The History of the DC Multiverse
Introduction:
I’m going to just get right into it. I’m a huge DC Comics fan, and I’ve always thought that their biggest asset was their vast multiverse, but DC does not make it easy at all to get into their history. With the endless retcons, continuity errors and recurring “Crisis” events that dramatically alter the multiverse; it’s almost impossible to figure out the long history of DC’s multiverse, and without that knowledge of the DC cosmos, it’s tough to feel like each Crisis event is actually doing anything.
In this essay I will be going over the history of the DC multiverse as a concept and how it’s evolved over the years as a result of each “Crisis” event. In the process, I’ll discuss what a Crisis event is, what the different “Ages” of comic history are and what continuity errors have occurred over the years.
Part 1: The Silver Age vs Golden Age:
American Comics are roughly divided into four “ages”:
The Golden Age encompasses comics that were published from 1938 to 1956. Notable characters that appeared here include Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel (later renamed Shazam), the Alan Scott incarnation of Green Lantern, the Jay Garrick incarnation of The Flash, and the Justice Society of America debuted here.
The Silver Age encompasses comics that were published from 1956 to 1970, with a greater shift towards science fiction. Broadly speaking, this is when Marvel Comics started gaining a lot of traction, with the majority of their most popular characters (par Captain America, who debuted in the Golden Age) debuting here. On the DC side of things, the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, Barry Allen Flash, and Justice League of America debuted here.
The Bronze Age continued a lot of the same trends in the Silver Age, but with more serialized stories and a slightly darker tone. Notable developments during this era included the revival of the X-Men and Teen Titans. Comic fans and historians refer to the Bronze Age as occurring from 1970 to 1985.
The Modern Age is everything that’s happened since 1985.
In the 50s and 60s, DC wanted to separate their Golden Age and Silver Age characters, which made sense. Sure, Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman are fairly close across the board (though not exactly), but Green Lantern and The Flash were outright separate people. Their solution came up in The Flash #123 in September of 1961, a storyline called “Flash of Two Worlds.” This comic revealed that all of the Golden Age was taking place on Earth-2, with the Silver Age taking place on Earth-1. This genius move allowed DC to pretty much have two “main continuities,” giving them a lot of freedom with their writing. For instance, even though Batman and Catwoman could never realistically settle down in the main continuity of Earth-1, they could absolutely have a daughter in Earth-2.
This led to the idea of a multiverse, with more and more Earths being added. The amount of Earths was infinite, and later storylines in the 2010s and early 2020s elaborated that this infinite multiverse was created by a goddess named Perpetua. As DC acquired more and more properties by buying out other smaller companies, this multiverse grew more and more. Some of the more notable Earths include:
Earth-3, home of the “Crime Syndicate of America,” an evil counterpart to Earth-1’s Justice League
Earth-4, home of the characters from Charlton Comics: Blue Beetle, Nightshade, Peacemaker, Question, Thunderbolt and Judomaster
Earth-S, home of Captain Marvel and the Marvel family
Earth-X, a universe where WWII lasted much longer than in the real world
Earth-C, home of the Zoo Crew, a team of anthropomorphic animals
And Earth-Prime, a world where Superman was the only hero
Parts 2-3: Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour:
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a 12 issue miniseries that ran from April 1985 to March 1986. Depicting the multiverse’s battle against an evil entity called “the Anti-Monitor,” this miniseries ended with the deaths of numerous characters (namely Supergirl and the Flash) and the destruction of nearly all universes, with the only survivors at the end being Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-4, Earth-S and Earth-X. All of those worlds in turn combined into a new universe, which most fans and even some official comics called “New Earth.” This essentially rebooted the DC continuity, separating the DC timeline into pre-Crisis and post-Crisis eras.
Crisis on Infinite Earths fulfilled three purposes:
By eliminating the concept of an infinite multiverse, it nullified several continuity errors that had existed up until this point, such as how Black Canary’s mom was supposedly the first Black Canary from the Golden Age even though they existed on separate universes.
It allowed DC to bring the Charlton Comics characters, the Justice Society and the Marvel family into the mainstream DC world, whereas before they had been relegated to separate Earths.
And it simplified the overall DC cosmos.
However, I (and many other fans and writers) would argue that DC simplified their cosmos too much. Yes, we removed continuity errors, and yes, we brought several popular characters into the main Earth, but those could have both been accomplished without destroying every other parallel universe. Remember how I mentioned at the beginning of this essay that the multiverse is DC’s biggest strength? Well, now DC shot themselves in the foot by removing that asset.
