The Multiversity: Society of Super-Heroes #1

Why is that Jemm, Son of Saturn, Green Lanterny Daredevil character on this cover? He was on the cover to Issue #1 and never appeared in that! I bet he doesn't appear here as well!

After reading the first issue, I pointed out that the reader was the villain bringing on tragedy by continuing to read the story and that was why the narrator was trying to get the reader to stop. Obviously I was wrong and reading it completely backwards. But that's because I was just trying to trick my readers into not reading for fear of being the villain. Then I would be the only one left reading The Multiversity and I would be the one true hero! Obviously the narrator is a bad guy, perhaps one of The Gentry, trying to get the reader to give up reading the comic book since reading the comic book creates time and executes the plot which will allow the heroes to win (since that's how comic book stories always end all the time forever). So if the reader were to listen to the Narrator and abandon the book, the heroes would never get a chance to win. This is why Captain Carrot mentions he likes reading stories with good endings. Because he knows he's reading the stories of heroes in alternate dimensions and, by reading those stories, he's helping those heroes to succeed.

So while dumb dumb critics continue to call comic books "wish fulfillment fantasies," Grant Morrison is telling us they're actually more than wish fulfillment. The reader gets to be a true hero by reading, and hoping, and pumping her fist in the air when the hero succeeds! Then everybody in the coffee shop looks at her, annoyed, and she stands up, wagging her middle fingers in every direction, and screams, "Fuck you all, you bourgeoisie bitches! Unless you pronounce and/or spell that dumb word some other way and then maybe you're just middle class, uncreative zombie mother fuckers!"

Judging by this cover, this story will be about Doctor Fate and Lady Blackhawk banging each others body parts sore while The Atom chokes himself and masturbates in the corner. Also maybe zombies will attack.

The initial narrator of this story is a composite of Anthro, Immortal Man, and Vandal Savage. He calls himself Immortal Man although he doesn't die and become reborn like the old DC Character, Immortal Man, who was Vandal Savage's rival. He gained his power of immortality from a radioactive meteor as did Vandal Savage. But Immortal Man was also called, at one point during his life, Anthro. And being a Grant Morrison book, I'm sure Immortal Man here is a little bit of all of those characters and maybe even a few more.

Immortal Man answers a call from Doctor Fate to join a group called The Watchmen, unless he decides to call it the Justice League. Oh! Or maybe the Society of Super-Heroes! I bet that's why this comic was called that! Master Comic Book Reader!

See? He's also part Phantom Stranger! Maybe! And some guy named Mortimer! No, wait! "Morty" is probably just a cute sex kitten nickname for "Immortal Man." Master Comic Book Reader!

Maybe I should stop proclaiming I'm a Master Comic Book Reader every time I show that I have an average ability to comprehend what I'm reading.

A few of the other people looking to join the Society of Super-Heroes are the Blackhawks (the all-female division), and The Mighty Atom. He completed some workout course he found in the back of a comic book and then put on a Doctor Manhattan mask, so now he thinks he can be a real super-hero. He's probably going to die, along with half of the Blackhawks.

Doctor Fate has a copy of the haunted comic book that Nix was trying to vivisect at the beginning of last issue. I don't know how you vivisect a comic book but that's what he was doing and I'm just trying to be accurate for once in my life! And since the comic book is extremely dangerous, Doctor Fate left it out where anybody could put their tiny little mighty hands on it. The Mighty Atom gets yelled at just before Jemm, Son of Saturn, arrives.

Dammit! This would be the perfect moment for that yellow penis joke I used to tell in third grade and now I can't remember it!

Abin Sur mentions he has 100 planets to patrol in his Sector 2814. The Green Lantern of Earth-23 said he had one hundred and one planets to patrol! How come Universe-23 has one more inhabited planet than Earth-20? Unless this is Earth-40? It's one of those, according to the cover!

Doctor Fate put out the call for adventurers because a parallel earth might soon be colliding with their earth. The only way to stop devastation on a scale nigh unimaginable is to recruit an eighteen year old comic book reading kid that cosplays Watchmen charactes, a guy that can't die, some women that can fly airplanes really well, and a Green Lantern. And since Abin Sur had already agreed to help Doctor Fate (having brought the warning to Doctor Fate himself), I'm kind of at a loss for why he needed these other chumps to help out! It's like hiring Black Widow and Hawkeye to be on a team with, well, anybody else with actual superpowers! When the Avengers have a Halloween party at their mansion, I wonder if Black Widow and Hawkeye go as Wendy and Marvin?

The real heroes are on the parallel Earth! Go Vandal Savage! Kick their asses!

He's just a caveman! This world confuses and frightens him!

Vandal Savage is working with Felix Faust although it's probably actually Wotan since Wotan is Doctor Fate's fremesis. They decide to go to war with the parallel earth they just discovered. Or the guy whose throat Vandal Savage tore out with his teeth discovered. Credit where credit is due!

And since the Society of Super-heroes had just finished up a war against Jonah Hex, Nazi Mastermind, they were too weary to defeat Vandal Savage when he invaded. At least that's what Immortal Man says. "Too weary." Excuses, excuses! Vandal Savage was just too bad-ass for you, Mort! That's why you lost the United States of America to him and his suicide robots and his zombie army! And then five years passes in the space of two panels because it's time for Futures End: Multiversity #1?

Five years later, things aren't going very well. Abin Sur has been killed by The Fear-Thing (Solomon Grundy, possibly?), and The Mighty Atom's Doctor Manhattan costume has been ruined. But Doctor Fate's helmet has told him of the Monitors, and of Nix Uotan trapped in some eternal battle to save the universe, and the haunted comic book that probably has something to do with one of those things specifically! Probably the one about Nix fighting! Probably! And since Nabu told Doctor Fate all of these things, Doctor Fate knows about the Transmatter Cubes and how to get to The Bleed where the Monitor's Satellite sits waiting for more heroes to join the fight.

While The Blackhawks battle Lady Shiva and The Mighty Atom (with a fresh new Doctor Manhattan costume) battles Blockbuster, Doctor Fate opens the door to the Monitor's satellite. I wonder if he can smell carrot farts through it?

This battle plays out with as much magic as in the final battle in Wizards except with less bullets and more kicks to the balls.

As Fate drags Faust into his interrogation machine, Faust calls to the Fear-Thing: Parallax. Well, I guess that makes more sense than Solomon Grundy although I do think Solomon Grundy's yellow erection could have done serious damage to Abin Sur. Except Parallax did not kill Abin Sur like Solomon Grundy's penis would have, so I'm smarter than somebody even if I don't know who, or even know what I'm talking about. Abin Sur had to survive so that he can be the one to enter the Multidimensional Lex Luthor Parallelotelegram and appear on the cover of Multiversity #1.

At the end, Immortal Man spills Vandal Savage's blood, summoning Nix Uotan (probably the Destroyer version and not the Superjudge version) to this Earth. Is that also what happened in the first issue on Earth-7 when the Genesis Egg hatched? It seemed to hatch only after having Lord Havok's blood spilled upon it. I think these heroes need to stop spilling blood!

Immortal Man sends out an SOS just like heroes from Earths all over the Multiverse have been doing.

More comic books should be like this! DC and Marvel have so much history, stop trying to force some kind of linear coherence on it all! Just let writers pick and choose and merge and mash and come up with fun shit to read like Multiversity! Hey DC! You can use that blurb on the back cover of the Multiversity trade, okay?