Post by HoM on Nov 21, 2020 15:41:44 GMT -5
Roy and I had big plans for the DC2 after the conclusion of the last Justice League arc, but due to my stepping away from the site, it means those stories won't see the light of day. That's a shame, because Roy was putting in some of the best work of his tenured career here on the site, and the story would have been the conclusion to threads I started laying in the earliest chapters of my run.
So, in the spirit of sharing and celebrating, here are the covers and logos for what would have been my "final crisis" for the DC2, pulling together everything I loved about the site, the characters, the continuity, and delivering what I hoped would be my opus.
Also known as...
Why couldn’t the Green Lantern Corps locate Kherubim or Daemon back when the concept of the two alien races was raised in their first appearance? John Stewart searched, but found no trace of them in the Book of Oa…
Simple. They’re from the FUTURE! These twin races are the final evolution of the super-human race—the Kherubim are super powered and righteous, the Daemonite are malevolent and sickening. There are no shades of grey here. If Majestros is a distant ancestor of the children of Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman , the Daemonites are the spawn of Lex Luthor and Darkseid. The Final Two Races! There is good versus evil at the end of the universe. Beyond the Fourth World, and beyond the Fifth World that is borne in the 21st century. Khera and Daemon are the New Genesis and Apokolips of the end times, twin planets in eternal war, and in the final days of battle, it looks like evil might have won. So, how has their war come to their distant past? How is this possible?
The ark Lord Emp designed to act as a life boat was damaged in transit, and their warp tunnel actually spit them out at various points in time; Majestros landed in the 80s, Emp and his last Spartan in the 20s, and the rest… crashed in the pre-Homo Sapiens era.
Firstly, it’s important to note that Daemonites had to evolve to be able to possess Kherubim hosts. It took them thousands of years to do so, but it was an integral part of their war machine against their foes.
Now on Earth, way back at the dawn of time, the Daemonites were suddenly without the ability to possess, so they were roaming the world in their natural, monstrous forms. For their own protection, they made deals with ancient evils like Vandal Savage, who became a stalwart ally through time. It took centuries for them to be able to possess humans, but eventually, they adapted. But what happens when metahumans arrive?
Who rules the Daemonites? There are three surviving Daemonite Lords who survived the ark’s crash landing in the past. Firstly, Ne’syr, a female Daemonite and the Lord of Science. She wants to further the agenda of her people through experimentation and science. Secondly, we have Lord Helspont, Lord of War. He wants to crush humankind under his heel, but unfortunately, he’s of the lower soldier caste, which means he’s subservient to the leader of the group, Defile, Lord of Lords.
As we enter Eschaton War, Defile and Helspont are both possessing two characters we’ve spent time with during my Justice League run. But who? Time will tell…
Daemonites are allergic to metahumans. Remember in Justice League #40, when one jumped at Superman and crumbled on contact? If the host has conventional, metahuman powers (regardless of being human, Kryptonian or Thanagarian), they’d die on the attempt to take a host. It would take them centuries to evolve again to be able to possess the superpowered population, so what can they do?
It starts in World War 2. The Daemonites infiltrate Nazi Germany, and begin their experiments with something called GEN FACTOR, a Kherubim compound capable of granting superpowers to those exposed to it. If they can infect humanity with Gen Factor, then they can possess those infected with it, due to the combination of Kherubim and human genetics.
This project is led by the Daemonite Lord of Science, Ne’syr, the Daemonite mentioned by the rogue survivors we met in Justice League #40.
In a series of flashbacks, we join a small group of non-metahuman JSAers (the Spear of Destiny’s influence is still in effect, so if Green Lantern or the Flash went in, they’d be handing the Axis a metahuman army), namely Hourman, Sandman and Starman, who manage to sabotage and set back the experiments—not knowing the alien threat behind them—but this only delays the success of Ne’syr‘s work.
By the eighties, Ne’syr has perfected the Gen Factor, and subsequently the likes of young Cole Cash (aka Grifter) are infected, though he and the others exposed manage to escape in the chaos of the successful experiment. They become known as the Gen12, the twelfth round of experimentation… but the first success.
So, the Daemonites introduce Gen Factor into the environment. A mutagenic compound capable of gifting superpowers while allowing Daemonites to possess. Super-powered hosts for the Daemonites! Chem trails, drugs in the water, all the worst conspiracy theories you can field, they’re because of the Daemonites!
Remember Doctor Psycho’s strange super-powered children? Gen-active. Do you remember the change in the Earth’s atmosphere after Majestros was released from Vandal Savage’s prison? That was due to him being a carrier for the Daemonite’s modified Gen Factor! But how?
Do you remember when the Shrike travelled back in time from the 10YL future to prevent the release of Vandal Savage’s supposed doomsday weapon? Everyone thought he succeeded but he actually failed! Majestros is but one carrier for the Daemonite’s Gen Factor toxin, and as he flitted about the world, fixing the ozone, he was also spreading their poison, furthering their malevolent goals, giving men, women and children superpowers that Doctor Psycho, in the guise of S.T.A.R. Labs’ Harrison Wells, went on to recruit into his fold. Children are our future, as the saying goes…
Majestros was hell bent on figuring out where the Daemonites were hiding, and for a time the Justice League were aware of the threat. But Spartan’s HALO satellite malfunctioned due to the introduction of the Gen Factor into the atmosphere. They were suddenly hidden more so than before… and then the Justice League kind of forgot about it. But what if… they were manipulated?
We find out that it was the Daemonites who launched the mysterious warp marker that lured the Justice League out behind the moon to the alien ark, in the hopes of their dying at the hands of the mad pilot-- the ark was legendary in the Daemonite’s history as causing great destruction when it appeared, so they sought to bring that destruction forward.
