A tie-in comic to Countdown to Final Crisis, and Final Crisis itself, written by Bill Willingham.
The Government has taken all of Earth's supervillains and exiled them to another planet. Here they have to band together in order to survive the harsh environment, and the strange techno-biological creatures who seem intent on killing them. Among those sent are The Rogues after killing Bart Allen, the Secret Society of Supervillains after attacking a wedding, and dozens of others.
Tempers flare and lines are drawn between factions, as the battle to stay alive wages. Soon, the villains are divided into two factions, one to survive on the planet (led by The Joker) the other to find a way off (led by Lex Luthor).
This series contains examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Several of the villains who die in the series qualify, but Psimon is probably the most deserving.
- Bald of Evil: Lex Luthor
- Berserk Button: Scandal Savage threatens to cut off Bolt's hand if he ever tries to grab her ass again.
- Bury Your Gays: Mallah and the Brain are killed off by Grodd.
- Butt-Monkey: Mr. Terrible can't catch a break.
- The Caligula: When the Joker gets his own camp he becomes this, dismissing Bolt's insistence that the camp needs food while ordering those who upset him to be attacked.
- Camp Gay: Monsieur Mallah.
- Commander Contrarian: Sivana is dismissive of Luthor and bemoans the fact that they're going to die. Nevertheless, he still pitches in to make the device to get them off planet.
- Crossover Villain-in-Chief: As with most DC Crisis Crossover stories, the Big Bad Duumvirate of Joker and Lex Luthor lead the forces of evil.
- Deck of Wild Cards: The story is an exaggerated version of this, with all villains exiled in a lonely planet and need to stay together to survive and come back to Earth. Considerating that The Joker and Lex Luthor are the "rulers" of this new planet, this trope goes up to eleven with the rest of the villains here.
- Dirty Old Man: Vandal Savage takes several female villains to a safe zone and intends to start a utopia with them, breeding and all.
- Deadpan Snarker: Captain Cold and Weather WizardCold (putting Abra Kadabra's arm in a splint): That should hold until we find a hospital.
Wizard: I suppose the nearest is a few billion light years away.
Cold: Sarcasm noted, you're not helping. - Decoy Protagonist: The storyline first first focuses on the Rogues; when more villains are sent in the spotlight is shifted onto Luthor and the Joker. However, the Rogues still provide plenty of the narration.
- Death World: The setting is artificially intelligent courtesy of Apokolips.
- Eviler than Thou: Joker explains how he is this to Lex while pounding him in a fight, since Lex kills and commits evil out of selfish pragmatism and grander plans while he commits evil deeds for the fun of it.
- Evil vs. Evil: Joker and Luthor get their own camps and are at each other's throats. Mirror Master speculates that they represent Chaos and Order respectively.
- Eye Scream: Joker threatens to cut out Neutron's eye and use it as a light bulb after Neutron fires at him.
- Genius Loci: It's alive. The Planet is alive and it's been created as a testing ground for Apokolips troops.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Amanda Waller. The entire plot is kicked off in the first place by her and her Checkmate organization secretly rounding up all of the Earth's most dangerous supervillains and exiling them to another planet to die under a lying pretense of giving the villains their own world to rule. Naturally, this goes wrong and the villain survivors return to Earth more pissed and dangerous than ever.
- Hypocrite: Gorilla Grodd mocks Monsieur Mallah's claims that they are similar and derides him as the uplifted pet of a Mad Scientist. Grodd conveniently fails to mention that he was uplifted by an alien Mad Scientist.
- An Ice Person: Captain Cold, Mr. Freeze, and Killer Frost all appear.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Brutale gets run through by a Parademon surprisingly, he survives despite the high body count, reappearing in later stories.
- Jerkass: The Joker is a pretty big prick, from not wanting to work to killing people for the dumbest reasons (boring him and touching his suit) to knocking Gorilla Grodd off a cliff because he didn't want to share leadership. Luthor lampshades it by saying he does nothing but complain and contributes nothing productive.
- Jerkass Has a Point: In-Universe; Iron Cross yells at Giganta and a few women for not working (even derogatorily calling them Fraulein). When they won't work with a Nazi, Mammoth says that Nazi or no, at least Iron Cross is helping.
