Underworld Unleashed


Underworld Unleashed was a multi-title American comic book crossover event released by DC Comics in 1995. As well as the core storyline of the three-issue Underworld Unleashed miniseries, most of the issues of the DC Comics titles that were published in November and December 1995 and four one-shot issues that were published at the same time were also part of, or at least connected to, the event.
The main theme of Underworld Unleashed involved the then-new ruler of Hell, a demon-lord named Neron, offering first many of the DC Universe supervillains and then a number of the DC Universe superheroes various deals - in which they would be given their greatest desires in exchange for their souls or for completing a task for him - and the consequences of those deals.
Underworld Unleashed is one of the very few major DC Comics crossover events not to directly involve Superman; at the time of the event he was off-world and in outer space as part of a crossover storyline in the various Superman titles called "The Trial of Superman!". This is important to the Underworld Unleashed crossover event, since the superheroes involved are driven by the belief that Superman is the key to Neron's plans.

Plot

Five members of the Flash's Rogues Gallery - Captain Boomerang I, Captain Cold, Heat Wave, the Mirror Master III and the Weather Wizard - are approached with an offer by fellow Rogues Gallery member Abra Kadabra, who had become an agent of the demon Neron in exchange for true magical powers to replace his technology-based magical powers. Abra Kadabra persuades them to cause havoc by destroying five separate targets simultaneously, with the promise of "respect" and "a guarantee that they would be remembered forever, not as has-beens but as the most infamous villains of their age". But Neron's deals are demonic, twisted and unfair and they were not told that their actions would cost all of them their lives and unleash Neron upon Earth. All five are killed in the ensuing explosions, the flames of which form the points of a pentagram that creates a gateway which releases Neron.
Soon after this, Neron kills the Chaplain of Belle Reve Penitentiary and then, having taken the form of the Chaplain, accompanies Father Richard Craemer, a priest who administers to the prisoners of Belle Reve, on his rounds at the prison. He next makes a deal with Lou Krupke, one of the inmates, in exchange for a gun that he had bought earlier before entering Belle Reve. Neron himself had already stolen the calendar in question without Krupke's knowledge in order to engineer the whole situation and he also makes deals with a number of key Belle Reve personnel or persuades/manipulates them in other ways to be absent that evening. Krupke tracks down Finney and kills him with the gun and, at the same time, damages the electrical turbines that give Belle Reve its power. The resulting chaos allows 142 supervillains to escape from Belle Reve. When it is all over, Neron claims Krupke's soul.
A few weeks later, another member of the Rogues Gallery, the Trickster I, reads of the deaths of his fellow Rogues Gallery members in the newspaper and determines not to waste any more time on petty crimes, but to finally make a major supervillain of himself. One week after the Trickster I's decision, yet another member of the Rogues Gallery, the Rainbow Raider III, shows him a carved black candle that he and other recently escaped supervillains had received, with instructions to light it at 12:00 midnight on a certain day to "open the door to fame, power and glory". The Trickster I steals the candle, secretly replaces it with a rubber chicken and, upon lighting it, is instantly transported to Hell, joining over 60 other supervillains who had done the same thing. Neron appears to the gathered supervillains and offers them all their greatest desires in exchange for their souls, then introduces his "Inner Council" - Lex Luthor, the Joker, Circe I, Doctor Polaris I and Abra Kadabra. The Fiddler II figures out immediately that Neron is actually the devil himself and the Trickster I overhears him; then over 20 of the supervillains accept Neron's offer, while the rest who rejected it are returned to Earth by him unharmed. As each supervillain accepts the offer, their souls are collected in a large clear container called the Soul Jar. Neron then sends the newly-empowered supervillains who accepted his offer back to Earth to fulfill their sides of their deals by seeking revenge on the superheroes and wreaking havoc. At the end of all this, Justice League America member Blue Devil, a friend of the Trickster I who had worked out that the locations of the deaths of the five Rogues Gallery members formed the points of a pentagram, appears. He is offered fame and fortune in exchange for performing a simple task: the destruction of an unmanned electrical power station.
While the supervillains empowered by Neron proceed to run amok with their new powers, Neron then turns his attention to Earth's superheroes. In addition to trying to gain the souls of the Batman I, the Flash III and an unknown number of other superheroes, Neron offers to resurrect Alexandra "Alex" deWitt from the dead in exchange for Green Lantern V's soul. Green Lantern V refuses and after Neron defeats him in battle he spares his life, giving Green Lantern V the message that what he covets most of all is "a far more noble soul" who Green Lantern V knows and that when he has it, Earth will be his. Green Lantern V assumes that this means Superman and carries the message to the Refuge, Justice League America's space station headquarters.
Meanwhile, Neron causes further disruption on an Earth now seething with violence and war as a result of his demonic influence on people and the chaos caused by the supervillains who are now in his debt. He also spreads chaos on New Apokolips just for the sake of doing so, giving all those who desire the missing-and-presumed-dead Darkseid's throne information on each other's plans, thus causing New Apokolips to wage war with itself.Meanwhile, back in Hell, Luthor and the Joker force the Trickster I to reveal that Neron's power is contained within his Soul Jar and succeed in rupturing the Jar using Circe I, Polaris I and Kadabra's magical and scientific resources together. As the Jar is breached, a swirl of the green vapor within the Jar reaches outward, then picks up Circe I, Polaris I and Kadabra and pulls them right into the Jar, after which the Jar reseals, which is what Luthor and the Joker had actually planned all along. However, Neron had preempted them by fooling the Trickster I into giving them false information, thus removing his Inner Council completely before they could become a threat to his power. He shrinks Luthor and the Joker in size and traps them in a snow globe-although they both believe that they are in a snowstorm in Metropolis until they reach the glass walls of the globe.
