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Judgment In Infinity is a Wonder Woman 1982 storyline published in Wonder Woman (Vol 1) issue #291-293. Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas and Gene Colan are credited with plot, script and art, respectively. It is noteworthy as the first team-up featuring most of DC's female heroes.

As investigating a commotion in Washington DC, Wonder Woman meets a weird, imposing figure in the center of all the chaos. Although she fails to restrain him, her Lasso of Truth gives her a glimpse of his mind: her enemy calls himself the Adjudicator and fancies himself as a judge of worlds who wipes out civilizations which are not up to his standards. Though, he is confused as to why humans have not wiped themselves out so far.

Before he vanishes, Wonder Woman learns he intends to test four Earths in the Multiverse. If any of them fails his test, though, he will destroy Earth-One, and due to its place as a cosmic keystone, its destruction will set off a chain reaction which will obliterate every Earth in the Multiverse.

Alarmed, Wonder Woman calls an urgent meeting of the Justice League of America. Her sibling-in-arms take her history seriously, but they are puzzled because they have never heard of the Adjudicator. In the wake of the League meeting, Zatanna approaches Diana and reveals her mystical perception allows her to know where the Adjudicator will strike. She also knows he plans to model his agents after an old human myth.

After hearing Zatanna out, Wonder Woman realizes she will have to call several of her fellow heroines to protect four different Earths from the Four Horsemen.


Tropes:

