Reign of the Supermen #226: Anti-Matter Ultraman

Source: JLA: Earth-2 GN (2000)
Type: Alternate EarthGrant Morrison never really accepted the results of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, did he? First he brought back a lot of the deleted characters for a meta-textual story in Animal Man, and then years later, "single Earth" be damned, he introduced a counter-Earth in JLA: Earth-2. Though Crisis maintained that no other parallel Earths existed, only other DIMENSIONS, Morrison squarely planted a parallel Earth in the Anti-Matter Universe known only really as the home of Qward (a notion taken from a Qwardian Crime Syndicate story in Justice League Quarterly #8). This "Earth-2" really took its cues from the pre-Crisis Earth-3, and included a new version of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika (sic). Its Ultraman, quite different from his pre-Crisis homologue, is Lt. Clark Kent, a very human astronaut who gets into trouble trying to break the hyperspace barrier, is saved and "repaired" by aliens, getting Superman's battery of powers and a touch of madness in the process. His powers, at least initially, are dependent on his proximity to Anti-Kryptonite. He's married to Superwoman (this world's Lois Lane), but she's Owlman's lover. And he knows about it, which must really suck.
As often happens, the popularity of Morrison's rejuvenated concepts have made other writers bring them back, and this Ultraman and his Crime Syndicate is no exception. Most recently in JLA, Brave and the Bold and Trinity, where they were seen to have turned their Earth into a hellworld. I heard Apokolips was jealous. So Morrison, as if at the behest of comics pundits rolling their eyes in unison every time the reverse-JLA showed up, finally put Ultraman out of his misery at the end of Final Crisis where, having been turned into a vampire in Superman Beyond...
...he is destroyed by a well-placed energy ring stake.

But that isn't the end, is it? Ultraman returns... next week!

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