As Earth collapses into violence, war, anarchy and chaos, Justice League America calls most of its members together to stand against Neron. Like Green Lantern V, all of them assume that because he is missing, it is Superman that Neron referred to as the pure soul that he wanted and that he had already been captured. The elite of Justice League America decide to take the fight to Neron and Blue Devil, who had been fooled by Neron's Faustian deal into indirectly causing the death of his friend, filmmaker Marla Bloom, takes them to Hell. Now alone in Hell after the fall of the Inner Council, the Trickster I, who had not yet been offered a deal for his soul, realizes that he had been taken for a fool, that no deal was forthcoming for him at all and that Neron had deeper plans that he had not revealed to him. He begins to scheme against him.
On Earth, Doctor Fate I's home, the Tower of Nabu, has become a portal to Hell that the demoness Blaze is trying to secure so that Neron can send Hell's demonic forces to Earth. Sentinel and Fate IV fight to close the portal, Sentinel destroying the tower to do so. While Fate IV battles back from being flung into far dimensions, Sentinel is drawn away from his wife Molly Catherine Mayne-Scott, a.k.a. the Harlequin I, who opens a box containing one of Neron's candles and accepts a deal to become young again and to have the power to create nightmares, losing her soul in the process. Sentinel contacts the Phantom Stranger, Zatanna Zatara and James Brendan "Jim" Corrigan I for help. Together with Deadman, they enter Hell to get Molly's soul back from Neron. The Spectre tries to help, but discovers that his deal keeps him from opposing Neron and, as a result, he is Neron's slave and is also destined to become his successor. Realizing that he is not prevented from fighting other demons, however, he joins the others in the battle and Sentinel frees Molly's soul in exchange for his own. Blaze is forced to flee from Neron for failing to stop the magical superheroes and while they escape, Sentinel is captured by Neron and imprisoned inside a jewel worn around Neron's neck.
Using what is left of Blue Devil's candle, Justice League America pierces the barrier to Hell and confronts Neron's demonic army, battling through the realms of Hell to find Superman. The Ray II, Firestorm the Nuclear Man II, Captain Atom II and Maxima are all killed in the battle, while the other superheroes begin to be corrupted by the influence of their hellish surroundings. Meanwhile, the demon Satanus bargains with Neron in the throne room of Hell for the return of his soul after failing in his task to stop the Leymen of Primal Force publicly, offering up the whereabouts of his sister Blaze in exchange; but once his soul is returned to him and Blaze is imprisoned by Neron, he reveals to her that Neron can be beaten by a single word that if spoken, even in Hell, would give even Neron pause. Neron kills Satanus for this betrayal, though not before his comment is overheard by the Trickster I. At that moment Blue Devil, seeking revenge for the death of Marla, finally reaches Neron ahead of Justice League America and is killed by him; after which the superheroes become completely evil upon entering Hell's throne room and Neron reveals that it was Captain Marvel's soul that he wanted all along, just as the Trickster I realizes the truth.
Neron has kept Blaze alive because her demonic powers dampen Captain Marvel's powers. She reverses this by augmenting his powers instead, saving him from death; while Blue Devil, who cannot die while he is in Hell, attacks Neron in a new demonic body. Taking advantage of the diversion, the Trickster I tells Captain Marvel about the word and Captain Marvel deduces that the word is "Shazam". When he uses it, the resulting lightning bolt in Hell stuns Neron and releases Justice League America from their spell, allowing them to attack him again. Sentinel is also released from his captivity in the jewel and he joins the other superheroes in the fight. The Trickster I then uses the time provided to persuade Captain Marvel that he has a plan to defeat Neron and quickly tells him what to do. Then Captain Marvel suddenly offers Neron his soul, in exchange for "the release of my friends...the release of Earth". When Neron asks him "And...?" he says "No "and", nothing else. Nothing". Neron accepts the offer and tries to take Captain Marvel's soul, but because the deal was purely altruistic and self-sacrificing, the first time that someone had ever asked for something without personal gain involved, because he cannot collect on a deal without there being something in it for the one he is dealing with and because Captain Marvel's soul is so pure that even a demon like himself cannot touch it without being actually, physically burned, he cannot do it - then he suddenly realizes that he still has to honor his side of the deal. Taunted by the Trickster I, he disappears in an explosion of green fire, the Soul Jar is shattered, the four superheroes who had been killed previously are resurrected from the dead and everyone is returned to Earth, including Luthor and the Joker, who are freed from the shattered snow globe and returned to normal size as well.
At the same time, all of the supervillains who had accepted Neron's offer, in addition to regaining their souls, are allowed to have their greatest desires still fulfilled and are no longer in debt to him, although one of them - Major Disaster - while silently gloating about this fact, soon finds out by looking at his reflection in a window that he has the number 666 carved into his forehead, thus implying that the rest of them do, too.

