Comic Book / Absolute Power (2024)

(aka: Absolute Power)

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Warning: Absolute Power is a direct sequel to events in Dawn of DC, Batman (Chip Zdarsky), Superman (2023), House of Brainiac, Green Arrow (2023) and Green Lantern (2023) so Late Arrival Spoilers for those comics may be unmarked on this page.

Absolute Power is a Summer 2024 comic book event from DC Comics, a Crisis Crossover set in the shared The DCU. Primarily created by writer Mark Waid with art by Dan Mora, the event is the conclusion of the Dawn of DC initiative.

After having been built up as the Big Bad of the Dawn of DC era over the last year and a half, Amanda Waller is finally ready to make her move against the heroes and villains of the DC Universe. With the military and strategic might of the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh (now Failsafe) and the alien technology of the Brainiac Queen, Waller will seek to steal the abilities of every hero and villain across the DCU — forcing the Trinity to lead the charge to stop this Trinity of Evil.

The first part of the event was released July 2024. Following the conclusion of the event, a new initiative, DC All In started in October 2024. Besides the involvement of Superman and Batman, it has nothing to do with the 2005 Absolute Power story line told in Superman/Batman.

Absolute Power provides examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Amazos of Task Force VII all soon become unreliable as an unintended consequence of absorbing the heroes' powers affecting their programming.
• Alliance of Alternates: Each Amazo on Task Force VII is run by the downloaded consciousness of a Zur-En-Arrh from an alternate reality, accumulated in Batman's mind during his trip across the Multiverse and transferred into Failsafe.
• Ambiguous Situation: Dreamer taunts Waller by suggesting she has one of her infamous brain bombs implanted inside her. She leaves Waller without confirming if it is true or not.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Batman notes that "Paradise Lost" (the Wonder Woman Amazo) seems to talk like a Victorian, presumably indicating that its animating consciousness is Gotham by Gaslight Zur-En-Arrh. "Last Son" (the Superman Amazo) also talks in a rather stilted manner, and may be run by the Zur-En-Arrh of Batman '66.
• Arc Welding:
  • While bringing the Amanda Waller Myth Arc that's been running through Dawn of DC (which started in the epilogue of Dark Crisis) to a head, the press release reveals the event will also be merging threads from Batman (Chip Zdarsky) and Superman (2023) (and House of Brainiac in particular). Indeed, the cover for Absolute Power #1 shows Waller joined by Failsafe and the Brainiac Queen.
  • In the lead-up to the event, it's become more apparently that Green Arrow (2023) and Green Lantern (2023) have plot threads that bleed into the events in terms of Amanda Waller being the reason that the Arrowfam have been separated since the events of Cry For Justice in the first place with Ollie now being under Waller's employ and Amanda Waller being allied with Thaaros, the corrupt leader of the United Planets. And while Waller isn't responsible for the mistrust of speedsters in The Flash (Simon Spurrier), she certainly takes advantage of it.
• Assimilation Backfire: The Amazos of Task Force VII assimilating the powers of the heroes disrupted their programming and causes their behavior to become erratic.
  • Last Son absorbs the Superman family's powers, developing a self-righteous hero complex and "conscience" over killing a defenseless Parasite.
  • Depth Charge gets feedback of the aggressive instincts of a shiver of sharks he's controlling, and "pacifies" Atlantis instead of forcing them to become allies.
  • Jadestone goes through the same experience of death, life and power that Alan went through after absorbing the Starheart and begins defying its programming.
  • Velocity absorbs the Flash family's powers and, by analyzing Barry Allen's memories to figure out how their powers work, develops an obsession with him that's similar to Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse-Flash.
• Back from the Dead: Dreamer sacrifices herself restraining Brainiac Queen in the self-destructing Fortress of Solitude and is consumed by the explosion. But Jon's dreams of her and lingering unresolved feelings while he was under Brainiac Queen's control pulled her mind into the Dreamscape, where she was able to put herself back together in time to foil Waller's plans.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Bonus points for being a gambit that manages to fool even Batman himself. Waller mass-produces fake news footage of superheroes going on murderous rampages, turning the public against its heroes. She does this expecting that the superhero population will rally together and try to create a counter-narrative, at which point she unleashes her Amazos to de-power and capture them all.
  • Nightwing, Mr. Terrific and Artemis pull one in #3: knowing Jon would somehow find Themyscira, they set up a trap where, once Jon sets foot on the island, he’s hit with the island’s magic. It’s enough, with Nightwing’s help, to free him from Brainiac Queen’s grasp.
• Beware the Superman: Waller's primary justification is that superheroes have gotten too much leeway and that the human population needs a balance of power restored. To this end she indoctrinated an impressionable amnesiac Brainiac Queen with a simulation of a life under constant threat from superheroes and has her pump out endless propaganda to convince the public that superheroes have gone on murderous rampages. They certainly haven't, but Waller is rationalizing taking action under the possibility they easily could. Notably, supervillains are left entirely out of any argument.
• Big Bad: Amanda Waller.
