So, Fallout 4 has
just been unlocked to the unwashed masses of planet Internet, which most likely
means this article won’t be read by many but if you’re one of the few without
access to this next great step in human achievement, this is for you. The release of Fallout got me thinking about apocalypse/post-apocalypses, one of
the most interesting elements of fiction while simultaneously one of the most
under-explored. Apocalypse and
post-apocalypse fiction is fascinating as a template but often filled up with
the same exploration of robots, aliens, zombies, and wastelands, there’s very
little variation is my point. So,
because I endeavor to shine the light of obscure nerdy knowledge into the
darkness of mundanity these are 10 comic book apocalypses and post-apocalyptic
wastelands I’ve chosen to spotlight, I’m not going in any specific order or
value set, they’re just a bunch of doomsdays that are worth sharing.
GHOST FLEET
I’ve spoken here before about Ghost Fleet and specifically how amazing it is and the 8th
and final issue is a big part of that awesomeness. I’ll be spoiling the ending here so bare that in mind before
going forward and know that if you’re on the fence about reading this comic
it’s a spectacular blend of action and imagination with an emphasis on real
drama and hilarious writing and amazing work from everyone involved, probably
the best comic of 2015. With that
said, spoilers ahead: as the series progresses it’s revealed the titular Ghost Fleet
has been hauling trucks filled with the four horseman of the apocalypse for
demonic overlords seeking to avert the end of the world. The heroes eventually stop the satanic
puppet masters and, in so doing, bring about Armageddon.
It’s a powerhouse sequence and an amazingly confident and
self assured ending to the serious that only works because it’s so perfectly
reflective of the series core themes of change and stagnation. The whole thing is most reminiscent of World’s End in how much it avoids sugar
coating its core thesis, accepting that while change may be a necessary element
of life and certainly better than stagnation it’s not without consequence. We only catch a glimpse of the
wasteland brought about by this demonic trucking apocalypse but it looks
amazing, a zany genre blend of Mad Max
style action apocalypse with plenty of robots, Cyborgs, and demons to go with
it. Of all the comics I’m about to
spotlight here this is the one I recommend the most.
SPIDER-ISLAND
As part of Marvel’s Secret
Wars (2015) event there were a ton of spin-off and tie-in comics exploring
the various fiefdoms and nations that made up the patchwork continent of
Battleworld. Each of the small
kingdoms was made up of a different universe in the Marvel Multiverse, with
some universes existing as location swapped versions of the main universe while
others explored “what if” possibilities of altered continuity. That’s where Spider-Island falls, examining the alternate timeline of an event
comic from the Spider-Man books also entitled Spider-Island. In the event, the Jackal found a way to
give everyone in New York some version of Spider-Man’s powers, thus causing
chaos. Eventually the heroes
stopped him and returned everyone to normal but in the Secret Wars timeline the heroes failed and the weird were-spider
infection spread across the planet.
Now, in a world dominated by horrifying spider/human hybrids we follow
the handful of heroes still fighting against the spider/human hordes. It’s a fun mini-series, mainly because
of all the heroes it forces together to stand against the spider people like
Vision, The Iguana, Tony Stark outfitted with Norman Osborn’s technology to
become Iron Goblin, werewolf Captain America, and a whole bunch of other Marvel
Monsters all led by Flash Thompson, Venom. This apocalypse is pretty cool visually as the look of the
Spider monsters is both terrifying and wholly unique, especially since the
various spider folk don’t share a uniform design. Some are more feral, full on man-spiders while others are
just humans with multiple arms or spider legs, it’s a very diverse and creepy
fallen world.
MEMETIC
Memetic features
probably the darkest apocalypse on this list and fair warning, one of these
apocalypses involves the end of the universe. The comic, published by BOOM Studios, is easily the most
well composed and affecting example of Internet horror ever produced. The basic set-up is that one day, out
of nowhere, a meme shows up on the Internet depicting what’s essentially good
time sloth.