Instead of the entire Justice League dying, only the Martian Manhunter was taken off the board when he agreed to help pilot the ark to safety, and they used that to their advantage.
They brought in Doctor Psycho, who, without the Martian Manhunter to stop him, subtly made the team forget about the Daemonite threat. If it was raised, they’d forget, as we saw time and again through my run.
We’ll meet Doctor Psycho in the final arc before the Eschaton War begins. We learn what was going on with the Weapons Master and why he was hoarding weapons! We find out about Katar Hol’s missing memories, and the truth behind his cancer. All the pieces fall into place.
But why does the Eschaton War finally start now?
Lord Helspont, the overarching antagonist of this event, has had enough. After millions of years it’s time for the Daemonites to finally make their move.
Behind Lord Defile’s back, Helspont engineered something terrible. The temporal dam that’s been on the horizon that Rip and Booster were so concerned about? That’s him. Helspont has taken a host that has figured out how to unpick any problem. Magic-users? Super science? GLC? Supervillains? The Justice League? Helspont has thought through everything, and those tie-ins are Helspont making his final move, all while wearing the face of one of the Justice League’s closest allies…
…Ted Kord, aka Blue Beetle.
I took inspiration, as do most creatives in the 21st century, from Alan Moore’s work with the Temporal Dam. Here’s something he said in his “Twilight of the Gods” proposal that really stuck with me:
Just an interesting aside. Anyway…
Helspont assassinates Defile—who is possessing President Jeb Stuart!—and takes control of the surviving Daemonites. Then he begins his ultimate plan: The destruction of the Justice League and the end of humanity. The transformation of Earth into a universal war machine. Rewriting time so that the Kherubim never are born and the Daemonites are the dominant species across all of time and space.
And it all starts with the assassination of the President of the United States of America.
--
But before that! First, in the style of Countdown to Infinite Crisis-- a touchstone event if there ever was one for me—I planned numerous lead-in miniseries and one-shots. They all build a foundation for the main event to launch, which would run in the Justice League ongoing, with tie-ins if people were interested in contributing.Their concluding issue would take place after / during the issues that reveal Ted Kord’s possession, and all post on the same day. I would have had to figure out how to make that work, maybe as an anthology conclusion, or something else. Who knows!
Ted Kord recruits Jaime Reyes to assist him in his brand new venture, except, the pair never meet. Ted is working remotely and in hiding, as since he walked away from the Justice League, he was recruited by the President to runs the US government's top-secret 'Dead Letter Office', an organisation dedicated to solving the problem of super-humanity in the 21st century. How do you take down the Secret Society of Super Villains? How do you prevent the propagation of magic? How do you stop alien invasions? The DLO has an unlimited budget and a mandate, and Ted thinks Jaime can help.
With Ted in his ear, Jaime is his operative in the field (think Oracle / Black Canary in early Birds of Prey), and plays a key role in various schemes to rout the threats outlined above. Along the way, his friends and family question Ted’s motives, if everything he’s doing is altruistic, but Jaime naively tells them he believes in Ted, so if he says something needs doing, he’ll do it.
When Jaime finds out that players from the rogue groups he helped take down are being recruited into the DLO, and Ted won't explain why, a confrontation draws near.
He tracks down the DLO’s HQ, and finds Angie Spica, the Engineer, held captive! Yes, the mysterious figure who kidnapped Angie in the final issue of Justice League was Blue Beetle, and when Jaime confronts him after trying to free her, Ted easily defeats him.
The reason he didn’t meet with Jaime is because the Scarab could detect Daemonite possessions, but with everything in place, he imprisons Jaime in “The Cancer”, a living prison designed to hold any and all metahumans in an inescapable, ever-changing environment. He wants the heroes of the world to watch as he burns it all down, while experimenting on their genetics to splice together a new form beyond anything the Daemonites have seen before.
In a dual timeline adventure following both heroes, Booster Gold searches for Rip Hunter after the latter went missing during his investigations into the temporal dam that’s about to go up in the immediate future. This device prevents anyone seeing what happened during its time buffering space / time—a Time Sphere around the universe.
Blue Beetle lures Rip Hunter to the present era and traps him, forcing the time-traveller to build a “temporal dam” that separates Earth from the rest of the universe. When the dam is up, no one from outside can enter the planet, and any changes to the timeline will not take effect until the dam comes down, history changing as events gush out across the multiverse. .
Booster searches throughout the timeline, following clues until he tracks down the truth of the temporal dam—Rip was the one who finished building it, forced to after tracking down Ted and realising the truth. Rip is possessed with Daemonites and made to complete the work Ted started, and before Booster can do anything else… Ted activates it, and the Eschaton War begins.
Booster is confronted by Beetle, a battle for the ages teased… and Booster runs away, terrified.
Tying into the planned Shadowpact series UDC and I had been planning, the team of mystic avengers would investigate the most haunted site in America (TBD) and find a feral version of the Spectre, driven mad by unknown forces. They discover that a strange organisation has created anti-magic technology that is slowly being activated across the globe, subtly so no-one realises the truth before its too late. The team try to placate the Spectre, but he defeats them easily, and the mysterious organisation—the DLO—collect their bodies, ready to throw them into “The Cancer”.
The Secret Society of Super-Villains are being picked off! Their ruling council don’t understand how their enemies are tracking them down the way they are, but no matter what they try, their satellite bases and safe houses are taken down, their plans anticipated and countered, leaving them trapped on Santa Prisca as the end draws near.
We find out that some of the human members of the Council have been possessed by the Daemonites and has been feeding intelligence to the DLO, and the book intersects with Jaime Reyes infiltrating the island, shutting down their forcefield, and allowing the organisation to be taken down “for good”.