• Bittersweet Ending: Waller's reign of terror is brought to an end and she's imprisoned for her crimes. The heroes have won and cleared their names, but not everyone got their powers back once Task Force VII was defeated; some heroes, like Fire and Ice, have their abilities swapped, while others, like Plastic Man, have lost their abilities to random people around the world. In addition, Earth-0 has been cut off from the rest of the multiverse. As fitting for a Crisis-level event, a Flash made a Heroic Sacrifice; in this case, it's Barry Allen, as him cutting off Earth from the rest of the multiverse has cost him his powers. However, the story ends on an optimistic note with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman telling Green Arrow about their plans to build a bigger and more proactive Justice League.
• Bland-Name Product: Issue #3 has what is most definitely not a pinata of Son Goku.
• Blatant Lies: Waller claims she's not a sociopath and that she won't hurt any innocents in her crusade. But the events of the story take place after she coerces Dreamer into working for her by holding Dreamer's family hostage and has Bizarro assassinate the fairly elected and just president of Gamorra just to turn it into a Puppet State. Even the cold-blooded Failsafe gives an aside look of disbelief when he hears Waller say this. Never mind her role in orchestrating the events of Titans: Beast World, which resulted in the deaths of millions, solely to villainize the superhero community. Even the rookie Airwave knows Amanda is full of shit due to her snatching up the heroes' powers endangering those who designated crisis workers cannot reach due to the danger levels of the life-threatening hazard surrounding them.
• Body Horror: Jon is transformed into a cyborg by Brainiac Queen to hunt for the remaining heroes, with most of his upper body, right arm, and half of his face replaced by cybernetics. His reaction to the destruction of the Fortress of Solitude makes it clear that he's aware of what's happening but is utterly powerless to control himself. In Issue #3, after his brainwashing and cybernetic parts are removed, his body is still left scarred and bleeding, and he seems to be missing an eye.
• Brought Down to Normal
  • What happens to the world's superheroes when the Amazos of Task Force VII steal their abilities. In the end, while most of the heroes regain their powers, some superpowers (like Plastic Man's) end up with random people, leaving their original owners powerless.
  • Barry Allen loses his connection to the Speed Force after shutting down Waller's Multiversal Gate.
• Came Back Strong: Dreamer, killed back in issue #2, is revealed to have come back to life in the final issue, her powers upgraded so that she can enter other people's minds and alter them psionically.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Dreamer is essentially brought back to life through this method; after her body was killed, Jon Kent thought about her so much that he essentially willed her back to life from whatever was left of her essence on the dream plane.
• Continuity Overlap: Absolute Power begins immediately following the events of Joshua Williamson and Rafa Sandoval's House of Brainiac crossover (with the Absolute Power: Ground Zero one-shot bridging the gap).
• Continuity Snarl: In Task Force VII #6, Jet of the Global Guardians is explicitly stated to be deceased when her powers are stolen from the Well of Souls on Themyscira. The very next issue shows her alive and active alongside the other Global Guardians.
• Copied the Morals, Too: It's outright stated that Task Force VII's absorption abilities are slightly more powerful than intended and that they're absorbing bits of their targets morals along with their superpowers. This throws off their functionality, which Failsafe attempts to address by rebooting them.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover to the second issue of Absolute Power: Task Force VII depicts Niles Caulder and Degenerate, when the only Doom Patrol members who show up in the event are Robotman, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl and Beast Girl.
• Crazy-Prepared: Waller's plan seemingly covers every avenue of escape that the superheroes have, having used her resources and technology to seal off the microverse, the multiverse, the timestream, and broker a deal with the United Federation of Planets to seal off the Earth from alien interference. Even with Failsafe and Brainiac Queen helping her, Amanda managed to miss a few spots, however.
  • The New Global Guardians and Eurocorps show she hadn't accounted for Mirror Universe travel, but fortunately for Waller, they decide to use it purely for getting into Western Europe more quickly when an Amazo starts kidnapping people there. They ultimately prove incapable of stopping the Amazo, and end up taking two more European super teams down with them. Still, Waller's oversight ends up being a plot point in a future DC crossoverwhere the super villain Mirror Master is revealed to have exploited it.
  • Power Girl volume 3 shows that Symbio and Ejecta have not only managed to hide away in the overlooked extra dimensional realm of Dolira, but from there have been skimming some of the powers Task Force VII steal for their own purposes. Unfortunately for our heroes, Symbio and Ejecta want to destroy them just as much as Amanda Waller does, though their end goal is opposite of the evil trinity's apparent muggle power. Unfortunately for the evil duo, Task Force VII is defeated before they can complete their own projects, though Ejecta's still confident she can at least destroy Power Girl with what she managed to maintain.
• Crisis Crossover: DC's Summer 2024 event.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: With the immense power the Amazo's possess, including the majority of heroes losing their powers with the challenge of facing Waller's own group, leaves the heroes very much incapable of fighting a head-on battle. With dozens of heroes being captured, stripped of their powers, then thrown in jail every issue. Even so, using their smarts and experience, core members such as the Trinity and others manage to always slip past capture by the Amazos and even do damage against them before being forced to run.
