Retro Review: DC: The New Frontier

It is easy to begin Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier, classify it as an "Elseworlds" story, and continue on, reading it with pleasure to its conclusion without revising that classification, that is an Elseworlds, one of many. But New Frontier is, significantly, something different than – something more than – an Elseworlds, and part of what makes it so outstanding lies in that subtle distinction.

Yes, New Frontier meets the definition. Just as "imaginary stories," from the era before the term "Elseworlds" was coined, fits as well. New Frontier presents variants of familiar DC characters in a variant of the familiar DC Universe. But to see how the story is more than that, note the ways in which it deviates from both the Silver Age and post-Crisis renditions of the DCU:

• New Frontier has an absolute timeline with precise dates, and with characters aging one year for every year that passes.

• As a rule followed in all cases but three, Cooke defines characters' debuts and careers to match their actual publication dates. For example, Barry Allen debuts, in the world of New Frontier, at the same time that Showcase #4 was published in our world. The exceptions are so rare that they are worth identifying: Dick Grayson, John Henry Irons, and (in a cameo only) Roy Harper all debut around 1960 instead of in 1940, 1993, and 1941, respectively.

•  New Frontier interweaves the timelines of actual historical and cultural events with DC publications so that, for example, the launch of Sputnik is inserted in proper sequence after the arrival on Earth of J'onn J'onzz and the accident in which Barry Allen gains super speed.

• Artistic style and period-appropriate slang makes this work about 1960 look and sound like it was created in 1960.

• Though the style is from the Sixties, the perspective is from the 2000s, turning an eye to much that was ignored by comics and the mass media in its own time, such as racial discrimination, racial violence, and the excesses of McCarthy-era anti-Communist rhetoric.

• Cooke includes not only DC's stars, but also a huge lineup of DC characters, offering memorable renditions of characters ranging from Batman to Slam Bradley and the Challengers of the Unknown.

• Cooke adapts, from post-Crisis continuity as well as Watchmen the notion that superheroes became feared by the public, and thus the JSA era was ended. He adapts, from The Dark Knight Returns, the notion that Superman (and Wonder Woman) continue to operate by pledging their loyalty to the U.S. government, while Batman continues on as an outlaw.

• The comprehensive history of an era, showing the dawn of DC's Silver Age, suggests parallels between the optimism of John F. Kennedy's "Camelot" and the debut of the Justice League.

To summarize the nature of New Frontier's world: While a typical Elseworlds offers a variant of the standard DCU, or makes the DC characters interact with some fictional variant of our world, DC: The New Frontier places DC characters in a world that is much more like the real world than any previous rendition of the DCU. During long, extended scenes and in tiny details, New Frontier is a period piece that is about our world – primarily the United States, but other places as well. It educates while it delights and entertains.

Because of all this, the superheroes are much as we've always known them, but their world seems different, and, though set in the past, and worked from established material, it is incredibly new in the way it combines older plots and styles with a new perspective. The superhero action, front and center, is as universally white and non-inclusive as the comics of the Fifties, but Cooke makes the readers and his characters aware of the glaring social inequalities of the times, with xenophobia, rape, lynchings, and Joe McCarthy's Red Scare punctuating the usually-sunny narrative.

And while it does such a great job of being about the real world – circa 1960 but seen from the perspective of the 2000s – New Frontiers does two other things, too. It crescendos around a particular story with a particular threat, called The Centre. But before, during, and after that central plot, it constructs an architecture of an entire age of heroes, showing the Golden Age and the Justice Society in the rearview mirror while it drives us through the beginning of the Silver Age and the formation of the Justice League.

The first time that NF shows us a superhero in costume is when Hourman dies fleeing from the police as a vigilante in 1952 – this is the first year after DC ceased publication of the Justice Society, and also the time that McCarthyism was near its zenith. As in DC's post-Crisis continuity, NF posits that the JSA was driven underground, leaving the world without superheroes for a time. As in The Dark Knight Returns, NF shows Superman working behind the scenes as a government agent while Batman fights crime illegally. Like the continuity applied retroactively to the Silver Age superheroes, we see heroes like the Flash (Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) debuting some time after Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Unlike any of those once-main continuities, NF asserts that the Trinity belonged to the JSA era, and after a few years, went on to be part of the JLA era. This is a luxury that NF's timeline allows because only eight year separate the two teams' tenures, unlike the decades that passed before DC reintroduced JSA stories in the late Seventies under the post-Golden Age concept of Earth Two.

