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| Cover to Justice League: No Justice (2018) #2 featuring Team Entropy Art by Francis Manapul |
When it was clear that Scott Snyder's insane Dark Nights: Metal (2017) was a smash hit, Snyder and DC wanted to investigate what other crazy directions stories could take in Metal's wake. Snyder had a wealth of tales to tell that spawned directly from Metal, but they would require the entire Justice League cast, and then some. DC had Christopher Priest wrap up his run on Justice League (2016) to make room for Snyder's post-Metal upcoming Justice League (2018), but Snyder first needed to set the stage. Enter Brainiac and Justice League: No Justice (2018).
In Snyder's No Justice, Brainiac abducts numerous heroes and villains from Earth and informs them that because the heroes' actions during Dark Nights: Metal broke the Source Wall, the universe was now vulnerable to numerous threats of universal proportions that had been locked safely behind the wall. The first of these threats to emerge was the celestially powerful Omega Titans. Each Omega Titan was powered by one of the four aspects of sentient life; wonder, mystery, wisdom, and entropy and held that their specific aspect to be superior to the others and devised a way to test these notions. The Titans planted four seeds, one containing a different aspect of sentience on myriad planets that had yet to develop sentient life. Over millennia once sentience and civilizations had evolved on these worlds, the Omega Titans would return to see which of the four aspects had become the dominant one on that world. With the superior aspect determined, the "winning" Titan would then consume the world. This process would continue until all sentient life in the universe had been destroyed.
Brainiac successfully convinced his assembled metahumans that he had formed a plan to stop the Omega Titans. On Colu, wisdom reigned supreme rendering mystery, wonder, and entropy weaker there. Brainiac reasoned that in order to stop the Wisdom Titan from destroying Colu, that the other aspects would need to be strengthened. To strengthen the weaker aspects, teams would be sent to the "Cosmic Trees," which grew from the aspect seeds that the Omega Titans planted eons before. To further "motivate" the abductees, Brainiac also informed them that if they failed on Colu, he made sure that The Omega Titans would target Earth next as he placed Titan Seeds there to attract them.
To succeed on Colu, the collected heroes and villains would have to abandon their previous alliances and rivalries and assemble into new teams of Brainiac's design. Brainiac regrouped the abducted heroes and villains based on the personal attributes that aligned best to each specific Titan aspect. For the Entropy Titan, Brainiac formed Team Entropy composed of Batman, Lex Luthor, Lobo, Beast Boy, and, of course, Deathstroke the Terminator.
Unfortunately, before Brainiac could communicate details about what to do at each tree location, his head literally exploded due to the foolish interference of Amanda Waller, who was trying to covertly extract all the knowledge held within Brainiac's mind from Earth. This turn of events left the assembled teams on Colu with clearly defined destinations, but without clear courses of action for when they all arrived. Luckily for each team, the costumes that Brainiac made for them contained "nodes" that drew each team to their designated Cosmic Tree.
Team Entropy was drawn to the Entropy Tree, which had sprung up in the middle of Colu's mega prison, the Ultra Penitence. Lex Luthor reasoned that the Entropy Tree, "must feed off of the chaos inside" the Ultra Penitence, therefore to boost the Entropy Tree's power, per Brainiac's plan, Team Entropy had to cause as much chaos as possible by freeing all of the prisoners. Once Team Entropy began freeing prisoners, they met resistance in the form of guard drones. While Batman called for an orchestrated counterattack, it was Deathstroke that suggested a more chaotic approach as illustrated in the image below.
Team Entropy continued to fight deeper and deeper into the Ultra Penitence, but the farther they infiltrated into the prison, the noticed that the robotic drones were guarding one cell in particular. Surmising that this prisoner was the true source of chaos, Team Entropy focused their efforts on that cell as the key to their mission. But once they open the cell door, what Team Entropy found inside was none other than Brainiac's son, Vril Dox, aka Brainiac 2.0. Needless to say the introduction of Vril Dox to this already seemingly impossible equation only served to further complicate matters for our ad hoc team of protagonists, but I'm not going to spoil the ending to this tale. To see how it all turns out, I suggest reading Justice League: No Justice for yourself.