• Curb-Stomp Battle
  • The initial face offs with the unsuspecting heroes and the Amazos aren't very challenging for the latter at all. As the story goes on the heroes not depowered do get better at fighting off or escaping from Task Force VII Amazos, but it takes awhile before anyone truly beats one
  • Even with no wonderful powers and her arms not fully healed, Wonder Woman still makes short work of Sarge Steelthanks to an unfinished tactical suit
  • At the finale of the event, thanks to a virus all of Task Force VII have their timelines reversed, the stolen powers released from them, and their energy drained. The army of heroes surrounding them make very quick work of them.
• Curse Cut Short: Dreamer is shocked by the brutality of the assault on the Fortress of Solitude and how Jon's mind is being manipulated. So she helps the superheroes escape and holds Brainiac Queen back in the last seconds before the self-destruct sequence is complete, telling Waller that she can go f- -
• Deal with the Devil: When Superman and Zatanna enter the Oblivion Bar, Neron appears to offer them a deal in exchange for restoring Superman's powers.
• Death Is Cheap: John Starr aka Time Commander previously died in the pages of Batman: Urban Legends. In the prelude issue, Waller easily uses his hourglass to reverse this so she can recruit him.
• Depending on the Writer: Every issue of Task Force VII is from the viewpoint of a different Amazo and written by a different writer. While the first two are clear that Last Son and Depth Charge have animating consciousnesses, derived from the multiversal Zur-En-Arrhs and becoming muddled with personality traits from the metas whose powers they copy, the third portrays Jadestone as just a robot following his programming, until he's given a spark of free will from duplicating Alan Scott's power ring.
• Didn't Think This Through
  • Many of the "meta humans" Waller has imprisoned were citizens of sovereign nations, some of which have leverage over the United States. As such she causes the North American economy to start tanking. She had no considerations for the economic consequences her campaign
  • When Superman and Zatanna are forced to retreat to the Oblivion Bar, Kid Warlock attempts to confront Superman in the belief that he'll be easy pickings now that he has no powers, but Superman still defeats his old foe, pointing out that lacking powers doesn't change the fact that he's always been vulnerable to magic and has long since learned to adapt to such weaknesses.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Some "meta humans" like the Martians never were human, their "powers" in including Super-Strength, being part of their natural being. While weaker after their brushes with Amazos, they're now more likely to cause unintentional injury and destruction, having no idea how "human" strength works, much less how to gauge the amount of force they should put into anything.
• Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit: Ted Kord mocks Aztek's helmet as looking ridiculous.
• Engineered Public Confession: As Waller rants about how she's still convinced everyone that the heroes are dangerous, Nightwing reveals that the restored Air Wave has been broadcasting Waller's confession live across the world, so now everyone knows that she was manipulating the situation for her own agenda.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Failsafe reboots the Amazos of Task VII in an attempt to purge them of the morals they've absorbed from the heroes, reasoning that it shouldn't cause any problems. Velocity's reboot causes it to stop pursuing Barry, allowing Barry to escape and head towards Waller's base in Gamorra.
• Entitled Bastard: Due to being programmed as being the new heroes, some of the Amazos show signs of this. In particular:
  • Depth Charge loses it when everybody would rather listen to Aquaman than him. Claiming that they should be obeying him, even though Aquaman's actions in calming the people could have benefited him greatly. Doesn't help that he was influenced by the sharks killer instinct.
  • When Velocity captures Barry, he proclaims that Central City deserved him as the hero.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: While Waller manipulated the Brainiac Queen into being her pawn, she does seem to show some sentiment of love to her, as she requests Failsafe unplug her from the simulation she was in early so she wouldn't be alone. In Issue #3, she becomes absolutely furious when she thinks Jon hurt Brainiac Queen, doing an emergency override and swearing to kill Jon. The feeling is mutual, as the Queen sees her as her own mother.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Time Commander looks into the future to see what will come of Waller's machinations, and is absolutely horrified.
• Everyone Has Standards: Sarge Steel has misgivings about Amanda's motives, since he recognizes just how badly she wants to take down the world's superheroes. As he puts it, a simple want can be achieved, but a desire as big as Waller's can never truly be satisfied.
• Evil Counterpart: Waller's Trinity of Evil (with herself, Zur, and the Brainiac Queen) is clearly meant to mirror Clark, Bruce, and Diana's role as the heroic Trinity.
• Evil Gloating: Once she's been defeated, Waller starts angrily ranting about how the heroes' victory is pointless since she's successfully turned the world against them. Nightwing, being Genre Savvy, anticipated this and had Airwave ready to broadcast her confession to the entire world.
• Evil Laugh: Black Adam cackles while torturing First Son, untruthfully claiming he feels sorry for the ignorant copy robot
• Fabricated Evidence
  • Amanda Waller creates the appearance of a metahuman crisis by having the Brainiac Queen generate craploads of fake footage of superheroes on a rampage.