The meme causes people
who view it to experience an intense sense of joy until 12 hours later when
they turn into bloodthirsty human killing machines. Our story follows a handful of people who’ve avoided the
meme for some reason or another as they make their way through the memetic
wasteland in the midst of humanity’s collapse. It’s an incredibly dark vision of the apocalypse that moves
with such scale and speed as to seem terrifyingly impossible if not for how
quickly memes can actually spread in real life. That little tidbit, the way the end of the world spreads
like an actual Internet phenomenon might in real life is a big part of why this
story is so creepy. Other Internet
horror stories usually involve some stab at standard horror like ghosts or urban
legend that just swap out some small tidbit of mythos for a laptop or a
website. Memetic is built in cyberspace with a firm foundation in all the
creepiest parts of the Internet. I
mean, the core concept of the story is that an Internet meme is able to turn
people into raving lunatics, hell-bent on murder and death, in a world where
people receive bomb threats as part of a Twitter hashtag that pitch seems all
to darkly familiar.
LEATHERWING
So this is a weird one. In a decade not our own DC Comics created a special imprint
called Elseworlds. Elseworlds
stories were just a fancy way of branding a story non-canon without having to
accept that it would exist as some parallel reality or alternate time line,
basically a blank check for writers to do whatever they wanted. While some of these stories remain as
simple one-offs a lot of them proved popular, especially the ones involving
Batman, so when DC Comics re-introduced its Multiverse they drew inspiration
for some of the new universe from the more popular Elseworlds comics. One such example was from a Batman
Elseworlds Annual that reimagined the dark knight as a pirate terror of the
high seas. The pirate Batman
elseworlds, entitled Captain Leatherwing, had actually proved tremendously
popular when it was published too, even sparking a sequel in the short lived Batman Chronicles comic.
The original stories reimagined Batman and his various
allies as swashbucklers of the 1800s and included pirate versions of Batman,
Robin, Catwoman, Joker, and Penguin.
However, when the Earth was revived in 2014 as part of Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity comic it was retconned
to be set in the future where global warming, mega-tsunamis, and tectonic
shifts have created a post-apocalyptic drowned world of pirates and ships. What I love about this vision of the
universe is that it seems to imply that civilization advanced up to the present
day only to suffer an apocalypse so severe it reset our technology back to
flintlocks and cutlasses.
Additionally it’s pretty great that this world, Earth-31 for those keeping
track, is basically Waterworld but
starring Batman. This revision
also introduced a few other characters like an axe wielding barbarian Aquaman,
an Asian Green Lantern who seems to be a reference to Green lantern Dragon Lord, some kind of pirate Cyborg, and admiral
Superman.
NAMELESS
Nameless might be
a bit of a cheat as it’s a little unclear if its apocalypse has actually
happened or not but given the fluid nature of reality within the comic I’m
willing to let it slide if it lets me talk about Nameless. Written by
noted genius and madmen Grant Morrison Nameless
is fundamentally about too much to sum up here but specifically about an
asteroid headed towards the Earth.
The asteroid is too big to blow up with a nuke so the plan was to send
up a group of asteroids to detonate it Armageddon
style only for one complication: the asteroid is covered in mysterious
structures and carvings that identify it as Xibalba, the Mayan underworld or,
more roughly translated, “the place of fear.” This prompts the ultra rich people funding the trip to the
atmosphere to hire the world’s foremost psychic thief and rogue to guide the
astronaut team through the depths of Xibalba and the horrors that lurk within
with the eventual revelation that the thing inside Xibalba is some kind of
Lovecraftian elder alien and that the asteroid itself is the last remnant of
Earth’s long lost twin planet.
There’s a lot of crazy in there to be sure, that’s Grant
Morrison’s MO, and I didn’t even get to the really weird stuff that the series
descends into near the end. What I
love about this apocalypse is just how much horribleness it piles onto the end
of the world. It wasn’t enough
that the Earth is going to be obliterated by an asteroid; it’s the remnants of
some other planet’s apocalypse, the same apocalypse that ended the
dinosaurs. Add to that the fact
that the Xibalba asteroid is also the prisoner for an elder alien God that the
mere comprehension of which can drive men to violent madness its just
overkill. It’s like the writing
wants to make definitely sure there’s no way out of this apocalypse.
