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99-682: In the DC Multiverse Earth-Prime is the true Earth from which all the other worlds within the Multiverse originate, the "actual" reality where the readers of DC Comics live (and where DC Comics operates as a publisher), and is an Earth where all superheroes are fictional. Earth-Prime does, however, become an alternate reality in its first appearance in The Flash #179 (May 1968), when the Flash accidentally travels there from Earth-One by being pushed by

198-658: A "Justice Configuration", isolated from the wider Omniverse. Eventually, it would be judged, and if found to still be tainted with the violence of its beginning, it would be destroyed. As told in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, the DC Universe was a single positive matter Universe until a scientist named Krona from the planet Oa altered the very moment of the creation of the Universe, causing it to split into countless similar universes and an antimatter universe. Oa, however, had no duplicates in

297-575: A Multiverse of its own: the universe of Earth-616 in the Marvel Multiverse. The universes were rarely referred to with specific names within the stories but were named in the "Real World" (both officially and unofficially) using the name of the editorial, imprint or even an element in particular. While in the comic books the concept of a "real" Multiverse was avoided, the Multiverse played an important role in cartoon series and live-action shows. In summary, from 1986 to 1999, everything not happening in

396-445: A creature called The Nok . The Flash, stranded, contacts then-DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz , who helps him construct a cosmic treadmill to return to Earth-One. Eventually, it was stated that the writers of DC Comics of Earth Prime subconsciously base their stories on the adventures of the heroes on Earth-One and Earth-Two. In The Flash #228 (July/Aug 1974), Earth-Prime's Cary Bates travels to Earth-One, where he discovers that

495-572: A fictional character. The success of this story led to the first team crossover between the new Justice League of America (JLA) and the Golden Age JSA, in the stories "Crisis on Earth-One" ( Justice League of America #21) and "Crisis on Earth-Two" ( Justice League of America #22), published in late 1963. This story arc started the tradition of a yearly crossover between the JLA and the JSA, and established firmly

594-399: A focal point among all the worlds in every universe). Some of the heroes of Earth knew about other Earths and their own counterparts and fought side by side on many occasions. Later, a scientist from one universe named Kell Mossa (known initially only as Pariah ) created another device that would allow him to attempt the same thing Krona had attempted before. His actions accidentally awakened

693-507: A male named Sean, and took a drug called ProFem to change genders and thereby secure Element Lad's love. With ProFem no longer available, Shvaughn reverts to Sean. Jan is unfazed, and continues their romantic relationship. At the same time, the Dominators' classified "Batch SW6" - temporal clones of the Legionnaires - escape captivity. After Earth is destroyed in a disaster reminiscent of

792-457: A new Multiverse was created. The new Multiverse consisted of 52 positive matter universes, an Antimatter Universe and a Limbo. The main continuity still occurred in New Earth (also called Earth-0), Earths 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 resembled Earths One, Two, Three, Four, S, and X of the original Multiverse respectively. Earths 13 and 50 were Vertigo and the rebooted Wildstorm Universe, while Earth-17 became

891-574: A new body housing Garth's consciousness. In the Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds miniseries (2008–2009), the post- Zero Hour Legion is brought to the pre-crisis Legion's timeline to help battle Superboy-Prime and the Legion of Super-Villains . During this time, the Pre-Crisis Brainiac 5 uses a specially charged lightning rod to enhance Element Lad's abilities, allowing Garth to mutate

990-486: A reboot of the Multiverse termed "5G", which would have fixed all of DC's publishing history into a single coherent continuity, stretching from World War II to the present day, with stories going forward focussing on new characters or aged versions of current ones. "A Brave New World", intended to be the first story set in this continuity, was published in Wonder Woman #750. This reboot was cancelled due to delays caused by

1089-696: A relationship with Shvaughn Erin , the Science Police 's Legion liaison. In November 1989, the Legion continuity jumps ahead five years. During this "Five Year Gap" following the Magic Wars, Earth falls under the control of the Dominators and leaves the United Planets . In a storyline written by Tom and Mary Bierbaum , it is revealed in Legion of Super-Heroes (vol. 4) #31 (July 1992) that Shvaughn had been born as

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1188-516: A ripple effect that affected several past events, Earth-13 (Vertigo Universe) and Earth-50 (new Wildstorm Universe). Similar to the result of Crisis on Infinite Earths , a new mainstream Earth is created from the former three, with a whole new history. Most of the stories have been retold anew but certain events of New Earth remain (such as Batgirl being crippled by the Joker). Since it was established after Infinite Crisis that if something ever happened to

