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Justice League Infinity #2 takes the DCAU’s Superman to a twisted world ruled by nazis, and it looks like his last hope lies with his worst enemies.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Justice League Infinity #2 from DC Comics, on sale now.
Superman has many deadly foes. These dangerous villains have tried time and again to destroy him and everything he holds dear, sometimes even coming close to victory. However, there are many different forces that attempt to erode the ideals of the Man of Tomorrow. While some are individuals, others are toxic ideologies that no one person can challenge alone. Now, for the Superman of the DC Animated Universe, the help of one is needed to defeat the other.
Justice League Infinity, the comic continuation of the hit DCAU show Justice League Unlimited, began with the inner turmoil of the android Amazo. His search for meaning led to the creation of a crack in reality, and the series’ debut issue ended with the horrifying results of Amazo’s actions. Superman switched places with a Nazi counterpart from another earth — Overman.
Justice League Infinity #2 by J.M. DeMatteis, James Tucker, Ethen Beavers, Nick Filardi, and Tom Napolitano opens with the DCAU Superman landing on this savage Earth, distraught by what he sees. At first, he thinks he’s been transported to a distant hate rally, but soon he realizes the hate isn’t contained to just one rally — it’s the whole world.
After battling the Brainiac of Overman’s Earth, repurposed as a tool for an Authoritarian regime, Superman sees the full extent of this Earth’s hatred. It’s ruled by the Nazis under a Fourth Reich with Vandal Savage as its leader, expanding on the “Savage Time” story from the original Justice League show. Despite all his amazing abilities, the Man of Steel concedes that fighting a world full of Nazis alone would be a never-ending battle.
When a strange portal appears above him, he believes it’s another Nazi attack. However, it turns out to instead be support from an unlikely place. As he arrives in what looks like an underground base, he meets three individuals who seem all too familiar. They are Doomsday, Metallo and General Abraham Zodetsa, otherwise known as Zod. Whilst on his own Earth, those names would immediately spur Superman to fight, here they’re known as the Freedom Fighters.
While these are clearly alternate universe versions of Superman’s rogues, what little is revealed about them could speak to their history here. Though their leader is Zod, it’s unclear whether he shares the Kryptonian origins of his villainous counterpart. His first name being Abraham suggests he may have been born on Earth. He also doesn’t look too similar to the DCAU Zod seen briefly in a handful of other DCAU comic series.
Metallo, obviously, isn’t John Corben. This version is a woman whose appearance looks more like the Teen Titans hero Cyborg, rather than that of the fully robotized Corben. Finally, the DCAU version of Doomsday was created from Superman’s DNA to destroy him, so it’s possible that the version on Overman’s Earth has the same origin. This Doomsday looks more like Clayface. In Justice League Unlimited, Superman and Doomsday fought inside a volcano, perhaps Overman was in a similar situation and went further, resulting in permanent disfigurement for Doomsday.
With the Freedom Fighters being composed of good versions of well-known villains and the Superman of this Earth being overtly evil, Justice League Infinity has essentially created an amalgam of Earth-3 and Earth-X. Though Vandal Savage is still a villain, all other evidence supports a similarity to Earth-3’s inverted morality, Overman most of all. The presence of the Freedom Fighters, regardless of their membership, and the world full of Nazis, is the classic Earth-X set-up.
To defeat Savage’s Reich and get home, it looks like Superman will have to band together with his alternate universe enemies, the Freedom Fighters. Though, with multiversal mishaps happening on his own Earth, Nazis may turn out to be the least of his problems.
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