Justice League – Volume 3 – 30

Synopsis

Wonder Woman is caught in the grip of The Darkness as it goads her to kill everybody like it has been doing with Green Lantern. Steve tries to get through to her as the children see the darkness but don’t understand how it can already be here, as in the future they have come from The Darkness did not make itself known until several years until after they had been born.

As Steve tries to make a move towards the helpless Amazon Princess Green Lantern defends her an the children in turn prepare to fight back, causing the soldiers around them to raise their own weapons as the tension increases.

Steve suggests everyone calms down as Hunter tells Steve that The Darkness wants them to kill each other just as it had done in the future, turning the world itself itself. Steve has to quickly get up to speed on recent events and how the children are actually the offspring of the Justice League, including Diana. Hunter regretfully tells Steve that he is not his father however. He then adds how this is all wrong and that the Darkness should be here already and Steve suggests that by them coming back from the future to try and change things may have actually caused this to happen.

Meanwhile off the coast of Amnesty Bay Sovereign descends from the recently materialised Mount Olympus. Aquaman kneels before his mistress as Mera and Serenity raise their weapons. Sovereign warns Serenity that she can destroy her mother Mera in an instant, making Serenity lose hope juts the way Sovereign had lost hope when she had lost the one dear to her.

Sovereign then forces Arthur to tell Mera how, after she had been killed, the villainess had banished him from the seas. Yet he did not die. No mater how thirsty or dry he was water was denied him, He was forced to scavenge body parts from a dead friend to survive. Mera suddenly realises he is wearing parts of Cyborg.

Aquaman then tells Sovereign he knows where her daughter is and will take her there and they all leave together in a boom tube.

Batman, in the Bat Plane, locks in on the signal of the vanished Cyborg and heads there.

Back at Central City Wonder Woman tells Steve she can hold back The Darkness for much longer and that it will wash violence across the whole world – just as it did in the future. It came back here with the children and although it was already here, but with what it has learned about the future it has become stronger quicker.

Steve asks if there is anything they can do and she replies no, and  that they had tried to stop it and had all died, before asking him to keep Hunter safe – not because he is her child but because it is the only person The Darkness does not want her to kill.

Suddenly Aquaman and Sovereign materialise and a fight breaks out as the children take her on. Arthur decides he has to choose sides and finally joins the fight against Sovereign. Even Green Lantern finally manages to break free of the hold over him and joins the battle.

Cyborg, Flash, Superman and Green Lantern find themselves being held in a pocket of space inside a boom tube. As Cyborg works to free them he finds a message for them left by Arthur.

He explains how the world he has come from has gone to hell but once he returned to this time he felt hope again and although Sovereign had ordered him to kill them as she knew they would try and prevent her from doing what she has come here to do, but instead he he had hidden them all here. He adds that he has left them a signal to track him down as wherever he will be  – so will Sovereign

Back at the battleground Sovereign manages to floor all her attackers  – including badly wounding Green Lantern (Simon) – leaving her face to face with Wonder Woman. Sovereign removes her mask to reveal that she is actually Hippolyta who, having lost Diana in the future, had taken vented her grief and rage on the unsuspecting world.

As Superman, Cyborg, Flash and Green Lantern (Jessica) arrive via Boom Tube having freed themselves and tracked the signal left by Aquaman, Sovereign tells Diana that she has come to take her daughter away and leave the word to die as it does not deserve her.

But The Darkness uses the circumstances to further worm its way into Wonder Woman’s mind and encourages her to release the darkness inside her.

“Let the hatred and violence rules their hearts as it rules yours” it whispers to her. And as she screams it adds “And kill everyone in the world!” …