Worlds Collide: The Milestone Side, Month 1 (July 1994)
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Worlds Collide: The Milestone Side, Month 1 (July 1994)
“Worlds Collide” was pretty unusual for a Superman-related crossover event: it only included one of the four main Superman titles (plus two spin-offs), it happened right in the middle of another Super-storyline (“The Fall of Metropolis”), and it came out right before another crossover event involving alternate worl– sorry, “timelines” (Zero Hour) but had absolutely no connection to it.
The basic idea is that Superman, Superboy, and Steel meet the characters of Milestone Comics’ Dakotaverse thanks to a mailman who switches universes whenever he goes to sleep. However, at least in this first month, the Milestone side seems way more into the crossover than the DC one – their issues are completely devoted to the event, while the Super Titles have a ton of other plotlines going on. (Then again, they always had a ton of other plotlines going on in this era.) In an effort to help our readers understand what the hell’s going in the Superman issues when we cover them, here’s what happened in the Milestone ones:
Static #13
This issue isn’t technically part of the crossover (it’s from the month before it started) but it does show the other side of the scene from Man of Steel #35 when Fred Bentson, the aforementioned superpowered mailman, unwittingly switches universes in the nude and runs into the Dakotaverse’s most famous inhabitant, Static.
Fred tries to steal Static’s flying disk (or “Static Saucer,” as they called it in the Static Shock cartoon) to take it back to Metropolis as proof that he isn’t just dreaming the Dakotaverse. He doesn’t succeed and runs off, leaving Static like “eh, probably just some nut and not something that will end up putting the existence of multiple universes in jeopardy…”
Hardware #17
This issue reveals Fred’s other superpower: picking the worst possible sleep clinic in every reality. We already saw him going into a super shady Metropolis-based one in Man of Steel, and this issue shows that he also went into one owned by Edwin Alva, Milestone Comics’ foremost unscrupulous businessman (and the boss of this comic’s titular character). Alva wants to exploit Fred’s reality-hopping powers, so he orders Hardware to go into the DC Universe with him in order to find out how they work.
Hardware obeys and finds himself teleported into the middle of Metropolis, which is in such poor shape after the events of Action #700 that he initially mistakes it for Detroit.
After saving a woman from some bizarre would-be rapists (that you’d never see in a Superman comic), Hardware suddenly sees Superman’s Pal, Steel, looking at him from the other side of a mirror. Both are big black dudes who used their super-smarts to build themselves badass robotic armors, so I can’t blame the universe(s) for getting them mixed up. Steel breaks the mirror from the other side with his hammer, causing Hardware to fall into a nightmare where people from his life call him a sellout and a terrible person.
Hardware wakes up back in the city of Dakota, and it turns out the only thing he managed to bring from the other universe is an issue of the Daily Planet… which is still enough to convince Alva that he can use Fred to conquer two worlds.
Icon #11
Superboy #6 (which we’ll cover in the usual Super Titles Round-Up post) ends with Fred accidentally taking Superboy into Dakota. Icon himself, who is pretty much the Dakotaverse’s Superman, barely appears in this issue, but that’s fine with Superboy because he gets to meet, and be a perv towards, his sidekick Rocket.
This is the issue where Fred realizes he can create beings with the power of his imagination, which is bad news for everyone around him because he’s an anxious little fella. Fred starts bringing his biggest fears to life: first, an army of IRS auditors who look like Superman’s enemy the Parasite (who attacked him in Superboy #6)…
…and then, a building-sized version of his Fifth Grade bully. The young heroes put aside their differences to defeat the big bully in the most appropriate way they can think of: Superboy uses his tactile telekinesis to drop his pants, and then Rocket pushes him down while he’s distracted.
Superboy, Rocket, and Icon (who finally decides to show up for his own comic) take Fred back to Alva’s sleep clinic for further study. At Alva’s, Superboy tries to hit on Rocket again, but she freaks him out by simply being a pregnant teenage superheroine, something that can’t exist in the DCU.
Oh yeah, and this leads to an important event in Superboy’s life that I’m surprised didn’t happen in his own comic: the moment he realizes he has no bully button.