  • Always a Bigger Fish: At the end, Diana and her allies are effortlessly stomped by the incredibly powerful Adjudicator. Before he can obliterate the heroines together with their home worlds, though, he is stopped and whisked away by his massively powerful overseers, who are not happy about being bothered by his annoying antics.
  • Apocalypse How: If the heroes fail the Adjudicator's trial, he will make Earth-One fade into oblivion, triggering a chain reaction which will disintegrate all Earths in the Multiverse.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: Played with With the Adjudicator. When he's forced by Diana's question while wrapped in the lasso to think about who gave him his supposedly righteous task, and it's revealed his fellows essentially sent him off to play with planets they don't care about so long as he doesn't bother them by thinking about them, he's just furious with her because they're now going to recall him and he won't get to destroy a bunch of earths and all life on them as he doesn't care why he was "judging" planets, its what he wants to do.
  • Artistic License – Religion: The writers blame the Indian famine on Hindu people clinging to his old religious beliefs and refusing to eat cow meat. Putting aside the significant number of Indians who are not adherents of the Hinduism, and contrary to popular beliefs, cows are not "sacred". It is just considered wrong to eat the flesh of the one who gave you milk (as a mother). Some branches of Hinduism though allow you to eat animal meat if they are already dead and/or in the case of there being no other food sources at hand.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Adjudicator seems a six-hundred-foot giant when he first appears.
  • Badass Boast: Starfire utters one when she engages the Horseman of Death:
    Death: "Ah— Two more supposed "immortals" to feel Death's tender touch! I shall— Eh?"
    Starfire's starbolt deflects Death's scythe
    Starfire: If you can thrust, Rider, it's no faster than I can parry. And if somehow it is you who is responsible for the pain that Raven feels— the Doom that hangs even now over her head— You'll soon be sorry you ever set foot on any Earth.
  • Big Bad: The Adjudicator intends to put humans through a test and destroy all Earths should they fail.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Several soldiers fire at the Adjudicator when he first appears and are immediately blasted into oblivion. When Wonder Woman tries to lasso him, he swats her away, and she only survives because she is extremely tough.
  • Bus Full of Innocents: During the commotion caused by the Adjudicator's appearance, a car careening out of control almost crashes into a school bus, but it is stopped in its tracks by Wonder Woman's lasso.
  • Catch a Falling Star: In Earth-I, Wonder Girl leaps from a flyover, catches a woman thrown off the edge by Death and flies her down to safety.
  • Coincidental Broadcast: Black Canary, Power Girl and Huntress are arguing about the Adjudicator's threat when a newscast reports on a sudden plague outbreak in Atlanta. The three women correctly guess that one of the Horsemen has begun its rampage.
  • Cool Starship: The Adjudicator's gleaming-grey starship dwarfs the largest battleship on the Multiverse and is capable of both inter-galactic and inter-dimensional travel.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: In Earth-X, War sends a battalion of animated war tanks after Supergirl, who disposes of them without breaking a sweat.
  • Deadly Gaze: The Adjudicator can turn disintegrate people or cause them to fade right out of existence with his gaze if he so chooses.
  • Dem Bones: The Four Horsemen are animated skeletons clad in ancient war regalia.
  • The Earth-Prime Theory: Earth-One is the multiverse's keystone; to the point that if it is destroyed, all alternate Earths will follow.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect:
    • The Adjudicator appears hovering by the Washington Monument for no reason.
    • Supergirl and Madame Xanadu are teleported into Earth-X's Paris, right in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
  • Elective Mute: The Adjudicator lets his thoughts and subsequent actions do the talking for him.
  • Evil Gloating: When Wonder Woman manages to lasso the Adjudicator's neck, he proudly states he can obliterate her and her Lasso in a heartbeat... instead of obliterating her without previous talk. It becomes his downfall when he is cajoled into keeping talking.
    The Adjudicator: Foolish mortal! Perhaps your lariat has some mystical powers over lesser beings— But it is nothing but a piece of string to the Adjudicator. A heartbeat more, and your lasso will follow you and your hapless friends— into complete and utter obliteration!
  • Exotic Eye Designs: The Adjudicator's eyes are split into a check pattern of many constantly changing swirling colors each square of which seem to reflect bits of shadow from different scenes.
  • Eye Beams: When attacked by the army, the Adjudicator unleashes multi-chromatic eyebeams who turn their targets into crystal before dissolving them into nothingness.
  • Flaming Sword: The Horseman of War is armed with a flaming broadsword.
  • Flashy Teleportation: A puff of smoke and a flash of light burst around Zatanna and Diana when they are magically transported from the Watchtower to Calcutta.
  • Force-Field Door: The small cells the Adjudicator imprisons Diana and the other heroes in have clear doors that look like some sort of thick glass which even a Kryptonian's strength can't budge but which he can put his hand through. Diana realizes her lasso can pass right through due to the fact that they're made of an energy field and not actually a solid.
  • Go Through Me: In Earth-I, Death is about to kill off Wonder Girl and Starfire when a crowd of ordinary people steps between him and both women.
