DC One Million
DC 1,000,000 (also known as DC One Million) was DC Comics' Crisis Crossover for the year 1998. Written by then-current JLA writer Grant Morrison, the basic idea came from his imagining what DC Comics would be like if they were published until they reached issue numbers 1,000,000 (which would take until the 853rd Century). He then created the notion of what the DC Universe would be like at such a time and used the miniseries to explore it.
The story begins when the League is visited by their descendants from the 853rd century. It turns out that Superman is still alive then, but had retired to live inside the sun for centuries, but had recently given word that he was coming out, and the future civilization is going to throw him a big 'welcome back!' celebration- and the original League are guests of honor! To make sure that Earth is safe while the league is gone, the future League (known as "Justice Legion A") will stay in the present in their place.
In the future, the League members have various adventures (detailed in the crossover's tie-in issues) while the central miniseries focused on the Justice Legion's adventure on present-day Earth.
It turns out that the solar system of the future has been massively terraformed. Not only that, but several planets are dedicated to specific heroes: Mercury to the Flash, Venus to Wonder Woman, Earth to Green Arrow, Pluto (which serves as a prison for the criminally insane) to Batman, etc. The only planet missing is Uranus (probably to avoid the Incredibly Lame Pun about it) destroyed and replaced by a second sun - Solaris, the Living Sun (actually an evil AI surrounded by a star-sized plasma field) which was defeated by Superman and reprogrammed to be helpful, overseen by that century's Starman.
Unknown to the heroes, Solaris has allied itself with the immortal villain Vandal Savage and Starman (who was sick of having to fulfill his heroic legacy) to take the chance to kill the original Superman! Starman brought back with himself a computer virus that infected Earth's computers; the heroes in the present realized that the only way to get it out was to create a new vessel for it... which resulted in Solaris' actual creation! Meanwhile Savage attempted to smuggle Kryptonite to the future that could then be used to kill Superman; however, due to the fact that the place where it was hidden (the planet Mars) had become merged with The Martian Manhunter, the plot fails - instead, Superman gains access to Green Lantern's power ring and uses it to destroy Solaris once and for all. Savage is apparently caught in the nuclear destruction of Montevideo, and Starman dies while making a last-minute Heel Face Turn.
In the end, (the future self of) Superman is reunited with (a clone of) Lois Lane (also arranged by the heroes) and everybody is happy. The heroes then switch back to their proper times.
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Years later, the (non-canonical) All-Star Superman, also by Morrison, featured an appearance by Solaris—and turned out to be (a version of) the story of how future-Superman ended up in the sun for all those years.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Solaris and Vandal Savage
- Non Sequitur Episode: Hitman One Million contributed absolutely nothing to the plot and served to only show that only Garth Ennis could see that the great, optimistic future of the 853rd century is filled with Jerkass, useless superheroes.
- In fairness to Ennis, while most tie-in writers got fairly detailed plots from Morrison, his merely said "Garth: do a pisstake."
- And "Jerkass useless superheroes" does describe some of the "icon jockeys" who showed up in the other books, like Aqua-Fresh and Negative Gorilla Woman.
- Exty Years From Now: With the twist that it's exty issues from now.
- Future Spandex: There's Superhero Spandex that is also Future Spandex—the present day heroes note that their future counterparts' costumes are shiny, seamless and even more formfitting, and wonder what they're made from.
- Genius Loci: Solaris
- Hurl It Into the Sun: The plan for the Kryptonite chunk (to kill Superman); it backfired.
- The Jailer: The Batman.
- Legacy Character: Most of the DC heroes have a successor in the future.
- Nanomachines: The Hourman Virus which threatens to destroy humanity in 24 hours.
- The Mole: the future Starman.
- Redemption Equals Death: the future Starman
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale
- Start X to Stop X
- Superpowerful Genetics
- Superpower Lottery: Resurrection Man.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Lampshaded by the future Batman.
- Tele Frag: Chase One Million has a black market icon dealer try and use an unlicensed Ambush Bug icon to escape arrest... he ends up messily merged into a nearby wall, mercifully dying seconds later.
- The Slow Path: Taken by Resurrection Man, Martian Manhunter, Superman and Vandal Savage.
- Throwaway Country: Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is destroyed for no other reason than giving Savage his Karmic Death.