Dan Liebke’s Astonishing Tales

Table of Contents

• Issues One To Four
• Issues Five To Eight
• #9 - War Zone
• #10 - Death At The Dawn Of Time
• #11 - Aftershock
• #12 - Final Crisis

Issue Nine - War Zone

Okey-dokey. Time to crank it up a notch. Luthor and Brainiac have joined forces and summoned all the supervillains from the five remaining Earths to Brainiac’s kickass tentacled skull spaceship. So it’s kinda crowded. As you’d expect, however, Brainiac and Luthor are brimming with plans -not just to conquer the Earths, but also to alleviate the tight quarters. We’ll get to the former soon enough, but they demonstrate their solution to the latter straight away, blasting the Luthor of Earth-2 into nothingness and creating 0.23% extra room for everybody.

Back on Earths, however, everybody’s starting to grow accustomed to the whole ‘five Earths intersecting’ business. They’ve even brainstormed a funky name for the intersection points - The Warp Zone. The Warp Zone is now the hippest place in the multiverse, with T-shirts (’My parents went to the Warp Zone and all I got was this lousy T-shirt from my Earth-2 counterpart’), reality TV shows (Earth-4’s Got Talent) and strip clubs (’Earth-XXX’).

He said 'Psimon Says', so I don't see any way out of this for Luthor

The serenity of this rampant media frenzy is shattered, however, by Brainiac, who informs the UN that he and the rest of the supervillains have conquered Earth-S4X and that, unless Earths-1 and 2 surrender immediately they’ll destroy Earth-S4X and hence the pop cultural Warp Zone funhouse it has spawned. The heroes won’t have that, so they head on over to Earth-S4X for an all-in brawl. This goes on and on and on until the end of the issue.

MVP: Psimon (aka Baron Brain-in-a-Bowl). Sure he may look like a doofus with a transparent skull and bad ponytail. But he’s the only one who pays any heed to Luthor and Brainiac’s endless reminding of one another that they’re going to just let the rest of the villains succumb to the heroes before stepping in and taking over. His response? He kills Brainiac and is about to kill Luthor when the issue runs out of pages.

Issue Ten - Death At The Dawn Of Time

Turns out Baron Brain-in-a-Bowl’s planned overthrow of Luthor and Brainiac wasn’t as foolproof as he’d hoped it to be, with Brainiac (stunningly still alive thanks to a reliable and regular backup protocol) smashing his brain into nothingness. There is, after all, a reason why most of us have a skull instead of an upside-down fishbowl covering our cerebrum. Despite this comeback, things aren’t looking good for the supervillain forces, with the superheroes beating the snot out of them all over the various Earths. Even the Shaggy Man - long renowned as ‘the foe the Justice League could never defeat’ - is undone by one of Green Arrow’s lame-ass exploding arrows. So that’s gotta hurt.

'Akkkkk' indeed. Psimon learns the importance of a non-glass skull.

Before they can wrap it up, though, the Spectre interrupts like the grizzly schoolmarm he is. “Enough of this childishness!” he lectures. “Calm down and listen to me.” And he makes some of the more unruly villains sit in the naughty corner while he sets up the plot for the rest of the issue. He explains that The Anti-Monitor is back at the Dawn of Time where he is about to change history, making himself the creator of all reality, destroying all the postive matter universes in the process. To stop him, half the forces need to head to the Dawn of Time to fight him. The other half need to head to, uh, Oa, around about lunchtime a few million years ago to talk non-multiverse-creating sense into Krona. “Wait a second,” says Robin. “If the Anti-Monitor’s in the past, changing things around, hasn’t he, like, already done it?” Batman shushes him.

Off everybody heads to the Dawn of Time where they fight the Anti-Monitor. Robin once again has the salient question: “Batman, we haven’t got any powers. What can we do?” “We can share our courage,” replies the Dark Knight. Ri-iight, thinks Robin, noting that they’re in the time bubble farthest from the conflict. Anyway, turns out Batman’s noble courage-sharing isn’t quite enough to turn the tide and the Anti-Monitor blasts the heroes away and prepares to become the hand that created the universe. Until, at the fifth-last moment, The Spectre, having just seen Sly Stallone’s 1987 arm-wrestling masterpiece Over The Top and powered by the greatest magicians of Earths-1 and 2 (including both Penn and Teller) challenges him to a winner-takes-all-of-reality arm-wrestle. The Anti-Monitor accepts…

MVP: The Spectre. Forget previous appearances where he was just a face in the crowd. This issue, the green and white dude steps up as an Earth-straddlin’, plot-promotin’, cosmic arm-wrestlin’ god!

Issue Eleven - Aftershock

The Earth-2 Superman wakes up in bed and, as most of us do after fighting ten issues’ worth of battles against an all-powerful anti-matter being, assumes it was all a dream. He totters off to work, only to find that he’s not on Earth-2 at all. He’s on (seemingly) Earth-1 and, hence, Perry White tears him a new one. Luckily, mid-tear, the Earth-1 Superman shows up and rescues his older counterpart with a typically ludicrous lie. Nobody at the Daily Planet finds anything odd about Clark having a genetically identical twenty year older duplicate running around. Ha ha ha! They’re such gullible morons.

