DC's Dark Multiverse Really Hates Superman

I had already read the first volume of DC's Tales From the Dark Multiverse series.  The idea was these were all stories from the multiverse where things work out poorly.  There were stories spun out of famous events like Knightfall, Death of Superman, Blackest Night, Infinite Crisis, and the Judas Contract.

Volume II does some other famous events.

The first is Batman:  Hush.  This was a 12-issue series that at the time was sort of a soft reboot of the Batman comics.  The premise was there was someone with bandages covering his face calling himself Hush who seemed to know Batman's secret identity and was out to get him.  It turned out Hush was the Riddler, who for whatever reason was trying to be more badass.  

In the sequel Heart of Hush, Bruce Wayne's friend Tommy Elliott takes up the Hush mantle and puts a bomb in Catwoman's chest.  Batman has to do stuff to save her before she dies.  (Yeah, it's not as good.)

This dark multiverse tale is based more on the sequel as it's about Bruce and Tommy.  In this case, after his parents die, Bruce goes to live with Tommy.  Years later he goes insane and is put into Arkham while Tommy basically controls Wayne Enterprises.  For some reason Gotham secedes from America to become its own nation-state that's controlled by the Court of Owls and their Talons, led by Dick Grayson.  Barbara Gordon (aka Oracle) leads "the Outsiders" who include Tim Drake (Robin/Red Robin) and Orphan (late 90s-2000s Batgirl).  And Jason Todd is a rich socialite.

Anyway, one night Bruce seemingly dies and the "devil of Arkham" begins killing people.  This "devil" has a bat on his chest and head wrapped in bandages.  And of course it's Bruce Wayne, who with the Joker's help faked his death.  Instead of killing people, this "Batman the Silenced" (a stupid name because he does talk) stashes them in cages in the Batcave.  And then Alfred, who has gone crazy, inherits control of the Wayne estate.

There's a lot of useless stuff in this that didn't really need to be there.  Other than the presence of Tommy, there's really not much to tie it to the Hush stories.  Probably because it wasn't written by the original author(s).

The second story is based on Flashpoint, which was the event where Barry Allen went back in time to save his mom from Reverse Flash only to create an apocalyptic timeline where Atlantis and the Amazons were at war and Superman was a government experiment in a secret lab and Thomas Wayne became a brutal Batman after his son was murdered in the alley instead of him.

In that story, Barry didn't have his Flash powers after changing history, so he staged the accident that gave him his powers so he could fix things.  This supposes:  what if that hadn't worked and he had just died instead?

The gist is that Reverse Flash basically takes control of things--or at least tries to.  He blackmails the American president to give him control of the US and then kills Aquaman to try to scare the Amazons into making peace.  Meanwhile, Batman and Cyborg rescue Superman and start exposing him to sunlight so he can charge up to full power.  Then he takes on Reverse Flash and is winning until Batman kills him with a Kryptonite gun because he wants Reverse Flash to save Bruce.  Um...sure.  Then Wonder Woman shows up at the head of an army of Amazons and Atlanteans and they've also allied themselves with Darkseid and the New Gods.  Realizing he's fucked up, Reverse Flash escapes to go try to alter time.  

And then it just kinda ends.  Ironically DC is also doing a series called "Flashpoint Beyond" that also involves rejiggering the Flashpoint story, only that was written by original author Geoff Johns, while this was not.  It was a good story, but the end just kind of leaves us hanging, thus it's not really satisfying.

The third story is based on War of the Gods, which was...I have no idea.  I had to read the Wikipedia entry for it that says it was a 1991 story conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wonder Woman.  The story involves all the various gods like the Greek and Roman and Norse and some other gods fighting.  This also involved Shazam and Wonder Woman.  And I guess there was some thing where if Wonder Woman died she'd be taken over by the witch Hectate, but she found some way around this, but...what if she didn't?

At first she thinks she's buried the witch deep down, but agents of the witch kill Steve Trevor and someone else and eventually the witch takes over and kills most of the superheroes until Zatanna and some of the magic users manage to trap her.  And so she's locked up somewhere until they can maybe cure her--or she escapes to terrorize everyone.

One thing that annoyed me was the witch's agents steal F-14 Tomcat fighters from an Air Force base to go bomb Paradise Island.  This is wrong for a number of reasons.  First, Tomcats are Navy planes, not Air Force planes.  Second, most of their lives, Tomcats were solely fighters, not bombers, though late in life they were adapted to that purpose.  Third, Tomcats were retired early in the 2000s, so unless this story takes place in the past (which it might; the original story came from 1991) they wouldn't be in use yet.  Especially in the 2020s it just seems so lazy that the writer and/or artist didn't take out their phones to Google what sort of plane to use.  In this case F-16s would have made the most sense as they are Air Force planes, have always been fighter-bombers, and have been in service almost 40 years.  It should have been pretty easy to find that out with a simple search.  I'm just saying.

