52 #27-39 Annotations

[VOL III - Winter]

52 #27 - "The Past Best Hope"

• So this is something I had to stop reading and look up on the wiki: Crispus Allen becomes the new host in Infinite Crisis, but apparently refuses the offer. Spectre gives him a year to think on it, hence the hostless version we see here.
• Spectre will resurrect Sue only if Ralph can punish Jean Loring Eclipso accordingly. They travel back to the night Sue was murdered (fixing the mysterious sound plot-hole) and Ralph restores Jean's sanity so she can suffer in a time loop watching her past self murder his wife. However, Ralph can't do it, and he pulls them both back to the present. Failing to hold up his end of the bargain, Ralph and the Helm choose to go to Nanda Parbat (to meet with Deadman or Rama Kushna?)
• Waverider hides in a clock shop, witnessing Time Commander die in front of him. Apparently he recruited the Time Stealers to fight against whatever mysterious threat is influencing the time stream (Skeets?)
• Fun reference to HG Wells.
• So Alex Luthor caused the refactoring of history, but the new earth and this missing year after the crisis is described as wet cement and honey by Skeets.
• Rip Hunter's true name and details of birth are secret...
• Skeets is made of dead waverider's skin!!!
• Renee has been trained by Richard Dragon, while Tot learns about the religion of crime via stolen crime bible.
• Vic has lung cancer!
• So the prophecy is that Manheim will kill Kate Kane! Twice-named...

52 #28 - "Beyond the Black Stump"

• Vic and Renee travel to Gotham and meet with Kate Kane/Batwoman, telling her that in three days the prophecy of her dying is to occur.
• Ridge-Ferrick arrives in aussie-land. Why is intergang down under? Uranium Mining Development...
• Johnny Warrawa was white the last time we saw him but is back to being aboriginal?
• Where are the scraps of red tornado going?
• Lobo and the space gang are hunted by the emerald head of ekron!
• The prophecy doesn't come true, but Manheim hints that Renee and Vic are part of it too, referring to them as "The Questions"...
• The Emerald Head of Ekron is revealed as a Green Lantern! The eye is part of his arsenal, and when Lobo stole it (because Ekron apparently offended the Triple Fish God), Ekron was defenseless as sector 3500 was destroyed by the stygian passover.
• Ekron teams up with the gang as they head towards this cosmic tyrant!

52 #29 - "Name Calling"

• Jeez they are doing a great job of making you hate these infinity inc everyman stooges.
• Obsidian drops in to start some trouble but alan pulls him out.
• New hero Jade joins infinity inc. Disrespectful af.
• Harder and harder to see any redemption for Natasha at this point.
• Komrade Krabb
• Science Squad thanksgiving! Fucking hilarious.
• Veronica Cale femme fatale evil genius, she's working on the secret weapons of Project X, definitely related to the fourth world tech Intergang has acquired.
• She snitches on Magnus, and Chang Tzu takes his meds away.
• Ferry gets a race switch... the errors due to the weekly schedule are becoming more apparent the more I read...
• John Henry peels off the steel skin! There's an expiration date on the everyman powers!

52 #30 - "Dark Knight Down"

• So Bruce, Dick, and Tim have been traveling the world to recreate the journey that built the batman, and they believe it's happening because he wants them both to become the new batman and robin.
• Charlie is admitted to hospice care within Kate Kane's apartment she lets them use.
• Dick and Tim intercept an intergang weapons shipment in north africa.
• Bruce has dipped out on Dick and Tim towards the desert, the empty quarter, to have the ten eyed tribe cut out his demons accumulated through the grim-dark age since the death of jason todd.
• Dick returns to gotham and Tim finds bruce in the desert, who claims that Batman is gone.
• Dick meets Kate/Batwoman in gotham as they take out the intergang monster men.

