Justice League just rewrote the origin of the DC Universe and the Crisis on Infinite Earths

Forget about Doomsday Clock. Forget about Leviathan, because the DC Universe may be about to be plunged into a war that has all of creation at stake in a manner that makes the original mega-crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths look like a lazy Sunday afternoon siesta in comparison. For the last few months, the multiverse of the DC Universe has been under threat from new cosmic menaces.

What began with the rise of the Dark Multiverse in Dark Nights Metal, ended with the protective shell known as the Source Wall being damaged and broken, allowing a new force of power known as the Totality to breach into our reality. Now here’s where things get tricky, so it’s time for a spoiler warning on Infinite Earths!

I’m not going to recap what the Justice League has been up to lately in exhaustive detail, but here’s the quick skinny: The Source Wall has a massive hole in it, the League has barely managed to defeat several cosmic=level titans and the Legion of Doom is up to tricks. In Justice League Annual #1 by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV,Daniel Sampere, Juan Albarran and Adriano Lucas, the team is attempting to use the remains of the Omega Titans to plug the hole in the Source Wall and stop the death of the Multiverse from exposure to the hostile energies surrounding it.

Only problem? It was all a trap, as the Legion of Doom attacks and uses the mysterious power source key that Lex Luthor possesses to free a prisoner from the wall: Perpetua. Not just another Omega Titan, Perpetua is revealed to be the mother of everything. The creator of the Anti-Monitor and the Monitor, architect of the Multiverse and all of creation itself.

While the Legion of Doom escapes with Perpetua, it’s not without a massive ramification. The Source Wall is destroyed entirely, the Multiverse is set adrift and the impending destruction of reality is hastened. Beyond that, the revelation of Perpetua and her existence, reveals that before our Multiverse was created, another one existed before that and was destined to be used as a weapon against an unseen force.

In the lore of the DC Universe, these are all massive new dumps of information. It gives new purpose to the biggest event in the Multiverse, the Crisis on Infinite Earths that saw countless worlds and realities destroyed in the war between Perpetua’s sons. While the Anti-Monitor and Monitor exist as two sides of the same coin, all of this opens up a whole new bucket of questions.

How was Perpetua trapped in the first place? What happened to the original Multiverse? Can reality be saved from a war with incomprehensible danger waiting outside? Will the Monitor and Anti-Monitor respond to the kidnapping of their mother? There’s so much at stake here, so much danger and even more intrigue to mine through, if the Justice League can even survive what’s to come.

Could this be the start of a brand new reset for the DC Universe, following continuity relaunches such as the first Crisis, Zero Hour and the New 52? If change is on the horizon, then Justice League Annual #1 is going to be seen as the first shot fired in a brand new direction for the DC Universe.

Last Updated: February 5, 2019