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| Publisher |
DC |
| Published | October 1982 |
CRISIS ON EARTH-PRIME! BOOK ONE - CRISIS TIMES THREE! On Earth-Two, at JSA HQ, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, Huntress, Power Girl, and Starman of the Justice Society of America prepare to activate a Transmatter Cube that will teleport them to Earth-One, where they may visit their friends, the Justice League of America. On Earth-One, aboard the JLA satellite, Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman, Superman and Zatanna of the League prepare to receive their guests. Something goes awry however, and rather than the JSA arriving on the satellite, the League instead encounters Johnny Quick, Owlman, Power Ring, Super-Woman, and Ultraman, the Crime Syndicate of Earth-Three. Before the League can even get their bearings, the Crime Syndicate dives on top of them. Owlman blasts Hawkman with a palm laser, while Super-Woman punches Superman through the hull of the satellite, and Power Ring bashes Firestorm with a large green energy hammer. Ultraman does the snatch-the-rug-out trick on Zatanna, only the "rug" is a piece of the metal deck, which he then wraps around Zatanna before pitching her into outer space. Aquaman tries to stop Johnny Quick, but Johnny's super-speed is faster than Aquaman's enhanced reflexes, ending in another one-punch knockout. But Superman's abrupt exit has left a jagged gap in the satellite's hull, which Ultraman and Johnny Quick and Super-Woman team up to repair. The Crime Syndicate then steals an experimental space shuttlecraft from the JLA's hangar, and flies towards Earth, intent on establishing a foothold on the planet, from which to stage their revenge plot against Per Degaton. The Justice Society meanwhile, does not appear on Earth-One, but rather in an emerald bubble in a misty borderland between dimensions. Dr. Fate recognizes this place as the dimensional prison in which the JSA and JLA had left the Crime Syndicate, several years earlier, at the end of their first encounter.[1] Power Girl fails to punch her way through the bubble, and Green Lantern already knows that his ring won't work on this bubble, so Starman and Dr. Fate apply their cosmic and magical energies against it, with success. So now they're free, but still adrift in an other-dimensional limbo, but Green Lantern has a solution: he scans the surrounding continuum, probing the fabric of space and time, and finds what looks like the Syndicate's trail. He brings his four teammates with him through a rip between realities, and they arrive in a world known as Earth-Prime. They stare horrified at the tableau before them, as the city of New York is nothing but a sea of broken, shattered buildings and debris. Green Lantern's ring confirms that it's Earth-Prime. According to Dr. Fate, this city has been destroyed by a nuclear blast, but not recently. Lantern's ring also has identified a psychic vibration at this scene, a familiar one; according to Green Lantern, Per Degaton is responsible for the destruction of New York. Back on Earth-One, Superman awakens when he hits the outer atmosphere, as he is plummeting towards the Earth. He spies Zatanna's steel-wrapped, spell-protected, unconscious body dropping from space, and zooms her back to the satellite, where Firestorm transforms the steel plating into several dozen roses. Hawkman detects the absence of the shuttlecraft, and wants to pursue this lead. But Chairman Zatanna decides that they need to find out what happened to the Justice Society before they can pursue the Crime Syndicate. They use the Transmatter Cube to teleport to Earth-Two. When they arrive however, they find the JSA Headquarters in terrible condition, with broken furniture and decades worth of cobwebs and dust. It looks as if it hadn't been occupied for a long, long time. A yellowing calendar on a peeling wall says "1942, July". And when the team walks outside, they discover a fascist city-state, with big black "D" flags flying from every flagpole, and statues of Per Degaton decorating the streets. (Superman is the only of of them to recognize P.D., having once studied the casefiles of the JSA.) The automobiles and the fashions, while newly made, are in the styles of the 1940s, but according to the news billboard at Times Square, it is October 2nd, 1982. The local people are all visibly cowed and paranoid, and avoid making eye contact, until one older lady recognizes them as "the forbidden ones," and yells for the police. Six fanatical fascist security cops race onto the scene, and in mid-crowd they open fire on the JLA with submachine guns, but Superman just catches all of the bullets, while Zatanna whips up a high-powered wind to blow away these punks. The Justice League withdraws into the empty JSA HQ. Their problem now is: What happened in July of 1942, that made 1982 turn out like this? There's one way to find out, so Superman and Firestorm team up to create a protective transparent bubble, in which four of them ride, while Superman flies through the sound barrier, the light barrier, and the time barrier, backward, to January 1942. Now the Justice Society's HQ is clean and tidy, so they've back-timed themselves far enough to be in place for whatever it was that happened here, between January and July of 1942. Firestorm gets a headache from contemplating the time paradox being created here. Then the front door opens and, to the JLA's amazement, it's NOT the JSA arriving, but the All-Star Squadron (Commander Steel, Firebrand, Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, and Robotman), none of whom are recognized by any of the JLA team.
