WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Justice League Incarnate #4 by Joshua Williamson, Dennis Culver, Chris Burnham, Mike Norton, Andrei Bressan, Hi-Fi, and Tom Napolitano, now on sale from DC Comics

DC has a habit of risking the entire fate of the multiverse on multiple occasions, with stories delving into possible multiversal destruction playing out repeatedly in the core-DC Comics recently. The latest is already being pushed forward at an enhanced rate -- and it's way too fast.

The revelations about the Great Darkness' long-running influence on the DC Universe in Justice League Incarnate #4 are undermined by similar events featured in recent events. This speaks to DC's need to avoid massive events for a while, and instead focus on building up the characters of the DC Universe before beginning the next "epic war for the fate of the multiverse."

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Infinite Frontier showcased the potential danger of the Great Darkness. Darkseid, Nekron, Eclipso, the Upside-Down Man, and the Empty Hand have been teased as fighters in a conflict over the dark power. But as confirmed in Justice League Incarnate #4, the Empty Hand and the rest of the Gentry are extensions of the Great Darkness. Seeking to break the tenuous truce brokered by Swamp Thing between life and the Great Darkness following Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Great Darkness has been retconned to have been behind many of the events that threatened the stability of the DC multiverse. Extant, Superboy-Prime, Mister Mind, and others were all influenced in some way by the Great Darkness' desire to reduce all creation to nothing.

Darkseid's motivations in Final Crisis have been morphed to be an attempt by Darkseid to draw out the Great Darkness so he could try to control the force for himself. Even the Demon Barbatos from the Dark Multiverse is revealed to have merely been an avatar of the Great Darkness. In short, Justice Incarnate uses this Great Darkness as a means of retconning a number of stories and ultimately tying everything happening in the DC Universe together. It's a massive revelation -- and one that mimics discoveries made about Perpetua in the build-up to Dark Nights: Death Metal and Doctor Manhattan in Doomsday Clock. In short order, the Great Darkness is revealed to be the dark force behind everything -- more or less taking the "secret villain puppetmaster" trope to an absolutely ridiculous degree.

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It's quietly a very tiring revelation, effectively retracing steps already taken in recent stories. It's especially frustrating, considering the revelations about (and eventual defeat of) Perpetua was just over a year ago at the time of this writing. The entire multiverse was at risk, characters were pushed to their absolute limits and barely survived -- only now for a very similar kind of meta-threat to rise up right after it. DC has made a habit of embracing massive universe-spanning retcon-filled events lately. But it's getting tiring, as there's no time to focus on the characters caught in these conflicts before they're thrown back into the deep end. This reduces the personal stakes inherent to the characters and just keeps ratching up the scope without forcing audiences to feel genuinely concerned by the threats at hand

The constant escalation of "multiverse level threats" without instead focusing on the heroes leads to diminishing returns -- with pretty much all the massive stakes of the war for the Great Darkness already having been reached recently.  DC should be taking time between events, fleshing out the new status quo from the last event, and making readers care about the situations the heroes find them in before throwing them back into chaos. The upcoming death of the Justice League members is the perfect opportunity for this. It could force DC to spotlight underserved characters, building them up to throw them into a conflict they've never encountered. But instead, by setting up the multiversal war that will change everything again, they've undercut the tension they could have escalated naturally through build-up and story. It's disappointing and makes the Great Darkness feel more like an afterthought.

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