Helping Hand To Understand: DC Comics!

As three titles from DC Comics’ Rebirth line launch this week, I thought it’s about time someone made it clear just what exactly is going on.

We’re actually best starting Flash#123 from about 1961, where it was revealed that the original Flash (Jay Garrick) and the ‘new’ Flash (Barry Allen) were from separate worlds. From this came the separation of the Silver Age, that is to say, the time of the Justice League’s creation, and Golden Age, the time of the Justice Society.

(this is basically Flash season 2).

All sorts of meet-ups started happening, which all featured the same word: “Crisis!” Be it Crisis on Earth-One (the Silver Age) where the Justice League met their Earth-Three counterparts, the Crime Syndicate or Crisis on Multiple Earths, involving the Justice Society as a whole. To make matters worse there were also worlds of DC-owned properties bought way back in the day that existed outside of the mainstream ‘Earth-One’ continuity. These were:

Ø  Earth-Two: Home of the golden age versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Also – the Justice Society, infinity Inc. (who were like a Teen Titans for the JSA) and Seven Soldiers of Victory. This basically covers the Golden age comics, 1938-1955 [the cut-off point is confused due to Batman and Superman being some of the only on-going superheroes of the time before Barry Allen becoming the Flash in ‘56].

Ø  Earth-Three: Opposite Earth, home of Luthorman as well as the evil villain Ultraman and his team, the CRIME SYNDICATE OF AMERICA!

Ø  Earth-Four: Home of the Charleston Comics such as The Blue Beetle, The Question, Peacemaker and various other characters.

Ø  Earth-S: Home of Shazam Family, better known as Captain Marvel at the time (or sometimes, Captain Thunder).

Ø  Earth-X: This was the ‘Freedom Fighters’ – people like Uncle Sam, Doll Man, Firebrand and that sort of thing, as well as the Blackhawks & Plastic Man.

Ø  Earth-Prime: An Earth which was meant to be real life itself only with one superhero, that being Superman.

Now there were a load of parallel universes but I won’t go into detail of that yet. Basically, by 1985, it was the most confusing thing ever. So DC asked Marv Wolfman and George Perez to write an event which would change comicbooks forever as well as straighten out DC comics’ continuity. This was known as Crisis on Infinite Earths and basically, all these worlds were being wiped out by this huge evil dude known as the Anti-Monitor. So, a group of about 12 heroes from these 5-6 worlds were gathered together to stop him. BUT it’s such a long arc that it’s not to go into detail unless you have to so here are the basics:

From Earth-Three you had Alexander Luthor Jr, the son of Luthorman, along with Earth-Two Superman, Earth-Prime Superboy and a bunch of other guys from various Earths mentioned above. BASICALLY, it saw the end of Barry Allen (Earth-One), Wonder Woman (Earth-Two), Supergirl (Earth-One) aaaand the original Superman, as well as Earth-Prime Superboy & Alexander Luthor Jr sacrifing themselves for the entire multiverse. It’s 1985, you’ve just killed basically everyone from the DC Comics of 1985-1955 along with your parallel universes, what do you do now?

This created ‘Earth-0’ or, for the sake of keeping things simple, Post-Crisis Earth. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman all got updated origins, Earth-Two/Four/S/X and One were all one Earth, housing all continuity under one roof. There wasn’t a single parallel universe out there and after Zero Hour, a time-travelling event from 1994, eventually things smoothed over. Post-Crisis Earth had none of the confusions of Pre-Crisis Earth and as storytelling matured, the glitches and hitches of making your golden age comics count for your stuff in the 90s soon became easier to do.

So remember how I said Alexander Luthor Jr, Superman of Earth-Two, Superboy of Earth-Prime were all dead? Yeah, think again. Turns out they’ve been in limbo this whole time and sick & tired of solitude, Alex Jr basically goes crazy. But worse yet, Superboy goes crazy first. And punches reality. I’m not even shitting you.

 (easily one of my favourite splashes ever).

Erh, here’s where it gets confusing. It turns out Power Girl is actually not from Post-Crisis Earth but instead is from the Earth-Two of 1938-1955 (I should have mentioned in about the mid-70s, Infinity Inc. and All-Star Squadron came out which were set earlier than their publication, thus explaining why Power Girl is from Earth-Two).

She’s real happy when Superman of Earth-Two comes through but uhhh, through punching reality, Superboy of Earth-Prime basically rebooted the multiverse. From this, without anyone from Earth-0 knowing, 51 other universes are created. They fight the now crazy Superboy Prime, who kills a bunch of folk like Superboy of Earth-0 and this also teases an event which would happen 7 years down line when Wally West sees his Uncle Barry for a millisecond in the Speed Force. This whole event was known as Infinite Crisis. About three years later, Final Crisis came which killed Batman for a bit and revealed the 51 other universes (and had some cool ideas like featuring a Multiverse Supermen team and Jimmy Olsen but poor execution on the most part).

So, this ‘new Multiverse’ helps to create categories. We have the Pre-Crisis Multiverse and the Post-Crisis Multiverse. An easy way of identifying everything is by going “ah but Post-Crisis Earth Two/2” or “Pre-Crisis Earth 4!” Right? It splits continuity into 1938-1985 and then 1986-2000s. THEN Geoff Johns went “damn, bringing Hal Jordan back to life was cool, now let’s do that to Barry Allen!”

In 2009, DC Comics published ‘Flash: Rebirth’, with the reincarnated Barry Allen [who’d come back to life in Final Crisis. Now to emphasise how unimportant as an event it was, I didn’t even mention that until now].

(As much as Barry Allen's return was annoying, this setup looked awesome).