52 #31 - "Human Resources"

• Captain Comet faces the Stygian Passover!
• Lanterns Thormon Tox and Xax are looking for Lantern Ekron. The Guardians fear the Stygian Passover and recall all lanterns.
• Lady Styx is our villain! She comes from the forever pit outside of the multiverse?
• "Believe in Her"
• Believer Cubes, Glorifiers = undead zombie soldiers.
• Ewww. Everyman Hannibal Bates needs to digest matter to takes its form. He pretends to be Natasha's boyfriend. Nasty mf.
• Ralph meets with Cassie, and she reveals that she found out Devem was a scam. She still believes that Conner was resurrected in the form of Supernova. Ralph lies to her about where he went, telling her Marseilles after reading it off the dossier given to Cassie.
• Ralph knows who Supernova is.
• Captain Comet is crucified at the head of Lady Styx's warship as she kills the GL's and eats one of their power rings like popcorn.
• Lobo, Ekron, and the space gang witness everything.

52 #32 - "Seven Days in Nanda Parbat"

• Ralph and the helm venture to Nanda Parbat. He helps the Accomplished Perfect Physician subdue the Yeti with an amulet that contains his rage.
• Ralph communes with Rama Kushna who tells him how he can be with her again.
• Ralph claims that he wrote his own end back in the ambassador hotel, be careful what you wish for...
• Osiris and Sobek want to join the Teen Titans, but Freddy Freeman is skeptical. He tells Osiris to convince the world that he is not a murderer like Black Adam, and he will help him join.

52 #33 - "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year"

• Christmas in the DCU!
• Ralph takes the gun we saw in #1 from the flash museum...
• Dick gives Batwoman a real batarang
• Luthor continues to fail to qualify for the metagene everyman procedure, so he tells his scientists to harvest the genetics of a test subject who initially resisted the metagene but then accepted in hopes he can overcome his own immunity.
• Charlie succumbs to delirium due to the chemotherapy and remembers people from his past. Renee spends time with Kate.
• The space squad arrives in Vega.
• Black Adam and the fam work to clear up their public image by depowering before the world.
• Amanda Waller gathers her ad-hoc suicide squad led by Atom-Smasher featuring Owen Mercer, Plastique, Electrocutioner, Count Vertigo, and some kind of version of the Persuader.

52 #34 - "Suicidal Tendencies"

• New years eve!
• Osiris and Sobek join the Teen Titans.
• The Black Marvels convene just to be attacked by Atom-Smasher's Suicide Squad.
• Persuader is about to kill Isis when he's torn in half by Osiris flying right through him.
• It was Waller's plan the whole time and she gets video recording.
• John Henry teams up with the Birds of Prey to meet with Natasha in secret, revealing to her that he's lost his steel skin and his suspicions of Trajectory dying at the hands of Blockbuster as one of Luthor's designs.
• Luthor kidnaps Clark Kent, injects him with truth serum, and questions him on Supernova's secret identity. Clark tells him Supernova is not Superman.
• Charlie is put in the hospital and Renee stays at his bedside.
• Luthor once again fails to qualify for the metagene, and activates some kind of remote to create a crisis that Supernova will fail to stop.

52 #35 - "Rain of the Supermen"

• Luthor turns off everyone with the everyman metagene except for Infinity Inc
• Supernova and the reg supes do damage control
• John Henry assembles the Titans
• Natasha suspects Luthor of foul play and confides in Skyman...
• The space squad arrives in the remains of the planet Vartu from #31
• Adam Strange plans for Lobo to give the three up to Lady Styx as a trojan horse so they can destroy her war machine from the inside.

52 #36 - "How To Win A War In Space"

• Animal Man and Starfire are brought inside Lady Styx's chambers by Lobo and Fishy.
• There's no bounty and Styx plans on eating the heroes and removing the intel from their brain stems.
• She insults the shit out of the Triple Fish God, causing Lobo to forsake his vows and revert to good ol fashion Main Man Ultraviolence!
• Adam Strange blows a hole in the hull as Ekron rams Lady Styx into a group of migrating Sun-Eaters. They are both devoured.
• Animal Man ends up getting shot by necro-toxin and succumbs to the poison. His wife and kids somehow feel his passing.
• Charlie continues to get worse, so Renee says screw it and decides to take him back to Nanda Parbat, leaving Kate to deal with Intergang in Gotham.
• Osiris gets booted from the Titans, but Sobek comforts him.
• Supernova is revealed to be working with Rip Hunter, who is suffering from some kind of temporal-linguistic-dissonance. He's building a device out of stolen weaponry from across the DCU that Supernova has been collecting.
• They are hiding from Skeets inside the Bottle City of Kandor!
• But Skeets is here anyway!