Mostly because this is an obscure story unless you're a real comic book nerd, I couldn't care.  I didn't know who Hectate was and thus really had little interest in all of this.

DC's first major line-wide event was Crisis on Infinite Earths.  The idea was to trim the sprawling DC continuity down and leave only one Earth with one set of characters--for the next 20 years.  Though the Justice Society survived this, DC didn't really want the old geezers around, so they came up with a one-off called Last Days of the Justice Society where they end up fighting an eternal battle against the Norse god Surtur.  An eternal battle that lasted until 1992.

So the premise of the fourth story is...what if it was the Justice League who did that instead?  Only they lose against Surtur, who then comes to Earth.  The Justice Society tries to stop him, but not even original Superman can stop him.  Their Hail Mary plan to essentially create a black hole to destroy Surtur fails and it seems all is lost.

Then original Green Lantern Alan Scott makes a bargain with Surtur.  He basically becomes Surtur's Silver Surfer, a herald who leads his master to new planets to destroy.  So predictably it's a pretty depressing story.  Earth is saved, but countless other worlds are destroyed.  Though really they probably would have been anyway; it might just have taken Surtur longer to find them.

Anyway, like the one before it was fairly obscure unless you're a comic book nerd.  I guess for what it was it was OK. Not something you'd read if you want a pick-me-up but then none of these stories are.

The last story is spun out of Metal, the really stupid event that prompted the creation of this series. That ended with the Justice League making some kind of armor and defeating the god Barbatos.  But...what if that hadn't worked?  Instead the League is turned into monstrous "dragons."  Duke Thomas, aka "the Signal" is one of the few survivors left.  He recruits Nightwing, Hawkgirl and Hawkman, Flash, and a sentient monkey to kill the five "dragons" based on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Green Lantern.  And they do.  And then Duke kills the Watcher-type guy, so I guess there won't be any more of these.  Hooray!

I thought Metal was really stupid so obviously a spinoff of that would also be pretty stupid to me.

Overall not really that great.  Some fairly obscure stuff and stuff that just wasn't great.  The Flashpoint one was probably the best.

I recall that after Marvel's What If...? series on Disney+, some people noted how many times Tony Stark was killed in the series and in the final episode was just disrespected by the Watcher, who barked, "Not you, Stark" when he took Gamora for his little team.

With these Dark Multiverse stories it seems like Superman is the one who really gets the short end of the stick most often.  In most stories he's killed or otherwise neutralized.

1. Story 1:  He does not appear in this Knightfall spinoff.
2. Story 2:  It's a spinoff of the Death of Superman so he has already "died" at the hands of Doomsday but later in the story comes back to life only to actually die.
3. Story 3:  It's a Blackest Night story where Superman as well as everyone except Dove, Sinestro, Lobo, and Mr. Miracle were made into zombies.
4. Story 4:  Superman (along with most of the other heroes) is made into an OMAC drone by Ted Kord.
5. Story 5:  Superman is poisoned with Kryptonite by Tara, who becomes the evil goddess Gaia.
6. Story 6:  He does not appear in the Hush spinoff.
7. Story 7:  After being rescued from a secret government lab, he's shot with a Kryptonite bullet by Batman.
8. Story 8:  Hectate rips his heart out Temple of Doom style.  Kali mal!
9. Story 9:  Modern Superman is trapped in a pocket universe while original Superman is about to killed by Surtur when Alan Scott cuts a deal.
10. Story 10:  Superman is turned into one of the evil "dragons," a brutish monster with a lot of teeth in its midsection.

Do you see the pattern there?  I guess it's part of that thing people have talked about where to show how badass someone is they have to take down someone who is seen to be badass.  Like how Borg or other aliens would kick Worf's ass in Star Trek TNG/DS9.  So to show how serious and terrible is, the villain has to kill Superman, the most powerful hero (supposedly) who's also the symbol of hope.

Weirdly none of these stories really involve Superman directly.  I guess because they've already done Elseworlds stories they could have used here, like Red Son where Superman was found in Ukraine in the 1930s instead of Kansas.  Or Injustice where he turns into an evil dictator after Lois and her baby are killed by the Joker.  Other than those, I'm not sure what other scenarios they could have used, so these stories focus on other characters instead, which leaves DC's original and most powerful hero as mostly a punching bag.