  • Heart Light: The Adjudicator has a bright glowing light in the middle of his chest.
  • Hellish Horse: The Adjudicator's four Horsemen ride powerful steeds with flaming manes.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: When Wonder Woman breaks free out of her cage, the Adjudicator shoots his eyebeams at her. Wonder Woman deflects them, so they hit the cages of Supergirl, Power Girl and Starfire, who proceed to release the remaining imprisoned heroines.
  • Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Adjudicator forms four deadly horsemen based on the Biblical ones as his agents through which to judge humanity via their reaction to them.
  • Humanoid Abomination: The Adjudicator looks humanoid, but it is a several-centuries-old, blue-skinned crystal-eyed alien with a completely alien morality and power enough to alter reality and destroy planets through different dimensional planes. Also, his size changes depending on the viewpoint, suggesting that human eyes cannot completely grasp its real form.
  • Humans Are Special: The Adjudicator wonders why humanity has not blown itself up by now, and he decides to put humans to a test. Once his trials are done, the Adjudicator concludes humans have not destroyed themselves so far due to their capability for self-sacrifice, which he considers unique among sentient species across the universe.
  • Ignored Epiphany: After carrying out his tests, the Adjudicator briefly wonders whether he should spare Earth in order to study humans further. One second later, he decides he is not interested in researching worlds but in "judging" them.
  • Judge, Jury, and Executioner: The Adjudicator judges civilizations and destroys those he finds wanting. Wonder Woman asks bluntly who appointed him as judge and jury.
  • Just in Time: One tank animated by the Horseman of War is about to trample over one little girl when Supergirl swoops down and smashes the war machine apart with a single punch.
  • Kangaroo Court: The Adjudicator sets out to judge humanity, his test subjects pass his trials, and he still decides to destroy Earth, making clear that he had already decided his sentence beforehand.
  • Kick the Dog: In Earth-X, War wills a tank to trample over a little girl who was just passing by.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Adjudicator owns a scrying ball which allows him to spy on different dimensions. Is it a magic crystal ball or some alien technological device? The story does not provide answers.
  • No-Sell: The Adjudicator is too powerful to be affected by the Lasso of Truth. Wonder Woman cannot restrain him, compel him or force truths out of him.
  • Now What?: The Justice League helped the Freedom Fighters free Earth-X from the Nazis, but Europe remains a ravaged-to-the-ground war-torn hellscape. It turns out that deposing a brutal tyranny will not magically and automatically set everything right. Likewise, the Resistance may not be suited to rebuild civilization since tearing down existent power structures is significantly easier and faster than replacing them.
  • Obliviously Evil: The Adjudicator does not see his destructive actions as anything but just even after it's learned that he was given the duty of "judging" worlds by his fellows who couldn't stand him and essentially gave him the "task" of playing with worlds they didn't care about so long as he didn't annoy them by thinking of them.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The Adjudicator justifies his actions as judgement on the peoples of whatever world he's currently destroying across the multiverse, but he "judges" the planets on a skewed scale only sometimes sending minions to test the inhabitants of a handful of the representative versions of the planet and that judgement always calls for the destruction of the planet(s) and its/their inhabitants.
  • Outside-the-Box Tactic: Diana and her companions are abducted by the Adjudicator and encased in individual pods which not even the team's strongest members can break out of. However, Wonder Woman wonders whether their cages are also protected against someone trying to break into them. Wonder Woman spins her Lasso super-fast until turning it intangible, phases one end of the rope out of the bubble, and then she draws it back. The partially solid end of the rope hits the pod's outer surface and shatters her cage.
  • People Jars: Persons abducted by the Adjudicator are imprisoned in individual crystalline spheres.
  • Pet the Dog: The Adjudicator's overseers may not care about Earth, but they do not actively wish harm upon humans either, so they teleport all heroines back to their respective Earths when they take the Adjudicator away.
  • Planet Destroyer: The Adjudicator is an ancient humanoid abomination who is powerful enough to blast planets into oblivion or wish them out of existence.
  • Platonic Kissing: Donna gives Diana a kiss on the cheek after her big sister saves the world from the Adjudicator.
  • Power Glows: The Adjudicator is always seen holding a glowing, multifaceted crystal ball which every so often sends "rays of polychromatic light in all directions".
  • Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: On Earth-X, Supergirl must fight the Horseman of Death, who declares he will not accept her challenge unless she can defeat a battalion of animated tanks.
    Supergirl: Well, mister, maybe there was a Tobruk back in World War Two— but remember this... There was also an El Alamein! And, just in case you need a History lesson— that's approximately what happened there to Rommel's famous Afrika Korps!
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Diana becomes flabbergasted when the Adjudicator reveals he was given permission to play with several worlds on the condition that he does not bother his "overseers" again. It turns out that the so-called, self-appointed judge of worlds is a crazy loony who his minders do not want to put up with.