  • Sarge Steel promotes Steve Trevor and gives him an office at Amanda Waller's Black Site, intending entrap Steve Trevor in a crime so Sarge can arrest Steve and imprison him there. Upon arriving, Steve sees through the plan, so Sarge just arrests him without even bothering to fabricate evidence
• Face–Heel Turn: Following up his arc from his own title and what was seen of him in The Flash, Green Arrow apparently joins Waller's crusade, telling Batman that superheroes don't do nearly enough to truly change the world. Ultimately subverted; he had Martian Manhunter plant a false personality that would side with Waller and pass any telepathic scans so that he could infiltrate her plans, his true agenda being restored at the right moment.
• Fantastic Racism
  • In the Superman tie-in, Ted Kord expresses suspicion towards any robots, offending Red Tornado to his face. When Reddy asserts his independence, Ted makes a crack that almost sparks a fight.
  • This whole messed up ordeal is brought upon the world due to one scorned housewife turned jealously embittered, manipulative bureaucrat who only hates superpeople because she felt they stole what was due from her. Only to guise it as a Beware the Superman crusade when, really, it just shows man's greatest enemy is Man Himself.
• Fate Worse than Death: Waller's final fate, from her perspective; she is not only sent to prison for what may be the rest of her life, but Dreamer has altered her brain so that, while Waller still technically remembers all the secrets she had access to, she cannot actually recall any of them. As the icing on top, she is left with the lingering thought of the possibility that she might have a bomb inside her head.
• For Your Own Good: Amanda started out as a volunteer advocate for a politician. Unpaid and working late, she missed out on a lot of time with her remaining family, and when called out on it justified it by saying everything she's doing is to insure their future. On its face this is clearly bull, as she's clearly on a quiet warpath to seek Misplaced Retribution against people that can gain what she feels has been denied her.
• Grand Finale: For the Dawn of DC publishing initiative and the Amanda Waller Myth Arc that began in the epilogue of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Heel–Face Turn: In Green Lantern #15, thanks to Alan's influence, Jadestone turns against Waller to protect Hal from Major Force and saves him from falling to his death. He takes Hal to Earth's power battery and decides to become its new guardian.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Waller discusses this and is fully willing to accept becoming a monster if she accomplishes what she believes is right. The problem lies in the obvious cognitive dissonance this requires.
• Head Butting Heroes: The Global Guardians and New Global Guardians don't get along, as the latter are wanted criminals, though the former never get around to formally arresting them because they help more than they harm, merely threatening to do so while strongly suggesting the "New" team attempt to somehow legally legitimize themselves. The Global Guardians are more friendly to Eurocorps, but they refuse to join, and none of these groups like Intercorps, though their allegiance becomes highly desirable in the face of Amanda Waller's international expansion.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic
  • Superman and Batman were building tactical suits for the Justice League before it disbanded. Only Flash's has a helmet, however. Justified, as they were unfinished, with many planned features never implemented. Once Superman makes it back to his Fortress of Solitude he tells the League members to just wear them and hope he finds time to give them upgrades.
  • Steve Trevor navigates Amanda Waller's Black Site prison after escaping two guards by wearing one of their helmets. For reasons not explained, he takes off this helmet when he comes across Amanda Waller, who naturally recognizes him and sends more helmet wearing guards after him.
• Hypocrite:
  • Brainiac Queen suggests pragmatically holding the heroes' loved ones hostage to draw them out of hiding which Waller shoots down, claiming she's not a sociopath. This is someone who regularly proposes the deaths of millions of innocents for The Needs of the Many, including during Beast World, which she instigated. Notably, as she's saying this, the panel focuses on Failsafe and Dreamer sharing a Meaningful Look, as she's holding Nia's family under threat to make her cooperate.
  • When Green Arrow reveals his Manchurian Agent role and J'onn's role in it, Batman is displeased at them hiding such a plan from him. While they didn't have time to discuss it after implementing it before the Amazos attacked, J'onn snarks that that was rich, coming from someone who constantly makes contingency plans without telling his friends. That earns J'onn an annoyed *tt* scoff from Bats.
• I Lied: Amanda freely cops to it when the President calls her out on spin doctoring. She says she doesn't care about what lies she has to say as long as those lies serve the preservation of democracy.
• Implacable Man: The Amazos are made more unstoppable by the fact that they have time technology integrated that resets any critical damage.
• Interquel: The Absolute Power: Ground Zero one-shot serves as a bridge between the Superman-centric House of Brainiac crossover and this event.
• Ironic Hell: Amanda Waller's ultimate fate: locked away like a common criminal in the prison she herself built, the memories of the meta community's secret identities and ways to take them down locked away.
• It's All About Me
  • Waller makes it increasingly clear that she considers herself the sole authority on Earth, capturing metahumans on both sides of the law and even from other countries, simply issuing a courtesy statement to China after capturing the Great Ten and blackmailing them to preempt their retaliating in any way.
  • Airwave voices what really frustrates him is that the heroes can't help normal people who first responders cannot get to in terse situations who they usually help right now because they're so focused on helping themselves in opposition to Waller's schemes.
