Giant Scorpion Moses

“ The Downward Spiral expressed itself in darker magic 

as the Invisibles faced bacterial gods from a diseased twin universe. 

After trying out a Voudon ritual in 1993, 

I found myself facing down 

an immense scorpion creature 

that tried to teach me 

how to psychically assassinate people 

by destroying their “auras.” 

When the ritual was done, 

I switched on the TV to decompress 

and caught the last fifteen minutes of Howard the Duck, in which 

nightmarish extradimensional scorpion sorcerers 

attempted to clamber their way into eighties America.”

"You are about to witness The End of The Old World, 

and The Birth of The New.

I am now one of 

The DARK Overlords of The Universe.

Tonight the laser beam hit 

The Nexus of Sominus.

It lies beyond The Planets. 

It is a Region of Demons, 

to which we Dark Overlords were exiled eons ago.

Just as you were brought down here accidentally, 

tonight, the laser beam released me from that Region of Demons 

and pulled me down into that lab.

During the explosion 

I entered Jenning's body.

I have disguised My True Form, 

which would be considered 

hideous and revolting, here.

Howard, The Duck :

Lucky for the people eating…..

OR —

Extremely considerate.

In the Steve Gerber miniseries The Phantom Zone #1-4 (January–April 1982), it is revealed that the Zone not only has a breach through which other inmates had escaped, but that they were never heard from again. 

The imprisoned Superman and Quex-Ul use this method and travel through several dimensional “layers” seeking The Exit into The Physical Universe. They finally encounter a Kryptonian wizard named Thul-Kar, who tells them that he believed Jor-El’s prophecy of Krypton’s doom and entered the Phantom Zone through magic. 

Using the same breach, he discovered The Truth about the Phantom Zone : all its levels are manifestations of the consciousness of a sentient, malevolent entity called Aethyr, The Oversoul.

As explained by Thul-Kar, Aethyr itself came into being uncounted millennia ago when two spiral galaxies collided at an almost primordial stage after the physical universe’s creation. Countless worlds were simultaneously destroyed and the deaths of so many beings merged somehow to form a single, evil consciousness that called itself Aethyr The Oversoul. 

This supremely powerful entity enclosed itself into a dimension outside The Physical Universe within itself, forming The Phantom Zone.

The Zone itself is an interface between the Earth-One dimension (The Physical Universe) and Aethyr’s Mind, the outer layer (where zone criminals are housed) representing its ability for Abstract Thought; The Zone is basically Aethyr’s capacity to imagine other possibilities of existence, and is the outermost template of its consciousness. 

Only by entering Aethyr’s core realm can a zone prisoner escape back to the physical universe, but this process is dangerous since any being who tries risks being destroyed in numerous ways as well as by forever having their souls merged with Aethyr’s essence while within Aethyr’s core realm. This is because as you enter deeper into Aethyr’s consciousness, you no longer exist as an abstract entity and your existence becomes subject to Aethyr’s whims. 

When attacking Superman and Quex-Ul, Aethyr personified itself as an aggressive, purple-skinned dog’s head that breathed flames capable of destroying and absorbing the souls of those that it wishes to conquer. 

While Quex-Ul is killed by Aethyr in this fashion, Superman manages to make his way out of the Phantom Zone by avoiding those flames and flying directly through Aethyr’s skull and its mind, returning to Earth through a tear in the fabric of Aethyr’s mind and the physical universe, but not without encountering the horrific remains of all of the souls entrapped within Aethyr over the millennia.

Mister Mxyzptlk is later possessed by Aethyr. During the process while Myyzptlk is imprisoned on his own home dimension, Thul-Kar communicates with Mxyzptlk and offers him an escape in exchange for the merger. This merger, however, empties the Phantom Zone of its criminal inhabitants. As the Phantom Zone villains head to Earth to conquer it, Thul-Kar and Nam-Ek are re-absorbed into Aethyr. Superman awakes and sees that the Phantom Zone villains are wreaking havoc on Earth, causing destruction to the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and demanding Superman come out and fight them. Superman battles the Phantom Zone villains in Washington D.C.. While fighting Faora Hu-Ul, he witnesses her disappearing as she is absorbed into Aethyr. Mister Mxyzpltk reveals that his strong personality has taken over Aethyr and he absorbs all the rest of the Phantom Zone inhabitants back into himself, determined to torture them endlessly and wreak havoc as he sees fit. Mxyzpltk-Aethyr leaves, intending to next take over the Fifth Dimension, and Superman is left to put out the fires in Washington and then rid Metropolis of the Kryptonite remains of Argo City.