YMMV / DCeased

• Anvilicious: The story involving the Anti-Life Equation spreading through the Internet, the heroes being forced to stop the spreading by permanently destroying the Internet and such an act being portrayed by the story as a good thing can get real grating to readers who disagree with the New Media Are Evil sentiment, especially since the event started shortly before the COVID-19 Pandemic, which made it necessary for many people to work from home and for certain media to be released digitally or through streaming services, neither of which would have been possible if the Internet did not exist.
• Character Rerailment: Stephanie Brown's portrayal in Hope At World's End is closer to her Batgirl series than her Post-New 52 appearances. Her Angst? What Angst? tendencies, Cool Big Sis relationship with Damian, Hates Being Alone behaviour during fights, history as Robin, and status as an experienced crimefighter are restored. At the same time, more recent additions to her character (high-level hacking skills, reticence about teaming-up, avoidance of fights she thinks she won't win) don't appear. Her romance with Tim Drake is also not acknowledged — while they were each other's main love interest Pre-New 52 and most of Stephanie's early appearances were in his Robin ongoing, it's been a common fan complaint since the latter half of Detective Comics (Rebirth) that she's been mostly reduced to her relationship with him.
• Complete Monster:
  • Erebos, a primordial god of darkness, is the true mind behind the Anti-Life Equation, released upon the world after Darkseid merges the Equation with Death. Immediately launching a full-scale assault on Earth, Erebos is responsible for all the death and misery that ensues in the series as the entire planet is nearly engulfed by a plague of the Anti-Living. Even when a cure is found, Erebos continues his destructive work through his control of Darkseid, using him to infect powerful beings like the New Gods and Mr. Mxyzptlk so as to conduct a wave of galactic genocide. A being obsessed with bringing death—whether it be simple mass murder or his own Anti-Life—to everything in existence, Erebos proves himself not only an arrogant sadist who delights in spreading fear of extinction, but also a hypocritical coward who begs for his life when his own end becomes inevitable.
  • Dead Planet: Trigon the Terrible, vexed by the Anti-Life Equation denying the souls of the dead to Hell, decides to take matters into his own hands by burning away all life and Anti-Life alike from the Earth. When John Constantine interferes, Trigon gloats of the tortures awaiting the magician in Hell and promises that he will partake in inflicting these punishments.
• Fridge Logic:
  • How was Captain Atom infected, exactly? Think about it: When Captain Atom explodes, it was because Ray Palmer infected him, right? Well, here’s the problem: Captain Atom is a being of pure energy. But Anti-Life can only infect people via screens and blood transmission. You’d expect Captain Atom to be infected by having him look at a screen, right? Nope. Somehow, zombie Ray is shown inside Captain Atom’s body (which is shown as organic, for some reason) and infects him from within. How is that possible? Captain Atom is a being of pure energy, so this shouldn’t have worked because he wouldn’t have any organic bits for zombie Ray to infect in the first place! Is it a mistake on the author’s part? Or does this imply that the Captain Atom of this universe is organic?
  • Later on, several heroes who can survive the vacuum of space, who can fly and who can travel faster than the speed of light get infected, such as Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Superman. The goal of the Anti-Life virus is to infect as many as possible across the universe in order to spread death, right? So, why doesn’t it send at least one of those infected heroes to go infect alien worlds of the DCU, like Tamaran, Zamaron, Daxam, Oa, Warworld or any of the others? Why keep all these infected heroes on Earth? All we’re saying is that, if Anti-Life, which gets established as being sentient and intelligent, had decided to send one of the aforementioned infected heroes on the aforementioned other planets to infect them, then Anti-Life’s job would’ve become much easier, because the outbreak would’ve been much harder to contain.
  • The Unkillables establishes that Slade and the Creeper are immune to the anti-life virus because of their Healing Factor. You know who else has one of those? Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Martian Manhunter... Point is, a lot of characters with healing factors are infected in the story; and, as far as we know, none of the ones that survived long enough to turn back (Superman and Wonder Woman, in particular) ever did.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Flash being infected with and potentially spreading something apocalyptic is touched upon here, as he becomes infected as an anti-life zombie and goes around the world, spreading the infection at break-neck speed, and the only thing that stops him in time is Superman. This issue is brought up again in DC vs. Vampires but with arguably more tragic results where a vampiric Green Lantern traps the Flash and tells him that as much as he wants Barry on his side, Flash's super-speed and metabolism would guarantee genocide of the entire human population and leave the vampires with nothing left. After that, Hal murders the Flash in cold blood.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Hope at World's End #3 shows Wally at his best, saving friend and foe alike. Of note, three of those people he rescued are Arsenal, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, two of which he accidentally killed and the other he framed in Heroes in Crisis.