• Killed Offscreen: Sandra Knight, the original Phantom Lady, apparently died at some point between her last appearance in 2011 and now, as her name appears alongside several other heroines and villainesses in the Well of Souls in Task Force VII #6.
• Lampshade Hanging: It's mentioned in an internal monologue from Steve Trevor that most of the supervillains are conspicuously absent, lampshading how much effort is directed towards persecuting heroes but the real problems from the superhuman community go unaddressed.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia
  • Magic users are dealt with by making them forget how to use their powers. This also happens to Jonathan Kent at the end of the first issue, as he is left wondering who he is while hooked up with wires from the Brainiac Queen.
  • Waller herself ends up subjected to this. Dreamer uses her enhanced powers to enter Waller's mind via her dreams and "move" her memories around. While all of the secrets Waller's learned are still in her mind, she's unable to actually access them.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In Suicide Squad: Dream Team, Waller put Dreamer through Hell in order to force her to level up her powers. At the end of this miniseries, Dreamer repays the "favor" by using her newfound control of the subconscious to take all of Waller's accumulated secrets and bury them so deep in her subconscious that she can't use those secrets ever again.
• Love Triangle: Super Son reveals that Jon also had feelings for Dreamer but could Never Spit It Out to her until after her Heroic Sacrifice.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Every hero collectively gets this when Waller deploys Task Force VII, which is made of Amazos, upon them, and their powers are taken away. Batman especially, as he starts to understand that they have underestimated Waller.
  Batman: I made a massive miscalculation! All this time I thought Waller was playing chess! That I could outwit her if I was just clever enough! But she's not playing chess! She's ROLLING TANKS!
• Malicious Slander: Issue one shows Amanda Waller hijacking all news sources to churn out fake footage of heroes going on murderous rampages (the system is even able to hack the Daily Planet despite Lois making it clear that she had no intention of publishing anything to support these claims without proper verification). This very effectively turns the public against heroes, leading to Animal Man getting seriously injured by an angry mob.
• Manipulative Editing: The White House condemns the Government Bureau of Sovereignty for its activities from issue #1, so Amanda has the President's next speech altered to punish him for trying to tell her what to do
• Manchurian Agent: Green Arrow calls himself this in the finale. Turns out that Martian Manhunter had psychically altered Ollie’s mind so that he can believe her motives, then break free after a time. J’onn didn’t expect to get captured so quickly, so he couldn’t warn the others.
• Mean Boss: Amanda Waller berates and insults the Amazos even when, to her knowledge, they're still simple machines the extra breath would be completely lost on. As Jade Stone does develop awareness, it contemplates killing Waller for her tone, but decides to follow its programming, but only follow Waller's orders to the bare minimum.
• Metaphorically True: As far as Waller is concerned, showing fake footage of heroes going on rampages isn't disinformation, because heroes have always been capable of that. Showing people what they're capable of if they go rogue is informing the public of their threat.
• Mirror Character:
  • Brainiac Queen ends up with Waller after Brainiac sent her away in an escape pod, when his attempt to reconstruct Colu was destroyed, where she was found and raised in a virtual simulation of farm life and raised on an ideology that becomes her moral center.
  • Waller is paralleled with Batman. They both suffered a tragic loss of family that would define a grim crusade for justice that would distance and alienate them from their friends and family. Batman is a rich white man that acquired vigilante justice by bringing Joe Chill to legal arrest, Amanda's husband simply ran out and killed the drug dealer that assaulted and murdered their daughter, but was condemned for his actions in a way that ruined their family. Waller overheard Joe being apprehended with the help of Batman and this colored her perception of superheroes.
• Misplaced Retribution: Amanda hates vigilante superheroes because she resents the fact that they can acquire justice where she can't, claiming it sets a bad precedent for the system. To this end she basically becomes the system, but rather than reforming it to provide what was denied her, she'd rather crush the superhero community under her heel first, and even shows no concern for the sovereignty of other countries so long as she gets what she wants.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: This series retcons that part of Amanda Waller's hatred/resentment of superheroes stems from the news of Batman and the GCPD capturing Joe Chill for killing the former's parents happening at the same time as the rape/murder of her daughter, Damita, and the mutual killing of her husband/Damita's father, Joe Sr., and Damita's attacker, Candyman; and feeling the capture of Chill overshadows what happened to her family.
• Moral Myopia: Waller regularly lobs criticisms at superheroes that directly apply to her own actions. Whenever she gets a much milder taste of her own medicine, she goes livid at the indignity.
• More than Mind Control: Essentially applies to Dreamer's manipulation of Waller's mind at the end; Waller still has all the facts she had gathered about the superhuman community in her mind, but Dreamer has ensured that Waller cannot actually remember them.
• Muggle Power: Issue one of the main title opens with a narration of a letter Waller sent to the president that superheroes are a clear and present danger to the public that humans need to take the power back from. She does this by inciting mass hysteria against them with fake footage that they've all become murderous. This leads to panicked mob responses from civilians that leave Animal Man, Black Lightning and his family hospitalized, and the Doom Patrol's mansion being burned down.