Obviously, not every successful media franchise or shared setting needs to be a multiverse, as long as there’s creative restraint, proper communication between writers and an adherence to continuity. But there wasn’t that either. Even though they removed parallel universes, DC was still greenlighting all sorts of projects that couldn’t exist in the main continuity, with no valid explanation for how or where these stories were taking place. They were also greenlighting stories that openly contradict one-another, which always forced DC to choose one “correct” story and disregard the rest. That’s why we got The Man of Steel as Clark Kent’s origin story in 1986, then Superman: Birthright in 2003, then Superman: Secret Origins in 2009.
Marv Wolfman thought he was fixing a problem in 1985, but instead, he was removing the solution. DC never stopped writing nutty, wonderful Elseworlds stories and reinterpretations of their characters, but now there was no explanation for how those stories could exist.
In any event, Crisis on Infinite Earths started a trend of DC comics, where every so often DC would either nullify continuity errors, bring in new characters from properties they acquired or simplify the DC cosmos in some way with a new intercontinuity crossover, all of which were either called “Crisis” in some way or were dubbed “Crisis events” by fans.
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The next of these was Zero Hour: Crisis in Time. This was much smaller in scale, but the general gist of it was that Coast City (the city where Green Lantern operates) was destroyed, and all of his friends, family and loved ones were killed. In his grief and rage, Hal Jordan turned evil and became the villain “Parallax.” Throughout the story, Hal Jordan steals other Green Lantern rings, becoming so powerful that he tries to recreate New Earth from scratch to save Coast City. This was a clever idea, as it allowed DC to retcon and change several events and then attribute it to Hal’s attempts to change the universe.
Parts 4-5: Infinite Crisis, One Year Later and 52:
After Zero Hour, the next major Crisis event was Infinite Crisis in 2005. Whereas Zero Hour was pretty much its own story separate from Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis continued one of the major plot threads of Crisis on Infinite Earths: namely that Superboy from Earth-Prime, Alexander Luthor from Earth-3, and Superman and Lois Lane from Earth-2 all arrive on New Earth. It turns out, when the final worlds that survived the Anti-Monitor merged together, they managed to survive the transition, and now they’re looking for a way to restore the multiverse.
Infinite Crisis was an event that pushed our heroes to the brink, with Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman all retired from superheroics for a year after the trauma they endured in this storyline. One Year Later was a massive DC event that occurred immediately after the publication of Infinite Crisis, with the Trinity returning to superheroes only to find that their world had changed drastically in the time they were inactive. One Year Later presented a chance for comic writers to breathe new life into their characters by putting them in unfamiliar situations, but it was also unsatisfying for fans to only learn about these events through flashbacks and exposition alone.
Luckily, DC predicted this, and they launched 52 in 2006. 52 was a miniseries that explored that “missing year” when the superhero community was reeling from losing their three biggest icons. 52 was named so because there are fifty-two weeks in a year and this miniseries was fifty-two issues. While this was briefly hinted at in Infinite Crisis, 52 confirmed that a new multiverse had been created by Alexander Luthor and then tampered with by Mister Mind. This new multiverse wasn’t infinite, it only contained a finite amount of universes…and you guessed it, there were 52 of them. New Earth was rebranded as “Earth-0” of this multiverse, and the other Earths were numbered 1 through 51 for a total of 52.
Honestly, this was a great move for DC. Fans sorely missed the multiverse for the 20 years that it was gone, as it allowed writers creative freedom. That’s not to say Crisis on Infinite Earths was a bad idea. Again, it’s a really good story with wonderful action, drama and emotional stakes. But the return of the multiverse allowed writers to explore new territory.
Most notably, DC acquired Milestone and WildStorm comics around this time, and they wanted to implement their Vertigo imprint into the DC mythos. While Milestone consisted entirely of characters like Icon, Static and Rocket that were based in Dakota City, and thus could be neatly put in the main universe; Vertigo and WildStorm were far too different, and they needed their own universes.
However, nearly two decades later, I’m still baffled by the fact that DC limited themselves to only 52 universes. If they really needed a finite, predetermined number of universes, they should have aimed much, much higher. That’s something I’ve always enjoyed about Marvel’s approach to the multiverse: because nobody knows how big it is, Marvel can put any number of their What-If stories (Ultimate Marvel, Marvel 1602, Marvel 2099, etc.) and any number of their adaptations (The Amazing Spider-Man, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, the X-Men films, etc.) in a universe without contradicting anything. But because DC only has a few dozen available universes, they’ve limited how many Elseworlds and how many adaptations can appear in their cosmos.