This is basically showing the villains side of the prologue side of things. We check in with characters who’ve made appearances in the past in the SSoSV title, e.g. Deathstroke and Lex Luthor, as they play major roles in the event itself.
Anyway, we follow the surviving dregs of the organisation trying to make a run for it, Talia returning to the League of Shadows with Scandal in tow, but at the end of the miniseries, nearly all the members are captured, with only a few strays out in the wild… including Catman, who still has a psychic version of the Question floating around his head!
With a legion of super-villains captured, some killed, we learn that a large amount of their number are now imprisoned in the Cancer, where further experiments await them…
Every decommissioned tank in Washington fires off a single, impossible round toward the White House, but due to the fact the attack was spectral in origin, no damage is done. King Faraday, who has been reduced to desk duty after increasing moves have been made to marginalise him in the FBI, joins up with Rose Psychic to investigate the cause.
The ghost of 19th-century Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart, the eponymous haunter of the Haunted Tank, has transmogrified from being a ghost to a poltergeist, after his current ancestor—President Jeb Stuart-- for reasons that become clear to King and Rose too late.
President Stuart only saw J. E. B. once, during the Vietnam War where he was a POW. He helped him survive that traumatic ordeal and rescue dozens of other prisoners. J. E. B. has watched over him since, and was present when the Daemonite Lord Defile took over his body. He couldn’t do anything—the rules of his haunting are very specific—but the impotent rage felt by the ghost changed him.
Putting everything together, King and Rose witness the anti-magic technology being deployed to remove J. E. B. off the board, and then proceed to head to the White House to confront the president, but the pair are taken down and sent to the Cancer, and the day is lost…
Then there would be three one-shots establishing the three characters who will become major players in the event, an “Eschaton Trinity” that pushes the narrative forward:
Focusing on re-establishing Saganowahna after his strange spirit walk over in Checkmate, the man known as Super Chief is questioning his role as the sole mystical guardian of the remaining Native American tribes scattered across the United States.
Prior to his spirit walk, he was present at a number of Daemonite-related incident over in Justice League, and this one-shot would show the other side of the international superhero experience, and he goes underground when he fails to prevent the DLO from erecting their anti-magic tech in the spiritual centres of the country, and is declared most wanted after being framed for a series of murders.
Donna Troy steps up big time in the event after something terrible happens to Diana, so we’d spend an issue grounding her character in continuity, and checking in with affiliated characters and locations. Generally, this is her spotlight, a chance to really show how amazing she is, and how she's on the same level-- or should be considered on the same level-- as the likes of Nightwing and The Flash (Wally) in the DC2.
And then we have Lady Zannah, aka Zealot, who is working with Wonder Woman to truly connect the Coda with Earth, rather than being a random colony tucked away in the northern point of Canada. They have a meeting at the United Nations planned, which we’ll see in the Justice League title proper. This would also show where characters like Emp, Grifter and Spartan are, after we’ve seen them debut and sneak around in the background of Justice League, and what HALO are planning now that all their existing plans to expose the Daemonites have been foiled over the past few years.
--
Before the event begins, there was a two-parter planned, that Jamie Rimmer already illustrated the covers for, called “The Last Will and Testament of Katar Hol”:
Hawkman’s cancer diagnosis has been a long running thread in the main Justice League title, as was his manipulation at the hands of Doctor Psycho (when he was in the guise of Harrison Wells). In the first part of the story, after another treatment feels, Katar battles Chemo, only for the Ultramarine Corps—having debuted in Checkmate—take the villain down.
Ultramarine Corps are the US’ new superhero team, but what nobody knows is that they’re the Daemonites most recent Gen Factor successes. Superpowered-infused hosts for the Daemonites. They’re on the hunt for Doctor Psycho, who has a lot of information in that head of his, after collaborating with the Daemonites during his takeover of STAR Labs’ operations. So, to protect himself and continue twisting the knife… Doctor Psycho surrenders himself to Justice League custody.
Doctor Psycho doesn’t explain what’s going on in full, because he needs leverage against all sides, but by the end of the two-parter, he’s murdered by the Ultramarine Corps at a black site after he’s handed over to them (the Justice League are already on shaky ground jurisdiction-wise, after the events of Checkmate), though they don’t know what happens to him.
Meanwhile, Katar comes to accept that his time is coming and wants to make the most of his last days, uniting with Kendra Saunders and Carter Hall, along with the rest of his friends, something he’s neglected to do in his search for a cure for his condition. He’s going to die. It’s going to be soon. But he doesn’t want to spend that time wallowing anymore.
--
Then the war starts.
In the first issue of the arc, entitled “A Day Like Any Other…”, which is the same title I used in Green Lantern when I killed off a character and started my big serialised push on that title, and, to me, means something terrible is about to happen, things start to go really wrong for the Justice League.
Lorraine Reilly is shot on her way to work at a local senator’s office-- and she recognises her assailant. She’s rushed to hospital and Martin Stein is horrified. When all hell breaks loose, he decides that he needs to take the ultimate chance and combine with the comatose Ronnie Raymond, the only other person capable of forming the Firestorm Matrix, to heal her.
When that happens, its revealed that the wasting disease that infected Ronnie (since Justice League #64) was actually Daemonite possession! They wanted in on the Firestorm Matrix, but couldn’t possess both components and still activate it, so they infected a host and engineered a situation Martin would have to combine with Ronnie for-- or they didn’t know what would happen and the shock rendered them comatose, along with causing Ronnie immense pain and the wasting side effects. They assert dominance over the Matrix and declare themselves Deathstorm.
