WRITER: Dan Jurgens
PENCILER(s): Dan Jurgens
INKER(s): Norm Rapmund
COLORS: Hi-Fi Colours
LETTERS: Sal Cipriano

CHARACTERS: Booster Gold (Michael Jon Carter); Skeets; Rip Hunter; Black Beetle; Kyle Rayner; Zatanna; Raven; Trigon

PLOT:
Booster regains consciousness, finding himself surrounded by the bloody and beaten corpses of the Teen Titans. Warriors who one day would become some of Earth's greatest heroes. But no longer. The only surviving member of the team is Raven. Thanks to her empathic abilities she can sense the legitimacy of Booster's claims. The arrival of a wounded (but still breathing) Rip Hunter only solidifies the reality of the threat. But since the Black Beetle's identity and real history is nearly as elusive as Hunter's, there's no way to travel to the past and beat him. The three must traverse forward in this new timeline in order to find and defeat the Black Beetle.

Dick Grayson is dead. And a terrifying new timeline begins to unfold giving birth to a nightmarish timestream. One in which Trigon (along side the ubiquitous Black Beetle) is able to conquer the earth, ravage it and reign over it - touting it to his enemies and allies as his greatest conquest. In the original timeline, Batman was there to help the Justice League fend off the advances of the treacherous Trigon. But when Bruce Wayne fell, with no Robin there to replace him, the Justice League not only lost their greatest tactician - but in many ways, the heart of their team as well. And that's exactly how the Earth came to resemble the wasteland stretching out before Booster and the others.

Their arrival does not go un-noticed. Skeet's acquisition of the new timestream's historical data lands him on the radar of one very much alive Lex Luthor who is also in league with the Beetle. Beetle orders that the visitors be monitored, but has other matters to attend to. Without the advanced armor that adorns the Black Beetle, his own shadowy master back in their time station is unable to traverse the chronal waves of time himself. But whoever this strange dark timemaster is, he's driven by the need to see the JLA crippled. So it is up to the Beetle to transmit images of the fallen Earth back to the base. Images that the stranger is more than pleased to behold.

But not all of the heroes on Earth are dead and gone. There remains a hidden underground resistance faction. One whose emissaries Kyle Rayner and Zatanna encounter Booster and the others while above ground. Shocked to see heroes they had long since assumed were dead, Kyle and Zatanna escort the time travelers to their hidden base. But upon arrival they become under attack by a horde of Trigon's winged sentries. Booster sends the rest on while he stands alone against the sentries but he's soon taken hostage. The flying beasts transport him across the land, depositing him directly onto the skull enforced castle of Trigon where he finds himself face to face with the red devil himself!

CHARACTERS: Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes); Dr. Alan Von Neuman Jr.; Brenda Del Vecchio; Paco; Professor Maria Boole; Black Beetle

PLOT:
When Dr. Von Neuman created THINKO! and the Unimates, he created them without emotion. Pure robotic might with no love, compassion or empathy of any kind. And because of that it was so easy for them to do such evil things. So when Von Neuman created his daughter Maria (yes, she's an android) he gave her the gift of the ability to feel. He never dreamed that one day she'd come to loathe the responsibility of emotion. Trapped in a well of sadness and vulnerability, Maria sent her own robotic children to break her father out of jail so that he could remove her emotions from her. His subsequent refusal to do so is exactly why he is chained up next to Paco in Maria's basement.

But the basement is soon turned into more of an open-air porch when Maria (now free of her human skin and in pure android exoskeleton form) sends Jaime flying through the rafters, crashing to the Earth below. She awakens her children and sics them on Jaime and while the battle ensues, Brenda goes and releases Paco and Dr. Von Neuman, pleading with him for a way to shut Maria down. He gives her the information she needs but in order to remove the power-core, she'll have to get close to her - something not easily acheived.

Nevertheless, Brenda pushes on and approaches the android, trying to find a common ground. She explains and recounts her own attempts to ignore her own emotions for Paco and the heartbreak it's caused. For a moment, Maria is stopped in her tracks. And a moment is all they need! Jaime reaches into Maria's core and rips out her power supply. As the metal skeleton collapses to the floor it's clear that she finally got what she wanted - a world without feeling.

Paco and Brenda are escorting Von Neuman upstairs on his way back to prison when suddenly Jaime's scarab starts going wild. He's already dealt with it going homicidal and that problem seems to be solved but this is something else entirely! Turning around Jaime is shocked to find none other than the Black Beetle standing over Maria Boole's body. Smirking, he scoops her up into his arms before disappearing back into the time stream!