Darkseid's Epic New Powers Have a Weakness He Doesn't Know About
Warning: Spoilers for Flashpoint Beyond #0!
The Dark God known as Darkseid has fallen under the influence of DC Comics’ darkest villainous threat, and now his Omega Beams have unknowingly been given a weakness that may be far more important to DC’s future than initially thought. Darkseid believing he's murdering his foes with his overpowered laser eyes is all fine and good, but in reality, what he is really doing is something that may come back to bite him in the worst way possible.
Revealed in the pages of Flashpoint Beyond #0, by Geoff Johns and Eduardo Risso, this issue acts as the follow-up to the 2011 series called Flashpoint, a line-wide crossover event that changed the DC Universe forever. Focusing on Thomas Wayne, aka Flashpoint Batman, as he inexplicably returns to a reality he thought was long dead, Flashpoint Beyond is only the opening salvo in a new storyline that will explore the implications of a world that was changed for the worst thanks to Barry Allen aka The Flash’s time-traveling shenanigans.
Surviving the destruction of the Flashpoint reality thanks to the evil machinations of Reverse-Flash, Thomas Wayne has been traipsing around the DC Universe as part of the multiversal team known as Justice League Incarnate. Consisting of President Superman, Captain Carrot, Doctor Multiverse, and more, Thomas Wayne — affectionately called “Doctor Batman” by his newfound peers — has helped to take on Darkseid and an ultimate entity known as The Great Darkness, with varying results.
Zapped by Darkseid’s newly upgraded Omega Beams given to him after unwillingly becoming the thrall of The Great Darkness, Thomas Wayne wakes up in his homeworld, despite — to the best of Thomas’ knowledge — it being a reality that Flash had long since fixed. And while Thomas is certain that Darkseid’s laser strike was meant to be a killing blow, it’s clearly anything but; a concerning and confusing thought for a character that doesn’t seem to understand why he’s returned to a reality he thought he left behind.
Though Thomas may be wrong about Darkseid wanting to kill him instead of sending him back to Flashpoint world, Darkseid did seem to think he'd taken him out in the recent Justice League Incarnate series; a fact that might become an issue for a villain that has been lasering people left and right as of late. Having already killed DC’s Iron Man knockoff, Machinehead, in a similar way, the thought that Thomas and others “murdered” by Darkseid have been accidentally sent to their home realities when he thinks he’s been killing them would be a huge implication for the upcoming Dark Crisis event, as allowing heroes to survive and potentially organize counter-attacks could turn into an eleventh-hour twist that the bad guys never see coming.
So whatever may come from Darkseid’s obliviousness is anyones guess, but the implications of his new powers not working the way he expects will undoubtedly come into play as DC’s Dark Crisis looms ever closer. Darkseid and his Omega Beams are the definitions of overpowered, but now with an unknown weakness dogging the Dark God, anything can happen.