| Re: The Semi-Complete Story of "52" (abridged)... any interest? |
Subject: Re: The Semi-Complete Story of "52" (abridged)... any interest?
by Gnostic85 on 2007/2/18 10:46:35
PART THREE:
- With Booster gone, Skeets tracks down Daniel Jon Carter, a former football player and 21st-century ancestor of Booster. Carter's been a loser ever since busting his leg during a football game, and Skeets offers him the chance to take over Booster's identity in exchange for helping it to access Rip Hunter's hideout once more. However, upon seeing the picture that supposedly implicated Booster in the chronal abnormalities (which Skeet realizes to actually be implicating it) the robot coldly traps Carter in a time loop. and walks off.
- Starfire, Strange, and Animal Man try to escape the vengeful Devilance, only to be caught by him once more. However, Devilance is then trapped and killed by bounty hunter Lobo. After tense negotiations, Starfire convinces Lobo to help them get home. Problem is, Lobo has joined the Church of the Triple-Fish God, and so his actions are now constantly monitored by a space dolphin named Fishy to ensure that he maintains his vow of non-violence. He has also managed to get in trouble with a giant crazed head named Ekkron. On top of all that, the road back to Earth is takes them into the path of a genocidal maniac named Lady Styx, whose fanatical followers have destroyed whole planets.
- The Everyman Project churns out a team, Infinity Infinity Incorporated (name legally purchased by Lexcorp), whose members include Starlight, wind-controlling Skyman (Jacob Colby); sharp-taloned Fury (Erik Storn); super-strong Nuklon (Gerome McKenna); speedster Trajectory (Eliza Harmon), and shape-shifter Everyman (Hannibal Bates). What none of them know is that their powers are under Lex Luthor's control - with a push of a button, he could strip any one of them of their abilities. Indeed, on their first mission, tackling the rampaging Blockbuster (no relation to Bludhaven's crime boss of the same name), Luthor decides to depower Trajectory, who had been a problem for him. As a result, she is killed in action. Witnessing her death are Beast Boy and an ad-hoc group of Teen Titans, who team up with Steel to investigate Luthor's control over the Everyman project.
- A young Iroquois man, Jon Standing Bear, is called home for his estranged father's funeral. On the bus ride over, he rescues a young woman from a would-be rapist, tossing the creep out the window of the bus. The woman, Sierra, is an applicant for the Everyman project, and later becomes Matrix, Trajectory's replacement in Infinity Inc. As for Standing Bear, he inherits the Manitou Stone, a meteorite fragment which grants its wearer "the speed of a thousand running deer, the keen senses of the wolf nation, and the power in his legs to leap higher than the tallest trees." He also gets a buffalo helmet, and a name - Saganowahna, the Super-Chief.
- Renee Montoya and the Question infiltrate Intergang's Kahndaq headquarters, where they discover a burgeoning cult devoted to the worship of evil. There, they see Amon Tomaz, Isis' little brother, being beaten for his refusal to convert to their cult. Black Adam and Isis bust in, breaking up the cult and rescuing Amon, only to find that the boy has been badly injured during the attempts to break him. Black Adam reveals that because of his marriage to Isis, he has gained the ability to endow his family with a portion of his own powers (in the same way Captain Marvel was able to share power with Mary Marvel and Marvel Junior), and thus he grants his newfound brother-in-law the power to become Osiris.
- The proliferation of the Everyman project drives Firehawk and the newly-healed Firestorm to form a new Justice League. Of course, with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman missing, and most of the classic members occupied, they have to settle for newbies Super-Chief and Bulleteer (the steel-coated heroine from Seven Soldiers), as well as complete reject Ambush Bug. Their first and last mission, stopping a stampede of pirates and killer robots, is a complete disaster, not due to the team's own incompetence, but rather because dozens of untrained Everyman superheroes decide to join them, to disastrous effect. Super-Chief discovers that the stampede of time-lost folks were actually summoned by Booster in an effort to draw out Rip Hunter, which results in Skeets killing him, and then going on a rampage to kill the Everymen. The rest of the team is scapegoated for the idiocy of the Everymen, and disband.