• Multiversal Conqueror: Discussed: Waller is on the path to it if not stopped, escalating from merely observing super heroes, high jacking news broadcast to air false reports about them, to altering the US President's broadcast speeches to fit her agenda and send a message, to kidnapping them without trial-hiring super villains in some cases to help only turn around and also imprison the villains, to "seceding" from USA to take her campaign to other countries. It's a very slow journey on the path, but she stares at a stolen map of the multiverse while privately admitting she aims to eventually spread her dominance to every known part of it, and technically already has much of "Earth Three", despite no longer being its official ruler.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Jon uses his connection to make Brainiac Queen realize she’s been lied to.
• N.G.O. Superpower: In the face of China demanding USA brand Amanda Waller a war criminal, hand her over, and give back the Great Ten, her Government Bureau of Sovereignty officially secedes from the United States, declares the Failsafe robot its commander-in-chief, and sends it to China to negotiate(threaten it into silence).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Carter Hall blames the success of the disinformation campaign on the Justice League, for disbanding. Green Arrow comes to the same conclusion independently. Ollie points out that having the League break up at the end of Dark Crisis and having the Titans shoulder the responsibility was a stupid move as it allowed Waller to make her play.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Sarge Steal promotes Steve Trevor and gives him a job at Amanda Waller's Black Site so that Sarge can entrap Steve in a crime and arrest him. Steve figures it out as soon as he sees his new office and calls Sarge out on it, so Sarge Steel has Steve Trevor arrested anyway, deciding to think of an excuse later, but Steve escapes and quickly gains intelligence on Amada Waller's operations, even gaining favor with guards he saves from a resisting super villain.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Amazons aiding the heroes to resist Amanda's machinations makes them her next target. This doesn't go without comment by either side.
• No Sympathy: When Jon tells Jay about Nia's death, Jay doesn't care. Justified as the pain of his loss is still fresh and far from allowing him to just forgive Nia like so.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Waller's focus issue implies part of her vendetta against superhumans is retribution over feeling powerless as a civilian when the system not only failed to get her family justice, but also posthumously condemned her husband seeking it. To this end she starts off supporting a politician she knows is dirty, who has some policies that are subtly authoritarian but she supports because he's anti-vigilante, all to make him a puppet on her path to power.
• Oh, Crap!: Batman and Catwoman are able to steal a Mother Box… And get the attention of Darkseid.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Waller appears on a public broadcast to announce that she is dispatching the ultimate solution to the worldwide superhuman attacks. Batman takes this as a sign that something is seriously wrong, as Waller would never show her face publicly like that unless she was sure she had already won.
• Order Is Not Good: The main motivation for the antagonists of the event come from a belief that superheroes are agents of chaos that are more trouble than they're worth and need to be ousted for world order to be instated.
• Parents as People: Waller ends up being this for both her actual children and Brainiac Queen.
  • For the former, despite Waller genuinely loving her children and wants what's best for them, years of neglect and her own daughter revealing her unscrupulous nature to her siblings cause all of them to disown her in general. Only one of her children, Jessie, shows a desire for the family to be reunited. But otherwise, Waller's own desires to defeat the heroes have left her estranged from her children and recently born granddaughter.
  • For Brainiac Queen, Waller is shown to be caring and loving towards her after years together in a simulation with the latter reciprocating it. However, like the above, even though Waller genuinely loves her, she had also groomed Brainiac Queen with her own hate of heroes and raised her with lies and deceit. The second Brainiac Queen sees Jon's memories of what the heroes truly were like, she becomes incapable of moving from realizing the truth.
• Post-Modern Magik: Paradise Lost invades Themyscira to raid the Well of Souls to drain superpowers from the souls of metahumans.
• Power Parasite: The Event Announcement reveals👁 Image
  Waller will seek to steal the powers and abilities of every hero and villain in the DC Universe (using the technology of the Brainiac Queen).
• Power Swap: At the end of the event, some heroes, like Fire and Ice, have their powers swapped around. Others, like Plastic Man, have lost their superpowers to random people around the world, necessitating a search to find them.
• Powers as Programs: The event's special centers around Waller stealing the powers and abilities of metahumans using the advanced technology of the Amazos. While the plan is foiled and the heroes have mostly regained their powers, some have gone to the wrong people.
• Propaganda Machine: One of the first things Amanda has Brainiac Queen do is use her vast computational power to hijack all news sources and broadcast fake footage of superheroes going on murderous rampages to sway public opinion against them. She gloats that mundane propaganda is really all you need to discredit superheroes to the public, no matter how much goodwill they earn. Nightwing and Air Wave do the same to her in the end in a Engineered Public Confession.
• Redemption Equals Life: Out of all the Amazos, only Jadestone chooses to defy his programming and instead become the Green Lantern Battery's new guardian. While it's unknown what happened to him with the virus that is stated to infect all the Amazos to reverse their timelines and release the stolen powers, he was also the only one to not be destroyed by the heroes.
• Replacement Goldfish: The end of Origins suggests that Amanda Waller sees Brainiac Queen as this as, by the end of the issue, Waller's family have all but disowned her and the final pages show her seeing the Queen fall to Earth.