Offers of Neron

Superheroes who accepted Neron's offer

The following is an almost complete list of the superheroes who are known to have rejected Neron's offer. A number of others may be very briefly being shown dealing with Neron in Underworld Unleashed #2.
The following is an incomplete list of the supervillains who are known to have accepted Neron's offer. Others who accepted may have been briefly shown dealing with Neron in Underworld Unleashed #1, but were not followed elsewhere in the miniseries. Only a small percentage of these fulfilled desires, however, were carried over into future stories.
The following is an incomplete list of the supervillains who are known to have rejected Neron's offer. Others who were briefly shown dealing with Neron in Underworld Unleashed #1 may also have refused, but have not been directly identified as having done so. Those in the latter category are herein marked with an asterisk.
The following DC Comics issues contain all of the stories that are part of, or at least connected to, Underworld Unleashed. They are listed here in a roughly chronological order, as the story did not flow in a strictly linear manner.
Several of the issues listed here are not specifically identified as Underworld Unleashed tie-in issues on the covers, but are still connected to the ones that are. These issues are herein marked with a dagger :

Before ''Underworld Unleashed'' began

The three-issue miniseries Underworld Unleashed, together with the one-shot issue Underworld Unleashed: Abyss-Hell's Sentinel #1, was collected as a trade paperback called Underworld Unleashed.

In other media

Television