Underworld Unleashed
| Underworld Unleashed | |
|---|---|
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| Format | Mini-series |
| Publication date | November–December 1995 |
| Number of issues | 3, plus crossovers and special titles |
| Main character(s) |
Justice League America Neron Trickster |
| Creative team as of November 1995 | |
| Writer(s) | Mark Waid |
| Penciller(s) | Howard Porter |
| Inker(s) |
Dan Green Dennis Janke |
| Colorist(s) | Rick Taylor (Heroic Age) |
| Creator(s) |
Mark Waid Howard Porter |
Underworld Unleashed was a multi-title comic book crossover event released by DC Comics in 1995. As well as the core storyline of the three-issue Underworld Unleashed mini-series, most of the DC titles published in November and December 1995 and a number of one-shot issues were part of the series.
The main theme of Underworld Unleashed involved the new ruler of Hell, a demon called Neron, offering many of the DC Universe villains and a number of the superheroes their greatest desires in exchange for their souls or completing a task for him, and the consequences of those deals.
Underworld Unleashed is one of the very few DC Comics major crossovers not to directly involve Superman; at the time of the series he was off-world as part of The Trial of Superman storyline. This is important to the Underworld Unleashed storyline, since the superheroes involved are driven by the belief that Superman is the key to Neron's plans.
Five members of Flash's Rogues Gallery- Captain Boomerang, Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Mirror Master II, and Weather Wizard- are approached with an offer by Abra Kadabra, who had become an agent of the demon Neron in exchange for true magical powers to replace his technology-based magic. Abra Kadabra persuades them to cause havoc by destroying five separate targets simultaneously, with the promise of 'respect' and 'a guarantee that they would be remembered forever, not as has-beens but as the most infamous villains of their age' . But Neron's deals are demonic and twisted, and they were not told that their actions would cost them their lives and unleash Neron onto the Earth. All five are killed in the ensuing explosions, forming a pentagram which releases Neron.
Soon after, Neron kills a priest who administers to the prisoners of Belle Reve Penitentiary and, disguised as him, makes a deal for the soul of one of the inmates (who is bent on revenge for the theft of a treasured calendar) in exchange for a gun. Neron himself had stolen the calendar in question to engineer the situation, and he also makes deals to a number of key Belle Reve personnel or persuades or manipulates them in other ways to be absent that evening. The ensuing chaos allows 142 superpowered criminals to escape from Belle Reve. Another member of the Rogues Gallery, Trickster, reads of the deaths of his fellow Rogues and determines not to waste any more time on petty crime, but to finally make a major villain of himself. A week later another villain, Rainbow Raider, shows Trickster a carved candle he and other recently escaped super-villains had received, with instructions to light it at midnight on a certain day to 'open the door to fame, power and glory' . Trickster steals the candle, secretly replaces it with a rubber chicken, and on lighting it is instantly transported to Hell, joining about 50 other supercriminals who had done the same. Neron appears to the gathered villains, and offers them all their greatest desires in exchange for their souls, then introduces his 'Inner Council' - Abra Kadabra, Lex Luthor, Circe, Doctor Polaris and Joker. Fiddler figures out that Neron is the devil and Trickster overhears him; then while several dozen of the villains accept Neron's offer, the rest are returned to Earth. At the end of Neron's speech and empowering session, Justice League America member Blue Devil, who had worked out that the locations of the deaths of the five Rogues Gallery members formed a pentagram, appears. He is offered fame and fortune in exchange for performing a simple task: the destruction of an unmanned power station.
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