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MULTIPLE EARTHS

Parallel worlds are not in truth a new concept. The Sliders TV programme showed us a new world each episode, Star Trek had its own mirror universe and the modern comic companies happily have their characters jumping into neighbouring publishers universes if they think they can make money out of it. However as far as comics were concerned in 1961 there were no parallel universes. All the characters of different publishers, groups and genres happily stayed in their own little self contained worlds, that was all to change...

By this time the Golden Age of heroes, with the original Green Lantern (Alan Scott), the original Flash (Jay Garrick) and the Justice Society, was a fading memory. The Silver Age had started wiping away much of the preceding twenty years of stories, there was a new Flash (Barry Allen), a new Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) and most important for us the Justice League. Only Barry Allen remembered the Golden Age Flash from comics he read while a teenager. However the fans remembered and most importantly so did the writers. But let us back track a bit to SHOWCASE #4, the debut of Barry Allen.

Editor Julie Schwartz was looking for material for his new experimental title SHOWCASE. The idea of the Flash cropped up and the decision was made to relaunch the character. Schwartz and writer Robert Kanigher kept the name and powers but everything else changed. This second Flash was police scientist Barry Allen (who was actually a fan of the old FLASH COMICS), he would be transformed into the new speedster by a freak combination of lightning and chemicals. The story was a hit and is widely recognised as the start of the Silver Age (some would argue that it actually started earlier with the first appearance of the Martian Manhunter). A new Flash comic was launched continuing the numbering from the cancelled FLASH COMICS.

This reappearance of the superhero after the hype of the pre-silver age Comics Code Authority and EC Horror titles was a welcome swing in direction. Soon DC were driving an entire industry of revamped heroes, fanzine publisher Larry Ivie even submitted a proposal for a JSA revamp entitled the Justice Legion of the World, he would later work professionally on FLASH GORDON for King. While his called for revamp would eventually become the Justice League as penned by one of the original creators of the JSA, Gardner Fox. The idea of the Justice Legion would resurface decades later in the hands of current writer Grant Morrison as the far future version of the JLA.

Now remember those writers that I was telling you about, the ones that remembered the Golden Age. Well the writing chores for the Flash had been handed to one such fellow, the aforementioned Gardner Fox. In a landmark issue FLASH #123 Barry Allen discovered that by altering his internal vibrations he could travel into a parallel universe, Earth-Two. This alternate universe was the home to the Justice Society and the original Flash. It was explained that on this Earth the heroes had begun their careers twenty years earlier. Suddenly the DC Universe had doubled in size. In the Justice League title the Earth-Two team ups became a yearly appearance as the JSA and JLA teamed up together to battle various Crisis on Earth-One or Crisis on Earth-Two.

A third Earth was added in JLA #29 (also the first Silver Age appearance of Starman) when Earth-Three was revealed to be a mirror universe of Earth-One. Here the American Christopher Columbus discovered Europe, assassin Abraham Lincoln shot the President and the mighty heroes were in fact vile villains calling themselves the Crime Syndicate of America. Yet another dimension, Earth-A was added in JLA #38 when the JLA/JSA encountered the Lawless League, and so it went on.

Over the years DC Comics had grown from its own beginnings in National and All-American, its universe had been doubled with the creation of parallel Earths and it was in the full steam of the Silver Age. Being one of the strongest companies on the market DC began to buy out other comic universes from failing companies. They bought up the Fawcett/Shazam characters and bolted them onto their own Earths structure creating Earth-S. DC also bought out the Quality Comics Golden Age characters adding them to Earth-Two (an Earth-Quality is used to describe the original stories of the characters but it was never actually seen in DC owned comics) where many of them later moved to the universe of Earth-X as the Freedom Fighters to battle the Nazi's there that had won the war.