Diana and Zannah are at the United Nations to petition the world’s government for the recognition of the Coda colony in the Antarctic as a sovereign state. Before they can make their case, the first strikes against the world begin, capital cities across the world immediately targeted. Zannah receives a distress call from the colony informing her that they’re under attack, just before the transmission cuts out.
Hawkman confronts Deathstorm, who immediately tears the cancer cells out from the Thanagarian’s body. Hawkman’s cancer finally reveals itself to be a sentient being that tears itself out of his body and takes 40% of his body mass with it—the creature calls itself KANCER, a horrific being that can take on any superpower! his creation a by-product of Katar Hol’s continued exposure to the Gen Factor during his mind controlled period at STAR Labs, and due to his unique half-human / half-Thanagarian physiology, and nurtured psychically by Doctor Psycho, it created a separate entity loyal to the Daemonites! Hol falls to Earth, lost as chaos unfolds (he’ll end up in Nanda Parbat, but that’s a story for another time).
At the same time, John Stewart, the only active Green Lantern on Earth, plummets from a great height after his ring’s power cuts out. Across the globe, superheroes are rendered powerless, or defeated with ease. Everything happens simultaneously, all hell breaks loose, and nobody can stop to think or anticipate what’s coming. They’re reacting, fighting fires, and being betrayed left and right by their friends and families, by the authorities, by the military, because the Daemonite have this planned down to the letter.
Blue Beetle has managed to anticipate every single threat against the Daemonite’s rule, a lethal version of Batman’s contingency plans from “Tower of Babel”. This is Blue Beetle unchained, without emotion, without compassion, without remorse. It shows how deadly a man of his intelligence can be when he’s on the side of devils.
The rest of the Corps were lured away from the Milky Way galaxy thanks to the Daemonite’s allies across the universe, who, with the weapons built on earth under the supervision of the Weapons Master, have managed to create cosmic strife that draws cosmic heroes away from the villains’ true prize—Earth.
The Cyborg-Ultraman (the Cyborg Superman from the CSA’s world) knocks down all world communication and removes any defences that the world governments might have been able to muster.
Ma'alefa'ak, who had been trapped in a bestial, chimeric form after his last appearance, is restored to a semblance of his power—his body is constantly shifting horribly, and he can sniff out metahumans, but he can’t use his psychic powers—and is unleashed in a horrific sequence in STAR Labs where he massacres everyone. He is now known as CHIMERA and is like John Carpenter’s The Thing but worse. The absolute worst.
Meet the Four Horsemen of the Daemonite apocalypse, and Helspont’s main enforcers:
Kancer = Famine
Chimera = War
Cyborg Ultraman = Conquest
Deathstorm = Death
Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in a locked room being interrogated. He’s made to watch as his teammates fall, and an assassin is sent to the United Nations to take down Wonder Woman and Zannah, who are there to officially see the latter’s colony recognised as an independent nation.
No matter what Bruce tries, he cannot escape, and eventually it dawns on him that he recognises his interrogator. It’s his father. Or at least, it’s a creature wearing his father’s face. How did he not realise this sooner? Because Batman has been possessed by the Daemonites. Not just one, but hundreds, who are burning themselves out to keep him under their control.
You see, the Daemonites don't want to possess bad guys because—basically-- it's boring. They want heroes, pure people they can ruin psychologically, but also to perform moral-destroying acts wearing their faces. Bruce is stuck in his head, kept under lock and key by an army of psychic attackers driving his body. And the attacker going after Wonder Woman and Zannah? It’s him.
As the heroes fall, red skies spread across the globe as the time knot is established. The Daemonites declared war. It lasted a day. And now begins the occupation, and eventually… the resistance.
In the immediate aftermath, the Daemonites burn all the hospitals because the sick are not good hosts for them, so why keep them around? They destroy the prisons and the asylums because they don't want competition or the hassle.
At this point, we learn that the reason the HALO detection system did not work was because of the Gen Factor. As soon as Majestic was taken off the board-- somewhat prematurely by Imperator-- it would mean the Daemonite detective network would start working, so that's why Helspont wanted to strike sooner rather than later.
When they assume control of the world, the Daemonites are able to manipulate the atmosphere to prevent unauthorised flight. This causes horrendous environmental side effects across the globe. Air corridors are maintained by their command structure to let them get from place to place, and they can deactivate the manipulations whenever they want, but forces are effectively grounded.
So, the occupation. What are the surviving heroes doing now? They’re scattered across the globe, on the run, and constantly hunted by the Daemonites. Hundreds of heroes are dead.
I may get to that at some future point…
So, in the spirit of sharing and celebrating, here are the covers and logos for what would have been my "final crisis" for the DC2, pulling together everything I loved about the site, the characters, the continuity, and delivering what I hoped would be my opus.
Also known as...
"I have descended to the house of darkness, the dwelling of the goddess Irkalla; to the house, whence he that enters goes out no more; to the road, whose way turns not back; to the house, whose inhabitants are deprived of light; to the place where dust is their sustenance, their food clay."
-- DESCENT OF THE GODDESS ISHTAR INTO THE LOWER WORLD (FROM THE CIVILIZATION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA, M. JASTROW, 1915)
Warning! The Daemonites have been here all along! Since the beginning of time, the planet Earth has harboured the refugees of the Kherubim / Daemonite war, and while Imperator murdered his kin and created a living hell for the survivors he kept under his thumb, the Daemonites have been keeping busy in different ways…
Why couldn’t the Green Lantern Corps locate Kherubim or Daemon back when the concept of the two alien races was raised in their first appearance? John Stewart searched, but found no trace of them in the Book of Oa…
Simple. They’re from the FUTURE! These twin races are the final evolution of the super-human race—the Kherubim are super powered and righteous, the Daemonite are malevolent and sickening. There are no shades of grey here. If Majestros is a distant ancestor of the children of Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman , the Daemonites are the spawn of Lex Luthor and Darkseid. The Final Two Races! There is good versus evil at the end of the universe. Beyond the Fourth World, and beyond the Fifth World that is borne in the 21st century. Khera and Daemon are the New Genesis and Apokolips of the end times, twin planets in eternal war, and in the final days of battle, it looks like evil might have won. So, how has their war come to their distant past? How is this possible?
