The End Is Here

Back in the day when I was just starting out on my journey through life as a fully paid up member of the Geek fraternity my main passion was collecting Batman comics and in particular Batman in Detective Comics which was not the easiest thing in the world as where I lived there weren't any comic book shops and I'd never even heard of the likes of Forbidden Planet. In fact the only place I could get hold of my chosen titles from the States was to ask my local shop of everything (groceries, videos, magazines etc) to pick up what they could from their wholesaler. This led to me owning a variety of titles but true to my Geekdom I read whatever I could get my hands on.

Now being new to the game I didn't own any pristine white boxes to store my comic books in and it is with a modicum of shame that I admit that they were kept just a little willy nilly in a cupboard inside a large ziplock bag (my collector gene had not yet truly kicked in). I'd also like to say that I still have that collection but it, and other such collections I have amassed over the years, was sold on for a fraction of what I paid, sales that would inevitably be followed by sellers remorse.

If you follow me on FB then you'll know that I have just turned 40 and have chosen to have my midlife crisis in the way of returning to my comic book roots. In recent years I have been collecting the UK collected editions of the American titles (released over here by Titan Magazines) but with an influx of gifts in the form of cash I opted to scour the internet and have managed to amass an entire 215 issue run of the Legends of the Dark Knight series from the early 90's (including all four variants of issue #1) which I am about to start trawling through to read once and then store away in the boxes that adult me understands are necessary.

This post is not about the Dark Knight however, rather I wanted to take time to review the DC story Armageddon 2001 which was released in 1991. At the time of its release I was 15 and remember picking up the first of the Armageddon books followed by a couple of the annuals that followed it but that was as far as my interaction with the story went. So with the aforementioned birthday having just gone down I also chose to collect the complete Armageddon set which starts with Armageddon 2001 #1, weaves its way through a variety of different annuals and culminates in Armageddon 2001 #2 (for the record I have also got my hands on the 4 issues of Alien Agenda and 4 issues of Inferno).

So to the story. We begin 50 years into the future where the world is ruled using an iron fist by the mysterious Monarch. It transpires that Monarch used to be a superhero who in the year 2001 kills all other heroes in order to take over the world, an event which does not sit well with our protagonist Matthew Ryder who hates the world under Monarch and who is soon given the opportunity to travel back in time to discover which hero goes mad and becomes Monarch. Matthew is turned into Waverider (which some of you may have spotted a nod to in Legends of Tomorrow as it is the name of Rip Hunters ship in the show.

Waverider can travel the time stream back to the past and then by touching a person he can see into their future to ascertain whether they will become Monarch or not. This of course leads to him turning up in an array of annuals such as Batman, Justice League America, Hawk and Dove, Superman, The NEw Teen Titans and LEGION among others. In each book he gets the opportunity to see into the year 2001 and find out where the hero he is interacting with is in their lives at that point. This culminates in the reveal of Monarchs true identity in Justice League Europe and Armageddon 2001 #2 where the final battle takes place.

Speaking of the Justice League Europe annual, the end of that book strongly indicated that it was Captain Atom that would become Monarch as to that point he was the only hero Waverider had not seen into the future of and that was meant to be the conclusion to the story. However this leaked way before the final issues were to be released and in order to maintain the element of surprise a last minute change saw Hawk become Monarch and this did not sit well with readers.

Firstly we had already seen into the future of Hawk and Waverider himself commented that it definately could not have been Hawk or Dove that would go on to become Monarch. Now it had been established during Waveriders 3 soirees into Supermans future that his interaction with the heroes had the potential to change things especially as in the case of the Man of Steel he retained a vague memory of his potential future and then went out of his way to change it but this still did not make up for the huge let down it was to see the main villain of the piece ending up being so anticlimatic.

In fact it was so poorly received that years later the story was retconned so that Captain Atom was indeed the man behind Monarchs mask and leter still it was complicated further with events involving Mordru.

So is Armageddon 2001 really as bad as people say or is it a little misunderstood with the changes forced upon it by the leaked ending? In truth its probably a little bit of both. The story is good and I enjoyed reading it from start to finish but I was underwhelmed by the choice of Hawk as Monarch although this could have something to do with my limited knowledge of the character as I've never read a Hawk and Dove comic book before. It just feels like if you're going to have one hero go crazy and kill all the rest then it should be one of the big guns although it could be argued that by going with someone out of the box that it is truly surprising and that is the whole point.

My other gripe is with the number of times we see Waverider return to check the future of certain heroes. He does this twice with Batman and three times with Superman which comes comes across as overkill, especially when DC had/have a universe of other characters they could have easily gone with instead of returning to the well of their big two. Hell Wonder Woman doesn't even get a look in throughout the entire story arc which just feels a little off to me.

That said however reading the whole saga did take me back to my youth when I first read some of the books and I did therefore get that warm glow of nostalgia as I remembered back to reading them the first time out. Now this probably means I am looking at this through rose tinted glasses but isn't that what our favourite comic books are about?

With that in mind I'm going to give Armageddon 2001 a strong 7 out of 10. Was it perfect? No, but then I feel it has aged quite well and has more positive than negatives going in its favour.