Further thought on Cornelius Van Damme.

How does CVD know that the real Aldus Hilltop isn't going to show up and call him an impostor?   The only ones who know the real Aldus Hilltop's true fate are his three lackeys and the doctor.  

I guess I just think the timing of the President's replacement is just too fortuitous to have happened by chance.   Maybe I'm working too hard.

Andrew:

Hilltop christens himself with that name in issue # (?) 30 (?)

"How does CVD know that the real Aldus Hilltop isn't going to show up and call him an impostor?   The only ones who know the real Aldus Hilltop's true fate are his three lackeys and the doctor. "

Because he wouldn't take Hilltop's appearance until after killing him. So no chance of that. (Rememer, when they went to the White House with Amanda, he did so appearing as CVD. The security guard even expresses surprise to see CVD out in public.)

Sorry, no. There he understand he is Sathanas. He knew that name from the first time he met "himself" (from the future) in issue #6; Jorgenson told him. So, where 'Sathanas' name came from?

Oddly this is one aspect of the H/S interaction that *isn't* necessarily an ontological paradox.

Provided that Sathanas is 'precisely the sort of name, Hilltop's own reading and culture would have suggested', then, there is still an implicit ur-timeline causality. That is Hilltop names himself Sathanas because (at that point) he knows he was named Sathanas, but if he had become Sathanas *without* encountering his future-self it would still have been his natural coinage. 

There's only a 'where did the information come from' paradox if the information *could not have been* generated by either party (past or future).

The man who gets a note saying 'steal the box at the corner of 40th and Main, it's a time machine and then use it to send yourself this note' who then sends himself the note, has information with no apparent source. It looks possible, but it in fact implies a previous 'ur' timeline in which somehow the man (or someone wishing to benefit him) is aware of and has the use of the time machine, without the note to prompt him (them).

Otherwise its a kind of thermodynamic miracle and profoundly unstable, as any changes downwhen from use of the time machine, or other time machines will tend to lead to the note not being written and the man not getting the machine and not writing the note.

Simon BJ

How about . . . when and where will we see the re-appearance of David?   We never saw a body.   Also, his ability may lend itself to him surviving that explosion.  

What was David's ability, anyway, other than transmutating into a "goblin" form?

Edited to add the word "NEVER"