The ark Lord Emp designed to act as a life boat was damaged in transit, and their warp tunnel actually spit them out at various points in time; Majestros landed in the 80s, Emp and his last Spartan in the 20s, and the rest… crashed in the pre-Homo Sapiens era.
Firstly, it’s important to note that Daemonites had to evolve to be able to possess Kherubim hosts. It took them thousands of years to do so, but it was an integral part of their war machine against their foes.
Now on Earth, way back at the dawn of time, the Daemonites were suddenly without the ability to possess, so they were roaming the world in their natural, monstrous forms. For their own protection, they made deals with ancient evils like Vandal Savage, who became a stalwart ally through time. It took centuries for them to be able to possess humans, but eventually, they adapted. But what happens when metahumans arrive?
Who rules the Daemonites? There are three surviving Daemonite Lords who survived the ark’s crash landing in the past. Firstly, Ne’syr, a female Daemonite and the Lord of Science. She wants to further the agenda of her people through experimentation and science. Secondly, we have Lord Helspont, Lord of War. He wants to crush humankind under his heel, but unfortunately, he’s of the lower soldier caste, which means he’s subservient to the leader of the group, Defile, Lord of Lords.
As we enter Eschaton War, Defile and Helspont are both possessing two characters we’ve spent time with during my Justice League run. But who? Time will tell…
Daemonites are allergic to metahumans. Remember in Justice League #40, when one jumped at Superman and crumbled on contact? If the host has conventional, metahuman powers (regardless of being human, Kryptonian or Thanagarian), they’d die on the attempt to take a host. It would take them centuries to evolve again to be able to possess the superpowered population, so what can they do?
It starts in World War 2. The Daemonites infiltrate Nazi Germany, and begin their experiments with something called GEN FACTOR, a Kherubim compound capable of granting superpowers to those exposed to it. If they can infect humanity with Gen Factor, then they can possess those infected with it, due to the combination of Kherubim and human genetics.
This project is led by the Daemonite Lord of Science, Ne’syr, the Daemonite mentioned by the rogue survivors we met in Justice League #40.
In a series of flashbacks, we join a small group of non-metahuman JSAers (the Spear of Destiny’s influence is still in effect, so if Green Lantern or the Flash went in, they’d be handing the Axis a metahuman army), namely Hourman, Sandman and Starman, who manage to sabotage and set back the experiments—not knowing the alien threat behind them—but this only delays the success of Ne’syr‘s work.
By the eighties, Ne’syr has perfected the Gen Factor, and subsequently the likes of young Cole Cash (aka Grifter) are infected, though he and the others exposed manage to escape in the chaos of the successful experiment. They become known as the Gen12, the twelfth round of experimentation… but the first success.
So, the Daemonites introduce Gen Factor into the environment. A mutagenic compound capable of gifting superpowers while allowing Daemonites to possess. Super-powered hosts for the Daemonites! Chem trails, drugs in the water, all the worst conspiracy theories you can field, they’re because of the Daemonites!
Remember Doctor Psycho’s strange super-powered children? Gen-active. Do you remember the change in the Earth’s atmosphere after Majestros was released from Vandal Savage’s prison? That was due to him being a carrier for the Daemonite’s modified Gen Factor! But how?
Do you remember when the Shrike travelled back in time from the 10YL future to prevent the release of Vandal Savage’s supposed doomsday weapon? Everyone thought he succeeded but he actually failed! Majestros is but one carrier for the Daemonite’s Gen Factor toxin, and as he flitted about the world, fixing the ozone, he was also spreading their poison, furthering their malevolent goals, giving men, women and children superpowers that Doctor Psycho, in the guise of S.T.A.R. Labs’ Harrison Wells, went on to recruit into his fold. Children are our future, as the saying goes…
Majestros was hell bent on figuring out where the Daemonites were hiding, and for a time the Justice League were aware of the threat. But Spartan’s HALO satellite malfunctioned due to the introduction of the Gen Factor into the atmosphere. They were suddenly hidden more so than before… and then the Justice League kind of forgot about it. But what if… they were manipulated?
We find out that it was the Daemonites who launched the mysterious warp marker that lured the Justice League out behind the moon to the alien ark, in the hopes of their dying at the hands of the mad pilot-- the ark was legendary in the Daemonite’s history as causing great destruction when it appeared, so they sought to bring that destruction forward.
Instead of the entire Justice League dying, only the Martian Manhunter was taken off the board when he agreed to help pilot the ark to safety, and they used that to their advantage.
They brought in Doctor Psycho, who, without the Martian Manhunter to stop him, subtly made the team forget about the Daemonite threat. If it was raised, they’d forget, as we saw time and again through my run.
We’ll meet Doctor Psycho in the final arc before the Eschaton War begins. We learn what was going on with the Weapons Master and why he was hoarding weapons! We find out about Katar Hol’s missing memories, and the truth behind his cancer. All the pieces fall into place.
But why does the Eschaton War finally start now?
Lord Helspont, the overarching antagonist of this event, has had enough. After millions of years it’s time for the Daemonites to finally make their move.