Regardless, I’d say that the implementation of some parallel universes is better than none. We got to see the full DC pantheon in Final Crisis, and it really paid off as one of the better DC crossover titles of the last 20 years.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. The Post-Crisis DC continuity was one of those things.
Part 6: Flashpoint and the New 52:
In 2011, DC started Flashpoint, a new storyline where Barry Allen (who’s alive now, by the way) tries to go back in time to save his mother. However, his actions inadvertently create a ripple effect (sound familiar?), creating a dystopian Earth where Bruce Wayne was murdered, Superman was captured by the US government, and Atlantis and Themyscira are at war.
Barry eventually has to go back in time and stop himself from going back in time, which is nuts, and I love it. However, he can’t restore the universe to quite the way it was. Instead, characters and elements from Earth-13 (the Vertigo universe) and Earth-50 (the WildStorm universe) are combined with his Earth-0.
Somehow, this once again had a ripple effect (I’ll explain how later), but instead of affecting just his own Earth, it affected every Earth. There were still 52 universes numbered Earth-0 through Earth-51, but many of them had been shifted around. Thus, DC called this The New 52.
The New 52 was a relaunch of DC Comics, with every one of their series now starting back at Issue #1. Without older continuity holding them back, the writers were free to do all sorts of new things. New storylines, new characters, new relationships.
…yeah, the fans didn’t like it.
Now, credit where credit’s due, there are some elements of The New 52 that I personally enjoyed. I loved the new Justice League origin story, I think the relaunch overall has a really consistent, solid artstyle; and several of its comics are really high quality writing, mainly the Batman Incorporated series that continues Morrison’s storyline and the Batwoman series starring Kate Kane.
But obviously this new continuity had its flaws.
Several fan-favorite relationships are removed entirely, such as Black Canary and Green Arrow’s romance.
Several fan-favorite characters are removed entirely. The sidekicks got the worst of this, with Wally West, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain being notable removals. DC realized its mistake and tried to bring in a new character who was also named Wally West, which was just…weird. It’s like when your pet goldfish dies while you’re at school, so your parents rush out to grab a new one and hope you don’t notice.
Many of the alternate Earths have changed for…no good reason at all. Earth-2, an iconic cornerstone of the DC multiverse, is now a mishmash of several ideas that don’t go together at all. Earth-2 is a universe where Darkseid invaded, and several heroes gave up their lives to stop them, so it's up to sidekicks and younger heroes like Robin, Huntress and Supergirl to take their place.
Several characters have been shuffled around and placed in new teams and situations for seemingly no reason. Cyborg probably got this the worst, and it really altered fan perception of the character for years to come. He was suddenly a product of Mother Box technology, and while that was fine on its own, he was also a founding member of the Justice League. Cyborg was one of the faces of the Teen Titans, no older than 18 in this new continuity, so for him to be a member of the same team as icons like Superman and Wonder Woman just felt off.
Tim Drake’s new origin story, where he never even became Robin and jumped straight into the Red Robin identity out of respect for Jason Todd, didn’t sit right with a lot of fans. Hell, I’d argue that the entire character of Tim Drake didn’t sit right with fans. He leads the Teen Titans in this continuity, but they resemble the post-Crisis Young Justice team more so than any previous incarnation of the Titans.
Barbara Gordon’s paralysis hasn’t been removed, per say. She was still shot and paralyzed by the Joker, but now she…recovered. (Suck on that, Charles Xavier.) Joking aside, many fans and supporters of the disabled community felt this did a disservice to her character. Fans who preferred Barbara as Oracle go hand-in-hand with fans who preferred Stephanie or Cassandra as Batgirl, so having both of those changed just felt like a slap in the face.
Are you noticing a recurring theme? Almost every one of these changes involved the sidekicks and teenaged heroes in some way.
This, to me, is one of the overall worst parts of the New 52. DC grossly underestimated how much fans cared for these characters, and they completely changed them around or removed them in an attempt to cater to the nostalgia of old fans, not even realizing that part of what gives DC it’s unique identity is its emphasis on legacy characters compared to other superheroes universes.
Plus, we are still rigidly sticking to only 52 universes. The fact that DC still wanted to do this baffles me. Bear in mind, at this time, we had the Young Justice show airing, the Arrow TV show in production, The Dark Knight Rises in production, and fans were still relatively fresh off Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bruce Timm’s DCAU, and Smallville. If DC really wanted The New 52 to be a good starting point for casual fans, they should’ve given room for those adaptations to exist in the multiverse, but they didn’t.