EMPIRE OF THE DEAD
At this moment in time two things are true about George A.
Romero: firstly that his trilogy of films Night
of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead popularized the zombie genre and developed it into
the powerhouse cultural phenomenon it is today and secondly, almost everything
he’s done in the 21st century has been terrible. Seriously, both Survival of the Dead and Diary
of the Dead are lackluster entries into the genre Romero used to dominate
and feel like a tired director straining to do what used to come
naturally. However, he has made
some good work this century and a lot of it has been in comics, in particular
the zombie maxi-series for Marvel Empire
of the Dead.
Empire of the Dead
is most similar in style to Romero’s also pretty good 2005 movie Land of the Dead, in that they both
revolve around a new society emerging out of the zombie wastes and using an
urban center as a sort of fortress against the undead. In both cases the emphasis of this new
society is on corruption at the top with the wealthy overlords growing fat on
the mistreatment of the common folk, the big difference is that in Empire of the Dead the rich rulers who
feed off the lower classes are literally vampires. The whole thing is in continuity with Romero’s other “Of the
Dead” entries so I guess vampires are now a part of the overall Romero
mythos. It’s a weird comic but not
without its charms, especially when Romero starts digging into the mechanics of
this zombie/vampire/human world he’s built out of the rubble of our former
society. The story is still
ongoing so it’s hard to tell where things will head but last time I checked the
vampire run city had come under attack from a newly formed army of the
confederacy in war blimps so at least things aren’t boring.
TRUE LIVES OF THE
FABULOUS KILLJOYS
Firstly if that name sounds familiar to you it’s because The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
was the subtitle of the last My Chemical Romance album Danger Days. It was a
concept album that revolved around a bizarre apocalypse world full of DJs,
masks, S.C.A.R.E.C.R.O.W.s, youthful destruction and abandon, robots, and all
sorts of other madness that, in 2013, came to comic books under the authorship
of the band’s leader Gerard Way.
Way has done a lot of comics before but I think this is his, and maybe
anyone’s, first time adapting the content of a concept album to a comic book
and it’s amazing. As you’d expect
everything is incredibly fluid in a mirage of weird future slang and a world
that’s more bizarre than anything this side of Weirdmaggedon.
Still, it’s an excellent read
especially if you can tune your brain to Way’s particularly weird
frequency. The actual narrative
content of the comic may be a bit sketchy by the atmosphere and thematic tones
of the story are spot on, an ode to youthful vitality and rebellion in the
scrap yard that is the last remnants of the old world. There’s also more than enough abject weirdness
to keep you engaged visually amid all the robots, Halloween masks, neon colors,
super cars, and other weirdness.
Honestly things may share the same visual location as Mad Max but the tone is much more in
line with Quadrophenia or The Wall only if it was influenced by
geeky genre weirdness instead of personal issues and punk rock.
CANCER-VERSE
In 2010, Dan Abnett capped off his amazing and universe
redefining run on Marvel’s cosmic books with Thanos Imperative. The
story brought back the titular mad titan as part of a last ditch gambit from
Star Lord and the Guardians of the Galaxy to defeat invaders from a parallel
reality called the Cancer-verse.
In that other world, when the hero Captain Mar-Vell was on his death bed
he rallied the heroes of Earth to his side in an attempt to find some way to
heal his cancer and prolong his life.
With Mar-Vell leading their path and the aid of the Marvel mystic heroes
like Dr. Strange and the Scarlet Witch the heroes summoned up the Many Angled
Ones, basically the Marvel in-universe equivalent of Cthulhu and Yog
Sothoth.