Behind Lord Defile’s back, Helspont engineered something terrible. The temporal dam that’s been on the horizon that Rip and Booster were so concerned about? That’s him. Helspont has taken a host that has figured out how to unpick any problem. Magic-users? Super science? GLC? Supervillains? The Justice League? Helspont has thought through everything, and those tie-ins are Helspont making his final move, all while wearing the face of one of the Justice League’s closest allies…
…Ted Kord, aka Blue Beetle.
I took inspiration, as do most creatives in the 21st century, from Alan Moore’s work with the Temporal Dam. Here’s something he said in his “Twilight of the Gods” proposal that really stuck with me:
The important thing in terms of Twilight is that the Time Trapper successfully sets up his fluke field, which effectively distorts a whole stretch of the timestream from, say, 1990 to the year 2010. With very few exceptions, nothing can get in or out of this Time Tangle.
Furthermore, as a result of an effect of the fluke field upon a continuum already sorely abused during the reality-reordering of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, within this bubble of fluke time, numerous alternate realities again become possible, if only for a limited thirty year stretch.
Although we won’t be exploring any of these realities save for one in Twilight, the possibilities there for story ideas in other books are limitless. Within the fluke, there are maybe worlds where the imaginary stories happened: what would the world of Superman Red/Superman Blue be like if you were to visit it twenty years on? Or the world in “The Death of Superman”. Is there a world perhaps like the old Earth-Two or a world in which Dark Knight takes place?
As well as opening up a wealth of story possibilities without opening up the attendant can of worms, it also provides a convenient trash bin for every story that DC ever published that didn’t fit in with the continuity. Brother Power? It happened in the fluke. Prez? The fluke. The Rainbow Batman? In the fluke.
Furthermore, as a result of an effect of the fluke field upon a continuum already sorely abused during the reality-reordering of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, within this bubble of fluke time, numerous alternate realities again become possible, if only for a limited thirty year stretch.
Although we won’t be exploring any of these realities save for one in Twilight, the possibilities there for story ideas in other books are limitless. Within the fluke, there are maybe worlds where the imaginary stories happened: what would the world of Superman Red/Superman Blue be like if you were to visit it twenty years on? Or the world in “The Death of Superman”. Is there a world perhaps like the old Earth-Two or a world in which Dark Knight takes place?
As well as opening up a wealth of story possibilities without opening up the attendant can of worms, it also provides a convenient trash bin for every story that DC ever published that didn’t fit in with the continuity. Brother Power? It happened in the fluke. Prez? The fluke. The Rainbow Batman? In the fluke.
Just an interesting aside. Anyway…
Helspont assassinates Defile—who is possessing President Jeb Stuart!—and takes control of the surviving Daemonites. Then he begins his ultimate plan: The destruction of the Justice League and the end of humanity. The transformation of Earth into a universal war machine. Rewriting time so that the Kherubim never are born and the Daemonites are the dominant species across all of time and space.
And it all starts with the assassination of the President of the United States of America.
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But before that! First, in the style of Countdown to Infinite Crisis-- a touchstone event if there ever was one for me—I planned numerous lead-in miniseries and one-shots. They all build a foundation for the main event to launch, which would run in the Justice League ongoing, with tie-ins if people were interested in contributing.Their concluding issue would take place after / during the issues that reveal Ted Kord’s possession, and all post on the same day. I would have had to figure out how to make that work, maybe as an anthology conclusion, or something else. Who knows!
Ted Kord recruits Jaime Reyes to assist him in his brand new venture, except, the pair never meet. Ted is working remotely and in hiding, as since he walked away from the Justice League, he was recruited by the President to runs the US government's top-secret 'Dead Letter Office', an organisation dedicated to solving the problem of super-humanity in the 21st century. How do you take down the Secret Society of Super Villains? How do you prevent the propagation of magic? How do you stop alien invasions? The DLO has an unlimited budget and a mandate, and Ted thinks Jaime can help.
With Ted in his ear, Jaime is his operative in the field (think Oracle / Black Canary in early Birds of Prey), and plays a key role in various schemes to rout the threats outlined above. Along the way, his friends and family question Ted’s motives, if everything he’s doing is altruistic, but Jaime naively tells them he believes in Ted, so if he says something needs doing, he’ll do it.
When Jaime finds out that players from the rogue groups he helped take down are being recruited into the DLO, and Ted won't explain why, a confrontation draws near.
He tracks down the DLO’s HQ, and finds Angie Spica, the Engineer, held captive! Yes, the mysterious figure who kidnapped Angie in the final issue of Justice League was Blue Beetle, and when Jaime confronts him after trying to free her, Ted easily defeats him.
The reason he didn’t meet with Jaime is because the Scarab could detect Daemonite possessions, but with everything in place, he imprisons Jaime in “The Cancer”, a living prison designed to hold any and all metahumans in an inescapable, ever-changing environment. He wants the heroes of the world to watch as he burns it all down, while experimenting on their genetics to splice together a new form beyond anything the Daemonites have seen before.
In a dual timeline adventure following both heroes, Booster Gold searches for Rip Hunter after the latter went missing during his investigations into the temporal dam that’s about to go up in the immediate future. This device prevents anyone seeing what happened during its time buffering space / time—a Time Sphere around the universe.
Blue Beetle lures Rip Hunter to the present era and traps him, forcing the time-traveller to build a “temporal dam” that separates Earth from the rest of the universe. When the dam is up, no one from outside can enter the planet, and any changes to the timeline will not take effect until the dam comes down, history changing as events gush out across the multiverse. .