In time, all of these problems with both the New 52 continuity (the limited multiverse, the unpopular changes to continuity and the mishandling of sidekicks) would be solved, but it would take a lot of damage control.
Part 7-8: Convergence, Hypertime, Rebirth and Doomsday Clock:
Convergence was a 2015 company-wide crossover, and a response to the general unpopularity of the New 52. In Convergence, Brainiac captures various cities from across the multiverse and plans to restore the multiverse to how it was before. He does this with Hypertime.
For those that don’t know, Hypertime was an invention of Mark Waid. In the 20 years between Marv Wolfman abolishing the multiverse in 1985 and Infinite Crisis restoring the multiverse in 2005, several writers at DC wanted to write stories that couldn’t exist in DC’s main continuity, but they lacked the ability to use the multiverse as a plot device. Mark Waid was one of those writers. In 1996, he wrote an Elseworlds story called Kingdom Come, set in a dystopian future where DC’s greatest heroes, villains and a new generation of violent anti-heroes all clash in a climactic, apocalyptic showdown. It’s one of the greatest comics ever made, and it's 1999 sequel, The Kingdom, introduced the concept of Hypertime.
Hypertime was a…messy, ill-explained phenomena that basically stated the DC cosmos consisted of one universe (New Earth, aka the post-Crisis Earth 0 where most stories were set on) and several timelines that branched out of that universe. Thus, there could be multiple versions of DC characters, but instead of them existing in parallel universes, they existed in alternate timelines. Again, a rather messy explanation, but I think the fact we were willing to accept that goes to show just how much fans and writers alike wanted a multiverse.
The original explanation for Hypertime is redundant and outdated, considering that Infinite Crisis restored the multiverse and canonized Kingdom Come as being on Earth-22; but the term has still seen its fair share of use. Namely, in the past decade or so of comics, DC has accepted a new definition of Hypertime. Hypertime is a cosmic force that “keeps track” of changes in the DC multiverse. The Earth-2 of the pre-Crisis multiverse, the Earth-2 of the post-Crisis multiverse and the Earth-2 of the New 52 multiverse are all “Hypertime versions” of one-another. Thus, in Convergence, Brainiac harnesses Hypertime to restore all three multiverses. This forces various heroes from the New 52 multiverse, the post-Crisis multiverse and the pre-Crisis multiverse to team up and fight against him.
By the end of the event, the Post-Crisis fifty-two universes, the New 52’s fifty-two universes, and the pre-Crisis infinite universes all exist simultaneously as three different multiverses. This new cosmic structure is canonically called (and I shit you not) the Multi-Multiverse.
Fans were hoping that this would mean DC would abandon the New 52 multiverse and go back to the post-Crisis multiverse, or hell, even the pre-Crisis multiverse. But they didn’t. They stopped using the New 52 label on their comics, but with a few exceptions (such as New 52 Superman fusing with his post-Crisis self and effectively reverting to his pre-Flashpoint characterization), almost nothing changed. Despite multiple statements from DC editors and writers that Convergence would radically alter DC mythos by canonizing everything, in practice, the writers still rigidly stuck to the unpopular continuity they’d already established in The New 52. Hell, they weren’t even making an attempt to bring in adaptations and Elseworlds into the mix, even though that’s exactly what their competition was doing (Marvel Comics launched Secret Wars that same year).
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In 2016, Rebirth was yet another relaunch of DC comics, only five years after the previous. Rebirth took a more proactive approach to fixing the mess caused by The New 52. Fans wanted the post-Crisis continuity, but DC wanted to keep going with The New 52 continuity. It wasn’t enough to simply restore that old continuity without focusing on it, so each ongoing series introduced several smaller changes to make things more in-line with the old continuity. It brought back characters like Wally West, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain; it restored old relationships like Oliver and Dinah; and it restored old teams, such as the Teen Titans.
Rebirth wasn’t a single event, like Convergence, but more like a whole company-wide process. But what was the narrative behind Rebirth?
Well, once Convergence revealed the existence of two other multiverses, the heroes of The New 52 wanted to find out where their multiverse diverged from the others, and how Barry Allen’s altering of a single timeline in Flashpoint somehow affected all 52 of their universes. Rebirth basically plays out like a company-wide mystery story, with each ongoing series focusing on characters trying to restore their memories of their post-Crisis selves.
