DC Multiverse Gets Feature Film Treatment
A New DC Comics Animated Movie Involves Parallel Earths
Aug 15, 2009
The September 2009 DVD release of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies features a sneak peek at the next DC Animated Universe movie, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. The title suggests that DC's multiverse will play into the story, as it has in nearly every DC comic involving a "crisis."
The DC Multiverse consists of numerous parallel dimensions existing alongside the main continuity and it allows creators the liberty to explore alternative versions of established characters and places without affecting the core storylines.
Why Parallel Worlds Were Needed
The first era of superhero popularity was called the Golden Age of Comics. In the late 1940's, these colorful characters went out of fashion and were retired, except for such major heroes as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. In 1956, DC Comics decided to try again with fresh versions of their old heroes, beginning with The Flash. Soon other Golden Age hero names were reassigned to new characters with new costumes. Thus was born the Silver Age.
When DC decided to have the Golden Age heroes meet their Silver Age successors, they invented parallel earths to explain why these two groups of characters existed separately and without knowledge of each other. The Silver Age heroes, who were established as representing the regular continuity, inhabited Earth-One while the Golden-Agers were assigned to Earth-Two, even though they'd existed first.
Creating So Many Earths in So Little Time
Eventually the meetings between Earth-One's Justice League of America and Earth-Two's Justice Society of America became yearly events in the JLA's titular comic, and often the story's title included the word "crisis." It all began with Justice League of America (Vol. 1) #21, "Crisis on Earth-One!" That was followed by crises on Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-A and others.
During the years that the annual team-ups continued, DC Comics acquired the characters of other companies and incorporated them into the multiverse by creating new earths for them. Naturally, the JLA and JSA had to meet these "new" heroes, hence "Crisis on Earth-X!" where Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters battled the Nazis who'd won World War II. "Crisis on Earth-S!" finally brought together Superman and his greatest newsstand rival during the Golden Age, Captain Marvel.
By the early eighties, DC had more parallel worlds and characters than it could handle. So the company celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1985 with the twelve-issue "maxi-series" Crisis on Infinite Earths. Written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Perez, the biggest crisis yet featured nearly every character in DC's stable, many of whom were dead by issue #12. The parallel earths were merged into one New Earth; the multiverse became a single DC Universe.
Return of the Crisis
Thus a new era was launched with rebooted versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and others. Then a few years later came Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! which tried to tie up some of the loose ends left over from Infinite Earths (a.k.a. "The First Crisis"). The next major crisis, novelist Brad Meltzer's murder mystery epic Identity Crisis, involved no parallel dimensions but did pave the way for Infinite Crisis. This direct sequel to The First Crisis resulted in the creation of a new multiverse that consisted of a finite number of earths--52, to be exact. 2008's Final Crisis promised to live up to its title, but only time will tell.
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is to be written by Dwayne McDuffie, veteran scribe of the current JLA comic series who also contributed scripts to Justice League Unlimited, the animated series that featured parallel earths in several episodes. The DC Multiverse is in good hands.
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