Though I love that Deathstroke was chosen for this event, I wouldn't say that he stood out. I know that it is impossible for every character to be a star in an ensemble cast, but it felt like Snyder chose Deathstroke simply because he was a popular character rather than for any reasons pertaining to the story. Deathstroke has outstanding leadership and strategic sensibilities, they can never be exploited to their fullest potential for any team on which Batman and Lex Luthor were members. Like the other characters, Deathstroke's inclusion on Team Entropy made sense given the squad's theme and objective, but for no bigger role part than he played in the overall story, Deathstroke's role could have been filled by any number of other entropic/chaotic characters, such as the Creeper, Deadshot, Plastic Man, or even the Heckler making Deathstroke's inclusion here feel somewhat forced. At the very least, Snyder represented Deathstroke competently and respectfully, though his dialog vernacular seemed at times to be lowbrow compared to his usual characterizations by Marv Wolfman or Christopher Priest. In any event, Justice League: No Justice is a worthy read regardless of its use of Deathstroke as a "look, he's here too" background character.
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| Team Entropy initial design art featuring Beast Boy, Lobo, Batman, Lex Luthor, and Deathstroke the Terminator Art by Francis Manapul |
Unfortunately, before Brainiac could communicate details about what to do at each tree location, his head literally exploded due to the foolish interference of Amanda Waller, who was trying to covertly extract all the knowledge held within Brainiac's mind from Earth. This turn of events left the assembled teams on Colu with clearly defined destinations, but without clear courses of action for when they all arrived. Luckily for each team, the costumes that Brainiac made for them contained "nodes" that drew each team to their designated Cosmic Tree.
Team Entropy was drawn to the Entropy Tree, which had sprung up in the middle of Colu's mega prison, the Ultra Penitence. Lex Luthor reasoned that the Entropy Tree, "must feed off of the chaos inside" the Ultra Penitence, therefore to boost the Entropy Tree's power, per Brainiac's plan, Team Entropy had to cause as much chaos as possible by freeing all of the prisoners. Once Team Entropy began freeing prisoners, they met resistance in the form of guard drones. While Batman called for an orchestrated counterattack, it was Deathstroke that suggested a more chaotic approach as illustrated in the image below.
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| No one thinks violence quite like Deathstroke. Art by Francis Manapul |
Team Entropy continued to fight deeper and deeper into the Ultra Penitence, but the farther they infiltrated into the prison, the noticed that the robotic drones were guarding one cell in particular. Surmising that this prisoner was the true source of chaos, Team Entropy focused their efforts on that cell as the key to their mission. But once they open the cell door, what Team Entropy found inside was none other than Brainiac's son, Vril Dox, aka Brainiac 2.0. Needless to say the introduction of Vril Dox to this already seemingly impossible equation only served to further complicate matters for our ad hoc team of protagonists, but I'm not going to spoil the ending to this tale. To see how it all turns out, I suggest reading Justice League: No Justice for yourself.
Though I love that Deathstroke was chosen for this event, I wouldn't say that he stood out. I know that it is impossible for every character to be a star in an ensemble cast, but it felt like Snyder chose Deathstroke simply because he was a popular character rather than for any reasons pertaining to the story. Deathstroke has outstanding leadership and strategic sensibilities, they can never be exploited to their fullest potential for any team on which Batman and Lex Luthor were members. Like the other characters, Deathstroke's inclusion on Team Entropy made sense given the squad's theme and objective, but for no bigger role part than he played in the overall story, Deathstroke's role could have been filled by any number of other entropic/chaotic characters, such as the Creeper, Deadshot, Plastic Man, or even the Heckler making Deathstroke's inclusion here feel somewhat forced. At the very least, Snyder represented Deathstroke competently and respectfully, though his dialog vernacular seemed at times to be lowbrow compared to his usual characterizations by Marv Wolfman or Christopher Priest. In any event, Justice League: No Justice is a worthy read regardless of its use of Deathstroke as a "look, he's here too" background character.
