Conquering the Universe through Good (with time travel)

[johnreiter902]

So, I had this idea knocking around in my head for years, how a supervillain could use time-travel to erase all the member of the JLA from history, without doing anything evil. In fact, all his missions would involve good deeds.

I've bounced around a bit on motivations. My main idea is that the villain decides there is some cosmic karma working against him (or maybe doing evil naturaly invites opposition). In either case, he decides that instead of going into the past and killing the heroes so he can conquer the world, he will go into the past and help them, passing himself off as a hero. . . and thus leave the present day devoid of heroes to oppose him.

Superman - He goes back to krypton and arrests Black Zero before he can use his planetary detonator. He then turns Black Zero over to Tomar-Re

Batman - He nabs Joe Chill before he can shoot the Waynes, and then forces him to confess to the police that he was hired by Boss Moxon. Moxon and Chill are sent to jail.

Wonder Woman - He lures Ares into a magical trap, from which he will no longer be able to influence the mortal world, so Aphrodite does not decide to send a champion to Man's World

Green Lantern - He saves Abin Sur's ship before it can crash

Flash - He deflects the lightning bolt before it can hit Barry Allen

Martian Manhunter - He rescues J'onn shortly after he is stranded on Earth and returns him to his family on Mars

Aquaman - He opens a hole in the radiation barrier over the Earth so that the Atlanteans can escape into space when the continent sinks

Green Arrow - He rescues Oliver Queen from Star Island right after his shipwreck

Atom - He rescues the cavers from the cave in before Ray decides to use his shrinking lens on himself. As a result, Ray doesn't learn that he can survive being shrunk

Hawkman - He captures Byth before he can escape Thanagar and turns him over to the Hawk Police.

[DocQuantum]

I like it. Sounds a bit like Earth-A, but with the premise focusing more on the "good deeds" than on crooks being substituted for the heroes in history.

This could be a very interesting Elseworlds.

I would prefer to have the villain think he or she is doing something noble, but it backfires on him in the end. Who will help him protect the Earth when an alien invasion comes, and he is the only "hero" in existence?

Of course, he might use time travel in this instance as well somehow, but eventually the universe is going to be so stretched out it will snap back into place in ways that he couldn't have predicted. There are rules to time travel that prevent much history from being changed, and even if it's possible there are always unforeseen consequences.

[dans]

I would be interested in any new heroes that were created because of the absence of the existing heroes. Also as Doc mentioned, some of the unexpected consequences of making these kind of changes to history.

Also point out that if this bad guy knows exactly how to alter history as John describes, he has access to an awful lot of secret information going into his 'heroic' career. How does he know that preventing the murder of the Waynes will prevent the origin of the Batman? Or that blocking 'this' particular lightning bolt will prevent the origin of the Flash?

But definitely interested in seeing some of the unexpected consequences of changing the past...

[johnreiter902]

My idea for an ending was something similar to the Challenge of the Super-Friends Episode "Secret Origins of the Superfriends"

The villain returns to the present day, only to find that there is still a Justice League, made up of different heroes, who then defeat him and fix history

[johnreiter902]

Aug 7, 2023 1:23:31 GMT dans said:

Also point out that if this bad guy knows exactly how to alter history as John describes, he has access to an awful lot of secret information going into his 'heroic' career. How does he know that preventing the murder of the Waynes will prevent the origin of the Batman? Or that blocking 'this' particular lightning bolt will prevent the origin of the Flash?

I think I would make him a time traveler from the future, where the heroes origins are common knowledge. Either that, or he simply stalked their timelines until he learned all the details of their origins.

[redsycorax]

Except that on the original Earth-Five, the Earth-One Batman and Robin did prevent an alternate universe Thomas and Martha Wayne from being killed, and yet Bruce Wayne was inspired enough by the mysterious stranger to become a Batman anyway- or Scorpion, Owl, Iron Knight or Shooting Star, given what else might have served as his inspiration? Unlike Earth-Five, Earth-One wasn't totally bereft of heroic myth.   It might also have been the case that given Gotham's entrenched violent criminal underworld, another individual would have surfaced as substitute for Bruce- in the new Multiverse, Barbara Gordon/Batgirl has served in that role on some AUs because Jim Gordon or his wife died long before their time?

As for Abin Sur, would Hal Jordan (or John Stewart, or Guy Gardener) been selected as Abin's replacement when the time came anyway and when the ring was instructed to select them as the most courageous being with the strongest willpower in that interstellar sector? Being a Green Lantern Corps member isn't exactly a risk-free occupation. Any villain would have had to keep constant surveillance on Abin and prevent him from being killed in other situations. This suggests a villain of some technological aptitude. 

As for the Flash, a simpler  possibility might have been to alter the composition of chemicals in his lab so that they weren't the admixture that gave him (and later, Wally West) superspeed.

As for Hawkman and Hawkwoman, would another Thanagarian or alien villain than Byth have escaped to Earth and required their pursuit anyway? (Although I acknowledge that might be a more distant proposition than some of the others- even so, Thanagar does seem aware of Earth's existence).

If Krypton hadn't been destroyed, then would another alien with similar capabilities end up on Earth anyway? Earth-One's universe does seem to have numerous analogues of Superman or Supergirl, as well as Krypton and Earth themselves. Mon-El comes to mind, for instance. It might be possible to get his vulnerability to radioactive lead fixed through invention of Brainiac 5's anti-lead serum a millennium beforehand so he could substitute for Superboy and Superman. 

Wonder Woman might still have fallen in love with Steve Trevor once he'd washed up on Themiscyra anyway; even if Ares was out of the picture, he had relatives and ancillaries like Bellona, Phobos, Deimos and others to carry on the deity of war 'portfolio'- and then there's the question of the exact extent of Olympian deity control over earthly affairs and the old philosophical chestnut about free will and determinism at work there. To what extent did Ares provoke war and to what extent were bad human decisions to blame?  Perhaps wipe out the Amazons millennia beforehand through plague or warfare, so Wonder Woman was never created by Hippolyta, because she was already dead?