At its finest, New Frontier is an origin story, not of one hero or another, but of a team – a universe. Most central are the three Silver Agers who joined the Justice League as charter members. Barry Allen is trim, almost petite, but supremely confident and courageous. J'onn J'onzz is lonely and isolated in his exile on Earth, but utterly driven to act only on the behalf of others as policeman John Jones. Hal Jordan, whose life is shown in more detail than anyone else's, begins as a kid in an outtake from "The Right Stuff," then goes on to become a war hero, a test pilot, an astronaut, and a superhero. New Frontier is a coming-of-age story for the Justice League's universe, tying together many loose threads, and ending by showing how the nascent League goes on to fight together, opposing Starro, the JLA's first opponent in print, back in Brave and Bold #28. The finale, quoting Kennedy's inaugural speech is overflowing with optimism. If it makes you want to see the new world that has been born, it's there in print, in the first fifty or so issues of Justice League. But those stories by Gardner Fox are written for kids, perhaps older kids. New Frontier is a look at that world that was newly minted for kids, but dressed up and sophisticated for adults, full of meaning and style. Sometime a few months ago, I realized that it is, in all likelihood, the best comprehensive account of the entire DC Universe in one work. If I had one DC story to take to a desert island, I can't think of a better choice.

 

Earlier this year, I read New Frontier for the nth time, taking notes, putting together drafts of a review to post on my blog. And then, when the review was nearing completion, Darwyn Cooke died, far too young. All of the kind things I say about the work, and by extension about Cooke, might seem like a puff piece, something overly kind said of the dead. No. After many times admiring New Frontier, I was putting into words why I thought it was so wonderful, and this was nearly complete when I heard that the author was gone. All of the admiration was firmly in place and for the most part already typed out when I got the sad news. Darwyn Cooke, this review – too late – is for you.

Retro Review: Identity Crisis

By a DC tradition going back to 1963, the word "Crisis" is used in the title of a story to indicate that the story is about interdimensional travel and a threat on a cosmic scale. It may seem, then, that the title of 2004's Identity Crisis, a seven-part miniseries that had no inter-dimensional dynamics, is a misnomer. Figuratively speaking, however, Identity Crisis did indeed rework the DC Universe, though it did so with physically and psychologically brutal events and unsettling, disturbing themes, rather than the science fiction notion of parallel worlds. The dark deeds around which Brad Meltzer centered this work set the tone for much of the next decade, and unquestionably had an impact that is still being felt today.

The plot of Identity Crisis – those events occurring in the present time – is a simple whodunit. Someone is murdered in the first issue, and the murderer's identity is revealed in the last issue. Along the way, there are red herrings that fool the heroes and attempt to fool the readers. There are, of course, suspects who turn out not to be guilty – at least, not guilty of the crime at the center of the whodunit – and there are false crimes, even extraneous subplots, along the way. It turns out that the false crimes were planned by the killer, but the murder itself was something of an accident, an assault leading to involuntary manslaughter. There are many twists and turns to complicate the mystery. Yet, the story is not remembered because of a death that takes place in issue #1, nor even the several deaths that take place thereafter, but because of the flashbacks that tell of events that took place several years before the time of Identity Crisis. Those events are still remembered as some of the most shocking in a mainstream comic book, and still help frame the code of morality for superheroes – and their creators.

From the beginning, there is a shroud of secrecy that hangs over the story. In the first scene, there is a box with something inside and we don't know what it is. Heroes and villains alike are trying to get information. The narration refers to events taking place before some mysterious "Now" and the reader doesn't know at first that the reference time is the death of Sue Dibny, the wife of the Elongated Man, Ralph Dibny. As the story goes on, the mystery format makes it natural that the reader doesn't know everything, but what is hidden is not so much the story of a murder as a story of disintegration as Meltzer breaks down the ethical binaries of the DC Universe. First, Meltzer makes the villains worse than they've ever been before. Then, he tears away at the moral unanimity of the heroes. He doesn't, to be sure, bring the heroes low as he does the villains, but he replaces the moral framework in which heroes are generally of one mind regarding acceptable conduct and creates one divide among them, then another divide, and finally a complex series of factions and facades, and thereby the DC Universe is irrevocably changed.

The first dark event to set the story in motion is the killing of Sue Dibny. Meltzer goes out of his way to make this hurt – we learn all about the love that Ralph and Sue shared and how special it was. We learn, also, that Sue was pregnant, which doesn't stop her killer from saying, with ambivalence, "Goodbye, Sue…" as a flamethrower is used to torch her body. At her funeral, Ralph is unable to speak, as his sorrow turns his face into a rubbery mess that makes a mockery of the tragedy and the solemnity.

Remarkably, the shocks have at that point just gotten started. Identity Crisis #2 presents the most shocking and controversial revelation, that the villain Doctor Light had years earlier raped Sue Dibny during a break-in of the Justice League Satellite; the rape is shown, partially concealed, on-panel. Arguably more unsettling is the way Doctor Light narrates the rape, mockingly, to the Justice League, making obscene taunts and threats after he is caught. The heroes are upset, and the readers were as well. Sue Dibny's rape was a bombshell, earning Identity Crisis attention in the mainstream media and infamy among some readers.

After the story had thoroughly darkened its villains, it was the turn of the heroes. Immediately after Sue's funeral, Wally West and Kyle Rayner learn that a group of older, Satellite Era, Leaguers have a dark secret. This leads to one reveal connected to the Doctor Light case, then another, and yet another. What is unveiled is that the JLA used Zatanna's magic to remove Doctor Light's memory of the rape. Then, to prevent him from repeating such a vile crime, they narrowly vote to alter his personality. This, they do, but with the alteration turning out somewhat more severe than they had intended. Finally, when Batman walked in on the process and flew into a rage, they froze Batman and removed his memory of the event.

