Fridge Brilliance
- The conclusion to Batman R.I.P. DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! However: IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO! But on the topic of DC continuity, the fact that Infinite Crisis ended, and immediately afterward came 52 and Countdown, which was a blatant lead up to yet another crisis. Wow, DC... way to leech our money you bastards. But, wait... this is all one event. INFINITE CRISIS ISN'T OVER! It's in the title, it's INFINITE. It's really a send-up of Continuity Snarl and Cosmic Retcons and quick continuity fixes, as well as a MASSIVE Take That! at continuity-obsessed fanboys. The whole reason Superboy-Prime ended up a villain was because he just wouldn't stop bitching about how his world was so much better and how he was gonna find his perfect earth and make everything better. Effectively, Superboy-Prime is just a send-up of the
Unpleasable Fanbase, the assholes who get mad because their favorite comic goes in the wrong artistic direction, or somebody dies that they don't want dead. Seriously, consider his origin. He was a normal kid in a universe with no superheroes. Superboy-Prime is what happens when you give the geek with too much time on his hands superpowers. And in the end, what happens? Continuity ends up more FUBAR than it was PRIOR to Infinite Crisis. What an epiphany.- It gets better. Kal-L of Earth-2, Superboy-Prime, and Alex Luthor are "things were better back how they used to be," "You're doing it wrong!" and "This is unrealistic, make it darker and edgier" respectively.
- In Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, Superboy-Prime is sent to live in "the real world" where all of his exploits are made into comics written by Geoff Johns. The last panel is of him logging onto a DC comics message board. Anvil time.
- Consider the death of Major Disaster during Infinite Crisis at the hands of Superboy-Prime: the catalyst for Disaster joining the Justice League of America during the Kelly run was an issue of Action Comics (#783) in which Superman (following the events of Our Worlds At War) wants to offer a second chance to a group of criminals lest one day they confront someone like Superman, yet *unlike* him, a superhuman who's willing to kill. Fast forward to IC and who kills Disaster? Someone who's like Superman, but willing to kill. Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?
- While on the subject of Superboy-Prime, his bloodlust makes a lot more sense when you realize he knows he's in a comic book. None of these people matter to him because none of them are real. He's basically playing Grand Theft Auto on a cosmic scale.
- Which would make his attempt to kill the writers and stop Blackest Night deliciously ironic-he's trying to kill the people who share the same mindset like him(the DCU isn't real), but ironically are significantly less evil than him because they've never been given any proof otherwise.
- In Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, during the climax Superman gets a weird giant statue version of himself made out of idealism and stories. In other words, Superman got literal Plot Armor: Armor made out of plot.
- In Final Crisis, Barry Allen frees his wife from the Anti-Life Equation by kissing her. This seems to come out of nowhere, but then in Blackest Night, he temporarily becomes a Blue Lantern, wielding the power of hope. Back in Sandman, Dream and Choronzon are playing the oldest game, and when Choronzon declares himself to be Anti-Life, Dream wins by saying, "I am hope." Whether or not Geoff Johns told Grant Morrison about his Blackest Night plans, or whether this is an example of Johns doing the research rather than excessively fanboying the Silver Age heroes, it's pretty cool.
- Evil took away the lives of Batman's parents with a Gun and a bullet, while Bruce was young and helpless. After all this time and training, Bruce is now finally the powerful one when confronted with Evil. He's the one with the Gun in his hand this time, and with a single bullet, attempts to kill the embodiment of the kind of Evil that killed his parents
- If the Anti-Life equation affects anyone who sees or hears it, why not just go into battle with it playing on loudspeakers? Why go into battle at all? Press the speakers against their fortresses, turn up the volume, and then quietly wait for whoever is on that side to walk over and open the door for you to go inside and reach the rest. While the audio-based zombification is amazingly effective as shown, usage of extremely common and simple equipment would have made it completely unstoppable.
- Darkseid's not simply about control, he also wants to crush resistance. He wants to see the people who escaped his control get brutalized for their good fortune.
- If Superman wished for a happy ending on a box that could do anything, why would he not resurrect his old friend? Would Clark's idea of a happy ending not necessarily include Bruce? With the ending of Final Crisis being as it is, why would any of the negatives even exist? It would have made far more sense for Final Crisis to have lead directly into the Universe Reboot (similarly to how Mortal Kombat Armageddon led into the MK:9 reboot of the franchise) rather than to have to deal with the aftermath AFTER unleashing a supposedly unlimited wish spell to restore the multiverse.
- What if he did? After all, he wished for a happy ending, not a happy in-the-middle. What if, before Superman's wish (on some objective, extra-story timescale), Batman was killed instantly by Darkseid's Omega Beams. But after Superman's wish, Darkseid's Omega Effect instead sent Batman back through time as part of a convoluted Taking You with Me plot- which Bruce ultimately escapes, returning to Gotham to save everybody again. There was a happy ending- it just took a while to get to. Darkseid sending Batman back in time rather than just killing Batman there and then is because Superman made his wish for a happy ending, which retroactively changed things in order to ensure Batman's ultimate survival.
- While most of Darkside's Elite are accounted for in the aftermath, several simply vanish. While it's implied that their Grand Theft Me gambits are risky and would kill the hosts, Darkseid himself went through several without explanation before fully possessing Dan Turpin. Characters like Steppenwolf and Mantis have enough intelligence, personal ability, and independence to be massive threats (especially without Darkseid to keep them in check), and Baron Bedlam in particular had long since mastered possessing robotic bodies. Nothing ever comes of any of these.
