The universe of DC will never be the same again...
Considering this is the comic story that took the DC Universe past the point of Darker and Edgier and irreparably changed the DC Comicverse forever, you can be certain it's got some prolific nightmare fuel in its content. Especially when it comes to Superboy-Prime.- Your reality and universe are under attack by three men that think "You're not good enough. You don't deserve to exist." And two of them have set events into motion that make an already unstable situation, even worse. And now they're starting to attempt to wipe out everything you have known, and replace it with a so-called 'perfect' reality. It's an astounding miracle that we didn't see more heroes and civilians desperately seeking out the red couch after each of these events, that's for certain.
- Even worse is while reality is tearing apart, the villains are breaking loose and having a free-for-all on Metropolis to destroy the heroes once and for all with Doomsday leading the charge.
- Superboy-Prime. At first he comes off as a teenager with entitlement issues, and then you slowly begin to realize that he's a teenager with entitlement issues and enough power to destroy a planet. The world cannot possibly come up with anything scarier than that. Not to mention the way he murders people is exactly what you'd expect from a Silver Age Superman if he stopped holding back.
- Superboy-Prime later has more than one moment that would qualify as Nightmare Fuel. But perhaps his defining moment is in Infinite Crisis #4, when Superboy-Prime has a complete psychotic breakdown, and starts brutally murdering Teen Titans left and right, with tears running down his face, moaning about how the heroes were corrupting him into a homicidal maniac. "You're RUINING ME!!!!"
- Thinking about it further, Prime was basically a perfect storm of issues that coalesced in the worst way. Not only was he bullied for most of his life for his name, but the people he loved died horribly as the Anti-Monitor destroyed his world, all the while being granted powered that rivaled the Silver Age Superman at his peak but without any sort of practice or training. He's literally isekai'd into a world he thought was just fiction, then spent years either watching what he formerly saw as comic characters live out their lives (and making messes of them), and desperately rewatching the few fleeting moments of happiness from his former life. To say that he had untreated PTSD is an understatement, coupled with him being manipulated by a sociopath who went from infancy to a adulthood in weeks and barely had any maturity himself. Especially when that sociopath, Luthor, intentionally goaded Prime into envying Conner Kent for having a better life but "wasting it". So when he does bad things, he tries to write them off as "not meaning to" and being condemned by his former childhood heroes, and then just snaps and becomes a villain that only sees them as no more than flawed comic characters; he doesn't get any help or empathy, and he turns it around into rage and anger, unable accept blame. This karma later bites him in the ass when he's able to return to his world with his family, but his loved ones are so disgusted by his actions as seen in the comics, he can't even get back what he lost. It wouldn't be until Wonder Woman actually tried speaking to him in Dark Knights: Death Metal, that Prime would get any therapy or asked to look inward. And despite the scorn he still had from hero and villains alike who remembered him, he was still able to do the right thing and die to save what was left of the ones he once admired... and only then did he get his true second chance.
- Alexander Luthor Jr. is a nightmarish Knight Templar who literally wants to kill off trillions of lives just to make a world he deems to be perfect enough. What's jarring is how he originally started off as a heroic figure but his nature as a prematurely grown infant to a teenager combined with having no background than being raised by a cold alien and being around nothing but an older Superman and Lois and a whiny Superboy while watching the darker events of the New Earth drove him nuts!
- The Body Horror that occurs when Luthor tries to fuse Earths together to make a perfect one. He callously distorts and fuses billions with such callous disregard you'd think he was experimenting in the kitchen and then tossing out the bad results.
- In a disturbing example of Breaking the Fourth Wall, Alexander Luthor starts taking the "best" Earths and mixing them all together. This includes Earth Prime, our Earth, which he has trouble finding. "Where... are... you!" He says, staring directly out at the reader as his hands reach out from the page, ready to snatch the reader's own world...
- At the end, he glumly skulks in Gotham, preparing for his next attempt at making the perfect world. Cue the Joker, who's actually ungodly pissed at having been specifically excluded from the Secret Society of Supervillains. First a squirt of acid, and as Alex recoils, the electric joybuzzer comes down into the exposed wound. And then, as he's writhing in pain in the filthy alley, Joker pulls a shotgun...
- One panel shows the sky filled with parallel Earths like stars and some of which are actually shown to be exploding and cracking apart. Never has a scene been so apocalyptic for the DC viewer.
- Superboy carving an Superman "S" Symbol into his chest with his fingernail while swearing to escape his prison. Worse is he's drooling like a crazed animal with glowing red eyes while he's doing it.