The Many Angled Ones granted the heroes wish by removing
death from that entire universe, allowing life there to grow like a cancer,
hence the name. Additionally,
whenever a hero should’ve died they became corrupted and infected by the
extra-dimensional evil and madness of the many angled ones, existing only as
cells within its cancerous mound and Lord Mar-Vell as their leader. It’s a super creepy universe filled
with Lovecraftian perversions of all the classic Marvel characters that are
really messed up and evil. The
epitome of this is something called the Galactus Engine, the burnt out husk of
Galactus now stripped of his power and enslaved to the will of the Mar-Vell and
his many angled masters. I’ll
probably dig more into Abnett’s run when Guardians
of the Galaxy 2 comes around in a couple years but this is easily his best
idea and a great way to turn Thanos, the greatest champion of death, into the
universe’s only hope.
KAMANDI
Kamandi is probably the most well developed and often
explored apocalypse featured on this list and that I haven’t talked about
previously in actual reviews like CrookedWorld, Future Imperfect, Legion of Monsters, or the Comic BookFutures article. Kamandi is
basically Planet of the Apes as
created by Jack Kirby, the guy who pretty much invented the Marvel universe and
a good chunk of most of the DC universe during his 5 years working for
them. I don’t make that comparison
lightly either, the story goes that DC editor-in-chief Julius Schwartz actually
called Jack Kirby into his office one day and asked him to make a comic in the
same vein as Planet of the Apes,
which was gaining major popularity at the time. Kirby, who hadn’t even seen the movie just the trailers,
decided that instead of a universe where only apes spoke and had meetings he’d
craft a future where ALL animals could speak and had formed themselves into
unique opposing societies. Thus
was born Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth,
which followed the last non-feral human being as he traversed the wasteland and
animal kingdoms, taking his name from the bunker where he was raised “Command
D.” There’s a lot of other
weirdness to the Kamandi universe including a race of mysterious super powered
robo-men led by Ben Boxer who’ve been subsequently retooled into some variation
of Kirby’s other future hero OMAC in some of the various Kamandi revisions over
the years. Though Kamandi has been
dropped from continuity on occasion as DC began to care more about its own
internal timeline, the last boy on Earth always manages to find his way back
and is currently Earth 51 on the Multiverse list.
MARVEL WHAT IF…
I’ve talked before about the 1969 Guardians of the Galaxyteam but here it is again. That
team was a group of freedom fighters operating out of the 31st
century where humanity and most of the galaxy had been enslaved by the Badoon
empire. These previous Guardians
only appeared sporadically during most of the ‘70s, popping up in one-offs and
team-up comics which is why they didn’t really register with most people till
1978 when they were featured in a big splashy Avengers comic event called ‘The
Korvac Saga.’ This one event
basically cemented the Guardians place as remembered if still obscure heroes of
the Marvel universe and even helped land them an ongoing series in 1992 that
had a respectable 62 issue run.
The Korvac Saga was the story of a human slave from the
future, Korvac, who had his bottom half chopped off by his Badoon masters and
replaced with a robot floating chair to improve his efficiency. Korvac discovered how to use this robot
chair to tap into the Power Cosmic, incredibly powerful energy of the universe,
and used that energy to go back in time to try and avert the Badoon take over
by conquering the galaxy himself because he was petty and evil. With the Guardians help the Avengers
were able to defeat him and that’s where the story should’ve ended, but it
didn’t. At the time Marvel was
publishing a comic called What If…
that basically explored alternate possibilities based around what was, at the
time, recent events in the Marvel universe. So, in the What If…
comic about the Korvac Saga Marvel asked “what if Korvac did manage to enslave
the Avengers and the Guardians to his cause?” The result was that Korvac spread his evil across the
galaxy, challenging more and more powerful cosmic beings till he and his pawns
became involved in a fight with Eternity, the living embodiment of the entire
Marvel universe. The resulting
battle ended up annihilating the entire universe, with Korvac’s last thoughts
being the realization that death had used him as her pawn to end
everything. At the time the story
was a major talking point and is still considered one of the best entries in Marvel’s
What If… series.
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