52 #37 - "Secret Identities"

• Skeets tries to destroy Kandor, but Supernova sheds his costume to reveal himself as...
• BOOSTER FREAKING GOLD!
• When booster and skeets went into Rip's bunker back in #6, Rip met with him and revealed the truth behind Skeets and they made a plan to stop him...
• Booster faked his death by switching places with his future corpse, going back in time to before Supernova appeared to show up as him alongside his past self. He and Rip operated out of the leveled Fortress of Solitude using kryptonian tech to make the Supernova costume out of the Phantom Zone projector!
• Rip rebuilds the projector out of the torn suit and tries to suck skeets in, but Skeets devours the entire Phantom Zone!
• Rip and Booster warp away, but Skeets follows...
• Hal helps Ollie rebuild Star City, while Ollie and Dinah chat about Ralph.
• Buddy is laid to rest in an impromptu funeral as Lobo and the gang prepare to go their separate ways.
• Adam Strange doesn't remember what they saw beyond, what Lady Styx wanted to kill them for.
• Buddy is resurrected by the Yellow Aliens!

52 #38 - "Breathless"

• Renee and Charlie venture through the snowy steps of the Himalayas towards the hidden city of Nanda Parbat.
• Magnus is off his meds and hyper as hell, rebuilding the Plutonium Man.
• We see the unveiling of the four horsemen: Yurrd the unknown (famine), Roggra (war), Zorrm (pestilence), and Azraeuz (war). These were four old Apokoliptan gods at the dawn of the fourth world given form by these physical bodies (final crisis hinting).
• We see only three of them, as the horseman of famine Yurrd rode out before his brothers. Apparently their mission is to remove the threat of Black Adam, since he's been destabilizing their efforts in Kahndaq.
• Cale expresses some regret over her contributions to Project X.
• John Henry and Beast Boy plan how they will deal with Luthor, but worry that his end goal might be to remove the powers of regular heroes.
• Natasha makes contact with them and reveals that Luthor is hiding something in a secret room. She apologizes for everything she's done, and prepares to venture alone.
• Renee and Charlie climb through snowstorms, but Charlie gains a final moment of lucidity before the gates of Nanda Parbat are revealed to them... as he passes away...
• Who is Renee Montoya, what will she become...

52 #39 - "Powers & Abilities"

• Dennis blows up his lab to cover something up, but Natasha and Jake witness him doing it.
• Mercy discovers what he was hiding...
• Ralph and the Helm venture to destroyed Atlantis to get one of the shackles of Arion. They meet with what appears to be a memory-donked Arthur who tells the that getting a shackle means freeing the monster it imprisons. Ralph replaces the shackle with his makeshift straw wedding ring.
• The four horsemen are sent on their way through a boom tube.
• Morrow suspects Magnus is gathering various metals to rebuild the metal men, but he distracts his mentor with the revelation that Red Tornado is in scraps in Australia!
• But we see that Magnus has been rebuilding the Metal Men, and Mercury hides in tiny form!
• Doctor Tyme asks Sivana about his missing 52 seconds, but Sivana shows him Suspendium, artificial time he created.
• Sivana reveals that before he was captured, he had been zapping the worm Mister Mind with Suspendium to possibly unleash his full potential. Since then, Suspendium has been acting strange...
• Sobek tells Adam and Isis that Osiris believes himself to be cursed by his powers.
• The skies over Kahndaq turn black as Isis' garden dies.
• Luthor and the everyman scientists prepare a subject for metagene procedure while Natasha watches with her bug drone.
• Jake reveals to her that he's not Jake, he's Hannibal, and he's been eating jake!
• Natasha zaps him, but it's blocked by Luthor who has Superman level powers! Dennis had been lying about Luthor's incompatibility with the metagene procedure!