DC One Million #1 “Riders on the Storm”
Creative Team: Grant Morrison writing, Val Semeiks and Prentis Rollins on art for all four issues of the series proper.
The Story: First, a brief frame story opens with a bang, depicting the immediate aftermath of a nuclear bomb that kills a million people in Montevideo, Uruguay. Flashing back 48 hours, the Justice League welcomes Justice Legion A, visitors from the 853rd century that include future versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Starman, and Hourman. Golden oldies all! What, no future Vibe?
Meanwhile four Titans try to bust up a sale of Iron Man type powered armor suits in Asia but get captured by Vandal Savage. He places them into the suits as his “Four Horsemen.” Paging Apocalypse…
The core JLA members (sorry, not you, Plastic Man) accept an invitation to travel to the 853rd century, guests of honor at a party to celebrate the return of the “prime” (original) Superman from a long mission inside the sun. But things go immediately awry as soon as the teleport occurs. The future JLA, still in the 20th century, succumbs to an attack from a computer virus.
And in the far future, Vandal Savage and his partner, Solaris the living computer, plot their next move.
Oh, also, Batman didn’t want to come to the future, so his future self beat him up, extracted his soul into a bottle, and just sent that instead. So, yeah. This may be a trap.
My Two Cents: The 853th century was chosen for this story because that’s a million months after DC’s signature comics began publishing, so all the main titles could publish an “issue #1,000,000” that might fairly take place in that time frame. Catchy from a marketing perspective, sure.
But it also fits in with Grant Morrison’s favorite theories about the relationship between the reader and the text. After all, we as readers are not limited to texts written right now. We can go “back in time” and read Action Comics #1 or Detective Comics #27. So why not go forward into the future and read texts from then too? The future exists just as much as the past, in a four dimensional universe. We simply need the ability to traverse the fourth dimension. That’s where 853rd century tesseract technology comes in.
Morrison indulges in his love of astrology by making each future JLAer the guardian of one of Sol’s planets. He did this already on a symbolic level in
JLA, by matching JLAers to the Greek pantheon, and now he’s giving this conceit a role in the story. Some of them match up surprisingly well. Flash is Mercury. Wonder Woman is Venus. Superman is Jupiter. Aquaman is Neptune. The others are less intuitive: Starman for Uranus. Batman get Pluto. Nobody gets Mars, for reasons to be explained later.
The issue title refers to The Doors’ song of that name. Probably everyone here knew that in 2018. But just in case someone else is reading this a hundred years from now… hi! Do you have tesseract technology yet?
By the way, this whole DC One Million Event was published in November 1998. This includes all four issues of the main mini-series.
Green Lantern #1,000,000 “Star Crossed”The Story: The seven members of the 20th century JLA were taken to different planets in the 853th century and pitted against challenges ideally suited to their individual powers. Green Lantern participated in a chariot race against “Mach Turtle.” Heh! Punny. Green Lantern’s celebrity challenge in the future is abruptly terminated by a power failure. He overhears an electronic communication revealing that the future-Starman is plotting something evil with Solaris, the living computer.
My Two Cents: Although numerous titles had “issue #1,000,000,” only a few were included in the trade collection. The only thing
pivotal that happens in this issue is the interaction between Starman and Solaris.
Starman #1,000,000 “”All the Starlight Shining”
Creative Team: James Robinson, story and art.
The Story: An intriguing three page opening sequence contains a monologue by Starman’s star- (and Starro-) shaped city, orbiting Sol but getting its heat and light from Solaris, somewhere near the orbit of Neptune.
Future-Starman rescues present-Starman from the villain Deathbolt. They chat; future-Starman is surprisingly forthcoming with details that could change the course of history. But then things take a dark turn; future-Starman is a villain who enjoys the financial and sexual rewards that come with his celebrity, but not the heroic expectations. He has cut a deal with Solaris to procure a glowing green meteorite from Ted Knight-Starman and bury it on Mars for use in the far future. So he does. He considers killing Ted too but decides against it and departs.
My Two Cents: It’s difficult to fit the sedate first half of this story together with the menacing second half. Maybe future-Starman was trying to get Ted to lower his guard before discussing the Kryptonite? But saving Ted from Deathbolt would have been enough.
One of the future Starmen will be Tommy Tomorrow II, homaging a Golden Age character. Another, Danny Blaine, is a time-displaced alias of Thom Kallor, the Starboy of the Legion of Super Heroes. Lyle Norg (the original Invisible Kid of the Silver Age Legion) is name dropped as well. Question: If future-Starman is part of a long line of Starmen dating back to Ted Knight, is the same true of future-Batman, future-Wonder Woman, etc.? (We’ll deal with the issue of future-Superman down the line explicitly.)
Future-Starman says that modern Earth foodstuffs like coffee are unsafe for him. Apparently humanity in the future is more specialized but less robust, like a vehicle that can only run on pure octane.