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In the end, Rebirth concluded with Doomsday Clock, a long-foreshadowed crossover that brought characters from Watchmen into the fray. Dr. Manhattan, the true architect of The New 52 and the one responsible for most of the reboot’s unpopular changes, reveals what happened.
In essence, Manhattan discovered that New Earth (that is, the Earth-0 of the post-Crisis multiverse) was what he called a Metaverse. The Metaverse is a single Earth at the center of the multiverse, a universe that all other universes are connected to. When Barry Allen altered the timeline, his actions didn’t combine New Earth with Earths-13 and 50, that was all Manhattan. Only those Earths should have been affected, but because Earth-0 was the Metaverse, it affected every other Earth, hence how a whole new multiverse was effectively created by the change to a single universe.
At the end of the storyline, Manhattan restores the changes he made, effectively bringing the New 52 multiverse even closer to the post-Crisis multiverse, and he departs.
Doomsday Clock was a widely anticipated storyline that ended up failing for a variety of unrelated reasons. The comic was supposed to be set one year in the future of the New 52, yet it was delayed so much that the “present day” New 52 caught up with it, and a lot of the mystique of Doomsday Clock got ruined. Fans of Watchmen were also deeply unhappy with the usage of its characters, and Doomsday Clock introduces several ideas to the DC universe that are never mentioned again. (For example, its a plot point that America has more metahumans than anywhere else in the world, and several characters believe that America is manufacturing them. This is never fully explained, it was never brought up in a comic before this, and it was never mentioned again after the final issue.)
To this end, Doomsday Clock was retconned as taking place on another universe; this hasty retcon and the main narrative of Doomsday Clock are riddled with continuity errors that blatantly contradict what we know about the Multi-Multiverse in Convergence:
In the final issue, Manhattan claims that the world he created (Prime Earth, the Earth-0 of the New 52 multiverse) is actually called Earth-52. That doesn’t really make any sense. First of all, there’s already an Earth-52 inhabited by sapient apes (I’m not joking). Second of all, Manhattan didn’t create a universe, he created a whole new multiverse, and Prime Earth is the Earth-0 of its multiverse, not Earth-52 of the older multiverse. Third, this completely disregards the established numbering scheme, and there shouldn’t even be an Earth-52! Because Earths in the DC multiverse are labeled starting at 0, and there are said to be 52 total Earths, then there should only be Earths-0 through 51. An Earth-52 would exceed what DC has already established. Besides the whole storyline is already occurring on Prime Earth, yet Manhattan refers to The New 52 as if it's somewhere else entirely. Remember, Doomsday Clock is the finale of Rebirth, which is an attempt to bring the New 52 continuity more in-line with older comics, so how could the New 52 actually be occurring somewhere else?
In the same issue, Manhattan (who has knowledge of Crisis on Infinite Earths) refers to New Earth (the Earth-0 of the Post Crisis multiverse) as being “Earth-1985.” Again, we don’t need a separate label for it, it exists in its own multiverse as the Earth-0 of that multiverse.
Doomsday Clock was retconned as being on another Earth the following year in an issue of Justice League. Not only is this stupid, because the whole narrative of Doomsday Clock is based around the Metaverse and it has to occur on that Metaverse; but it raises even more questions. If it’s not taking place on the post-Crisis Earth or the post-Flashpoint Earth, where the fuck is it taking place?
Part 9: Dark Nights and Infinite Frontier:
After the mess that was Doomsday Clock, we have Dark Nights and Dark Nights Death Metal. These two events are still set in The New 52, but they introduce a fourth multiverse and a new branch of the Multi-Multiverse: the Negative Multiverse.
Unlike the pre-Crisis multiverse, the post-Crisis multiverse of the Flashpoint multiverse; the Negative Multiverse consists entirely of evil versions of our heroes. Specifically, the vast majority of them are evil versions of Batman combined with other iconic characters, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Joker.
The finale of Dark Nights Death Metal has Wonder Woman learn the true origin of the pre-Crisis multiverse: it was made by a goddess named Perpetua, herself subservient to a group called “the Hands,” the architects of the cosmos. In the finale, Wonder Woman defeats an evil version of Batman called “the Batman Who Laughs,” which results in (you guessed it) the entire universe being rebooted again.
Actually, I don’t know if it's accurate to say it's a reboot. It’s more like an un-reboot, because it’s undoing a lot of the popular changes that occurred in The New 52. This new cosmic structure is called the Omniverse, and DC has declared it consists of infinite universes where everything they’ve ever written is canon. They call this relaunch Infinite Frontiers.