The Earth-1 Superman. Nursemaid to the elderly.

The pair of Supermen team up with the Flash from Earth-2 and Kid Flash from Earth-1 and, using naught but a cosmic treadmill, the four of them discover that Earth-2 no longer exists. Earth-2 Supes loses it completely and threatens to fly off into the void. “You senile old fool!” roars Supes from Earth-1 and pulls him back by the cape. “Take your medication!” A quick consultation with everybody reveals that this whole Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-S, etc nonsense has been editorially purged. There is now only one Earth. The only people who remember any of the previous ten issues are those superheroes who travelled to the dawn of time in the previous issue. And, of course, us, the loyal readers.

Reactions to this new single universe vary. Uncle Sam declares that it ‘totally blows’. Earth-2 Supes has another brain snap. ‘Where the freak is Earth-2 Lois?’ he shouts, before Earth-1 Supes, sighing audibly, flies off to calm him down again. And, of course, the Blue Beetle responds to the demise of Earth-4 with a typical ‘Hmmm?’. Before anybody can decide what to do next, however, the Anti-Monitor returns and sucks the New Earth into the anti-matter universe. “Welcome to my universe,” he says, ever the graceful host. “Welcome to your doom,” he then adds, which is perhaps less from the Emily Post handbook.

MVP: Supes from Earth-1. Let’s face it, the Supes from Earth-2 is a gibbering mess this issue and the only person capable of wrasslin’ some sense into him is good ol’ Kal-El. He does so with aplomb. If the Justice Society ever need a night nurse, they know where to look.

Issue Twelve - Final Crisis

Okey-dokey. Time to wrap this sucker up. We begin with the Anti-Monitor sucking Earth into the antimatter universe, which is described as a ‘burning, cosmic hell’, ‘a place of death’, rank with ‘the stink of sulfur, with the banshee wail of things long dead’. So, y’know, clearly a place that could benefit from a sassy tourism commercial, complete with an enticing catch-phrase. “Welcome to the Anti-Matter Universe,” tries the Anti-Monitor. “Welcome to your doom.” Which probably doesn’t quite cut it.

Compounding his greeting etiquette error, the Anti-Monitor then sends all his shadow demons down to Earth to kill off all the superfluous superheroes they find. More sensible (and less superfluous) superheroes, meanwhile, have taken up Harbinger’s offer to fly into the anti-matter universe and attack the Anti-Monitor in a final, winner-takes-all battle (where, y’know, ‘all’ is defined as the planet Earth (this includes France)).

So they zoom up there and start fighting. There’s a vague kind of plan to their attack. Dr Light sucks energy out of the anti-matter universe sun. Alexander Luthor sucks anti-matter energy straight out of the Anti-Monitor himself. And Captain Atom? He just sucks. Back on Earth, meanwhile, all the sorcerors are casting a spell on the shadow demons, capturing them in a ’shell of burning pyro-sorcery’ (just as is used in Guantanamo Bay). They fling them off the Earth, putting an end to the twin terror of a) their murderous rampage and b) Lois Lane’s reporting of same (sample quote: “Dove, of Hawk and Dove… was saving the life of a child. And now he’s dead. Gone as if he’s never existed. It’s horrible, Lana. Horrible.” Lana: “Indeed.”)

We all have, Supes. We all have.

With the shadow demons defeated, the heroes in the Anti-Matter universe zap the shit out of the Anti-Monitor (not literally) and kill him. Alexander Luthor opens up a portal back to the real universe, shoves the Earth through and then orders the heroes to fly back to safety. Most of them do, but then the Anti-Monitor comes back to life and starts it all up again. Earth-2 Supes punches out Earth-1 Supes and makes Superboy of Earth-Prime take them back to the real universe, while he deals with the Anti-Monitor. Just like Bruce Willis in Armageddon, except, y’know, Ben Affleck is not the Earth-1 Superman and the Anti-Monitor is not a giant asteroid (although he does get punched into a few).

Superboy of Earth-Prime flings Earth-1 Supes back into the proper universe and flies back to help. He’s no bloody use at all (as you’d expect). However, Darkseid the Destroyer, who is inexplicably watching this battle through Alexander Luthor’s eyes (and “who” is also putting “random” quote marks around portions “of” his dialogue), zaps the Anti-Monitor, throwing him into a star. This still doesn’t kill him, so Earth-2 Supes just punches him one last time. That does it. The Anti-Monitor’s dead. It’s all over.

MVP: Alexander Luthor. Completely ignoring the ‘Final’ portion of this issue’s title, he takes Superman of Earth-2 and the Earth-Prime Superboy into a magical kingdom inside, uh, his stomach. Which is also where the Lois Lane of Earth-2 now lives (duh!). This neatly sets up the sequel (Infinite Crisis) for twenty years later.

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