Booster searches throughout the timeline, following clues until he tracks down the truth of the temporal dam—Rip was the one who finished building it, forced to after tracking down Ted and realising the truth. Rip is possessed with Daemonites and made to complete the work Ted started, and before Booster can do anything else… Ted activates it, and the Eschaton War begins.
Booster is confronted by Beetle, a battle for the ages teased… and Booster runs away, terrified.
Tying into the planned Shadowpact series UDC and I had been planning, the team of mystic avengers would investigate the most haunted site in America (TBD) and find a feral version of the Spectre, driven mad by unknown forces. They discover that a strange organisation has created anti-magic technology that is slowly being activated across the globe, subtly so no-one realises the truth before its too late. The team try to placate the Spectre, but he defeats them easily, and the mysterious organisation—the DLO—collect their bodies, ready to throw them into “The Cancer”.
The Secret Society of Super-Villains are being picked off! Their ruling council don’t understand how their enemies are tracking them down the way they are, but no matter what they try, their satellite bases and safe houses are taken down, their plans anticipated and countered, leaving them trapped on Santa Prisca as the end draws near.
We find out that some of the human members of the Council have been possessed by the Daemonites and has been feeding intelligence to the DLO, and the book intersects with Jaime Reyes infiltrating the island, shutting down their forcefield, and allowing the organisation to be taken down “for good”.
This is basically showing the villains side of the prologue side of things. We check in with characters who’ve made appearances in the past in the SSoSV title, e.g. Deathstroke and Lex Luthor, as they play major roles in the event itself.
Anyway, we follow the surviving dregs of the organisation trying to make a run for it, Talia returning to the League of Shadows with Scandal in tow, but at the end of the miniseries, nearly all the members are captured, with only a few strays out in the wild… including Catman, who still has a psychic version of the Question floating around his head!
With a legion of super-villains captured, some killed, we learn that a large amount of their number are now imprisoned in the Cancer, where further experiments await them…
Every decommissioned tank in Washington fires off a single, impossible round toward the White House, but due to the fact the attack was spectral in origin, no damage is done. King Faraday, who has been reduced to desk duty after increasing moves have been made to marginalise him in the FBI, joins up with Rose Psychic to investigate the cause.
The ghost of 19th-century Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart, the eponymous haunter of the Haunted Tank, has transmogrified from being a ghost to a poltergeist, after his current ancestor—President Jeb Stuart-- for reasons that become clear to King and Rose too late.
President Stuart only saw J. E. B. once, during the Vietnam War where he was a POW. He helped him survive that traumatic ordeal and rescue dozens of other prisoners. J. E. B. has watched over him since, and was present when the Daemonite Lord Defile took over his body. He couldn’t do anything—the rules of his haunting are very specific—but the impotent rage felt by the ghost changed him.
Putting everything together, King and Rose witness the anti-magic technology being deployed to remove J. E. B. off the board, and then proceed to head to the White House to confront the president, but the pair are taken down and sent to the Cancer, and the day is lost…
Then there would be three one-shots establishing the three characters who will become major players in the event, an “Eschaton Trinity” that pushes the narrative forward:
Focusing on re-establishing Saganowahna after his strange spirit walk over in Checkmate, the man known as Super Chief is questioning his role as the sole mystical guardian of the remaining Native American tribes scattered across the United States.
Prior to his spirit walk, he was present at a number of Daemonite-related incident over in Justice League, and this one-shot would show the other side of the international superhero experience, and he goes underground when he fails to prevent the DLO from erecting their anti-magic tech in the spiritual centres of the country, and is declared most wanted after being framed for a series of murders.
Donna Troy steps up big time in the event after something terrible happens to Diana, so we’d spend an issue grounding her character in continuity, and checking in with affiliated characters and locations. Generally, this is her spotlight, a chance to really show how amazing she is, and how she's on the same level-- or should be considered on the same level-- as the likes of Nightwing and The Flash (Wally) in the DC2.
And then we have Lady Zannah, aka Zealot, who is working with Wonder Woman to truly connect the Coda with Earth, rather than being a random colony tucked away in the northern point of Canada. They have a meeting at the United Nations planned, which we’ll see in the Justice League title proper. This would also show where characters like Emp, Grifter and Spartan are, after we’ve seen them debut and sneak around in the background of Justice League, and what HALO are planning now that all their existing plans to expose the Daemonites have been foiled over the past few years.
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Before the event begins, there was a two-parter planned, that Jamie Rimmer already illustrated the covers for, called “The Last Will and Testament of Katar Hol”:
Hawkman’s cancer diagnosis has been a long running thread in the main Justice League title, as was his manipulation at the hands of Doctor Psycho (when he was in the guise of Harrison Wells). In the first part of the story, after another treatment feels, Katar battles Chemo, only for the Ultramarine Corps—having debuted in Checkmate—take the villain down.
Ultramarine Corps are the US’ new superhero team, but what nobody knows is that they’re the Daemonites most recent Gen Factor successes. Superpowered-infused hosts for the Daemonites. They’re on the hunt for Doctor Psycho, who has a lot of information in that head of his, after collaborating with the Daemonites during his takeover of STAR Labs’ operations. So, to protect himself and continue twisting the knife… Doctor Psycho surrenders himself to Justice League custody.
Doctor Psycho doesn’t explain what’s going on in full, because he needs leverage against all sides, but by the end of the two-parter, he’s murdered by the Ultramarine Corps at a black site after he’s handed over to them (the Justice League are already on shaky ground jurisdiction-wise, after the events of Checkmate), though they don’t know what happens to him.
Meanwhile, Katar comes to accept that his time is coming and wants to make the most of his last days, uniting with Kendra Saunders and Carter Hall, along with the rest of his friends, something he’s neglected to do in his search for a cure for his condition. He’s going to die. It’s going to be soon. But he doesn’t want to spend that time wallowing anymore.
