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In Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #5, a New God gains access to a powerful weapon that was responsible for starting the Doomsday Clock.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #5, on sale now from DC Comics.
The new Mister Miracle series has reintroduced Shilo Norman, the third person to carry the mantle, into the DC Universe. The character first reappeared in “Future State,” and has now appeared in the present. This new series also brings back a number of elements from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World to the DCU including an all-powerful weapon that kicked off Doomsday Clock – and it just found a new user.
Shilo and Oberon are in the middle of a fight between the New God Orion and their shared foe N’Vir Free in Mister Miracle: The Source of Freedom #5 (by Brandon Easton, Fico Ossio, Rick Renzi, and Rob Leigh). With the mysterious and villainous daughter of Big Barda and Shilo’s predecessor Scott Free rebuilding her intergalactic empire across time and space, Mister Miracle is desperately searching for a way to stop her. Orion’s plan of blasting her with a cannon fails but now he has another idea in mind.
Taking Shilo and Oberon into a bunker, Orion reveals a prototype of their secret weapon – the Mobius Chair. This powerful item first appeared alongside its creator Metron in New Gods #1 (by Jack Kirby, Vince Colletta and John Costanza). The device was created by Metron in his quest to gain omnipotence over all of time and space. To gain the vital power source the chair needed, Element X, Metron gave Darkseid Boom Tube technology, and thus gave the Dark Lord of Apokolips the tools he needed to later wage all-out war with New Genesis.
Here, Oberon describes this chair as a “multidimensional-transtemporal-cosmic locomotive vehicle” – basically meaning, it can travel throughout all of reality. Oberon reveals that Shilo has ridden it before, to his surprise, and now he uses it once more. With the power of his Mother Box, the famed escape artist powers up the prototype chair and uses it to gain insight into his enemy. Unfortunately, this chair doesn’t have the mind-bending omnipotence of Metron’s chair and can’t directly answer the question of who N’Vir is, but it can delve into the villain’s memories. A power boost from the Source Wall allows the chair to travel to N’Vir’s time, where the heroes hope to end her reign of terror once and for all.
When asked about the whereabouts of the other Mobius Chair, Oberon says that it’s gone for now. Since “Darkseid War” brought the New 52 to an end, the Mobius Chair has ventured from its role in New Genesis and played a big part in some of the major events in the DCU. In “Darkseid War” it was used by Batman, where he first uncovered the existence of three different Jokers, and at the end of that story Metron allowed Owlman to wield its power as well.
Unfortunately for Owlman, he asked the wrong questions and drew the attention of someone perhaps even more omnipotent than the Mobius Chair – Dr. Manhattan. Although it didn’t feature in the series itself, the chair was also a big part of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Doomsday Clock, with the powerful Watchmen character killing Owlman and Metron for looking into what he did to the DCU, and imbuing the Mobius Chair with his omnipotent powers.
At the end of the Flash Forward miniseries, Wally West found his way to the vacant chair and, as the chair’s new user, gained Dr. Manhattan’s powers. During Dark Nights: Death Metal, Wally and his newfound power were targeted by the Batman Who Laughs, giving the Darkest Knight the power he needed to carry out his twisted, multiverse-shattering plan.
With its reintroduction here, the Mobius Chair is pulled away from the spotlight of the more mainstream DCU and brings it back to the universe created in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. However, its prominence in recent years solidifies the chair as a venerable weapon and artifact both in the pocket world created by Kirby and the overall DC Universe.
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