In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just one of the five examples that I chose. Today, we look at some times that comic book imprints start blowing doing apocalyptic stuff when the imprint is nearing the end of the line.

Reader Alvaro M. wrote in to suggest this one, and it's one that I have been thinking about doing for years (I even did a quick archive search to see if I maybe DID do it and just forgot - but nope!) because it really is one of those hilarious things that always keeps popping up.

In any event, here's the thing in a nutshell. You launch an imprint, a separate universe from your normal comic book universe. It starts with promise but, over time, it sort of falters a bit. However, it occurs to you, "Wait, this is a side universe. This isn't the 'main' universe, why do I have to play by the normal rules of what you do with a universe? We could do ANYthing with this universe." That is a totally logical reaction. And what is the sort of thing that you think to do when you realize that you can do ANYthing? Well, it's typically to destroy stuff, right? One of the things about the DC and Marvel Universes is that, generally speaking, you can get away with a whole lot, but you have to keep the universe itself intact, you know? Even the exceptions, like Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars, aren't really exceptions, because they essentially leave things back to normal at the end of the story (just altered).

With imprints, though, you can really just go nuts.

THE NEW UNIVERSE

The initial set-up with the New Universe was "what if the world outside your window suddenly had super heroes in it?" In other words, the idea was that it would be just like our world, only with superheroes thrown into it. The big problem with the New Universe is that it seemed like too many of the creators were looking at it as if it had to REMAIN "just like the world outside your window," so everything was mostly restrained and, to a lot of fans, a bit mundane.

So when John Byrne returned to Marvel, he joined up with the New Universe to try a bold idea to throw the whole line of comics out of whack. The idea was that in Star Brand #12 (by Byrne and Tom Palmer), Ken, the dude with the Star brand, decides to get rid of it. He was going to do it on the moon, but then he worried that he might be too far away, so he instead did it over his home city of Pittsburgh. Well, it went horribly wrong...

This was followed by a one-shot called The Pitt by Byrne, Mark Gruenwald and Sal Buscema, where see the after-effects of Pittsburgh being annihilated into a giant crater...

Obviously, everything devolves into chaos, but it was too late to save the New Universe, so it instead all ended in a miniseries called The War.

MARVEL 2099

Things here really started when, about two and a half years into the existence of the Marvel 2099 future imprint, Doom decides that the only way to stop the evil Corporation that is taking over the world is for him to conquer the United States...

But things REALLY got bad when the Corporation fought back and won by using "Captain America" as their figurehead in their successful return to power in the United States, at which point they then began to hunt down all superheroes in the appropriately named 2099: Apocalypse #1 (by Warren Ellis, Mark Buckingham and Kev Sutherland).

First, here is them destroying the White House...

Then them hunting down and executing Punisher 2099 on live television...

The rest of the issue is them killing off other characters, before turning on the journalists who kept broadcasting the murders on live television to show what the new government was doing...

Then the Phalanx show up, which causes worldwide flooding and things go down hill from there. They actually tried to keep the story going in a book called 2099: World of Tomorrow, which combined all the canceled titles into one book, but that did not last long.

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AMERICA'S BEST COMICS

Alan Moore brought his America's Best Comics line of comics to a close with the final few issues of Promethea, where he and J.H. Williams II (and Mick Gray) had the various heroes try to stop Promethea from ending the universe. I love Jack B. Quick's idea to stop the doomsday in Promethea #29...

However, their plans weren't enough to stop here and she ended the universe at the end of the next issue...

But don't worry, it all worked out okay. And then we got Promethea #32, the final issue, which was one of the most inventive comics ever (it was certainly out there, as the whole issue could be combined into one super-large image if you removed the pages and taped them together...I might have done that myself)...

WILDSTORM UNIVERSE

In 2008, Wildstorm did an event called Armageddon, where the character Nemesis is shown the future and she has to find a way to prevent the apocalypse...

However, in the series that followed, Wildstorm: Revelations, she only temporarily halted the apocalypse, as they unleashed these old World War II super beings who ended up wrecking the Earth quite nicely in the follow-up miniseries, Number of the Beast (this whole process took way too long)...

The hope was that having the titles now have to deal with a post-apocalyptic Earth would be a nice twist for a fading imprint, but in the end, Wildstorm just ceased to be and then they were briefly merged into the DC Universe and now Warren Ellis was given a shot at rebooting the line in the current Wildstorm series.

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ULTIMATE UNIVERSE

The Ultimate Universe is a weird one.

After being around for about nine years, the Ultimate Universe came out with Ultimatum, a miniseries by Jeph Loeb, David Finch and Danny Miki that had Magneto use Thor's hammer to kill millions of people in New York City with a tidal wave and then in Eastern Europe with freezing cold...

By the end of the series, most of the X-Men (including Cyclops, Wolverine and Professor X) were dead, the world was in ruins, things were bad.

However, somehow, the Ultimate Universe kept going for another SIX years. They even then killed off Spider-Man and things kept going, almost purely based on Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli coming up with an awesome new character in Miles Morales, the NEW Spider-Man. He was great, but the universe as a whole was a wreck.

They kept having story after story that seemed like, "Okay, is this it? Is THIS the end?"

Like Cataclysm, when Galactus entered the Ultimate Universe through a rift in the Multiverse...

But nope, they still kept going. Finally, during Secret Wars, the Ultimate Universe was officially dropped, with a few of its more notable characters (like Miles and the evil Ultimate Reed Richards) coming over to the main Marvel Universe. This was depicted in Ultimate End.

The Ultimate Universe looks like it might be back now, but who the heck knows?

Thanks for the suggestion, Alvaro!

If anyone else has an idea for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!