"So, the League has been warned about the coming of Mageddon, an Old Gods weapon that basically makes everyone go insane with paranoid rage and then obliterates things on a cosmic scale. (Hey, wait a minute...)"

Yeah, the Solaris virus fit that MO as well. What I think happened was, Waid introduced Knowman (back in "Midsummer's Nightmare") who foretold the coming of ultimate war (or something). Which Morrison then ran with. The build-up to Mageddon begins all the way in "Rock of Ages" (which was about 30 issues before Mageddon actually showed up).

But it's comics and shit happens. So just in case something happens, Morrison used the Solaris virus -- so that, if the Mageddon storyline didn't pan out, the prophecy (regarding humanity going crazy) still winds up being fulfilled. Just by a different story than he'd originally intended.

Which is what I loved. The guy had that much foresight.

But no, I adore the WWIII storyline. Issue 41 was one of my first comics ever. I had no idea what was going on, I just knew it was awesome. I did like the Oracle/Prometheus scene. "When you're done trying to insult me to death..." Hah!

And that double-page spread with Wonder Woman leading humanity into battle against Mageddon. It took my breath away when I first read it, and you know, it still does. I just love the originality of it all -- usually it's the heroes who gather en masse to take on the Big Ol' Space God From Beyond. Here, it's *everyone*. I liked that. It was awesome.

Oracle has a couple of appearances during Waid's run, but really doesn't show up much in the JLA from that point on. Given the current status of the book, we should probably be grateful. Oy.

But no, mad props for WW3. And the fun thing was, during the Burning Martian story in Kelly's JLA run, Atom makes a reference to WW4. Which was a nice reference to this storyline, I felt.