Comic Book Resources

The Spectre wiping out a whole country might count.

Hell, Ultron wiping out a whole country in Avengers comes to mind, too.

The nuclear apocalypse in Fist of the North Star. One wonders what all the Mad Max-esque kung fu barbarians Ken beats up and/or befriends would’ve done without it.

The ten year occupation of Earth in Resurrection.

The Red Skull works his way into a position in American politics as “Dell Rusk”.

The Joker as an Ambassador.

Also, the entirety of The Kang Dynasty. Worldwide disaster, Busiek style.

Am I nuts, or do some of the more extreme disasters depicted here seem out of place on the list? An explosion or natural disaster, my brain can handle because we can relate to them. Heck, I can even comprehend a zombie apocalypse as a compilation of the threat of disease, invasion, and breakdown of social order. But the destruction of the multiverse seems to be so far out there that it’s not a disaster, it’s…something else. Maybe I’m nitpicking too much.

Good call Kevin, that’s the firsrt thing that came to my mind.

Therefore, although it’s relatively obscure, I might as well suggest Transformers: Generation 2, in which Decepticons basically carry out attacks all over Earth for the Hell of it, combined with orbital bombardments which culminate in the San Francisco Bay area being annihilated.

Ah, I was also going to go with Kurt’s Kang Dynasty. For those who haven’t read it, Kang conquers Earth and enslaves humanity, sending all who defy him (including superheroes and the Avengers) into concentration camps.

Another choice might be that issue of Green Lantern where Coastal City gets destroyed.

The far-off conflict/disaster hinted at in Dan Clowes’s David Boring.

Minetaro Mochizuki’s Dragon Head is all kinds of disasterrific. Also, Kazuo Umezu’s The Drifting Classroom has to be mentioned because of all of the wonderfully horrible things that happen to elementary school children in an increasingly hostile environment.

It hasn’t been translated here yet, but Umezu has an apocalyptic manga entitled 14 (I think) that’s supposed to be pretty out there in terms of end of world carnage.

The destruction of Coast City by Mogul in Green Lantern ranks up there. Ditto the (pretty graphic by comics standards) destruction of London by Kid Miracleman in the Alan Moore Miracleman series.

The meteor in The Mourning Star
The curse in Uzumaki
Akira wave in Akira
Tetsuo destroys(?) the fabric of reality in Akira

“But, of course, he could have easily chosen the Legacy Virus, the destruction of Genosha, M Day or some other X-Universe crisis/massacre (they have a lot of those, don’t they?).”

hmm. I’ve reread the leadup to the Mutant Massacre, the massacre itself and the aftermath in the B&W volumes and I’d have to say that it’s got far greater weight and impact than any of those. It’s pretty much the template for those stories in fact.

Fred Hembeck Destroys the Universe?
http://www.hembeck.com/Destruction.htm

My bad, the MARVEL Universe…