Who Is DC's Multiversal Big Bad?

At the end of both Superman: Doomed and Booster Gold: Futures End this week, we learned big revelations about the New 52.

What we didn't learn was...who's the big bad behind it all? I mean, yeah, it certainly appears that the pre-Flashpoint version of Brainiac seen in Geoff Johns's Action Comics run somehow survived the apparent end of the previous DC Universe...but while he was seen as a disembodied computerized voice in Superman: Doomed, where he recruited his New 52 self (a character who spoke in more traditional word balloons that had a unique font and a green color), but between that issue and the Booster Gold one-shot, the word balloons are caption boxes, the colro scheme is red and he's certainly much more focused than "our" Brainiac was when we saw him kidnapped by his previous self.

So...why? What the heck happened? It could just be the merging of the two, but it seems unlikely that a character who's been around as long as Brainiac would suddenly take a level in badass impressive enough to pull this off.

So...who might be working with Brainiac on this larger-than-life plot?

Black Beetle

The longtime nemesis of Booster Gold and Rip Hunter during Dan Jurgens and Geoff Johns's Booster Gold Volume 2, the Black Beetle first appeared in Booster Gold #6, claiming to be a Blue Beetle from the future and sporting the scarab to back up his claims. He offered to help Booster travel back in time and save his dead best friend Ted Kord, a previous Blue Beetle, but it turned out to be a trick, and that Black Beetle was in fact evil.

Throughout the life of that series, he continued to be a time-traveling menace -- but it was shortly before the universe-wide reboot that he took it to the next level. Using the damage done to time by Flashpoint and The Return of Bruce Wayne, Black Beetle created an alternate universe where the Blue Beetle scarab was utilizing a different energy, with a red hue and matching red energy.

He combined it with the blue one he already had to allow himself even more power...but that was the last time we saw him, as the miniseries in which all this took place led into Flashpoint and Black Beetle vanished with much of the rest of the DC Universe.

But...a connection to Flashpoint, red energy and a foe to Booster Gold? Could it be...?

Probably not.

Nix Uotan

While it seems unlikely that Grant Morrison or DC will allow anybody else to muck around in his playground while The Multiversity is still happening, remember that the Crisis-level event that supposedly will come out of all of this is going to happen after The Multiversity has either concluded or almost concluded. Holding off the Big Bad for a while into the story would almost certainly get them clear of Multiversity and allow Morrison to do his story unmolested.

But the last of the Monitors, corrupted by a wave of antimatter in The Multiversity, is a cosmic level threat and one who has appeared in Final Crisis, tying him to the Crisis franchise and the multiversal chaos it brings with it.

Barry Allen

I'm kinda thinking he'll end up being called Cobalt Blue at some point down the line, although The Flash inker Norm Rapmund told me he calls him "Blue Barry," which I kinda like.

Anyway, the Barry Allen seen in the current Futures End tie-ins is another time traveler and The Flash has always been key to the DC multiverse.

And since Barry died during Crisis on Infinite Earths, he's tied to that event.

And since Barry was the bad guy in Flashpoint, he's tied to that event.

In fact, the events of Flashpoint are being conspicuously echoed by Blue Barry here: a loved one died at the hands of the Reverse Flash, and so he traveled back in time to save them and in so doing, made things far worse.

Seriously, it's that flagrant; when you take out the details, you can't even tell which of the two stories I"m talking about.

That Barry kills...Barry...and continues to exist suggests that the villainous version might also be from an alternate earth, which brings the multiverse into play here. And the fact that the speed force energy he expelled, creating the Wally West Flash, was red...!

Darkseid

The presumptive big bad of the upcoming Earth 2: World's End miniseries, Darkseid is a multiversal threat who was the big bad of Final Crisis and who also has the Omega Beams -- vaguely defined power with red energy.

He was also the threat that united the Justice League of the New 52, something that arguably makes him one of, if not the, most important villains since the reboot.

He could actually tie a number of characters on this list together, since he has ties to Nix Uotan, Barry Allen and...

The Anti-Monitor

This doesn't explain the red (although red skies are a staple of his presence), but it makes sense in other ways.

We know from the end of Forever Evil that he's hunting Darkseid, which means he's likely to play into World's End. We also expected him to play a role in the upcoming Crisis-level event, since it will take place on the 30th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Nix Uotan as the last Monitor is kind of his opposite number, and if he turns out to be "good" again by the end of The Multiversity, that would pit the two against one another again, not unlike the Monitor/Anti-Monitor dynamic of the original Crisis. And the involvement of Barry Allen, who died in Crisis, and Booster Gold, DC's first major post-Crisis character, plays at the edges fo that event as well...!