Identity Crisis thereby introduced the term "mindwipe" into the vocabulary of early 2000's DC readers, and established it as a controversial weapon in their arsenal. The controversy is articulated by the characters within the story, with Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Green Lantern voting against altering Doctor Light's personality, and Batman, obviously, completely rejecting the idea. Both Wally West and Kyle Rayner also articulate shock regarding the practice, and the heroes who supported the idea nonetheless knew that it needed to be kept a secret, even from other heroes, seemingly from Superman, among others. However, it is the controversy that was new to Identity Crisis, not the mind wipe idea as such. The idea of memory wipes goes back to a Green Lantern story in All American #23 in February 1941. Later stories show heroes deliberately altering their enemy's minds, such as a 1948 story in which Batman uses an interrogation room to break a prisoner's will, and a 1952 farce in which Batman goes to great lengths to make the Joker doubt his own sanity. Even killing villains was not off-limits for Golden Age heroes, with Hawkman and the Spectre downright bloodthirsty while Batman, the Flash, and arguably Superman finished off some of their enemies deliberately.

However, in the older stories, there was no hint that the reader should doubt that the hero had acted appropriately and justly. What's new in Identity Crisis is the controversy. It's not the deed, but the reaction. Superhero comics operate under the universal truth that heroes try to act justly. When one faction of superheroes decides that another faction of superheroes has acted inappropriately, the worldview that superheroes are just is irreparably shattered, because at the very least, one of those factions is wrong. Mindwiping and even killing villains was not new. Superheroes judging other superheroes as immoral was.

What makes the knife twist deeper is that the mindwipes were not an event involving only some newer, morally suspect superheroes such as Guy Gardner or Booster Gold. The flashbacks in Identity Crisis involved Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, who were not even alive anymore when Identity Crisis hit store shelves. By placing them in the conspiracy, Meltzer made this story about the pre-Crisis Justice League, and tore down the black-and-white morality of DC's pre-Crisis superheroes.

In performing his rewrite of DC history, Meltzer included some thorough scholarship in the details. When, in pre-Crisis history, did the Doctor Light-Sue Dibny incident take place? A panel in IC refers to events from a 1979 story in JLA #166-168, and the deaths of Barry Allen's wife Iris Allen and Zatanna's mother, Sindella, also took place in 1979. According to Meltzer's revisionist timeline, these all took place before the mindwipe and the secret pact to cover it up. Meanwhile, a story in New Teen Titans #3-7 that shows a "dimwitted" Doctor Light is cover-dated January-May 1981. That story itself explains that Doctor Light had been psychically manipulated by Psimon, but IC attributes his state to manipulation by Zatanna. According to the cover dates of the original issues, the rape of Sue Dibny and its shocking aftermath must correspond to an unprinted story that would have taken place sometime between late 1979 and late 1980.

Meltzer’s handling of the DCU did more, though, than simply lower the bar of morality for its villians and heroes. A gritty, noir feel pervades his use of supervillains as criminals who just happen to have superpowers rather than as superbeings who just happen to be bad. Meltzer’s villains are involved in all sorts of criminal activity, and are first and foremost out to make a buck, often without the traditional flamboyance of standing up in costume to make a public show of some grand robbery. In contrast, Meltzer’s heroes are more of a family, if an often dysfunctional one, than the traditional DC lineup, with first names being used at almost every opportunity. These people, heroes and villains alike, feel more real than the characters of earlier years.

The destruction of traditionally "good" characters is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the handling of Jean Loring. This character had been through the ringer before: In pre-Crisis stories, she was driven insane, then cured of insanity, by the villains in two science fiction stories, and abducted by the villain in another. In Identity Crisis, she is conspicuously on-panel early and often, and was, before the conclusion, correctly identified by readers as the killer. Other possible culprits might have been motivated by a desire to strike heroes through their vulnerable loved ones (as Doctor Light articulates in the rape flashback); the story illustrates that this is not a sound motive for super criminals because it drives the heroes to harass all super criminals even harder than usual. Yet, Jean Loring's motive is less than rational: Seeking to win her ex-husband back, Jean plans to attack Sue Dibny with the use of the Atom's shrinking suit, give her a stroke "or something" and thereby draw Ray Palmer back to her side as her defender. Her microscopic invasion of Sue's brain accidentally killed her, but insofar as that goal is concerned, her plan works, until her culpability is discovered. She accidentally gives away her complicity to her ex-husband, Ray Palmer, at virtually the same time that Batman separately solves the case. Her efforts to conceal the crime include a staged attack on herself, a threat to Lois Lane, and a hit-for-hire that killed Jack Drake, the father of Robin, and his attacker, Captain Boomerang. In perhaps the story's weakest moment, she smilingly tries to get Ray to accept her despite the killing. Predictably, he doesn't go for it: The story ends with Jean in Arkham Asylum and Ray shrinking himself to go into some microscopic exile. Identity Crisis a fair mystery in the Agatha Christie sense, Jean Loring was already marked as a damaged individual all the way back in 1970, decades before Meltzer planned this story. Surely, earlier writers didn't foresee her future use as the villain at the center of a rape-and-murder story, but Meltzer didn't choose the story's killer arbitrarily.

