The story is set in the aftermath of the 12 issues limited series, as the surviving members of the Squadron begin to dismantle the "Utopia" program they had renounced. But the Scarlet Centurion, Master Menace and Professor Imam (who warned the Squadron) all notice a really dangerous thing going on: a giant white human-like hand of a cosmic size appeared next to the sun, and will soon engulf it. Hyperion, Menace and the Centurion met at Menace's lab, and agree to work together to destroy that thing. Menace and the Centurion build a machine in the distant future, and take a spaceship to the hand, which is now a full cosmic-sized human figure. Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum, Lady Lark (who took Blue Eagle's wings) and Whizzer (using a tredmill that allows him to run in space) take the four parts of the machine to strategic points around the entity.
It's all in vain. The machine doesn't work. Inertia's power doesn't work. Imam's attempts to talk to the entity don't work. The Overlords' mental commands don't work. The sun is engulfed, and the being keeps growing and growing, nearing Earth itself. But when it engulfs the Squadron's ship, it comes into contact with Arcanna's newborn son. Perceiving great mystic potential in him, Imam had appointed him the new master of the mystic arts before dying; but now the baby and the entity switched places. The baby is replaced by a common man, who then vanishes, and the giant white man is replaced by a giant white baby, who begins to shrink and release the sun, and then move to the other consumed universes to release them as well.
Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe contains examples of:
- Anyone Can Die: Maintained from the previous series
- Inertia tries to use her power against the entity, to delay its growth. She vanishes into pink smoke.
- Redstone, whose powers are linked to Earth itself, becomes thinner and thinner when leaving Earth, and can't be returned to the planet in time.
- Prof. Imam dies as well, when trying to communicate with the entity
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The newborn son of Arcanna Jones
- Badass and Baby: Arcanna had her newborn son with her in the ship.
- Catastrophic Countdown: The series has a permanent "X time left for the end of the world" reminder.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The newborn son of Arcanna
- Child Mage: All of Arcanna's sons have some potential for magic.
- Composite Character: Lady Lark is an expy of DC's Black Canary, but by taking the wings of Blue Eagle, she became the resident Hawkgirl as well.
- Enemy Mine: To defeat the entity, Hyperion must form an alliance with Master Menace and the Scarlet Centurion. At least they did as much as they could.
- Gladiator Games: The Scarlet Centurion has those at his future kingdom. He's bored to death.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: When you see those in a baby, you can be sure that something will happen with him.
- Hope Spot: Several attempts to defeat the entity are useless, and even cause the death of some of the heroes.
- Huge Holographic Head: Imam summons Hyperion with one of those.
- Light Is Not Good: The Universe-destroying entity is pure white light.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: The villain of the piece isn't actually out to destroy universes.
- Naked People Are Funny: Haywire and Inertia are having fun at the beach. Inertia cheated in their game, so Haywire cuts her bikini, leaving her naked. She takes revenge by leaving him naked as well.
- The Night That Never Ends: Things would have ended this way.
- Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: Averted. In any other comic book, an order "get to X, Y, Z and W points in space" gets done in an instant, as if it was going a few blocks away. Here, the plot realizes that they would get their time to reach their destinations, and that they may even get there late.
- Secret Identity: The white entity, the "Anti-Monitor" expy, is actually The Nth Man
- Silent Antagonist: The white man doesn't say a single word.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: To save time, the Scarlet Centurion takes Master Menace to the future, to work on the machine without time limits, and then return to the same point in time. They spend 15 years building it.
- You Shall Not Pass!: Everybody agrees to turn off the Utopia Program, but there is an exception: the hibernaculums, where the dead Squadroners are kept until as such a time as they can be healed. Whoever wants to turn it off for Wyatt and Olivia will have to go through Dr. Spectrum first.