In Flash the Rebirth, it was revealed that Professor Zoom had killed Barry’s Mother all this time, not his Father, which as you can imagine pissed Barry off a lot. In fact, it pissed him off SO much that by 2011 he decided to rectify it. This created the ‘Flashpoint’ world, which is kinda like DC’s answer to House of M. But only like, 6 years later. This alternative timeline had Thomas Wayne become Batman and Atlanteans & Wonder Woman’s people at war

Now, the solution for fixing the timeline so that it would return to Post-Crisis Earth is really dumb but it’s comics so let’s go with it. Barry was going to attempt to fuse with himself via the Speed Force in order to stop himself from stopping Professor Zoom. On his sprint he sees a total of three timelines – Post-Crisis Earth (Earth 0), the Post-Crisis Earth-Thirteen (the world of Vertigo Comics) and the Post-Crisis world of Earth-Fifty (Wildstorm). Some crazy lady tells him that they’re all connected but have been separated for stopping an ‘even larger threat’.

Hearing this, Barry does what any normal person would do: fuse them all together. Which reboots the Universe. Again. (Are you all detecting a pattern here?)

Barry just thinks everything’s normal now and gives this weird-ass letter to Bruce Wayne from his Father in the alternative timeline. Except….not quite. This is where, in 2011, they created ‘The New 52’ which is a pretty darn confusing name. To make it even more confusing, they removed numbering and decided to call it ‘Prime Earth’.

But wait Uly, surely they realised that calling it both those things would just confuse new time readers with the ‘52’ Earths of the Post-Crisis Multiverse? Or that ‘Prime Earth’ would make us think of the punching universes guy, Superboy Prime?

(Honestly, so stupid, after 11 years I'm still getting shocked by the levels of stupid that comics can achieve).

YOU’D HAD THOUGHT, WOULDN’T YOU.

To make your life easier, I suggest we spread around CBR’s great term of ‘Earth August’. This is after the New 52 (its name was given for the 52 new titles they launched from #1, including Action & Detective Comics, which had never been done before). Fans everywhere hated the New 52 – or Earth-August I should say – because it basically rebooted everyone they had loved and removed characters like Oracle, Wally West, Donna Troy and any major marriage you can think of. It was meant to be ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’ and it ended up looking like basically every other 1990s edgelord Cable comic out there.

Earth-August also saw a new Multiverse [why, I don’t know]. Without Wildstorm and Vertigo imprints, which were now just part of the mainstream comicbook universe, there came a new ‘Earth-2’ and ‘Earth-3’ (which has been a major feature as of late!) SO back to our lovely multiverse categories, of which there are now 3:

Ø  Pre-Crisis: Anything before 1985, with separations for Earth-One Pre-Crisis being 1956-1985 more or less and Earth-Two for 1938-1955.

Ø   Post-Crisis: A multiverse of 52 Earths, Earth-0 being a fusion of about 5-6 worlds from the Pre-Crisis Multiverse.

Ø  Earth(s) August: The New 52’s Multiverse, which includes its own Earth-2 and Earth-3.

It kinda had a couple of highs, some nice art but generally was displeasing. Then DC did something AMAZING. They…. listened. suddenly, these last few months we saw the return of Post-Crisis Superman and Lois Lane, that is to say pre-Earth August Lois & Clark. They were in hiding on Earth-August and had a son. Earth-August’s Superman was f*cking up basically, with people knowing his identity and it’s all being leading up to his death now.

As the Earth-August-3 universe attacked, it was revealed that a mysterious blue force was the one that vanquish Owlman of EA3. Now, in ‘DC Rebirth’ this has been expanded upon to be revealed as…DOCTOR MANHATTAN. That’s right, the dude from Watchmen. Why is it him? No one’s really quite sure right now as we’re in the early stages. But DC Rebirth#1 chronicles Wally West, trapped in the Speedforce as post-Convergence (the REAL reboot event of Earths August, which sort-of-maybe brought back Post-Crisis Earth) Earth began to show familiar faces who had been long since dead or gone.

(“I’m bored, let’s make the DC Universe” – Dr. Manhattan, apparently).

And now, we’re awaiting DC Rebirth titles, bringing Post-Crisis Earth but slightly altered back from Comics Limbo! After reading DC Rebirth#1, I’m super excited. I’ll be collecting 4 titles – Superman, Action Comics, Supersons and Batwoman. Possible reviews to come soon.

NOW – a TL;DR:

1938-1985 à separate universes for golden age and silver age, as well as DC purchased characters like Charleston and Fawcett. All changed in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and later in “Zero Hour.” Known as Pre-Crisis Multiverse.

1985-2011 à A combination of Earths 1, 2, 4, S, X and others. This housed all creations bar Vertigo and Wildstorm under one roof, making it easier to follow post-Zero Hour which straightened the timeline out. Infinite Crisis saw the recreation of the Multiverse, so this is the Post-Crisis Multiverse.

2011-2016 à After Barry Allen edits time to save his Mother then to un-save her, it creates (and destroys) an alternate timeline which basically brings an end to the Post-Crisis multiverse and refuses Vertigo/Wildstorm in with mainstream DC. This also brings about an edit multiverse, so is the Earth August Multiverse.

2016- à Dr. Manhattan turns out to have fled from his Watchmenverse and apparently, all this time, has had a play in creating the Post-Crisis DC Universe. This is ‘DC: Rebirth’, which will bring back the Post-Crisis Earth (it is unclear if there will be a ‘Rebirth’ Multiverse or if it’ll just bring back the 51 other Earths or whatever. Many unanswered but exciting questions!) To save confusing, code this as Earth-Rebirth.

This has been me giving you a helping hand to understand DC Comics! Couple of links to help with any further reading too:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/unpacking-dc-comics-reboots-relaunches-retcons

and

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Post-Crisis