Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Last chapter was long — this one is short. And there’s an Epilogue to come that ties it all together…
Chapter 5 — Long Live the League1
The heroes at the End of Time battle the Time Trapper! But there’s no way in the world to win! With the End of Time sealed off from the rest of the timestream, the Trapper will eventually lose, but at the cost of dozens of superheroes, now stuck with the vengeful Trapper. Brainiac Five’s plan leads to a Pyrrhic victory, at best.
Meanwhile, Wally West — possessed by Deadman, speed-amped by the Thunderbolt — leads the remaining twentieth-century heroes to the Dawn of Time, then further back, around the circle of time to the End of Time…where he opens the portal “home” for those stuck with the Time Trapper! It’s a rescue mission, planned by Brainy and executed to perfection by Batman.2
Now, the Time Trapper can’t go back in time because his Iron Curtain of Time is locked in place…and he can’t go forward to circle around to the past because he’s never been able to do that. So he’s stuck here. The Time Trapper is trapped.
As the heroes flee around the curve of Time itself to escape the End of Time, Brainy explains to the enraged Trapper exactly where his plans went awry. For his trouble, the Trapper blasts him with a tremendous wave of chronal energy just as Superman grabs Brainy and pulls him to safety.
When Brainy wakes up, safe and sound back in 1986, he finds that the Trapper’s blast aged him tremendously — he’s the aged Coluan in the old picture found in the future.3
SUPERMAN: You just had to stay and taunt him, didn’t you?
BRAINIAC 5: I wasn’t taunting him. I was lecturing him. It’s important for people to understand where their theories are wrong.
The heroes begin to settle in, mopping up the last of the Time Trapper’s soldiers, fixing what’s been broken, etc. Somewhere in there, according to my notes, “Superman (and Clark, obviously) turns 30. This is a key scene. Symbolic. Time is advancing and moving on from the Bronze Age…”4
As the issue wraps up, Superman and Batman meet to discuss everything that has happened. Superman can’t stop thinking about Lex, and what they did to him.
SUPERMAN: Did we do the right thing, Bruce?
BATMAN: I’ll tell you a secret, old friend. There’s no right. There’s no wrong. There’s justice and there’s injustice. There’s love and there’s hate. That’s it. What we did was just. What you have with Lana — what I have a chance for with Silver — that’s love. Everything else is details.
SUPERMAN: But we gambled… And we’ll never know if that gamble—
BATMAN: Your parents gambled when they put you into that rocket and fired you into the void, but that turned out all right, didn’t it?
One more tiny bit as a tag: Brainy preps Mon-El to return to the Phantom Zone, including — as promised — post-hypnotic suggestions. When the time comes to return, Mon asks, “How much longer will I have to wait?”
And Brainy effortlessly lies and says, “Not long.”
End Chapter 5
Still to come: The Epilogue
(The only glory I will ever get for this thing that I’ve carried in my brain since childhood is people looking at it. So if you have friends you think might get a kick out of it, please point them in this direction! Teen Barry thanks you, and so do I.)
- The Legion’s battle cry is “Long Live the Legion.” So of course I would have to reference that.
- Yes, this is astonishingly close to the resolution of my Flash: Crossover Crisis series. What can I say — I’m not about to let a good idea go to waste!
- Back in the Prologue, remember?
- Pre-Crisis canon dictates that Superman and Batman were eternally 29 years old.