    Wonder Woman: Mad! I see it all now— You're mad! Your "overseers"— are some kind of cosmic keepers assigned to keep you from hurting yourself!
    The Adjudicator: Be still! I do not like these thoughts.
    Wonder Woman: They didn't care about worlds like Earth, so they let you obliterate them— like a dangerous lunatic playing with expendable toys! No wonder the space-traveling Justice Leaguers hadn't heard of you before! You're not a real judge of worlds at all— But only a madman!
  • Remember the New Guy?: Multiverse version. Earth-I, specifically created for this story arc, as if it had been always around and was one of the most important Earths.
  • Save Both Worlds: A group of heroines from five parallel Earths come together to save all parallel Earths from the Adjudicator.
  • Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: In Earth-I, the Mayor of Mega City offers the Horseman of Death anything he wants in exchange for their lives. Unflappably, Death replies that the only thing he wants is their lives, as per his boss' orders.
  • So Proud of You: After they have saved the worlds from the Adjudicator, Donna kisses Diana on the cheek, stating she has never been prouder of her big sister in her whole life.
    Diana: So I guess that's the end of— Why, Donna! I didn't know you cared.
    Donna: (while hugging her) Big sister, I just had to tell you— I've never been prouder of you in my whole life!
  • Soft Glass: Justified when Power Girl leaps through a skylight, and her invulnerable skin does not get cut by broken shards.
  • Some Nutty Publicity Stunt: A passerby wonders if the Adjudicator's appearance next to the Washington Monument in #291 is some kind of publicity thing for the new Star Wars movie, but he's not terribly convinced.
  • Square-Cube Law: Invoked when the Adjudicator shows up in Washington D.C., and a passerby notes that a six-hundred-foot-tall man is supposed to be scientifically impossible.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Adjudicator is a multi-dimensional being who goes around destroying planets, across all dimensions at once. Right when the coalition of super-heroes from three different earths fail to stop him from destroying earth his more powerful overseers step in and save the planet, considering him to have overstepped his bounds.
  • Surveillance as the Plot Demands: The Adjudicator uses his scrying ball to watch the battles between the Earth's champions and his agents across different dimensions.
  • Super Window Jump: Power Girl jumps through a skylight to enter a hotel lobby and stop Pestilence's rampage.
  • Taken for Granite: The Adjudicator turns several soldiers attacking him into glass statues before dissolving them into atoms.
  • Telepathy: The Adjudicator "speaks" by broadcasting his thoughts.
  • Tempting Fate: After hearing Black Canary's history, Power Girl asks why she is so sure that the Adjudicator will strike Earth-Two.
    Black Canary: Then— you'll help me!?
    Power Girl: Sure we will! But I still can't help observing— that it sounds like your adopted world, not mine, that needs its fat pulled out of the fire. What makes your Wonder Woman think the alien will strike here instead of—?
    Newscaster: We interrupt this program to announce that a strange, serum-resistant epidemic has broken out suddenly in Atlanta!
    Huntress: (dryly) You were saying, P.G.?
  • There Was a Door: Power Girl bursts into the hotel's lobby where Pestilence is causing mayhem by smashing through a skylight.
  • Too Dumb to Live: When the Horseman of Death arrives in Earth-I and begins killing indiscriminately, most people sensibly turn tail and run, but the Mayor of Mega-City declares he will bargain with the Horseman because "he believes in the power of human reason". Death unflappably retorts he wants nothing but his life and cuts him down.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When the Adjudicator appears in DC, random spectators have an argument about whether or not he's real or just some kind of movie promotion, with one woman pointing out that a humanoid that tall is scientifically impossible. None of them seem surprised to learn the threatening giant is not a staged event when told so by a guard.
  • Villain Ball: The Adjudicator makes one stupid mistake after another during the final segment. He brings the eleven heroines into his ship because he wants to keep some "specimens", fires small eye beams at Wonder Woman when she breaks out of her cage instead of shooting a big unblockable blast or teleporting her into some airless world, and then he is cajoled into starting to monologue when he is about to obliterate Diana and her companions, which results in his undoing.
  • Villain Teleportation: The Adjudicator has the power to teleport himself or anyone to any place.
  • Void Between the Worlds: The Adjudicator relocates himself to an inter-dimensional limbo, described as an empty, fathomless, black void, while he tests humanity across different parallel universes.
    Meanwhile— if such a word has any meaning in a universe founded upon relativity— in a strange, trans-dimensional limbo, a stark robed figure stands amid rivulets of gleaming fire which harm him not— staring deep into the many-faceted globe he holds before him.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Wonder Woman summons the League for a debriefing, Superman and Green Lantern go out to look up information in their archives about the Adjudicator... and then the Leaguers disappear from the story. Shortly after, Diana summons an army of heroines to fight a multi-dimensional war, but she does not even think of calling Mary Marvel or Batgirl.
  • Wingding Eyes: The Adjudicator's eyes look like multi-faceted, multicolored crystals.


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