--
Then the war starts.
In the first issue of the arc, entitled “A Day Like Any Other…”, which is the same title I used in Green Lantern when I killed off a character and started my big serialised push on that title, and, to me, means something terrible is about to happen, things start to go really wrong for the Justice League.
Lorraine Reilly is shot on her way to work at a local senator’s office-- and she recognises her assailant. She’s rushed to hospital and Martin Stein is horrified. When all hell breaks loose, he decides that he needs to take the ultimate chance and combine with the comatose Ronnie Raymond, the only other person capable of forming the Firestorm Matrix, to heal her.
When that happens, its revealed that the wasting disease that infected Ronnie (since Justice League #64) was actually Daemonite possession! They wanted in on the Firestorm Matrix, but couldn’t possess both components and still activate it, so they infected a host and engineered a situation Martin would have to combine with Ronnie for-- or they didn’t know what would happen and the shock rendered them comatose, along with causing Ronnie immense pain and the wasting side effects. They assert dominance over the Matrix and declare themselves Deathstorm.
Diana and Zannah are at the United Nations to petition the world’s government for the recognition of the Coda colony in the Antarctic as a sovereign state. Before they can make their case, the first strikes against the world begin, capital cities across the world immediately targeted. Zannah receives a distress call from the colony informing her that they’re under attack, just before the transmission cuts out.
Hawkman confronts Deathstorm, who immediately tears the cancer cells out from the Thanagarian’s body. Hawkman’s cancer finally reveals itself to be a sentient being that tears itself out of his body and takes 40% of his body mass with it—the creature calls itself KANCER, a horrific being that can take on any superpower! his creation a by-product of Katar Hol’s continued exposure to the Gen Factor during his mind controlled period at STAR Labs, and due to his unique half-human / half-Thanagarian physiology, and nurtured psychically by Doctor Psycho, it created a separate entity loyal to the Daemonites! Hol falls to Earth, lost as chaos unfolds (he’ll end up in Nanda Parbat, but that’s a story for another time).
At the same time, John Stewart, the only active Green Lantern on Earth, plummets from a great height after his ring’s power cuts out. Across the globe, superheroes are rendered powerless, or defeated with ease. Everything happens simultaneously, all hell breaks loose, and nobody can stop to think or anticipate what’s coming. They’re reacting, fighting fires, and being betrayed left and right by their friends and families, by the authorities, by the military, because the Daemonite have this planned down to the letter.
Blue Beetle has managed to anticipate every single threat against the Daemonite’s rule, a lethal version of Batman’s contingency plans from “Tower of Babel”. This is Blue Beetle unchained, without emotion, without compassion, without remorse. It shows how deadly a man of his intelligence can be when he’s on the side of devils.
The rest of the Corps were lured away from the Milky Way galaxy thanks to the Daemonite’s allies across the universe, who, with the weapons built on earth under the supervision of the Weapons Master, have managed to create cosmic strife that draws cosmic heroes away from the villains’ true prize—Earth.
The Cyborg-Ultraman (the Cyborg Superman from the CSA’s world) knocks down all world communication and removes any defences that the world governments might have been able to muster.
Ma'alefa'ak, who had been trapped in a bestial, chimeric form after his last appearance, is restored to a semblance of his power—his body is constantly shifting horribly, and he can sniff out metahumans, but he can’t use his psychic powers—and is unleashed in a horrific sequence in STAR Labs where he massacres everyone. He is now known as CHIMERA and is like John Carpenter’s The Thing but worse. The absolute worst.
Meet the Four Horsemen of the Daemonite apocalypse, and Helspont’s main enforcers:
Kancer = Famine
Chimera = War
Cyborg Ultraman = Conquest
Deathstorm = Death
Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in a locked room being interrogated. He’s made to watch as his teammates fall, and an assassin is sent to the United Nations to take down Wonder Woman and Zannah, who are there to officially see the latter’s colony recognised as an independent nation.
No matter what Bruce tries, he cannot escape, and eventually it dawns on him that he recognises his interrogator. It’s his father. Or at least, it’s a creature wearing his father’s face. How did he not realise this sooner? Because Batman has been possessed by the Daemonites. Not just one, but hundreds, who are burning themselves out to keep him under their control.
You see, the Daemonites don't want to possess bad guys because—basically-- it's boring. They want heroes, pure people they can ruin psychologically, but also to perform moral-destroying acts wearing their faces. Bruce is stuck in his head, kept under lock and key by an army of psychic attackers driving his body. And the attacker going after Wonder Woman and Zannah? It’s him.
As the heroes fall, red skies spread across the globe as the time knot is established. The Daemonites declared war. It lasted a day. And now begins the occupation, and eventually… the resistance.
In the immediate aftermath, the Daemonites burn all the hospitals because the sick are not good hosts for them, so why keep them around? They destroy the prisons and the asylums because they don't want competition or the hassle.
At this point, we learn that the reason the HALO detection system did not work was because of the Gen Factor. As soon as Majestic was taken off the board-- somewhat prematurely by Imperator-- it would mean the Daemonite detective network would start working, so that's why Helspont wanted to strike sooner rather than later.
When they assume control of the world, the Daemonites are able to manipulate the atmosphere to prevent unauthorised flight. This causes horrendous environmental side effects across the globe. Air corridors are maintained by their command structure to let them get from place to place, and they can deactivate the manipulations whenever they want, but forces are effectively grounded.
So, the occupation. What are the surviving heroes doing now? They’re scattered across the globe, on the run, and constantly hunted by the Daemonites. Hundreds of heroes are dead.
I may get to that at some future point…