• Reset Button: It turns out that the Amazos' indestructibility is due to them being linked to Starr's hourglass so that if they're ever heavily damaged they can turn time back to the moment before they were damaged. Oliver is able to reverse this by essentially infecting an Amazo with a computer virus that infects the entire network, simultaneously shutting down the Amazos and restoring the stolen powers to the heroes.
• Resistance Is Futile: Said almost word for word by the Amazos as they appear to defeat Earth's heroes.
• Retcon: A minor version. Origins keeps Amanda Waller's origin — that she lost her daughter to rape and murder and her husband to a retribution gone wrong — but adds on that this happened at the same time that Batman and the GCPD brought Joe Chill to justice for the death of the Waynes. Thus, she believes that metas have a hold on the police, despite Batman not being a "meta", in an expanded take on the "two justices" idea.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: When Amanda's husband Joseph learned what happened to their daughter, he went out with a gun and shot the drug dealer dead, dying from a knife wound. He's posthumously condemned as a criminal for this, as the charges against the drug dealer wouldn't hold up in court. Meanwhile, Amanda overhears from the news that Joe Chill, infamous murderer of the Waynes, was successfully incarcerated with the rumored aid of Batman.
• Rule of Seven: The team of Amazos built to steal all the powers of superheroes are referred to as Task Force VII, and are each modeled after individual members of the big seven Justice League members.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Discussed in Issue #3 by Air Wave. He's pissed at having lost access to his powers because of people counting on superheroes like him to fight the battles they cannot. The fact that there's nothing he, someone not even the same weight class as A-Listers like the Justice League, can do to help while being hunted down by the Amazos frustrates him to no end.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Subverted. When Waller is finally carted off to prison for her crimes, she claims she'll blackmail the heroes into breaking her out in due time. Unfortunately for Waller, Dreamer has psychically altered Waller's brain so she will never be able to recall any of the dirt she has on the superhero community.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • The events of Justice League Dark's fight with Amazo happen differently in the first issue than in Wonder Woman (2023). For example, the Justice League Dark are shown to be out in a plaza listening to Waller's broadcast during the initial attack, but in the Wonder Woman tie-in, they are in a hotel with no idea of what's happening right before they are attacked. Also, Spectre disappears when Waller makes all magic users forget how to use their powers while in Wonder Woman (2023), his powers are simply drained by Amazo.
  • In Task Force VII #2, Aquaman is referred to as Atlantis' king, but since the event takes place after Aquaman (2016), Atlantis should still be a democracy.
  • Issue #2 features a list of heroes who have and have not been incapacitated. Red Canary is suspiciously marked as red despite Green Arrow #13 running alongside it which definitely features her and the rest of the Arrowfam not captured.
  • The same issue also features Mister Terrific II supposedly meeting Air Wave for the first time, despite meeting him all the way back in JSA #12 by rescuing him from Kobra.
• Smug Snake: The second Wonder Woman tie-in has her and Damian taking turns playing Good Cop/Bad Cop to Captain Boomerang about the whereabouts of the facility Waller is imprisoning the heroes. Wonder Woman swears on The Power of Love and tries appealing to his better nature, while Robin tries a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique. When both their methods fail, they ultimately acquire the info they want from Boomer gloating about how he withstood their questioning and was never going to reveal what he just told them. Lampshaded by Robin pointing out to never underestimate the overconfidence of a Flash rogue.
• Spock Speak: Mark Waid has Wonder Woman speaking in this manner, in imitation of Tom King, though Waid still affords her the odd contraction. Waid and Stephanie Williams also apply it to Queen Nubia, slightly more consistently since she has less lines. Paradise Lost has more of this under Williams than King, as he gives the robot a literal Verbal Tic, except when Paradise Lost is directly quoting Amanda Waller.
• Stealth Pun: "Wonder Girl" Yara Flor is allowed to escape from an AMAZO robot, unaware of the fact Nia Nal, "Dreamer", is hiding within Yara's psyche, planning to ambush any "meta humans" still at large should Yara meet with them. As Flor doesn't remember her developmental years in Brazil, the nation she was taken away from, and is still more USA culturally even after returning to her native land, Yara was basically DREAMer👁 Image
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• Super Hero Packing Heat: Several of the "meta humans" who escape from Amazos still have their powers stolen in spite of it, forcing them to use whatever they can while continuing to evade capture. Plastic Man, Beast Boy, Wonder Girls Cassie Sandsmark and Yara Flor, Atom Smasher, Red Tornado and Starfire all take up firearms. Ray in particular expresses disgust with himself for having to, and ignorance on how they even work.
• Take That!: The first stage of Waller's endgame takes a shot at A.I. generated content by showing the damage it can do to people's reputations and livelihoods, as Animal Man's family is attacked over it while the Doom Patrol's home is burnt to the ground. The fact that it's mass-produced by an actual sentient A.I. acts as a warning for when current language learning models get more complex and truth becomes harder to discern from fiction.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Discussed but ultimately Played Straight. When Barry Allen meets up with Iris West to explain why he hasn't been around she immediately tells him to shut up, saying she can clearly tell his life is in danger and he shouldn't be wasting time trying to tell her the details. Seeing how Batman can belt out multiple speech bubbles worth of dialogue in between individual building swings however, Iris was clearly overreacting.
