SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Justice League of America # 13 by Steve Orlando, Ivan Reis and Julio Feareira, on sale now, as well as DC Comics' greater Rebirth storyline.


Now that we're more than a year into DC Comics' Rebirth initiative, major elements from pre-Flashpoint continuity have been forcefully integrated into the former New 52 universe, creating a whole new reality. In Justice League of America #13 by Steve Orlando and Ivan Reis, readers get a look at these macro-level changes from a subatomic perspective, as Ryan Choi leads the team into the microverse in search of his mentor Ray Palmer, the previous Atom.

As it turns out, things like Superman's conflicting histories and whatever Dr. Manhattan is doing to the multiverse have dire physical consequences for the Microverse's billions of inhabitants, as quantum storms wreak devastation with unpredictable and unavoidable fury.

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"Panic in the Microverse" part 2 catches up with the Justice League as Choi -- joined by Batman, Killer Frost and Lobo -- traces the source of Palmer's distress call to a lone cloaked figure wearing the Atom's bio belt. But instead of the heroic physicist, the team finds a native of the Microverse named Preon, who claims to have been Palmer's guide in the strange microscopic universe. Preon claims that Palmer gave her the belt before she was separated from the Atom and his assistant (another local named Aron Aut) during a Quantum Storm. However, when Preon and the League catch up with Aut on planet full of desperate refugees, Aut attacks Preon, and tells Choi and company that they are deceived, that the guide is actually a pirate. As Batman so astutely observes, "someone is lying."

Beyond the very solid superhero adventure, though, are JLA #13's contributions to the DC meta-story of Rebirth. Orlando draws from the Grant Morrison theory of a "living universe," where changes to one part affect the whole. So when Superman's past is rewritten, it doesn't merely affect the Man of Steel, or even those closest to him, or even still those who have had even a passing acquaintance with him over his many heroic adventures. It affects everything, not matter how large... or small.

"Memories, families, whole truths are burning in an instant," Preon tells the League. Everything you knew is wrong! It's a simple take -- and logical consequence -- of everything that's happened since Rebirth, and for all that quite exciting.

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Later, the League is caught in a quantum storm -- what's happening right now, in the Macroverse? -- and Lobo is struck by the reality-rending lightning, costing him an arm. Lobo will be just fine (he regenerates quickly, and remained standing after the blast), but it will be worth watching to see if there are any direct consequences of being hit by this particular form of energy.

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Ignition Point

Since we're drawing so close to Doomsday Clock, the 12-issue series debuting in November that will reveal Dr. Manhattan's master plan for the DCU, it's also worth considering how the Microverse quest might tie in beyond the existential threat of reality-warping storms. Preon tells us that Palmer had been searching for Ignition Point, "the theoretical epicenter of the destruction." If it exists, and if the storms really are connected to changes in reality wrought by Rebirth, then Ignition Point, too, must connect with Dr. Manhattan.

There's also the matter of Moz-Ga, the sentient planet whose godlike intellect may hold the key to finding both the Atom and the Ignition Point. But despite the teeming pleas of Microverse refugees, Moz-Ga has not spoken in one thousand years, even refusing to speak with Palmer when he visited with Aron Aut and Preon previously. Choi believes he can get Moz-Ga to talk -- by shrinking dangerously smaller, pushing the limits of his bio belt and risking his own life.

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Moz-Ga sounds a lot like the Green Lantern Mogo, in terms of being a living world, but of course Mogo is a bit more outgoing, personality-wise (even if he famously "doesn't socialize"). And in the story presented here, he serves the role of Absent God. But there is potential here for a number of Rebirth connections. Moz-Ga itself could be the ignition point, with the god falling silent because he -- Manhattan -- is busy elsewhere; the Microverse's thousand years may be relative, and could amount to only the span of time that the Watchmen character has been tampering with the DC universe.

Choi's belief that shrinking smaller will get Moz-Ga to listen to him is a seemingly incongruous hypothesis, but might make sense if Moz-Ga is a creature of science. Choi could be imagining that only offering up new knowledge would attract the deity's attention, or, more likely, he may imagine that Moz-Ga's consciousness exists at the quantum level -- thus the line about "talking to him on his terms." It's not an enormous leap from here to the Moz-is-Manhattan narrative, since the former Dr. Jon Osterman views himself as one with the universe, his consciousness everywhere at all times.

Justice League America has not been one of the titles central to the Rebirth meta-arc, and so it's unlikely that there will be any major revelations about Mr. Oz, Dr. Manhattan's schemes, or the mysteries of the Comedian's blood-splattered smiley face button found within its pages. Nevertheless, nearly every DC Universe-based series has been drawn into the epic to some degree, and especially when dealing with reality-warping forces, the echoes of Rebirth will be impossible to ignore. Choi's team will not defeat Manhattan, but they may save the Microverse -- and they might just do it with an assist from, or despite the efforts of, a naked, blue demigod.