Armageddon 2001 is one of my favorite DC events/crossovers. Full stop.

I realize that part of it was because I was 15 when it happened and in the full flower of my person Golden Age as a comic book reader and collector, but it also happens to be a really cool story that suffered from a change at the end that didn’t ruin the story (at least for me) but made it a lot weirder than it needed to be.

For those not familiar with Armageddon 2001, the basic plot is that one of the heroes of the DC Universe turns evil in the year 2001 (hence the name) and becomes a brutal dictator named Monarch. 20 years later a man named Matthew Ryder volunteers to be part of a time travel experiment and hopes to change the past and undo the damage Monarch has done. The experiment works…sort of…and Matthew Ryder becomes the time traveling Waverider, who can touch a person and see their potential future. Sent to the past, Waverider finds himself leaping from hero to hero, striving to find the one that becomes a villain, and hoping that the next hero will help him save the future.

(Cue Mike Post theme song.)

One of the main reasons Armageddon 2001 is so good is that it gets to have its cake and eat it too. We get to see potential futures for the heroes, which allows the writers and artists to tell bold stories that ultimately won’t happen but are still very entertaining. You could do just about anything, but you aren’t stuck having to deal with the ramifications of what happens during those stories. Normally this sort of thing bugs me, but when it’s baked into the premise it’s a lot easier to accept.

The creative team on the main book was a big draw too. Archie Goodwin wrote the first issue and Denny O’Neil wrote the second with Dan Jurgens drawing the entire thing. The annuals were, more often than not, really well done with the Superman annuals being personal favorites for obvious reasons.

I didn’t know about the last minute change to the story when the ending got leaked to a comics info phone line at the time, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to me and I’ve pretty much maintained that opinion. It is what it is. Does it make total sense? No. Is it a weird swerve right at the end? Yes, but that doesn’t really matter.

At least it doesn’t matter to me.

It’s weird to think that this was 35 years ago. As ever it both feels like three and a half decades and like it was just yesterday but that’s time for you.

Which is kind of ironic given the premise of the story.

More to follow…