Anyway, Alva gets Fred to teleport himself and Superboy back to Metropolis by asking him to imagine himself “as a bridge between worlds.” This works a little too well, since not only does Fred jump universes again, but he also creates a literal bridge between them…
Blood Syndicate #16
The bridge scene is repeated from different perspectives in Steel #6 and in this series, which follows a bunch of gang members who get superpowers after the police throw radioactive tear gas at them. As a result of that incident, known as the “Big Bang,” half of the bridge connecting Dakota with the gang-ridden Paris Island was blown off – which is pretty convenient for this crossover, because Metropolis also has a half-blown-off bridge, courtesy of a fight between Superboy and Spider-Man But Evil during “Reign of the Supermen.”
Now Fred has merged both half-bridges into one interdimensional bridge connecting both universes, which is very confusing to the Blood Syndicate gang (for once, when I call a group of superheroes a “gang” I mean that literally). It gets even more confusing once they cross the bridge, thinking the bombed-out Metropolis is Dakota, and hear people talking about Superman. You know, from TV! Wait, does this mean the Blood Syndicate watches Lois & Clark?
Then they run into Superman and assume he must be some insane “Bang Baby” doing cosplay, while he assumes they must be working for Luthor. It doesn’t help that they’re quite rude towards him and drop swear words no one in the DCU has probably heard before. The issue ends with the whole gang about to attack Superman while one of them, a talking dog called Dogg, says “Yo, Superman, where’s Krypto?” (SPOILERS: In Superboy #6, with Bibbo.)
Worlds Collide #1
This one-shot brings all the characters together as we transition from the “meet and fight” to the “team up to face the greater threat” part of the story. Fred finds himself back in Dakota and runs into a bunch of high school kids who are working on their own comic book. When Fred looks at one of the pages of the comic without meaning to, he summons its equally destructive hero and villain into existence.
One of those comic nerds happens to be Static in his secret identity, so he gets to work on stopping the runaway characters and soon bumps heads with Superboy as he’s trying to do the same thing.
At this point, Fred starts enjoying his powers a little too much and adds his own childhood comic book creations to the mix, all of whom look like him but with way more muscles. Things get really chaotic, and this is when we learn that Static actually reads Superboy’s comic – though I’m confused by his mention of the “no belly button” thing. Does this mean Static read Icon #11 up there? My head hurts.
Rocket also drops by to help, and there’s a bit about Superboy panicking when he realizes that she, a jacket-wearing teenager with “kinetic energy” powers who works with an iconic superhero, is his Dakotaverse counterpart. This reminded me of Magdalene Visaggio and Darick Robertson’s Superboy pitch in which Conner Kent transitions into Connie Kent and becomes a superheroine called Skyrocket – if DC hadn’t rejected the idea, they could have used this scene as foreshadowing. (I asked Visaggio on BlueSky if she knew about the Superboy/Rocket thing when she picked the name Skyrocket and she said “Nope!”)
At one point, Fred merges with all of his creations and becomes a super-jacked gunslinger with wheels for feet. When Superboy makes the mistake of criticizing his fashion sense, we learn the ultimate source of Fred’s trauma: Adam West’s Batman.
Meanwhile, Fred’s body is also at the sleep clinic in Metropolis and somehow at Alva’s lab at the same time, and both places are trying to pull him to their side in order to exploit his powers. The process tears Fred apart, both physically and psychologically – leaving in his place a giant, all-powerful, scary-looking being calling himself RIFT. He even does the “Fred Bentson is no more!” thing, so you know shit’s getting real.
As for Superman, he’s losing his patience with the Blood Syndicate, especially after they dare to mess with the hair.
After some more fighting, Superman finally convinces them that this isn’t Dakota, it really is Metropolis from the comics. They’re like “ah, okay, not our problem then” and head back to Paris Island… just as Rift grows so large that he’s able to pick up the entire island and throw it in the ocean, creating a massive tsunami wave that seems to be about to wipe out what’s left of Metropolis.
NEXT IN “WORLDS COLLIDE”: Shit gets even more real! (But not real enough to impact the other Superman titles.)
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