Millennium was a DC Comics crossover miniseries published as a weekly in the year 1987, though it was cover dated 1988... twelve years before the actual millennium change. The basic concept was that the Guardians Of The Universe chose ten humans to father the next race that will take over their duties, and they ask Earth's heroes to protect them from the Manhunters, a race of androids with a grudge against the Guardians. Things get more complicated when it turns out that the Manhunters have infiltrated the personal lives of all of the heroes.
Often considered among the worst of DC's crossovers, due to a variety of factors, but mainly because of a confusing number of tie-ins (56 issues!), blatant and inexplicable retcons, and a group of Chosen Ones that were largely unlikable ethnic stereotypes. Its Spin-Off, The New Guardians, didn't get much better, but at least featured Snowflame, a villain who got his powers from cocaine use, and The Hemo-Goblin, a vampire who gave people AIDS when he bit them.
This comic is not be confused with the various other works named Millennium.
Tropes in Millennium:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Manhunters, obviously.
- Anti-Climax: After all that build up, at the end of the series, when the moment comes for the Chosen to be transformed, they become... your average superheroes.
- Beneath the Earth: The location of the final Manhunter base.
- Also, Wonder Woman spends some time in Tartarus during her tie-ins.
- The second Outsiders tie-in features the Outsiders defending the underground kingdom of Abyssia from the Manhunters.
- Blood Knight: The Manhunters, who became obsessed with the *act* of hunting criminals rather than dispensing justice.
- Call-Forward: The Young All-Stars' crossover, where the Green Lantern was guided by his ring to save three individuals who would become the parents and grandparent of three individuals that would be candidates for The New Guardians.
- Camp Gay: Extraño
- Captain Ethnic: What most of The Chosen turned out to be in the end (and the major complaint about the series.) The worst example might be Gregorio De La Vega, a Latino Gay Man (with AIDS), who transforms into... the sorcerer Extraño (Spanish for "Strange".)
- Catchphrase: "No Man Escapes The Manhunters!" ...except when they do.
- Deep Cover Agent: Every comic published at the time was
forced to reveal that one member of the cast was a Manhunter spy, never mind how much sense it made. Example: in Superman's case, the entire population of Smallville! (via Mind Control.)- The Greek god of nature, Pan, turned out to have been replaced by an alien robot, too.
- Didn't Think This Through: Of the male New Guardians, one is gay and the other two don't have human bodies. How are they supposed to breed?
- Doesn't Like Guns: Averted in the Batman tie-ins. While Batman abhors using guns on humans, he has absolutely no problem with delivering a shotgun blast in the face to an alien robot. Robin also uses a gun to lay down suppressing fire when the robot's human agents try to rush him, although he is careful to not actually hit anybody.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite all the hoopla about The Chosen in the series, years later The Guardians would claim the whole thing was just a personal project of one Guardian (and his mate) and not a major project of theirs.
- Empty Piles of Clothing: In a Superman tie-in story to this event, Green Lantern Hal Jordan finds on a planet piles of empty Guardian and Zamaron clothes, and then realizes from this that the Guardians and Zamarons were using their combined power to hide themselves from the Manhunter Highmaster.
- Even Evil Has Standards: During his appearance in Secret Origins, the Manhunter Grandmaster expresses displeasure at the idea that the Axis powers might win World War II. For that reason, they raised up two individual heroes going by the name of Manhunter (the Quality Comics version and the DC Comics version) to fight crime and the Axis forces.
- Fake Defector: Booster Gold temporarily defected to the Manhunters, although the whole thing was a ruse so he could help the heroes defeat the Manhunters. He lost a bit of respect from his peers because of this and also lost his fortune when his agent ran away with his money, forcing Booster to become a full-time member of the Justice League.
- Fat Bastard: Janwillem Kroef is very paunchy and happens to be a white supremacist.
- For the Evulz: Why did the Manhunters want to prevent the next generation of Guardians? Out of spite, apparently (they were once the Guardians' enforcers, but were replaced by the more merciful Green Lantern Corps.)
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Completely inverted. Because the public had been temporarily turned against the heroes of Earth by Darkseid during last year's Legends crossover, during the events of Millennium, the majority of the public refuse to believe the Manhunters' attempts to discredit Earth's heroes and the Guardians. In fact, many of them act extremely trusting in order to compensate for letting Darkseid hoodwink them.
- Kryptonite Is Everywhere: The Manhunters painted their entire homeworld yellow in case a Green Lantern found it.
- Magi Babble: The speech given by the Guardian to the Chosen, trying to sound very profound, but being
Narm instead. - Meaningful Name: Inverted; despite what the title sounds like, it had nothing to do with the end of the 20th Century.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Manhunters attack Aqualad and Aquaman with cyborg alien jellyfish submarines!
- Omniscient Morality License: During World War II, the Starheart forces Alan Scott to take actions that are moderately destructive to the Allied war effort in order to make sure the ancestors of the Chosen are not killed before they procreate.
- Only You Can Repopulate My Race: Sort of. The New Guardians were supposed to breed until there were enough to watch over the universe. How some of them could breed (one was gay, others had no organic bodies) was not explained.
- Also, at the time this story took place, the rest of the original Guardians had left the universe to... breed.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Janwillem Kroef is extremely racist and a proponent of white supremacy.
- Psychic Block Defense: The Spectre has great difficulty taking on the Manhunters because they have defenses in place against mystical manipulation. He manages to break through eventually, of course; he is The Spectre after all.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In the Young All Stars tie-in Nazi supervillain, Baron Blitzkrieg tells his troops not to rape a woman they captured because such behavior was unbecoming of Third Reich soldiers.
- Refused the Call: Tom Kalmaku decides at the last minute that he doesn't want to be one of the Chosen.
- Robot Me: The Manhunters replace Commissioner Gordon with a robot double.
- And Nancy Reagan.
- Self-Sacrifice Scheme: The Guardians' messenger (and his mate) die to activate the Chosen Ones' powers. Too bad the results weren't that impressive.
- Title Drop: The descendants of the Chosen would have been ready to replace the Guardians... in a millennium.
- However, the Legion of Super-Heroes crossover indicated that there was no trace of the Guardians then. Considering what happened with their series, it's probably for the best.