By this time the DC Universe or the Multiverse as it had become known was reaching critical density, the alleged continuity that we accept to day was much looser back then and much of it had to do with editorial structures. Back then DC operated a cabal of editors each looking after their own books, Aquaman might have his home in Atlantis under his editor but across the corridor another editor would be using a totally different version of the city for Lori Lemaris in the Superman comics, let alone in the Batman, Wonder Woman or Hawkman books. Another Earth, Earth-B was even postulated to handle the continuity inconsistencies. The march of the parallel worlds continued, Earth-12 and Earth-C were humours parodies, while even Earth-Prime (supposedly our own Earth until it gained a superhero of it's own) was added.

The parallel Earth structure allowed tremendous freedom in story telling, but it also left tremendous holes in trying to keep some sort of order. Earth-Two was the occasional home to stories as were other Earths but Earth-One remained the main storing telling arena. That was until Roy Thomas created the brilliant All-Star Squadron and the later day Infinity Inc. Something had to give, multiple future timelines within each Earth as well as the parallel Earths had created a fifty year continuity nightmare that was rapidly catching up with DC Comics. It was literally a Crisis on Infinite Earths.

A plan was put together for a History of the DC Universe it involved hiring one guy to read and make notes on all of DC's previous fifty years of stories (how's that for a job). The original idea was to create this one work that would detail and clarify the past, present and future of the DC Universe or more precisely Earth-One. However they had a problem. Earth-Two and its ilk made any linear history almost impossible and combined with the multiple futures there was no almost in it, it WAS impossible. Therefore the History became one of three linked projects that would catalogue for posterity the DCU, transform it into a single unified universe and relate its established history as part of a "new start". These three projects became the Who's Who of the DC Universe, Crisis on Infinite Earths and the History of the DC Universe.

It would be the Crisis that would really being the DC Universe into a consistant alignment. It began with a mysterious being called the Monitor, The who began popping up in random books across the DC line either helping criminals or otherwise just observing the heroes. Eventually he could bring them all together as part of the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS twelve issue maxi-series to battle the forces of his counterpart the Anti-Monitor from the anti-matter universe. This Anti-Monitor was destroying entire universes with anti-matter and absorbing the released energy. In a massive battle that spanned space and time, from the 30th century to the beginning of the time the heroes battled to save the Multiverse. Ultimately they won by saving the universe but failed in preventing all universes being remoulded into one. Along the road old names like Supergirl and Barry Allen died while new heroes were created such as the third Flash and the second Doctor Light.

In the wake of Crisis the DC Universe had for a brief moment a single timeline. There were the western heroes of the 19th century, followed by the Golden Age JSA who inspired the Silver Age Justice League, in the future there was the Legion of Superheroes. It all fitted in. Well not really. You see chronology and continuity were still in flux, John Byrne's reinvention of Superman eradicated the possibility of Superboy (a necessary part of Legion history), Batman Year One by Frank Miller wiped away almost all of Golden/Silver Age Batman history and Wonder Woman was totally restarted from scratch by George Perez. With all this revamping and rebuilding much of the "otherworldly magic" went from the DC Universe.

From 1985 until recently the DC Universe had become a much smaller place, more Earth centric, all really ground breaking stories and tales were being told in the Vertigo imprint and those stories that pushed established fact were rendered out of continuity Elseworlds. That is not to say it was a bad time for DC, the Justice League International school of titles brought a welcome change of pace and Lobo captured the epitome of the big gunned hero. Each year the storylines became more and more event driven, the Death of Superman, Knightfall, Invasion, War of the Gods, each excellent stories in their own right served to rebuild the confusion and cluttered world that Crisis was deigned to clear away. DC even tried again with ZERO-HOUR which sought to fix all the continuity worries about reboots and ret-conning. It did not even last as long as Crisis.

So what happened? Mark Waid, Dan Jurgens, Grant Morrison, John Ostander, James Robinson and others happened. The true rebirth of the DCU happened after ZERO-HOUR as part of the new direction across comics in general best illustrated are the cases of the JLA and FLASH at DC Comics, ASTRO CITY at Homage Comics and the entire HEROES RETURN line at Marvel. The high point of this must be seen as KINGDOM COME, where Mark Waid and Alex Ross managed to totally revitalise the heroes of the DCU in an Elseworlds tale, now we are seeing echo's of that future tale filtering through to the current stories and characters.