DC 2000 was a two-issue miniseries published by DC Comics in the year 2000.
Time-traveling Mad Scientist Dr T.O. Morrow attempts to reshape the course of history to his advantage by using his technology to travel back to the late 1930s/early 1940s and selectively deposite advanced technology in the hands of early scientists. This causes the Justice League to try and stop him, but things go awry when their intertemporal battle is discovered by the Justice Society of America, whose interference causes things to go awry for all parties involved.
This comic includes examples of:
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Held prisoner by The Spectre, Batman has the Martian Manhunter telepathically link his mind to the Spectre's, then bombards the Spectre with all the pain, sorrow and suffering he has experienced, distracting the vengeful spirit so the other members of the League can escape and regroup.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When The Spectre goes on his tirade about the evils of the Justice League's future, he discusses the two world wars, the invention of the atomic bomb, the waves of rioting and protest movements over civil rights and anti-war movements, the proliferation of "crack" cocaine, the election and subsequent disgraced resignation of Richard Nixon, the dismantling of Roosevelt's new deal and the subsequent drastic spread of poverty whislt the stock market soars, the proliferation and advancement of guns, the legalization of pornography and the invention of rock music.
- Bad Present: Twice over:
- Dr. Morrow creates a Bad Present by altering the past, causing the present to develop into the kind of 2000s the world envisioned when he was a kid in the 40s... and also a world in which he rules supreme as a brutal and callous dictator with command over life and death. It actually gets worse when he uses time travel to invent a common cold cure and Ret-Gone his cold, only to create a present in which vast portions of humanity are hideously deformed as a side-effect of the cure being marketed before it was fully tested.
- The timeline that the Justice League is trying to preserve revolts the Spectre, and he uses visions of it to convince the rest of the Justice Society that they cannot allow the League to preserve the "intended" course of history.
- Bullet Catch: Zigzagged. As is normal, Jay Garrick attempts this trick when trying to capture murderous crooks Spider Slick and Fly Flinn, using his helmet instead of his hands. He succeeds with the tommygun rounds that their mooks are using... but when Spider and Fly attack with the more advanced assault rifles they were given by Dr. Morrow, the advanced rounds punch clean through the Flash's helmet and kill the policeman he was trying to save.
- Butterfly of Doom: Aside from the general trope being weaponized in Dr. Morrow's plan, one particular example is when he uses time-travel to Ret-Gone his cold. He then notices that a significant portion of his slave population are now hideously deformed, which his computer tells him is because the cold cure was released before it had been properly tested for human safety, resulting in a massive wave of birth defects due to its teratrogenic side effects. Essentially, the thalidomide disaster multiplied ten-fold.
- Creepy Child: Our first issue opens on the juvenile T.O. Morrow "playing" in the backyard. Between his actions, his dialogue and his facial expressions, it's easy to see how he grew up to be a world-conquering Mad Scientist.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Overlapping with Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas. When Jay Garrick interferes with a time-traveling Dr. Morrow's attempt to murder his own mother, he breaks down in tears, admitting that this was a line he never believed he had it in him to cross. Jay persuades Dr. Morrow that he hasn't crossed that line yet, and he can still make amends, which causes Dr. Morrow to lend his assistance to the heroes in undoing his catastrophic tinkering with time.
- Freudian Excuse: Dr. T.O. Morrow was brought up his whole life trying to be prepared for the year 2000 as was envisioned in the late 1930s. Disappointed by the reality, he invented Time Travel and went into the far future where technology had finally caught up with he had always dreamed it would, only for the natives to disdain him as no better than an animal. Infuriated, he decided to use time travel to manipulate the course of human development to create a world that both matched the "world of tomorrow" he had been brought up to yearn for and which was under his control.
- Future Me Scares Me: At the story's climax, Dr. Morrow tries to kill his mother in order to make himself even more ruthless and effective... instead, he simply traumatizes his past and present incarnations so badly that, with a little encouragement from Jay Garrick, he abandons his plan and helps to undo it.