I know what you’re thinking. “Wait, so DC is undoing The New 52? Didn’t they already try to do that with Rebirth?” And the answer is yes.
“And wait, everything they’ve ever written is canon? Isn’t that that word-for-word what happened with the Multi-Multiverse at the end of Convergence?” And the answer is…also yes.
I’m honestly really baffled about this myself. As far as I can tell, DC already declared that everything they made was canon several years prior, and I’ve scoured the Internet trying to figure out what differentiates the Multi-Multiverse from the Omniverse, and what differentiates Rebirth from Infinite Frontiers, but I’m finding very little.
I’ve come up with a few differences from a cosmic perspective:
The main large-scale reason why the Omniverse is different from the Multi-Multiverse is because it's not segregated into smaller, isolated multiverses. In Convergence and Rebirth, the New 52 versions of these characters are treated as separate entities from their post-Crisis and pre-Crisis versions, with wholly different experiences, personalities and memories. In Infinite Frontiers, they all regain those memories. That makes sense, when you think about it. Convergence basically declared that the post-Crisis characters we know and loved were still around, but did nothing with that information and continued on with their very unpopular ideas.
Furthermore, there were a handful of universes that didn’t fit “cleanly” into the post-Crisis, pre-Crisis or post-Flashpoint mutiverses. For instance, the dystopian world of Flashpoint where Thomas Wayne is Batman never really had a place in the DC cosmos, because it only existed due to a time traveling discrepancy that Barry Allen later corrected. But with Infinite Frontiers, “fluke” realities such as this are restored because they no longer need to fit into a specific branch of the multi-multiverse.
The notion of the “Metaverse” is removed. Instead of all of DC comics spinning around Prime Earth or New Earth, Earth-0 is just allowed to exist as its own universe. The closest thing we have to an axis are the two opposing universes of “Elseworld” and “Earth Omega.”
That’s all well and good, but what will actually change in the individual stories? Well, textually speaking, Infinite Frontiers is seeking to do damage control on The New 52, Rebirth and Doomsday Clock, taking the best elements from those stories without feeling the need to adhere so strictly to unpopular writing decisions.
Basically, The New 52 fucked everthing up. Rebirth and Doomsday Clock tried to un-fuck it, but they just fucked it up even more. Hence the existence of Infinite Frontiers.
Part 10: The Problems with DC:
If nothing else, research for this essay has led me to believe that DC comics has a few major problems with their multiverse that they need to figure out:
Infinite Crisis and The New 52’s adherence to a finite, predetermined amount of universes means that only certain Elseworlds and adaptations can be considered canon. I already mentioned this, but it’s a clear disadvantage compared to Marvel, whose multiverse is so big that any property they ever make can be considered canon in some way.
DC needs better communication and creative restraint with its writers. Greenlighting projects that contradict each other without explaining which projects are on parallel universes (and which parallel universes those are) just leads to confusion. The defense they often give is that they want their writers to be as creatively unrestricted as possible so fans can stop focusing on continuity and focus on characters. The problem here is that if continuity is meaningless, there’s no reason to get invested in the characters anyways, because we never know which version of the characters we’re dealing with in which universe in which multiverse.
When DC wants to implement new properties they acquire, they don’t need to reboot everything in such dramatic ways. Crisis on Infinite Earths only needed to combine Earths-1, 2, 4, S and X to achieve its goals, but it jumped the gun by also destroying every other universe. Flashpoint could have been a chance for DC to incorporate WildStorm and Vertigo in a “soft reboot,” but instead they hard rebooted not just Earth-0, but every other Earth, creating a whole new multiverse and undoing a lot of work. Even Doomsday Clock was guilty of this. If DC wanted to implement Watchmen, they could’ve done so in a way that was far less convoluted.
DC needs to slow down on the reboots (which are less about attracting new fans or solving problems and more about big, flashy cosmic battles) and clearly convey what has changed with each continuity reboot. It took me a long, long time to figure out what Infinite Frontiers was even doing because nothing about its premise seems new.
I wrote all this to help comic fans understand what the Omniverse is and how it's different from the Multi-Multiverse, but I’ve finished writing this script disillusioned and disheartened. DC really needs to get their shit together. They need to adhere to their own rules, stop using cosmic reboots to retcon continuity errors that never should’ve existed in the first place, and start clearly labeling all of their properties in a multiverse that’s big enough for them to actually work with.
I really hope Infinite Frontiers does all that, but I’m not holding my breath.
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