WARNING: The following article contains SPOILERS through Justice League #4
-
The multiverse of DC Comics is in a state of flux, with strange energies changing the laws of physics and seemingly improbable events occurring in defiance of conventional wisdom regarding what is and isn't possible. This his how some of the Justice League's most powerful found themselves defeated by a baby.
Previous issues of Justice League and The Flash revealed the existence of The Still Force - a cosmic balance to The Speed Force, which Barry Allen and other speedsters tap to achieve superhuman velocities. The existence of an equal and opposite Still Force devoted to inertia was first theorized by a super-villain called The Turtle, whose experiments to prove his theories gave him some minor ability to interfere with The Flash's connection to The Speed Force.
Despite this, nobody took The Turtle seriously as a threat or gave his ideas any serious consideration. Nobody, that is, except for Lex Luthor!
Related: The Flash Discovers The Power Beyond The Speed Force
One subplot of Justice League saw Lex Luthor establishing a team of like-minded individuals to assist him in seeking out seven unique energies that Luthor believed held the key to restoring the natural order in the wake of the current collapse of reality. The Still Force, Luthor found, was the first of these unique powers and it had been used to contain the other theoretical energies. Shockingly, the key to The Still Force lay with a newborn human infant, whom Luthor entrusted to the telepathic Flash villain Gorilla Grodd.
Justice League #4 revealed that the baby was The Turtle, who had been reborn three times as a result of his experiments but had finally developed the connection to The Still Force he had sought for years. With Grodd lending his telepathic might to the infant, the two were able to boost their powers by a considerable magnitude. Not only was The Turtle able to stop The Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman dead in their tracks, but Grodd was able trick Wonder Woman and Aquaman into fighting one another, using an illusion to make them see one another as The Cheetah and Black Manta.
Grodd and The Turtle saved their best trick for last,however, siphoning off The Speed Force energy that Barry Allen expended trying to break free of their influence. This was used to fully charge The Still Force, stopping the expansion of the universe and breaking the barrier that was holding back The Invisible Emotional Spectrum.
With Sinestro now recruiting the largest Lantern Corps in history, made up of beings from around the universe who have been taken over by their own repressed urges, things are looking bleak indeed for the Justice League.
More: DC Reveals The TRUE Opposite To Flash's Speed Force
Justice League #4 is now available from DC Comics.