- The Heart: Jay Garrick is somewhere between this and the Only Sane Man of the Justice Society. Having encountered "futuretech" in the form of assault rifles in the hands of a pair of thrill-killers, he's the most leery of the dangers of letting humanity have access to this advanced technology, and the most willing to listen to the Justice League's warnings that they need to preserve time exactly as it was. In the end, his compassion enables him to talk down Dr. Morrow and convince him to help set things right.
- Hypocrisy Nod: In a debate with the Spectre over if it's right to prevent the Justice League's world from coming to pass, Dr. Fate points out that the present they live in isn't exactly tolerant of his distinctly non-Christian faith when the Spectre brings up the potential treatment of "spiritual thinkers" in the League's world.
- Internal Homage: The title and covers homage DC One Million, another story about the premier superhero team of the age having to deal with their counterparts from the future.
- Just Think of the Potential!: Part of the reason why the Justice Society is swayed to allow, or at least try to co-opt, Dr. Morrow's plan is because the time traveler makes sure to include beneficial technologies amongst his interferences as well as weapons. Dr. Mid-Nite is particularly set on this viewpoint, since his first exposure to Dr. Morrow's interference was an artificial heart and a complete step-by-step guide to heart transplantation surgeries, containing test results, procedures, machine diagrams, drug formulas... literally everything that would be needed for 1940s doctors to be able to perform full heart transplants.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Zigzagged. The Justice League initially attempts to avoid all interaction with the Justice Society, to preserve the sanctity of the timeline. When The Spectre and Green Lantern of the JSA discover the Martian Manhunter on the moon, the Spectre attacks and captures him, despite the Manhunter's attempt at peaceful diplomacy. When the rest of the Justice League arrive to save the Manhunter, things seem poised to erupt into a brawl, before The Flash talks the JSA down. The two teams then share a peaceful meal and drinks and start to communicate... but the Manhunter attempts to sneak away and destroy the future tech that the Justice Society has gathered whilst they are preoccupied, causing the Spectre to turn on the League and imprison them.
- The New Rock & Roll: Rock music is used as something that horrifies and disgusts the residents of 1940 on several occasions. When the Justice Society first encounters the Justice League, Kyle Rayner uses a ring-construct of a heavy metal band caricature playing to distract the JSA so the League can escape, with Alan Scott noting that he didn't believe the "green flame" could be used for evil before that display. When The Spectre is lambasting the Bad Present of the Justice League, the existence of rock music is one of the evils he denounces as proof that their future must never be allowed to come into existence.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- The Spectre's aggressive antics throughout the story, in particular his revulsion at the future that the Justice League hails from, leads to Dr. Morrow conquering the world. It comes to the point that first Batman and then Dr. Fate call the Spectre out that he's actually afraid of the future, because it's the one thing that even his power cannot shape and control.
- The rest of the Justice Society, except for the Flash, share the blame, as they are completely swept up in the potential applications of the future technology that Dr. Morrow has been scattering like candy.
- When the Justice Society get their hands on a disk containing a complete map of the human genome, the result is the creation of the Justice Squadron, genetically designed successor heroes who proceed to take over the world.
- Ripple-Proof Memory: Subverted. Once Dr. Morrow's plan is foiled, the League doesn't even need to wipe the attempt from the Society's collective minds, because the resetting of history to its proper course erases the events from their recollection, leaving at best dreamlike memories.
- Stephen Ulysses Perhero: The name of our villain is Thomas Oscar Morrow. Or, in short, Dr. T.O. Morrow. Lampshaded by the Justice Society, who initially believe the name is fake simply because of how it sounds. Justified; it was deliberately chosen by Morrow's mother, who is a somewhat eccentric lady with a particular fascination with the "World of Tomorrow" exhibit from the World's Fair.
- Taken for Granite: The Spectre turns Batman and Superman into stone statues for part of the comic.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Justice Society is not portrayed as a bunch of happy campers in this book. Doctor Fate and The Spectre loathe each other, and the rest of the team has its share of squabbles.