- Dibny's quest takes him to the realms of the dead - to Hell, where he learns the horrible fate of Felix Faust. Faust had been trying, once again, to sell his soul for more power, petitioning, among others, the demons Etrigan and Choronzon, the witch Tala and the submissionary Klarion. Turned down by all these, he finally turned to Neron, the Wishweaver. Desperate for a pure soul to give to the demon, he killed an innocent girl. Neron saw through his plans, though, and locked his soul in Hell. Dibney also goes to the Iroquois afterlife, where he watches Jon Standing Bear fall into oblivion. Finally he arrives in the palm of the Spectre, with whom he attempts to make a deal to bring back Sue. The Spectre offers to give Ralph what he desires, but in exchange, Dibny must become a temporary host so that the Spectre can avenge the crimes committed by Jean Loring, who orbits the sun, possessed by Eclipso. As Loring killed Sue, Dibny agrees, and uses the spectral power to purge Eclipso, making Loring sane once more. He pulls her back in time 84 weeks and 2 days, to the night Jean killed Sue, intending to leave her there in a loop, to watch her own horrible crime over and over without the benefit of insanity to insulate her. However, he cannot bear to witness it either, and so he undoes the punishment. Having worn out his welcome with the Spectre, he decides to try the mystic realm of Nanda Parbat next...
- Meanwhile, Martian Manhunter, who has been working undercover to disband Checkmate after its involvement in the death of Blue Beetle and the assault on Themyscira which caused Wonder Woman to send the island into another dimension, manages to get the corrupted agency disbanded by the US government, but the UN decides to create its own Checkmate in order to monitor the new proliferation of heroes from the Everyman project. Alan Scott is selected to serve as its White King, with Terry Holt (AKA Mr. Terrific) as his Knight.
- Black Adam and his new family are summoned to dinner with Venus Sivana and her family. The Sivanas are worried about their patriarch, unaware that he is safe on Oolong. Their dinner, however, is distrupted by one of the doctor's last experiments prior to his kidnapping - a large anthropomorhic crocodile. Though Venus is horrified, young Osiris, who felt out of place anyway, goes to look for it and discovers that the creature is in fact docile. Osiris befriends it, giving it the name Sobek.
- On Oolong, Magnus navigates his way through the mad scientists, learning that they are led by Chang Tzu (formerly Egg Fu) and that the Four Horsemen are being developed by Intergang as a "solution" to the "problem" of Black Adam and his family. He meets the lovely Dr. Veronica Cale, who seduces him and has his antidepressants taken away. Without them, Magnus becomes bipolar again, and begins work on a deadly Plutonium Man...
- In Louisiana, Dr. Amanda Waller, longtime head of the Suicide Squad, seeks out Albert Rothstein (AKA Atom Smasher), former teammate of Black Adam and a collaborator in the coup that put Adam in power in Kahndaq. Rothstein is serving a long sentence in Belle Reve for his involvement in the coup, and Waller offers him the opportunity for parole if he'll lead a new squad against the Black Marvels...
- Supernova collects various weapons, including Luthor's Kryptonite gauntlet and Starman's staff, while Skeets kills several time travelers, including the Time Commander, and tortures Waverider in hopes of learning where to find Rip Hunter. When Waverider tells him that nobody knows how to track Hunter, Skeets kills him.
- On Thanksgiving, as the Sentinel, Wildcat, and Flash contemplate disbanding the Justice Society of America, Infinity Inc. introduces its newest member - the plant-controlling Jade. This doesn't sit well with Sentinel, father of the original Jade, and enrages his son Obsidian, who attacks the new Jade and nearly pulls her into a shadow dimension before Sentinel intervenes. Dismissed as the old models of superheroics, father and son stalk off.
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