she went, watching the hairs on his torso bristle in their wake. “I’ll use the Purple Healing Ray. A small dose should get you back on your feet properly. If you’re not going to listen to reason, you might as well be given all the tools you need to not keel over before you even make it out of the door.”

“I don’t need--” started Batman, but Wonder Woman shook her head.

“I thought you were dead,” said Wonder Woman. “When we walked into Ugthothlhem, and you were trapped on Laputa, I thought you were dead.”

“You know it’ll take more than a cosmic horror to put me in the grave,” said Batman.

Wonder Woman laughed. “We haven’t spoken properly, since we kissed*… and I regret that.”


“Me too. There’s never been a free moment. There never is in our world.”

Wonder Woman kissed him, their lips tight, the passion burning between them. When they parted, she spoke quickly. “Now’s the time. I don’t ever want to not know.”

“Diana, let’s not kid around… you’ve always known.” Bruce returned the sentiment, pulling her into his arms even as the pain from his wounds yelled at him to not move, and kissing her once more. It felt right. Even through the pain, it felt good.

“It’s possible… it’s more than possible that we could be wonderful together. There’s equal potential for utter disaster. I love you… and I don’t want to live in a world where we didn’t at least try to see where this can take us.”

“So you want to try? Batman and Wonder Woman, a couple?” He cracked a smile. “It’d drive Clark mad.”

“Who cares what Clark thinks?” laughed Diana. “What’s the point of doing this… living this life… if we don’t take chances in our own lives? So… do you want to go on this adventure with me?”

“Together, then,” said Bruce. He held her hand and squeezed it lightly. “And if you’re offering a burst of the Purple Healing Ray, at this point, the amount of pain I’m in… I wouldn’t say no.”

Wonder Woman smiled. “Let’s get you healed up. There’s plenty left to do tonight.”


Katar had healed completely. No alien surgery to undo and then fix, his Nth metal harness had kept him intact, and a burst from John’s power ring fixed the rest. Even so, the medical staff wanted to keep an eye on him. Their initial scans had found something, and against his protest, they’d insisted he stay for further observation.

“Jesus Christ, Katar, what happened to this place?” Kendra Saunders, otherwise known as Hawkgirl, rushed into the room, past the doctors, and embraced her lover. “Are you okay? I bumped into Wonder Woman, she gave me the rundown. God.”

“I’m absolutely fine. You should have seen me an hour ago.”

Kendra punched her boyfriend in the arm lightly. “Don’t say things like that. You could have died.”

“Yes, well, I’m here, I made it,” said Katar. He turned his attention to the staff moving around the medical bay. “Excuse me, sorry, could you please give us the room?”

After a couple of seconds the medical bay was empty, and that left Katar and Kendra alone. “What’s wrong?”

“I went to see a doctor yesterday, Harrison Wells*.”


Kendra’s expression darkened, utter concern spreading across her features. “Katar…”

“I need you to listen to me very carefully. Because he found something.”


Christmas had come and gone, but the military had yet to leave the town called Whilkirk, ground zero for an invasion of outerdimensional beings. The Justice League debrief had been helpful in understanding what had happened, but now it was time for clean-up, and while the team helped, General Sam Lane didn’t exactly want them there.

“No sir, as per my debrief, we had no casualties, but the damage done to them is severe.”

With the sun rising on the the quiet, haunted town, Lane reported the current situation directly to the President of the United States over a secure line that connected him directly to the Oval Office.

“But like I said, the trauma inflicted has left every single person who called this place home in a sort of… psychic fugue. Ten thousand Americans, currently driven insane by what landed on top of them. We’ve turned the town into a treatment facility, and the Medical Corps are on-site. The specialists have been helpful, and I’m confident we’ll be able to get our citizens back on their feet. Thank you, sir. Yes. God bless America.”

The call ended and he headed into the tent that housed the civilians they’d taken in for treatment.

Every day a team of Justice Leaguers would teleport down and assist the doctors in their analysis. Four weeks gone, and they’d made little progress. The psychic damage on the citizens was so immense, that not even the specialists the Justice League had flown in had helped. Currently, a small group of the Justice League, namely Big Barda, Cyborg, Doctor Light, the Guardian and Mister Miracle, were on-site, analysing the recent readings taken from a sample group of the townspeople.

“How are they looking today?” Lane asked one of his medical staff.

“Not good, sir,” said the doctor. The two of them exited the tent. “The damage inflicted on the town’s residents by that rogue reality landing on top of them is immense. It’s like they all had the exact same mental break, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“They shouldn’t have been caught in the crossfire,” sighed Lane. “Any ideas?”

“Right now, all we can do is-- holy hell, who’s that?”

In alarm, numerous soldiers levelled their rifles at the figure that floated above the town, arms outstretched. Lane squinted, and he quickly recognised the man, his cape flapping in the wind. “Good grief.”

Shock and awe filled the expressions of those below, and the soldiers lowered their weapons as the Martian Manhunter descended! His eyes were closed, and there were sounds coming from the locations the town’s residents had been taken to-- they were waking up! The locals who had previously been broken by the impact of the monster reality onto their town were suddenly cognisant, aware and all right, somehow healed of the trauma they’d experienced.

Rushing to where the Martian Manhunter, long off-world*, landed, the Guardian addressed their newly-returned comrade. “Manhunter! What did you do?”


In his calm, almost Zen-like manner, the Martian Manhunter smiled as he floated down toward the Guardian. “I exorcised the madness inflicted upon them using an ancient technique taught on my world. I could sense their suffering on my approach and thought it best to come here first. I’m back, my friends, I only wish I’d got home sooner!”



NEXT ISSUE: When the criminal underworld hear the Martian Manhunter is back, they don’t waste their time, and a deadly vendetta is launched against the greatest hero the world barely knows! Who is beyond this new fiery reign of terror? FIND OUT NEXT MONTH