JLA #81: Jean Loring's first bout of insanity

While many readers objected to the formulaic and seemingly unrealistic "good person goes insane" story arc, it is worth remembering the character's history of externally-triggered madness, and one might consider that, whether or not it made

Jean Loring's role in Identity Crisis may have had some slender precedent in the past, but superhero comics had never seen anything like the rape of Sue Dibny. The shocking reveals and realism (not the same thing) in Identity Crisis create an unmistakable air of revolution. The use of Silver Age characters, including a pointed statement that Hal Jordan might soon return from the dead, turned the Crisis on Infinite Earths revolution into a counter-revolution, and Identity Crisis became the first of several monumental works that rolled back the entire post-COIE continuity. Within four years, it would all be undone: Hal Jordan would return to life as soon as Identity Crisis ended, then Infinite Crisis would bring back the Multiverse, and Final Crisis would bring back Barry Allen. The entire era from Infinite Crisis to Flashpoint was presaged by Identity Crisis. The darkness implied by Identity Crisis joined the deaths of Superman and Jason Todd and Bane breaking Batman’s back to become a rationale for Infinite Crisis and seemed to justify a quest to repurify the DC Universe.

History of the DC Universe: 1986-2015

My earlier post, History of the DC Universe: 1935-1985, breaks down how DC Comics became committed to a shared and (relatively) consistent continuity very gradually over a period from about 1952-1969. But once a shared universe began, inconsistencies from older stories were left unresolved and new ones were being made all the time. In 1981's Green Lantern #143, writer Marv Wolfman answered a letter from a fan who asked about why a character from Kamandi's universe had recognized Hal Jordan in a sprawling crossover in Showcase #100, but claimed not to in a recent issue of GL. Wolfman's answer acknowledged a need for some sort of clean-up wherein editorial powers would make it clear which past events were part of the main (Earth One) continuity and which weren't. At about the same time, some creators at DC began to perceive that the idea of a Multiverse was too confusing for new readers, and some features, such as Superman, seemed to be in need of a major overhaul. And thus, DC's first housecleaning event, Crisis on Infinite Earths, was conceived. It would finally be published in 1985-1986, and created a new, simpler, better DC Universe.

But if a shared, moderately consistent DC Universe was only about 15 years old when Wolfman saw the need to simplify it, it took much less than that for the need to arise for another clean-up, event, which was followed by another, and another. The post-1985 history of DC Comics is most aptly summarized by recording these reboot events, and what effect they had. They are as follows:

1986: Crisis on Infinite Earths

1994: Zero Hour

2006: Infinite Crisis

2011: Flashpoint

Each of these events restarted or revised the timeline of the DC Universe, enabling them – in principle – to change everything. In practice, none of them led to a completely new continuity. COIE and Infinite Crisis performed radical surgery on the Multiverse, with the former reducing the number of alternate Earths from "Infinite" down to just one, and the latter event increasing the number from one up to 52. Infinite Crisis made a modest number of changes to the continuity of the main Earth, while Zero Hour performed some extremely limited clean-ups. Below, I break down in more detail the changes that each reboot ushered in:

Crisis on Infinite Earths

In principle, Crisis rebooted everything. A new timeline began, and the Multiverse never existed in this timeline. In practice, many features were rebooted with new origins while other features were affected only slightly.

• The Multiverse of many alternate Earths was replaced by just one positive-matter universe with a past history that consisted primarily of a modified version of the Silver Age continuity of the Justice League and other Earth One features in its recent past and distant future, preceded by a modified version of the Golden Age continuity in its World War Two era. A smattering of heroes from other Earths were added to the modern age of post-Crisis Earth.

• Superman and Batman lost their positions of prominence as among the first superheroes on both Earth One and Earth Two. Instead, the JSA era had no versions of Superman and Batman at all, and they became first heroes of the second wave, but reserve members of the JLA instead of founding members.

• Superman's history was completely overhauled, with the Byrne Superman constituting a significantly new version of the character.

• The original lineup of the Justice League became Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and Black Canary. Superman and Batman existed at that time, but did not join as full-time members of any version of the Justice League until later.

• Wonder Woman was, in time, retconned to be two people: Diana's mother Hippolyta as a member of the JSA and Diana coming along much later as a member of the third lineup of the Justice League.

• Characters such as Captain Marvel of Earth-S, Blue Beetle and the Question of Earth-Four, and Lady Quark were added to the current era of superheroes.

• The Crisis itself became part of post-Crisis Earth's history, but as an attack by the Anti-Monitor on the one and only positive-matter universe. Barry Allen died in this Crisis, but Supergirl, who had never existed, did not.

