BOHICA!

There is a scene in JLA: New World Order in which the white martians rage over the very idea that a mere human could be causing them so many problems, and an imprisoned Kal-El laughs at them and proclaims that Batman is the most dangerous man on the planet.

It's an idea I like, and it's not the only time that the idea of a man being more dangerous than a superman has appeared in a book I've really enjoyed. This weekend I reread a story that is perhaps the best example of this idea.  Why don't I tell you the basic premise and you see if you can follow along and guess which series I'm talking about?

The god-like Emperor of a parallel universe abducts one hundred beings from across our universe to test and study in advance of an invasion. The vast majority of his victims are powerful beings here in our universe, but find their powers corrupted and unreliably dangerous once they are spirited away to his universe. Yet even as the Emperor's men study and test the powerful specimens they have collected, a normal human caught up in all of this begins to devise a plan for escape. Can an ordinary man out-think a nearly omnipotent being, and lead a band of refugees in an uprising against the greatest threat to the known universe that has ever existed? 

Did you figure it out?

Judging by the pathetically low amount of respect that CrossGen Comics gets in polls that run constantly on this blog, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that almost none of you were able to guess that I was attempting to adequately describe the awesomeness that is Negation.

Obregon Kaine is the character at the heart of this series, as the military tactician commands much more powerful beings in an effort to save their lives, and escape from the clutches of the God-Emperor Charon. This series doesn't rest on one simple (and incredibly cool) premise though, as it ties in story threads that delve into the power of The First (a race of gods who claim they created the known universe,) the fate of the last survivors of Earth and the very nature of good and evil. This series is the foundational building block for the story that was meant to be the first official climax of every Crossgen series being published at that time; Negation War. It offers up an insight into fight and flight rebellion in a sci-fi genre that puts The Rebel Alliance to shame, and it does so with surprisingly few weak moments.

While I'm not terribly fond of the way that Tony Bedard comes off in his interview regarding this series, and I'm not sure I would have loved seeing him write to the conclusion he had in mind, I do think that he did an exceptional job of turning this into one of CrossGen's best series.  So good in fact that I'll nominate its entire 28 issue run (27 standard issues and one prequel) for the debate on Best Story Ever.

Seriously people, this is COOL.

Find it & read it.

Oh, and BOHICA?

Bend Over, Here It Comes Again!

Because that's what you say when things go from bad.......to worse.  And in this series?

That happens a lot.