Mann

"You don't get it, do you?" said Henry. "I'm a destroyer of worlds now! You can't stop me!"

"A destroyer?" replied the old man. "I am a /creator/ of worlds. Now end this, or I will."

Reality began to fray at Henry's fingertips as he gathered power to himself. The real power, not the parlor tricks he'd been using. "You still can't stop me. What are you going to do, make more worlds? I'm just as powerful as you are!"

"Oh dear." The old man sighed. "This is what dualism does to you. You think that just because two things are opposite, they must also be equal." He snapped his fingers, and the fraying stopped.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Henry tried to summon the power back. It was there, he could feel it, but he couldn't quite reach it.

"I'm going to finish this before you cause any more damage." It might have been Henry's imagination, but the old man seemed so much larger now. No, not larger. But more… present. More solid. More real than anything he'd seen before. "I happen to be quite fond of this world, for any number of reasons. I'm certainly not about to let the likes of you hurt it."

"P-please don't…" The words crumbled on Henry's tongue.

"I won't kill you," said the old man. "In fact, quite the opposite. I'm going to give you what you want."

"What I want?"

"I'm giving you worlds worthy of your destruction."

And everything vanished.


"Moons of the Netherworld! What villain approacheth?" asked the alien war god.

"I don't know, Xenthir," said Uncanny Man, the leader of the League of Righteous Heroes. "But I know trouble when I see it coming."

"But Uncanny Man," his girlfriend, the Amazing Girl said, "What if we can't stop him?"

"Then we go down fighting, like heroes!" her boyfriend replied, striking a heroic pose.

The stranger approached. He was dressed simply, in blue jeans and a faced blue t-shirt. His hair was unwashed, his cheeks hollow, his eyes empty. "My name is Eschaton," he said. "I am doomed to end your world."

"Doomed?" said Xenthir. "By whom hast this doom befallen thee?"

"By the beginning."

"What do you think?" George Martinez looked at his publisher hopefully.

Max Sim looked over the lovingly drawn panels again and sighed. "I'm sorry, kid. You're an okay artist, but Jack Kirby would call this dialog wooden. And the characters read like the worst parts of the Silver Age. I'd say scrap the whole thing."

"Ah," George said, looking downcast.

"Though…" Max looked over the page again. "I kind of like this Eschaton character. Maybe try him with one of those other projects you showed me. Maybe something will click."

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