• Many characters, including Donna Troy, Power Girl, and Hawkman, were eventually rebooted at least once, in an effort to provide them with histories that were consistent with the new, unified Earth.

• Because the new Superman had never been Superboy, the Legion of Super-Heroes were inspired by the Superboy of a Pocket Universe that was created as part of a nefarious plan by the Time Trapper. A sequence of timeline reboots taking place in – and affecting only – the Thirtieth Century created more than one new, distinct version of the LSH.

• Because certain features, such as Wolfman and Perez's own Teen Titans, were not rebooted, the post-Crisis continuity of these features was added on to pre-Crisis continuity, which eventually became very lengthy and complex.

• Justice League continuity eventually included six considerably distinct lineups: The Year One JLA, the Detroit JLA, Justice League International and Justice League Europe, the new Big Seven with Kyle Rayner and Wally West, and a new JLA led by "the Trinity" of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, which eventually turned into the Robinson JLA with Donna Troy, Starman, and Congorilla. This slate was wiped clean only with Flashpoint.

• The ranks of youths who served as Robin eventually included Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne. This sequence of Robins has never been reset at any point from 1940 to the present.

Zero Hour

In principle, Zero Hour also restarted the timeline, and modest retcons affected some features, such as Batman, but no flagship features were fundamentally altered. A fold-out in the final issue included a timeline of the DC Universe.

Infinite Crisis

Infinite Crisis became the third event to reconstitute DC continuity. The villains' effort to remix pre-Crisis Earths to their liking was thwarted, resulting in a haphazard reordering of continuity of no one's design. A few major changes resulted:

• Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were once again made full founding members of the original Justice League lineup, replacing Black Canary in that capacity.

• DC once again had a Multiverse, rather than only one dimension. The new Multiverse, however, was not revealed for almost a year after Infinite Crisis ended, and has only 52 Earths rather than the thousand (or "infinite") Earths before COIE. These were initially identical, but tampering by Mister Mind made them all distinct. Many of these Earths were described only in very brief fashion until nine years later, when the Multiversity Guidebook provided an overview of almost all of them.

• In general, Infinite Crisis left more things the same than it changed, but it gave writers latitude to make modest changes that they could explain as having happened as a result of the event, or of Superboy Prime having altered reality while punching the walls between dimensions. Consequently, many small changes were revealed months and years after the event ended.

Flashpoint

Only five years after Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint changed DC Comics in more radical fashion. In contrast to COIE, which was published long after the concept was considered, Flashpoint apparently occurred as a matter of some urgency, interrupting many creative projects mid-stride. This was perhaps most evident in the Dark Knight title, which ran only 5 issues in a Volume 1 before being rebooted with a new #1. The New 52, as the post-Flashpoint DC Universe was called, made dramatic changes in the publication format as well as fictional, creative changes within the story:

• DC began distributing new comics digitally on the same day that print versions were released.

• Every title, new or old, was relaunched with a new #1, including the venerable Detective, Action, Superman, and Batman, which had not previously been renumbered since their 1937-1940 inceptions.

• Most flagship characters received a new costume, in many cases raising the collar, creating a 3-D armor look in place of skintight fabric, and eliminating the "underwear on the outside" look that had traditionally added an extra splash of color to the uniforms of Superman and Batman.

• The timeline of the main Earth, Earth 0, was rebooted in significant ways, although those have not yet been entirely explained. Most notably, the Justice League was rebooted with a new origin depicting the first meeting of most of the various pairs of heroes, including Superman and Batman, but not Flash and Green Lantern. New origins were told for many characters, including Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, but significant elements of their pre-Flashpoint history appear to be intact. The main heroes are now shown as almost a decade younger than in their pre-Flashpoint versions. Details of how much pre-Flashpoint history is still in continuity continue to emerge as new stories are published.

• Earth 2 was radically reimagined, replacing a version in the image of the Silver Age Earth-Two which had been seen only occasionally after Infinite Crisis with a new version stricken by bloodshed and catastrophe. A relentless series of attacks by Darkseid first eliminated the new Earth 2's versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, then almost the entire population, and finally the physical planet itself. The survivors now live on a new planet along with superheroes loosely based on the members of the Justice Society.

• The rest of the Multiverse is presumably unchanged since Mr. Mind created it at the end of 52. Most of this was seen rarely or not at all before Multiversity in 2014, so there was no creative reason to change any of the Earths besides Earth 0 and Earth 2.

Five Versions of History

In, all, DC has had about five major company-wide versions of continuity in their main storytelling world, and countless parallel worlds, alternate timelines, and lesser retcons. To describe the full history would occupy an encyclopedia, but a quick summary can be provided by listing some of the major superheroes of the era in approximate order of introduction, and the various incarnations of the "J" teams (Justice Society / Justice League). Other features, other reboots, and the tangled history of the future and past are beyond the scope of this summary. 

Golden Age (1938)

Superman, Crimson Avenger, Batman, Sandman, Flash, Hawkman, Hour-Man, Spectre, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, Atom, Justice Society, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Seven Soldiers of Victory.

