The Origin of DC’s Evil Justice League is Finally Revealed

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Crime Syndicate #1

DC Comics has just released a brand new series that reveals the origins of the evilest Justice League in the multiverse – The Crime Syndicate. The Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 has been recurring villains for the Justice League since the 1960s, though the most current version was rebooted for DC’s New 52 continuity in 2011. Now, the origins for this iteration of the team and its members are finally being revealed, existing as dark mirror versions of their more heroic counterparts.

In the past of DC’s most current continuity, the Crime Syndicate made their debut in the New 52 with DC’s Forever Evil, seeing the team coming to the prime Earth and trapping the Justice League. They then uniting the world’s villains for an extreme take over of the world. While the rise of Lex Luthor’s Injustice League eventually defeated the Crime Syndicate, the team of villains would eventually be brought back after DC’s Rebirth, wreaking havoc to try and win the favor of Perpetua and enter into her service. When Perpetua took over the multiverse with the Batman Who Laughs in Dark Nights: Death Metal, the Crime Syndicate’s Owl Man betrayed and killed his teammates in order to save the multiverse, knowing that he and his partners in crime would eventually be reborn once more when the multiverse was restored by the heroes.

Now, Crime Syndicate #1 from writer Andy Schmidt with art by Kieran McKeown begins to reveal the origins of the dark team of Earth-3. The main story looks to be a dark mirror of the event that brought the original Justice League of America together: the invasion of Starro. However, each of these criminals won’t be uniting not to save the world and protect the innocent. Instead, it looks as though the Crime Syndicate will be uniting as a team in order to better retain their power and control over the world.

This dark fact is revealed quite horribly when Ultraman is trying to resist Starro’s mental control. Rather than submit to Starro’s power, Ultraman determines that if he can’t have the city of Metropolis no one can, leading to the powerful being setting the city and its people ablaze with his heat vision. Furthermore, this new series will also reveal the individual origins of these criminals, and the end of this first issue shows just how twisted Ultraman was, even in his youth in Smallville.

As DC’s new Crime Syndicate series continues, it’s going to be very interesting to see just how this group of dark and corrupted individuals will decide to unite and get along. No doubt their alliance will be shaky at best and full of distrust, but there’s no denying that the combination of their abilities will allow them to keep their grip on the world, while also keeping it out of the hands of those who would try to take it from them. As such, this is a much darker motivation for this team as opposed to the more positive drives that motivate the Justice League, despite both groups holding the same kind and amount of power in the DC Multiverse.

About The Author

Kevin Erdmann
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Kevin Erdmann is one of Screen Rant’s staff writers. With a major in Cinema Studies and a minor in Comics and Cartoon Studies from the UofO, Kevin is pretty sure he’s writing for the right site. While Kevin is a huge Marvel fan, he also loves Batman because he’s Batman and is a firm believer that Han shot first. Disney also shares a big part of his fan patronage. Kevin lives in Oregon with his wonderful wife and sinister cat who is no doubt currently plotting his demise.

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