    • The first person Max Mercury brings into the other universe? Linda Park-West.
    • When Max is infected with the Anti-Life, the other Speedsters decide the best thing to do is to send him off into the Speed Force, knowing it's a lot better than having to kill him.
  • Hope at World's End #8 has Detective Chimp, Krypto, Ace and a lost horse named Comet defend a little girl left behind in the race to Poison Ivy's sanctuary.
    • This exchange between Krypto and Ace, showing that the World's Finest title can be even passed down to the pets:
    Krypto: Still guarding?
    Ace: Still guarding.
    Krypto: Good dog.
  • Dead Planet #3 has Damian Wayne hugging Jim Gordon, to the latter's surprise, glad that he's alive after five years of not knowing what happened to him.
  • Dead Planet #7 has Jon saying to Constantine, who has just stolen the most powerful magical artifacts in the universe to defeat Trigon, that he's a good man. Constantine's response:
    I'm really not. But I'm not gonna lie, it's nice to hear Superman say that.
  • Hope at World's End #5 has Stephanie donning a Robin suit to protect Damian
  • Hope at World's End #10 has Stephanie hugging Damian while the League argues
  • Hope at World's End #12 has Damian acknowledging Stephanie was his big sister at her funeral.
  • War of the Undead Gods #1 features a big group hug from Superman, Pa Kent, Ma Kent, Lois Lane, and Jon Kent after the former two are cured of the Anti-Life virus. Given this series’ tremendous body count, it’s a miracle that all of them lived to that point.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Harley Quinn's own self-titled comic, she and Poison Ivy once battled against a (temporary) zombie apocalypse in their neighborhood, but entirely featured there as hilariously demented comedy.
  • Given the series' debatably infamous Too Bleak, Stopped Caring, it came as a shock to readers that The Unkillables spin-off, which focused on a group of anti-heroes and villains, actually ended up being more optimistic in tone.
  • A major storyline over in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) has everyone being infected with a virus that turns everyone into robo-zombies, with one speedster — Shadow — being fully infected and the other — Sonic — being forced to run to stop the infection. Similarly, we got Barry fully infected while Max is sent into the Speed Force, literal speed, to save him.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Both Subverted and Invoked; given his propensity for being the focus of elseworld storylines many were shocked to see Batman Killed Off for Real at the end of the second issue. The third issue even contains a brief Hope Spot where it seems like he may have survived after all only for Alfred to reconfirm that he is indeed dead.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Lex Luthor is the self-proclaimed "smartest man on Earth." Joining Superman and his fellow survivors, Lex quickly makes a plan to defeat the Anti-Living horde besieging the heroes' sanctuary by obliterating them via vicious bombing, despite the potential for a cure. When dissuaded from this course, Lex instead creates a plan involving multiple metahumans to lure in the Anti-Living, coordinating a massive battle that ends with him using a metahuman to trap countless Anti-Living in another dimension to save his fellow survivors, albeit entirely willing to sacrifice a few of his comrades in the process. Despite Lex's own ego, he concludes that mankind needs to evacuate Earth and quickly begins work. Though he dies, Lex's work is instrumental in saving the human race.
  • The Unkillables: Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson is a callous Professional Killer with an incredibly cunning mind. After recovering from the Anti-Life infection, having contracted it during an assassination, Slade sets off and saves his daughter. Surviving everything the apocalypse throws at him, he allies with a group of other supervillains before joining Jason Todd's team in Gotham, personally convincing James Gordon to ally with him and to let him train the children into Child Soldiers to defend themselves. When forced to move to a new sanctuary, Slade uses a ploy to switch buses and take on the enemy horde. When cornered, Slade proceeds to give his daughter a hug, depart, and battle the Anti-Living to the death in order to buy time for his companions and the children.