Silver Age (1952)

Earth One: Superman (first as Superboy), Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Atom, Hawkman. After many years, original JLA replaced by Detroit version.

Earth Two: Retroactively declared to fit the Golden Age stories, with considerable revisions made or implied. The JSA returned from retirement and younger heroes began another team, Infinity Inc.

Post-Crisis (1986)

World War Two era: Flash (Jay Garrick), Sandman, Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Wonder Woman (Hippolyta), Hawkman (Carter Hall), Doctor Fate, Atom (Al Pratt), Black Canary, Justice Society.

Second era: Superman, Batman, Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Black Canary (II), Justice League (with Black Canary but without Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman). Detroit Justice League. Flash (Wally West). Justice League International and Justice League Europe. Wonder Woman (Diana), Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner). "New Big Seven" Justice League.

Post-Infinite Crisis (2006)

This timeline inherited most of the Post-Crisis timeline, but with the original Justice League reset to the Silver Age lineup with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman instead of Black Canary. After Infinite Crisis, a new JLA lineup included several Silver Age JLAers along with Red Tornado, Black Lightning, Vixen, and Arsenal (Roy Harper). This later gave way to a JLA lineup including several former Teen Titans, Congorilla, and Starman (Mikaal Tomas).

New 52 (2011)

Earth-0: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Cyborg, Justice League.

History of the DC Universe: 1935-1985

Introduction

The Multiversity Guidebook is the most recent of several publications to offer a summary history of the DC Universe. Similar, somewhat longer, histories have been published in the past, and are already somewhat out of date.

It’s not easy to write a History of the DC Universe (or Multiverse), and it never was. Before anyone cared to piece the logic and the timeline together, it was already complicated and full of contradictions. Sometimes, the creators have published a retcon to try to correct the contradictions, sometimes they offer silence and perhaps a shrug. Reconciling eighty years of stories into a logical whole would fill a book, but here I hope to offer some cogent history of how the DC Universe took shape, something that might best be called “The History of The History of The DC Universe.” One simple observation – perhaps surprising to many – that I'd like to convey is that DC continuity didn't truly begin for decades after the superheroes debuted. Unbeknownst to me at the time, DC had adopted a full-fledged continuity across its titles not all that long before I began reading them in the early Seventies.

Roots: The Golden Age, 1935-1951

From 1935 to 1952, there was, with minor exceptions, no DC Universe: Most features stood alone. Features were published in a single title, or sometimes, such as Superman and Batman, were popular enough to be printed in multiple titles, but by and large, there was no thought in anyone’s head that the assorted titles were part of an integrated whole. This may come as a surprise to newer readers, familiar with stories printed in later decades that imagine the Golden Age stories as an early DC Universe. But this was nothing one saw in the majority of those early stories themselves.

Three exceptions, however, are worth noting. The Justice Society feature in All Star Comics merged the worlds of over a dozen different features that had started off separate. I've earlier written about the origin of the Justice Society. What’s important to note is that although the Justice Society feature placed all of these characters into the same fictional world, this never carried over to the solo features. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Starman, etc., in their own features never acknowledged that the Justice Society existed, and there was a distinct sense, often repeated, that each hero was the only hero in the world of his or her own feature. No police chief ever said, “I could call Superman or Starman. How about Starman?” Likewise, there was no indication that the Gotham City that Green Lantern lived in was the same Gotham City that Batman lived in, or that anyone on the Justice Society had ever heard of, say, Aquaman or Green Arrow. Later Justice Society stories placed the whole team in Civic City, with no mention of the heroes' respective home cities from their solo features.

Similar to the Justice Society feature was the Seven Soldiers of Victory feature in Leading Comics. This team appeared about a year after the Justice Society, also teamed up heroes who had been created as solo features, and also stood apart as its own fictional world.

One sort of tie-in which did link different features was the reference, in one feature, to another one as a comic book in the world of the other, an idea which was later used in the origin of Barry Allen, who was an avid reader of Jay Garrick comic books, and is a plot element in Multiversity. In the Golden Age, both Red Tornado and Wildcat were inspired by the comic book adventures of Green Lantern, and Batman and Robin interacted with Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman. The early Justice Society stories, beginning with the very first panel, made Fourth Wall references to their own comic books, and even to the editors.

Many efforts in later years would tie DC’s Golden Age stories, and characters such as Doctor Occult, Slam Bradley, Speed Saunders, Superman, and his super hero successors into a unified continuity, but during the Golden Age itself, there was no unified continuity to be found.

Unification: 1952-1968

The Justice Society went out of publication in early 1951. Just over a year later, as though to replace the team concept that had been extinguished, the first Superman-Batman meeting took place in Superman #76. In truth, Superman and Batman had previously appeared together in action and in many cameos in the Justice Society feature, but Superman #76 retconned that all away, and presented a story of their “first” meeting. In July 1954, World’s Finest began running a regular team-up of the two heroes, and their fictional worlds have been merged together, between and through reboots, ever since.

