Flame Wars VI

Flame Wars VI was a crossover that ran from May to August 2003. It was written by Martin Phipps and Jesse Willey. It concerned the Anti-Moderator's attempt to destroy all RACC imprints it found unfitting, and the resulting cross-time chaos. It can be read here.

See also The Flame Wars, Flame Wars II, Flame Wars III, Flame Wars IV, Flame Wars V, Flame Wars Final, and the term flamewar.

History

In Cute Anna, Crypt Looter #9-12, Deja Dude and his family and friends were lost in spacetime on a stolen Dorf ship and found themselves in the world of the Society of Net.Heroes, a more "realistic" version of the Looniverse which resembled The Ultimates. On the way home, they discovered a timeline of the Mirror Looniverse where the evil LNH still reigned.

In the nonexistent events of Flame Wars V, the LNH traveled to a "Haven World" where humans and Dorf lived in peace at the bidding of Cute Anna's heretofore-unkown sister, who was searching for God. This whole story was so embarrassing that Deja Dude asked Retcon Lad to retcon it out of existence once it was over.

In The Team #41-44, Autumn Gully, a mage seeking redemption and former member of The Team, went in search of the mysterious and highly dangerous Eyes of Time. She convinced Duplicator to destroy them and absorbed their power for herself, gaining knowledge of the secrets of time and space.

Plot

When Russ Allbery became moderator of RACC, he chose to forego all judgment and let through any work as long as it fit the group's topic. But his expelled judgmental nature took on a form of its own: the Anti-Moderator. It seeks to judge all the worlds of RACC and destroy those it finds wanting. To carry out its judgment, it creates a horde of undead minions, the Headhunters, from the remains of the Hell's Titans Earth.

Meanwhile, Autumn Gully becomes aware of the threat posed by the Anti-Moderator. She appears to the troubled net.antihero Electra just as the latter is about to commit suicide and asks her help. Autumn gathers together a group of heroes associated with the Team, including Electra's alternate future self Erin Joy, to find Excess, the hero who is destined to stop it. But the ghost of her cousin and mentor Jerome Gully appears to her and reveals that Excess is actually her.

Meanwhile, in the LNHQ, different timelines are beginning to merge together: Looniverse-A, Society of Net.Heroes' universe, the Mirror Looniverse, the Oddballverse, and the XXX Looniverse. Vel, a half-human half-Dorf who came to the aid of the LNH in Flame Wars V before that story was wiped from existence, reappears in the LNHQ and finds himself bonding with Sing-Along Lass. Confusion spreads throughout the different Legions, and Excess decides to stabilize the multiverse by joining them into a single amalgamated timeline.

Excess then appears to the amalgamated Legion to warn them about the Anti-Moderator, and Kid Recap shows up just in time to explain things. The amalgamated net.heroes, stronger than any of their individual counterparts, make short work of the Headhunters. But the Anti-Moderator stops them by preventing the posting of the last two issues, resetting things to just before the realities were merged. Now the good Legion, with members from each of the different alternate-reality Legions, is locked in a war with the evil Legion, whose Earth is on the opposite side of the sun.

Excess has to convince all the different Legions to work together. She appears to Ultimate Ninja and his counterparts Ultimate Soldier, Penultimate Ninja, Ultimate Emperor, and Ultimate Gimp, and merges them into one being: Ultimate wReam. But the Anti-Moderator counters with his Hell's Titans counterpart, the Ultimate Headhunter. Excess merges together Electra, Erin Joy, and Electra's "good" counterpart, Carolyn Forge, and sends the resulting unstable amalgamation to kill the Ultimate Headhunter. Together, the two amalgamated heroes kill the Anti-Moderator, though Erin Joy does not survive.

With the Anti-Moderator's destruction, everything goes back to normal. Well, more or less. A few things are left over from the alternate timelines, including a Teacher Legion sign on the front of the LNH headquarters and Vel...

Associated Issues

• Flame Wars VI #-2 to #0, by Jesse Willey
• Flame Wars VI #1 to #6, by Martin Phipps and Jesse Willey
• Hell's Titans #-18 to #-16, by Jesse Willey: The Headhunters attack the Hell's Titans timeline, but leave when Divine reveals to them that this is the world of their origin.
• The Team #45 and #46, by Jesse Willey: The Headhunters attack the heroes Autumn has gathered while they are searching for Excess; the present-day Team join the battle against them. Strange sacrifices his life to destroy the Headhunters.
• Cybernet: Never Say Goodbye #1 to #3, by Jesse Willey: The heroes of the Cybernet universe join together one last time to save their world from destruction.
• Ultimate Mercenary #1 to #7, by Jeanne Morningstar: Trapped in an alternate timeline, Ultimate Mercenary is pursued by a Headhunter, as with his mysterious new powers he is a threat to the Anti-Moderator. He finds himself involved in a war between two factions of time travelers. His ally, Varda, falls out of the story and is captured by a mysterious woman who is gathering survivors of destroyed universes. When Ultimate Mercenary returns to the LNHQ, he encounters his counterparts from the alternate timelines that are converging there and his descendants from the LNH2 timeline. In isssue 7, while trying to escape the Crossover Citadel, UM and company briefly cross over with issue 5 of the series and leave before things get even more ridiculous.

Legacy

After his introduction in FWVI, Vel spun off into his own series, which itself led into Killfile Wars.

A Headhunter killed Pointless Awards Man II, resulting in Saxon Brenton's transformation into Pointless Awards Man III in Just Imagine Saxon Brenton's RACCies.

Amabel Holland later Elsewhirled all stories involving the Teenfactor cast. However, this does not affect this story, given that it involves merging alternate timelines.

In Ultimate Mercenary #6, it was revealed that the Anti-Moderator had drawn on the power of The Hungry Past to create the Headhunters. The Crossover Queen, who had captured Victoria Arden and other individuals from dead worlds as servants and sacrifices, drew the Headhunter who'd been sent to pursue Ultimate Mercenary after Beige Midnight so she could revamp the LNH and attract new readers, thereby gaining power over the Internet. Ultimate Mercenary and his allies stopped her plan and freed the Headhunter, discovering it was Manga Girl II.

In Ultimate Mercenary v20 #3, a Headhunter resembling Kid Enthusiastic was accidentally summoned by Professor Penumbra on Earth-20 when attempting to return Ultimate Mercenary to his own world. Since Kid Enthusiastic came into being after the Hell's Titans timeline branched off from the mainstream Looniverse, Ultimate Mercenary speculated that someone or something is creating new Headhunters.