If only Flynn was allowed to reference all Sonic material. Not only could they then reference the previous multiversal crossovers with Mega Man, where they also met tons of other Sega and Capcom characters (though I suppose they'd have to not name names when referencing Capcom characters here), but they could allude to meeting other superheroes, like the the ridiculous Image Comics crossover from the '90s, or the time they met Sabrina The Teenage Witch. But most of all, this would be the best time to use Scourge, since it's a blatant ripoff of Ultraman from DC Comics, and his entire world is just a blatant ripoff of the various Crime Syndicate worlds. And the Justice League is aware that there have been multiple Crime Syndicate worlds, so if they learned of Scourge, they could point out that not only is he a copy of Sonic, he's a copy of the Crime Syndicate, and there are like four other Crime Syndicate worlds, too. And Ultraman gets his ass handed to him each time. The more meta Scourge gets, the better.
Alright. I'm in this deep, so I'm just gonna unleash my full autism and explain more fully why Scourge should have been in this comic. This will require I back up a bit...
In 1964, DC introduced The Crime Syndicate of America. Earth-One is the home of the Justice League, who we all know. Earth-Two is the home of the Justice Society, who are actually from older comics from the '40s, and the Justice League is the rebooted version of them. But then to have their cake and eat it too, DC said the Justice Society still lived on Earth-Two, and they're older now, so basically they're the older Justice League. Earth-Three instead has the Crime Syndicate. They're like both the Justice League and Society, but backwards and evil. Superman is Ultraman, Batman is Owlman, Wonder Woman is Superwoman. Interestingly, the Crime Syndicate's fast guy is Johnny Quick, who is obviously equivalent to both the Flash of Earth-One (Barry Allen) and the Flash of Earth-Two (Jay Garrick), but actually there is also a hero called Johnny Quick on Earth-Two, who I don't think ever interacts with the evil Johnny Quick, but Jay Garrick and Barry Allen interact with both of them. So Johnny Quick of Earth-Three is the counterpart of at least two different people on Earth-Two. He's the equivalent of both Jay Garrick and Johnny Quick. And oh, there's also Power Ring, the evil Green Lantern equivalent. There's an evil spirit inside his ring called Volthoom, and it scares him, and his fear is what powers it.
But more important is Alexander Luthor of Earth-Three. Being the backwards Lex Luthor, he's the greatest hero of their universe. But being Lex Luthor, he's destined to lose in his universe. His only hope of winning is to recruit the League and Society from their Earths and make them fight the Syndicate outside of Earth-Three. On Earths-One and Two, good always wins, but on Earth-Three, evil always wins.
That is until 1985, with the arrival of The Anti-Monitor, essentially the god of the Anti-Matter universe of Qward, where Green Lantern villains The Thunderers and Weaponers live. The Anti-Monitor ate all the positive matter universes, including Earth-Three. The Crime Syndicate tried and failed to stop him, and everyone from their universe died. Except right at the last second, Alexander Luthor and his wife, Lois Lane (who is apparently destined to always fuck the greatest hero of her universe) sent their infant son, Alexander Luthor, Jr., into the multiverse in a prototype one-man spaceship (echoing Superman's origin). He was found by The Monitor (the Anti-Monitor's good counterpart), but not before getting dimension warping powers from being sent through the warping multiverse. With Alex Jr's help, the heroes of the multiverse defeated the Anti-Monitor and saved Earth-One, merging a few other universes into it, including Earth-Two, but Earth-Three was destroyed. Alex Jr., along with Superman and Lois Land of Earth-Two (meaning they were the original Superman and Lois, from Action Comics #1), as well as Superboy from the real world (he was only discovered very shortly before the real world was destroyed. Yes, the real world was destroyed in 1985), all went to a "Paradise Dimension" created by Alex with his powers. Because DC probably felt like it would be sad to literally kill the original Superman, so they had him go to a sort of heaven instead.
Also, a couple of other positive-matter universes survived for various reasons. One of these was The Fourth World, the universe where the New Gods, including Darkseid, live. Darkseid used his power to shield it from the Anti-Monitor. Also, The New Gods traverse universes so easily that it almost never comes up that they technically live in a different universe. But they do. Also the cartoon animal universe of Captain Carrot survived. It was just left out entirely because I guess DC figured they didn't want to murder Captain Carrot on screen, because doing that to such a cartoony character would seem ridiculous, even though he was firmly part of the multiverse.
But a few years later DC realized that actually the concept of the evil Justice League from the backwards universe was awesome, so they introduced a new Crime Syndicate, who this time were just from the Anti-Matter universe of Qward. See, the point of the Crisis on Infinite Earths was to remove all the alternate universes, because they felt they were too confusing. But they left the Anti-Matter universe, because I guess they figured one alt-universe was fine, and this one was important to Green Lantern lore, and it was the main bad guy in the Crisis, which was still canon and super important. So after the Crisis, history was changed so there was never alt universes, but the Crisis still happened, only now it was a war between the Anti-Matter universe and the (single) positive matter universe, instead of infinite positive universes. And oh, for the record, Qward is not technically the name of the universe, (that's Earth -1, pronounced "Earth Negative One,") it's the name of the planet at the center of the universe, the equivalent of the Green Lantern homeworld, Oa, on Earth-One. But sometimes the whole universe is called Qward. I guess you could call Earth-One Oa by the same logic. The Anti-Matter universe also has an Earth, and it's just called Earth.
So anyway the Justice League met a new Crime Syndicate, this time from the Anti-Matter Earth. But the Justice League at the time didn't include the characters everyone loved. This was the era of the Justice League International, when all the famous guys quit, and the league was made up of guys like Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. So the Crime Syndicate they met was equivalents of them, and not the characters we care about. But later, the classic Justice League got back together, and apparently, off-panel, the Crime Syndicate also got shifted around, and now was filled with equivalents of the classics. So you had Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, and Power Ring. And a few others I think. I forget. They're not important right now. Anyway, there was also a new Alexander Luthor (Sr.). He came to the Justice League world, which he called "Earth 2," though this isn't an official title, and is an ironic joke on how the Justice League sees themselves as the center of the multiverse. (Well actually, after all the universes merged together in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Earth is literally the center of the multiverse. Specifically, Central Park in New York City on Earth-One. This would be a plot point in a few stories, like Our Worlds At War, from 2001, but that isn't terribly important for our purposes.) So Alexander Luthor recruits the Justice League to help him beat the Crime Syndicate, who have killed all the other heroes of their world, like The Jester, the equivalent of The Joker.
But the writer of this story remembered an older bit of DC trivia. Before "Superwoman" was the name of the evil Wonder Woman of Earth-Three, it was the name Lois Lane took on when she occasionally gained Superman powers, starting back in the early '40s. So here they established that Superwoman was the equivalent of Wonder Woman, but she was also the equivalent of Lois Lane, so she had a relationship with her equivalent of Superman, Ultraman. Also she was cheating on him with her equivalent of Batman, Owlman, because I guess this is the evil universe, so of course.
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