DC One Million

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


DC 1,000,000 (also known as DC One Million) was DC Comics' Crisis Crossover for the year 1998. Written by then-current JLA writer Grant Morrison, the basic idea came from his imagining what DC Comics would be like if they were published until they reached issue numbers 1,000,000 (which would take until the 853rd Century). He then created the notion of what the DC Universe would be like at such a time and used the miniseries to explore it.

The story begins when the League is visited by their descendants from the 853rd century. It turns out that Superman is still alive then, but had retired to live inside the sun for centuries, but had recently given word that he was coming out, and the future civilization is going to throw him a big 'welcome back!' celebration- and the original League are guests of honor! To make sure that Earth is safe while the league is gone, the future League (known as "Justice Legion A") will stay in the present in their place.

In the future, the League members have various adventures (detailed in the crossover's tie-in issues) while the central miniseries focused on the Justice Legion's adventure on present-day Earth.

It turns out that the solar system of the future has been massively terraformed. Not only that, but several planets are dedicated to specific heroes: Mercury to the Flash, Venus to Wonder Woman, Earth to Green Arrow, Pluto (which serves as a prison for the criminally insane) to Batman, etc. The only planet missing is Uranus (probably to avoid the Incredibly Lame Pun about it) destroyed and replaced by a second sun - Solaris, the Living Sun (actually an evil AI surrounded by a star-sized plasma field) which was defeated by Superman and reprogrammed to be helpful, overseen by that century's Starman.

Unknown to the heroes, Solaris has allied itself with the immortal villain Vandal Savage and Starman (who was sick of having to fulfill his heroic legacy) to take the chance to kill the original Superman! Starman brought back with himself a computer virus that infected Earth's computers; the heroes in the present realized that the only way to get it out was to create a new vessel for it... which resulted in Solaris' actual creation! Meanwhile Savage attempted to smuggle Kryptonite to the future that could then be used to kill Superman; however, due to the fact that the place where it was hidden (the planet Mars) had become merged with The Martian Manhunter, the plot fails - instead, Superman gains access to Green Lantern's power ring and uses it to destroy Solaris once and for all. Savage is apparently caught in the nuclear destruction of Montevideo, and Starman dies while making a last-minute Heel Face Turn.

In the end, (the future self of) Superman is reunited with (a clone of) Lois Lane (also arranged by the heroes) and everybody is happy. The heroes then switch back to their proper times.

--

Years later, the (non-canonical) All-Star Superman, also by Morrison, featured an appearance by Solaris—and turned out to be (a version of) the story of how future-Superman ended up in the sun for all those years.

Tropes used in DC One Million include:
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/DC_One_Million?oldid=1542110"