  • Dead Planet: John Constantine is initially an innocuous survivor of an Anti-Living massacre. Upon taking initiative, Constantine quickly joins the heroes in forming a cure and concocting a plan to help humanity survive the impending oblivion brought about by Trigon. Through clever planning and quick thinking, Constantine steals multiple magical artifacts including Xanadu's crystal ball and Ragman's cloak, which he uses to impale the generous Rama Kushna and ruthlessly imprison Deadman to steal his powers. Manipulating the surviving heroes to cover his tracks, he then talks the Phantom Stranger and Etrigan into helping him take the Helm of Fate, even using the staff of Shazam to get past its magical protections. When Trigon arrives, Constantine absorbs dozens of villains' souls and combines all the magic together to hold him at bay, before then using Deadman's powers to possess Trigon and perform a Psychic-Assisted Suicide on the demon, saving the human race from his attempted obliteration.
• Narm: It's rather hard to take Damian becoming Batman seriously when he's shown to still be less than fifteen years old, thus rather than showing a new Batman it's more like a kid dressed up as him. It doesn't help that Trevor Hairsine's artwork at the very least gives Damian a Vague Age only for subsequent artwork in books like Hope At World's End making Damian's youth much less ambiguous.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • It's your favorite DC heroes turned into ravenous zombies that also have superpowers. Comes with the territory. And unlike Marvel Zombies, which was a Black Comedy, DCeased is played totally straight.
  • In the lead-up to the book's reveal, Tom Taylor posted tweets concerning the events of the book. All of them were pretty ominous, but the one that took the cake would be:
    Darkseid Was.
• No Yay: Fan reaction to the kiss between Damian Wayne and Cassie Sandmark was mostly negative. Besides the fact the relationship came out of nowhere, quite a few fans were put off by the fact that in the canon universe, Wonder Girl is usually portayed as a Love Interest for Tim Drake, Damian's older brother, and is in a relationship with Connor Kent, Jon's older brother.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Issue #2's tearful goodbye between Batman and Damian Wayne.
  • Issue #5 has Superman's goodbye to his family and loved ones just before he turns.
  • Booster Gold's death in A Good Day to Die. He slowly disappears, wiped from existence because his future has ceased to exist, right in front of a panicking Ted Kord who can do nothing but beg his best friend to stay.
    Booster Gold: I'm sorry... I'm sorry that I'll never know you, Teddy.
  • Hope at Earth's End #3 has Batman attempting to dissuade Wally from going out and saving civilians due to the risk of what could happen if the Anti-Life Equation possesses a Speedster, but Wally disagrees. Before signing off with Bruce, he asks him to tell Dick to be safe. The scene then pans over to showing the corpses of Dick Grayson and Tim Drake.
  • ''Hope at World's End #12" has Stephanie Brown being killed by zombie Black Manta, leaving Damian without his sister.
  • Dead Earth #5 has Jason Todd dying at the hands of zombie Captain Marvel Jr. Even worse is that he was married to Rose Wilson, whose precognitive abilities meant she had to watch him twice, becoming a widow twice over.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In War of the Undead Gods. Supergirl being sent to New Genesis instead of Earth is actually a really interesting idea, with potential ramifications for her worldview. Too bad that, by the time she gets there, everyone’s already a zombie, and Kara is turned by the end of the first issue.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Even by zombie apocalypse standards, the setting is extremely bleak, with every plan by the heroes to stop the zombies getting crushed and where Anyone Can Die, including even the JLA’s core members, like Flash, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, etc. Because of how beloved some of these characters are, it can be very hard to watch them die and then watch as they become monsters as all their plans to deal with the infection fail or make things worse. Things get progressively worse and quickly escalate. By Issue #6, The Amazons and Atlanteans don’t survive and all succumb to the Anti-Life equation, the entire solar system gets destroyed by zombie Superman and what’s left of the human race is forced to evacuate Earth to relocate to another planet.
  • Even at the end of the sequel series, where they manage to cure the infected, there are only two billion survivors. 3/4 of the Earth's population are dead. Large parts of that number are killed on panel, with multiple parties committing mass murder on zombies that the reader knows could be cured. And Zombie Darkseid has awakened.
• Unexpected Character: A main villain in War of the Undead Gods is Erebos, a primordial Greek deity and personification of darkness so obscurely used that he's never actually been seen in the main DC universe.
• Woolseyism: The Brazilian version was translated as "DComposição"^note  A pun on "decomposição", meaning rotting or decay. Fans have expressed amusement that the translation managed to retain a Pun-Based Title and enthusiastically embraced the change.

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