Woo boy. Long story, and still going on.
(major spoilers follow)
As you may know, in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the alternate Earths were either destroyed or folded into the history of Earth-1, creating the post-Crisis continuity. The Superman and Lois of Earth 2 survived, and they went into some kind of extradimensional paradise with Alexander Luthor and the Superboy of Earth-Prime. They’ve been there ever since.
In the meantime…
Years ago, Dr. Light raped Sue Dibney. The Justice League decided to have Zatanna brainwash him to make him less of a threat (they ended up pretty much lobotomizing him). Batman tried to stop them, so they erased his memory of the event. Both Light and Batman have regained their memories (and Light’s smart and scary again), and they’re both pissed.
Light’s story has circulated around villainous circles, and virtually every badguy (with a few very notable exceptions) has united under Lex Luthor’s leadership to stop the heroes from ever pulling such a stunt again. They’re building a device ostenibly to mindwipe the heroes, but we’ve since learned that this Luthor is an imposter (the real guy is elsewhere, and pissed) and the device is for something else.
Batman, also deciding he can’t trust the heroes, built a satellite AI , Brother I, to watch them. It was stolen by Max Lord, who attatched the satellites to over a million unwitting nanite-driven Super-Soldiers, the OMACs. Max killed Blue Beetle (who figured it out first), brainwashed Superman, and sent him after Batman. Wonder Woman killed Max to free Clark. The heroes took out most of the OMACs, but several thousand still remain, each capable of giving Superman a good workout. As revenge, Brother I broadcast the footage of Wonder Woman killing Max, pretty much destroying her rep), and has launched a massive OMAC assault on Paradise Island. Nobody likes Batman, nobody likes Wonder Woman, and Superman is consumed with guilt and self-doubt.
At the same time, the Spectre, at Eclipso’s urging, has decided that magic is the source of all evil, and has set out on a campaign to destroy it. We’ve been told that this is fruitless and that the Spectre is, by pulling down all the old spells and wards, is just making magic even more wild and dangerous than it was before, but Ghostface won’t listen, and he’s racked up some impressive kills, among them the wizard Shazam and smashing up Atlantis pretty good.
Meanwhile, in space, pretty much every inhabited world save Earth is involved in an enormous interstellar war. And there’s a giant hole opened up in the middle of space…
Superman-2 sees all of this going down from his prison/paaradise, and decides hes had enough. He breaks free and plans to remake the univserse, this time using Earth-2 as the base template. Will he succeed, what will the DCU become? Only time will tell.
Fan response, except for some gnashing of teeth over the deaths of some fan favorite characters (especially Blue Beetle), has been pretty positive. It may seem like a lot. but it’s been very well written, so far.