- Kill It with Fire: When Martian Manhunter is revealed, all the villains swarm him, but the "attack" devolves into a confused mess; Deadshot even comments that he can't get a shot off, and Captain Cold says he can't see the guy. Luthor tells Abra Kadabra to transmit a message telling everyone to clear out, while fire-based villains attack. Heat Wave, Neutron, Tar-pit, Heatmonger, and Deadshot all take him down.
- Killed Off for Real: As a lead-in to Final Crisis, DC needed to thin the herd. Hellhound was gored, and taken by his team back to camp, only to be ditched by the Body Doubles so the predators eat him instead. Psimon is beaten to death by the Joker who found him boring. Iron Cross was convinced to grab the Joker, who casually shoots him in the head. Monsieur Mallah dies after trying to forge an alliance with Grodd, Grodd insults him and they fight each other, Grodd gets the upper-hand, and beats Mallah to death using the Brain, causing both to die. Hyena is shot by a Parademon. Solomon Grundy is killed by the Parademons, but he always comes back because of the swamp. Neutron, Plasmus, Heatmonger, Warp, Thunder and Lightning are all used to power their escape, and are subsequently blown up.
- The Load: In a story full of supervillains who contribute nothing but misery and crime in the society they were exiled from, the Joker really takes the cake by sheer virtue of killing other villains for petty reasons and starting a fight with Lex just because he can.
- Mad Scientist: Luthor, Sivanna, Immortus. Luthor even says to Vandal Savage that he knows what he's doing because he got a degree from Mad Scientist School.
- Made of Iron: Gorrilla Grodd gets shot in the chest several times, beaten and then thrown off the cliff. He's back later on, using plants as makeshift bandages, and he's mad.
- The Mole: Blockbuster is really the Martian Manhunter in disguise.
- Moral Event Horizon: In-universe, with Captain Cold saying that killing the Flash was the worst thing that he and the rogues ever did.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Heat Wave panics and chews on his finger when he believes that he's killed Martian Manhunter, believing that they'll all get cut up by rusty razors. Bane tells him to calm down as he's still alive.
- Only You Can Repopulate My Race: Psimon wanted to start plans to create a new society of people on the hostile planet using the female villains as carefully protected baby factories. Vandal Savage had the same idea of creating a self-serving utopia consisting entirely of his own progeny using the three female villains who accompanied him to the planet safe zone he uncovered.
- Rousing Speech: Luthor makes one to the assembled villains, to rally them behind him.
- Shoot the Dog: To save her own skin, Catwoman outs Martian Manhunter as being in disguise, reasoning that he's super-powered and probably can last longer than she could against the angry villains. While he does put up a good fight, the fire villains take him down painfully. They also accidentally leave him there which caused a series of events which led to his death at the hands of Libra. Nice one Catwoman.
- Shout-Out: To Gilligan's Island when Luthor is asked how he's going to make a teleporter, "With sticks and coconuts?"
- Heat Wave calls Martian Manhunter "My Favorite Martian".
- Soft Glass: Averted when Grodd beats Mallah with the Brain's dome, with enough force to shatter it. The blows still kill him.
- Token Good Teammate: Thunder and Lightning try to be more civil, and tell people to stop blaming Catwoman for their troubles. Lampshaded when Bane says that they don't have a long enough rap sheet for this place. They also try to give food to a captured Martian Manhunter.
- Too Kinky to Torture: This series gives a reason why the Joker is like this: the burning sensation he felt when he took his fall into the vat of chemicals that dyed his hair and bleached his skin never went away and not only had he gotten used to it, but over time, he grew to enjoy it.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Kid Karnevil always talks about cutting the Joker's skin off and wearing it.
- Villainous Friendship: Much of the conflict of the story comes from the villains getting fed up and taking their aggression out on each other. The Rogues seem to be the only ones who are friends (even if they threaten each other with death over who caused the aforementioned
Moral Event Horizon). Working together to survive. - We Hardly Knew Ye: In-universe Captain Cold regards Grundy's death this way, saying that they may have spoken only two sentences to each other.
