Brad Simms is a boy in his early teens living in Berkeley, California in the present day. One day, his life is upended when a grown-up version of himself, a powerful superhero and astrophysicist calling himself "Doctor Tomorrow", arrives and recruits him to help him fight Hadrian, an even more powerful supervillain who has been traveling across the multiverse, destroying universes as he goes, and rally the heroes of the Valiant universe to put up a fight.
The character of Doctor Tomorrow was originally introduced during the Acclaim era, in which he was a superhero active during World War II and member of a contemporary super team, the Stormbreakers.
The Valiant Entertainment comic contains examples of:
- Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: In Hadrian's original universe, which is older than the main one in the series, Bart's friend Gretchen is an eminent scientist who goes on to train present Bart into becoming Doctor Tomorrow
- Anti-Villain: Hadrian is knowingly destroying universes, but has grand ambitions to save the many universes that are still around when he's done and is motivated by his mother's death from cancer.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Future Doctor Tomorrow, while justifiably angry about the destruction of his universe, shows a more selfish side when he tries to take the vial of negative mass from Hadrian after he's been defeated, intending to use it just to make himself more powerful.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: While he's still seen as a pure hero, Future Doctor Tomorrow is a handsome young man. When he's exposed as a selfish bastard, he gets hit in the face with an energy beam and spends the rest of the story with a burnt, hairless head.
- The Cape: Doctor Tomorrow, a clean cut superhero with a predominantly white outfit.
- Hero Killer: Hadrian's introduction has him single-handedly fighting and killing the heroes of an iteration of the Valiant universe before destroying their entire universe. Even Hwen Mirage, who was already a ghost.
- Missing Mom: Bart's mother passed away from cancer before the beginning of the story.
- Queer Establishing Moment: Alternate Gretchen is shown to be married to another woman, Alice, though it's never made clear if the main universe Gretchen also is queer.
- Treacherous Advisor: Future Bart was mentored by Hadrian during his astrophysics studies and went on to co-develop negative mass with him, but then Hadrian's lust for power resulted in the destruction of their universe and sent them on the chase they're on, with Bart becoming Doctor Tomorrow.
- Unreliable Expositor: Future Bart turns out to be this after the defeat of Hadrian, since he's been lying about a lot of details around his collaboration with Hadrian.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Hadrian dreams of leading a multiversal empire where every major problem like war, cancer and the climate crisis has a known solution in some universe. Because he believes this will grant stability and safety to many trillions of people, he considers the hundreds of billions killed when he gathers negative mass an acceptable loss in the grand scheme of things.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Since Bart's mother passed away, his father has been spending a lot of time away for work to make ends meet. When he meets Bart again in the end and sees him grown up, he is heartbroken to realize he has missed out on so much time with him.
- Writing Around Trademarks: When preparing the defense against Hadrian with the Valiant heroes, Doctor Tomorrow asks Armstrong if they have a "Man of the Atom" in this universe; Armstrong just shrugs in response and Tomorrow moves on. This alludes to Doctor Solar, who was a hero in the original Valiant continuity, but whose license then reverted back to Gold Key Comics.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: After getting pulled into Hadrian's original universe, Bart spends several years there being mentored by its Gretchen into becoming Doctor Tomorrow and returns to his universe just seconds after he disappeared.
