Armageddon 2001
| "Armageddon 2001" | |||
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Cover of Armegeddon 2001 2 (Oct 1991). Art by Dan Jurgens.
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| Publisher | DC Comics | ||
| Publication date | May – October 1991 | ||
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| Penciller(s) | Dan Jurgens | ||
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"Armageddon 2001" was a 1991 crossover event storyline published by DC Comics. It ran through a self-titled, two issue limited series and most of the annuals DC published that year from May through October (Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2 did not tie-in to the storyline). After the event, there were two limited series, Armageddon: The Alien Agenda (which was a direct sequel) and Armageddon: Inferno (which was only tangentially related).
Each participating annual explored potential possible futures for its main characters, much in the manner of Marvel Comics' What If?. The guiding hands behind the series were editor and writer Dennis O'Neil, writer Archie Goodwin and artist Dan Jurgens.
Monarch was an oppressive tyrant from a bleak, dystopian Earth fifty years in the future. The people were unhappy with his rule, particularly a scientist named Matthew Ryder, an expert on temporal studies, who was convinced he could use his technology to travel back in time and prevent the maniacal ruler from ever coming to power. He learned that in the late 20th century one of Earth's superheroes had become evil. In the year 2001 this hero had killed all of his comrades, assumed the identity of Monarch, and began his rise to global domination. Because Monarch always appeared in a suit of full body armor his prior identity was unknown.
Chosen by Monarch to take part in a time-travel experiment, Ryder traveled back to 1991, the year in which the series was published, and ten years before Monarch's massacre of Earth's heroes. Ryder was determined to find out who the Monarch really was and, if possible, kill him before he could rise to power. As he travelled through the rift, his body mutated into a form of living temporal energy, and upon arriving at his destination, he took the name Waverider.
Waverider used the superhuman abilities he gained during his transformation to peer into several possible futures of different members of various superheroes in the DC Universe, seeing where they would be in the year 2001, when Monarch's rise to power began, but he was unable to pinpoint exactly who would become Monarch. After several attempts, he began to rethink his approach. However, Waverider accidentally came in physical contact with Captain Atom, unleashing a storm of temporal energy that opened a gate to the future through which Monarch emerged. Monarch, it seems, had been monitoring Waverider's every move in the past ever since he left the future, and merely waited for the perfect time to travel back and stop him from erasing his existence.
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Wikipedia