In the meantime, DC had several other superhero features, new and old, but for the most part, only Superman and Batman were part of a unified continuity. The mid-Fifties origins of Martian Manhunter and the Flash, Barry Allen, conspicuously avoided any mention of Superman as a part of their universe, something that almost certainly would have entered into the discussion at some point if he had existed in their worlds. The Fifties neared their end with DC Comics having one fictional world for Superman and Batman, with many other features that were presumed to be separate.

However, a story in early 1959 told the tale of Superboy meeting a young Oliver Queen, before he became Green Arrow. In late 1959, the origin of the new Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, mentioned Superman. These two stories began a process that would turn the Superman-Batman continuity into a unified DC Universe over the course of a decade.

In just a few months, the Green Lantern reboot and the first Justice League story turned DC Comics in a new direction. Now there was a feature that unified the worlds of a whole team of superheroes, and for the first time, their solo features were – at least in some ways – implied to be part of that unified continuity.

But by the end of 1961, the editors hadn't really commited to a unified continuity just yet. At the end of the third JLA story in Brave and Bold #30, an editorial note read, "With this issue, we close the case book of the Justice League of America! We'll be glad to re-open it – and continue the adventures of the JLA in a magazine of its own – if enough of you readers request it! Please write and let us know!" For about two years after the JLA was introduced, the Justice League members’ solo features made little or no mention of the Justice League, just like the Justice Society before it.

And then, that changed. In June, 1962, an appearance by the Flash in Green Lantern #13 made it the first crossover that put a JLAer besides Superman or Batman into another hero's solo title. Three months later, Green Lantern was a guest in Flash #131. Crossovers tying the heroes together remained rare, besides JLA and World's Finest. A story in Action #309 in early 1964 had "all" of Superman's friends with no mention of the Justice League besides Batman.

The years from 1963 to 1967 were when the idea of a unified DC continuity really took root. Brave and Bold began regular team-ups with an adventure starring Martian Manhunter and Green Arrow in issue #50 in November, 1963. The editorial voice is again instructive: "Here it is, fans – the magazine you've been asking for – two heroes from the DC Hall of Fame teamed together in a full-length spectacular adventure!" The implication is that fans' letter-writing was the impetus for the creative decision. Moreover, the phrase "DC Hall of Fame" is intriguing, being the concept they had in mind before a "DC continuity" or "DC Universe" had begun. Month after month, Brave and Bold tied two more characters' worlds together until it was devoted to team-ups with Batman in October, 1967.

By 1968, the Teen Titans had joined the JLA as a team that tied several older features together in one title, Brave and Bold had run over a dozen team-ups,

and many characters had made guest-appearances in other heroes' solo titles. By this point, it was natural for a reader to assume without question that most of DC's characters shared one continuity across all its titles.

Earth Two

Overlapping the same time frame that DC created a continuity around Superman, Batman, and the rest of the Justice League, they also developed the Earth Two concept to publish new content utiltizing Golden Age characters who didn't fit into the new Silver Age setup.

After the landmark meeting of Barry Allen and Jay Garrick in Flash #123 in September, 1961, almost two years passed before Barry Allen met the full Justice Society in Flash #137, and the first JLA-JSA meeting in JLA #21. In the same month that the third annual JLA-JSA meeting took place, in August 1965, the purely Earth-Two teamup of Starman and Black Canary was published in Brave and Bold #61 and #62, and later in the year, Alan Scott had a guest appearance with his younger counterpart in Green Lantern #40. This handful of stories established the Earth Two concept as a sidestage for DC, one that would later be developed into its own monthly series.

So, while DC continuity developed most actively between the Justice League characters who represented Earth One, it was at almost the same time that Earth Two became an integral part of that continuity, one that was separate most of the time, but could be bridged by the Flash or other cosmic events.

The Birth of Linear Time

The fact that DC’s Golden Age could proceed without an overarching continuity points to a more general truth: The stories of that era were simply not bothered with consistency of any kind. Retcons happened often, without apology, as though the creators simply hoped no one would notice. A feature that began in Detective Comics #1 started in San Francisco and suddenly jumped to New York. Superman went from working for George Taylor at the Daily Star in Cleveland, Ohio to working for Perry White at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. Hour-Man’s boss turned out to a criminal in one story and then was back as Rex Tyler’s boss in the very next issue. Note also that Hour-Man’s name told his enemies how to defeat him. Details like this were swept under the rug because it suited the creators’ in some way (Superman’s creators decided that they didn’t want to tie the character to Toronto or Cleveland), or because the creators themselves just weren’t concerned with details.

Going into the Fifties, comic book stories took place, primarily, in circular time. If you grab a random Superman story from 1943 and another one from 1949, you can probably read them in opposite order and not notice any inconsistencies. Nothing much was changing in the lives of these characters, and every story ended neatly to allow the next one to start with a fresh beginning. There were exceptions: Villains often returned after their first appearance, beginning in 1939 with the Ultra-Humanite and Doctor Death who returned to pester Superman and Batman, respectively, in the very next issue after their respective debuts. Immediate recurrences were also true for Luthor and the Joker when they arrived on the scene about a year later. Batman’s life changed with the addition of Robin and his butler Alfred in the early Forties. But, by and large, time did not move for DC characters in this era, just as it rarely did for many lighter cartoon features.