• Teleport Interdiction: Time Commander is conscripted by Waller to use his time machine to repair Failsafe. He attempts to escape with a jury rigged time machine but she already installed temporal routers in her base that only allows him to travel back to the same day he was recruited, into a cell. Oliver later states that Amanda has blocked all forms of extranormal travel, including to parallel universes or the microverse. That being said run of the mill teleportation is still on the table, both via boomtubes and modified Phantom Zone projectors.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Jay learns that Nia, however unwillingly, was complicit in the coup of Gamorra that killed his mom and swears he'll never forgive her and will one day make her pay.
• Threshold Guardians: Superman #17 reveals that Konfusion, the strange inverted Superman/Batman/Green Lantern fusion first introduced at the end of Dark Crisis, has been living in the Bleed, preventing anyone from the Multiverse to come aid anyone from Earth-0.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: The Fail Safe robot and the prototype Amazo models the Zur Batman was working on were damaged by the Batman family beyond the abilities of Amanda Waller's team to repair...so she had Time Commander retrieve them in the states they were in before they were so damaged. Whenever one of them gets too damaged extremely localized time travel is abused again to go back before that damage.
• Twilight of the Supers: Waller's plan boils down to this—the elimination of all superpowered beings from the Earth. The one who started her hatred in this take was the famously super power lacking Batman, however, and though she rails against vigilante justice, Batman was working with the Gotham police department.
• Tyke-Bomb: Although physically adult, Brainiac Queen has been mentally regressed to a feral child after the events of House of Brainiac. Waller raises her in a time dilated virtual simulation of farm life where they regularly defend their home against superheroes and Waller raises her on her ideology. This leads to Brainiac Queen being loyal to her and her cause when she emerges, believing that heroes don't deserve their power and should have it taken away.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Waller effectively takes over the United States and threatens the rest of the world.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: Ollie's meeting with the Trinity in Happy Harbor during the epilogue and after his Manchurian Agent gambit's revealed. Diana makes it clear that it's taking their collective willpower not to break Ollie's arms on the spot.
• Wham Shot: An unusually literal version of this trope. The first issue opens with Superman flying in to stop some robbers from taking off in a helicopter. One of the robbers shoots at him in a panic...and Superman actually feels it. He starts falling from the sky while bleeding profusely, indicating that his powers are now gone.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The event ends with the fates of Brainiac Queen, Sarge Steel and Jadestone unaccounted for. Since the latter two are involved with events in the Wonder Woman and Green Lantern titles, they'll most likely show up there. Brainiac Queen is another story.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Depressed and frustrated by the loss of his powers and inability to help others in need, Air Wave calls his power to turn into a broadcast signal with his helmet dumb compared to the powers of heroes like the League. There's a good bit of Dramatic Irony in this scene, given that more recent versions of him had incredible control over radio waves that led him to participate in events as big as Infinite Crisis. And yet, it's his command over the transmission of information that allows Nightwing to deliver Waller's Engineered Public Confession to the world above her own Propaganda Machine. This exonerates the superheroes of the world and finally pins Waller for her many, many crimes.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Jay takes Nia to task for being complicit in Waller's scheme, especially since it got his mother killed and put Gamorra under her control. He's unsympathetic that she was cooperating under threat to her family, arguing that she essentially traded her family for his.
  • Gets played both ways between Ollie and the Trinity in the epilogue. Ollie gets both barrels for his Manchurian Agent plan and Ollie concedes mistakes were made and he got in over his head. But he also chastises the Trinity for dissolving the Justice League after Dark Crisis, pointing out much of the trouble wouldn't have happened if traditional support systems and lines of communication had been left in place.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: During the final battle, Waller has the gall to start complaining that she "only" wanted to imprison the heroes, and that their "escalation" forced her to try and kill them all instead.
• Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer: Depth Charge takes a depowered Aquaman back to Atlantis and threatens them with an army of sharks to comply with the new order put forth by the Bureau of Sovereignty. Because he's using Aquaman and Beast Girl's powers to control the shiver of sharks, the feedback of their aggressive instincts means that when Aquaman concurs that his people should stand down, he takes it as a slight to his authority and starts a fight with Atlantis anyway by physically assaulting Arthur.
• The Worf Effect: Lots of heavy hitters get their powers drained and taken out but the worst is the House of Heroes getting taken out offscreen. Kimiyo Hoshi, who after Dark Crisis has been upgraded with the Light of Creation to a multiversal force, is the only apparent survivor and she's also been depowered by Waller's Amazos.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
  • Aquaman's reaction to his imminent death by drowning
  • Waller's reaction to Failsafe telling her that Task Force VII have absorbed bits of the heroes' morals along with their superpowers
  Waller: "You're telling me goodness is a %S#& superpower?"