Salvation Run
Eric S Brown
Salvation Run was a DC Comics mini-series event published in 2008 which ran for seven issues that were later collected into a single trade paperback. Salvation Run isn’t a story about heroes but rather forty of the DC Universe’s villains who are in custody and deemed too dangerous to be allowed to remain on Earth. They are shipped off to a strange planet with no means of returning home, no supplies, and no idea where they are. Being villains, they quickly split up into various groups with Lex Luthor and the Joker leading two large ones. Luthor’s group intends to stick together and find a way home, but the Joker’s just wants to survive where they are and make the most of things – even if that means killing Luthor’s group (and even each other at times) and they go to war. Vandal Savage wants no part of this and forms a very small group of his own. He leads them to a hidden safe zone where he hopes to begin a new civilization through the descendants he plans to father, while Captain Cold and his Rogues, easily the most likeable of the villains, join in the fray, siding with Luthor in the hopes that the master criminal can indeed build them means of returning to Earth.
As the groups of villains fight amongst themselves and seek their own goals, Darkseid, the hell-planet’s actual owner, releases his armies of Parademons upon the villains. Though many villains die in the ensuing battle, the majority do make it back to Earth at the end of the series.
Salvation Run is a very different, and powerful, story from DC that illustrates the best and worst sides of humanity – and what happens when the choices one is left with are grim.