Nowadays, readers take for granted that the characters inhabit linear time in which, like the real world, changes take place in stories and then the changes carry over to subsequent stories. This transition from circular to linear time was ushered in by a few important events between 1952 and 1969.

First, the Superman-Batman meeting in 1952 “counted”, unlike their previous meetings in All-Star Comics. When they next met in 1954, their 1952 meeting was considered to have happened, and so both of their worlds had changed, in a shared continuity which accumulated new history from then onwards.

Second, the landmark Action #242 in 1958 introduced Brainiac, but more significantly, the bottled city of Kandor. Suddenly, a huge number of surviving Kryptonians joined Superman who had met only a few Kryptonians before this.

A third, important shift took place with the second introduction of Supergirl in 1959. A story one year earlier introduced a magical “Super-Girl” who died at the story’s end. The character was popular, so a permanent Supergirl, Superman’s cousin from Krypton, was created the next year. Like the case of the Superman-Batman association, the early story didn’t “count,” and was never mentioned again, but the newer one did.

Then several important events marking the transition to linear time happened in rapid succession in early 1961. Just as Supergirl was introduced twice – once not counting, the second time counting – Mon-El was introduced twice, once as “Halk Kar” in 1953, then as Mon-El in a very similar story in 1961. Halk Kar never appeared again, but Mon-El became an integral character in continuity. Also in early 1961, DC’s two superhero teams, the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes, both got new members for the first time in issues printed the same month, with Green Arrow joining the JLA, whereas the LSH was shown to have multiple members, beyond the three LSH founders who had been introduced earlier. Almost simultaneously, the Phantom Zone was introduced, which was a permanent version of the criminals-from-Krypton idea first explored with Mala, Kizo, and U-Ban in 1950 and 1954. As with Supergirl and Mon-El, an earlier idea that was subsequently ignored was given a permanent replacement. These four revolutionary events, published within only three months, switched the Superman and Justice League features from circular to linear time, and with this change, the continuity became much more fertile for accumulated history for fans to explore.

The revival of the Justice Society in Flash later in 1961 also indicated that time moved for the characters, as Jay Garrick and other JSAers were revealed to have retired and grown older in the years since their earlier stories had been published.

For Batman, the change to linear time occurred later than it did for the Superman continuity. The “New Look” Batman of 1964, besides putting a yellow oval around his chest emblem, eliminated more fanciful aspects of Batman’s stories, erasing the characters Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat-Hound; for many years afterward, those characters were simply gone and assumed never to have existed at all. Then, in 1969, perhaps the most pivotal “linear time” change in DC history took place, with Robin ­– Dick Grayson ­– growing up and going to college. That same year, a JLA story bid J'onn J'onzz farewell, as the Martian Manhunter went on an indefinite leave of absence in space, and did not return to DC stories for several years.

Linear time brought life and death to the characters. The first stories with significant characters dying (temporarily) involved Lightning Lad in 1963 and Alfred Pennyworth in 1964-1966. Both of these plots unfolded over many issues, told as mysteries with subtle clues and misdirection intensifying the drama before Lightning Lad and Alfred were both resurrected. In 1966, the Flash married Iris West. [EDIT: Even earlier, as Keith Jones just commented in Feb. 2018, Aquaman married Mera in November, 1964. Thanks, Keith!] In 1967, the Legionnaire Ferro Lad died and – in a first for DC superheroes – remained dead. Now, the DC characters were going through all the major changes in life. The reader could perceive the characters of the DC Universe growing older, acquiring new associations, making life changes, and moving on. The lives of the characters moved at a much slower rate than real world time, but the implication was that time did march forwards for the characters.

The shift to linear time went hand-in-hand with DC features crossing over and joining together in one shared continuity. Characters could meet, team-up, grow up, age, and die. There was a significant backstory accumulating all the time, and the casual reader might be a bit adrift picking up an issue of DC Comics, but devoted readers now had an ever-more complex continuity to learn and explore.

The Bronze Age

Thus, the Seventies were the first full decade where a shared DC continuity ruled by linear time was in effect. Things changed slowly, but they did change, opening up more complex narrative possibilities. DC's creators and fans could conceive of a full-Multiversal history. The past included the Big Bang, the Guardians of the Universe, the New Gods, and eventually the World War Two era when superheroes began on Earth Two. The present included the Justice League on Earth One, an older Justice Society on Earth Two, and many adjunct characters on those and other parallel universes. And there was a future including the Legion of Superheroes, the Reverse Flash, Abra Kadabra, Rip Hunter, and other characters. DC's titles followed dozens of characters on many teams, acquiring a stable of hundreds of villains on various planets, dimensions, in various eras. About twenty years after DC continuity had finally gotten up to speed, it would be perceived as cluttered and overly complex, and DC's editors made plans to sweep much of it away.

Further reading: History of the DC Universe 1986-2015.