1287-580: A similar concept. In the Amber stories, Amber is the only true world; all others, including our Earth , are but "shadows" of the tension between it and Chaos. In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made-for-TV film , Turtles Forever , Ch'rell (or 2003 series 's version of The Shredder ), took the technodrome from his 1987 series counterpart and Krang and upgraded it with Utrom technology. He later decided to destroy Turtle-Prime to destroy

1386-506: A special publishing deal with Milestone Media , DC Comics published a new series of comic books that told the stories of the heroes living in Dakota City , formed mostly by African American superheroes and other minorities. These characters lived in a universe separated from the DC Universe (known as the Dakotaverse or Milestone Universe). The event known as Worlds Collide presented one of

1485-497: A time that Superboy-Prime is still looking to make his "Perfect Earth". He starts by rebuilding the Legion of Super-Villains to fight Superman and the three versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes. During the battle, the 2004 team's Element Lad creates Kryptonite that unexpectedly affected Superboy-Prime; the Kryptonite of New Earth had previously had no effect on Superman (Kal-L) and or Superboy-Prime during Infinite Crisis. At

1584-440: A twin world existing alongside Earth with duplicates of everyone but with a different development. The concept of different versions of the world and its heroes was revisited in the pages of Wonder Woman a few times later. Led by editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox, DC Comics' superheroes were given a "reboot" with the publication of Showcase #4 in 1956, where a new version of the Flash made his first appearance. This

1683-640: A very important ingredient within DC Comics' publications. It helped (among other things) to explain continuity errors, to retell and retcon stories, and to incorporate foreign elements that could actively interact with everything else and allow them to have an "existence". Continuity flaws between the established Earth-Two and several stories from the Golden Age were given separate Earths. "Imaginary" stories and sometime divergences of Earth-One were given also separate realities (such as Earth-B and Earth-A). In addition to

1782-529: Is a superhero appearing in media published by DC Comics , primarily as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th and 31st centuries. A native of the planet Trom, he has the power to transmute chemical elements . Element Lad first appeared in Adventure Comics #307, and was created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte . Element Lad, whose real name is Jan Arrah, first appears in Adventure Comics (vol. 1) #307 (1963). In this first story, he

1881-539: Is among the Legion of Super-Heroes members who appear in the present after Doctor Manhattan restores the timeline, resurrecting the Legion and the Justice Society of America . Element Lad is able to transmute objects by touch and change one chemical element into any other, for instance, lead to gold or iron to aluminium. He can transmute an element even if it is part of a compound and can change solid objects into gaseous ones. Like all Trommites, Element Lad could sense

1980-521: Is briefly known as "Mystery Lad" as the Legionnaires do not initially know his powers. Jan is the last survivor of Trom, as he was in space while the space pirate Roxxas massacred the Trommites for refusing to transmute valuable elements for him. With the aid of the Legion, Roxxas is brought to justice and Jan joins the Legion, using the codename Element Lad. He is a member of the Legion for many years, serving terms as leader and deputy leader. He later enters

2079-510: Is considered the beginning period of the Silver Age of Comic Books . The success of this new Flash led to the creation of new incarnations of the Golden Age characters who only shared the names and powers but had different secret identities, origins and stories. Later, new versions of other heroes, Superman , Batman and Wonder Woman, were also restarted by retelling their origins but keeping their secret identities. Gardner Fox, who worked before in

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2178-707: Is defeated, but the Source Wall at the boundary of the Multiverse is cracked and the Batman Who Laughs manages to escape into the main DC Universe. The story is continued in Justice League . In Snyder's run on Justice League , the crack in the Source Wall allows the Totality, a small meteorite bearing immense power, to enter the Multiverse from the Source beyond. Lex Luthor retrieves the Totality and eventually frees Perpetua,

2277-474: Is destroyed except for five Earths (the Silver Age 's Earth-One, the Golden Age 's Earth-Two, Charlton Comics ' Earth-Four, Fawcett Comics ' Earth-S and Quality Comics ' Freedom Fighters' Earth-X). Later, the universe is recreated as one single universe from those five. The crossover event Convergence (2015) officially retconned the events of Crisis after heroes in that series went back in time to prevent

2376-650: Is free he fights the Shazam family. As magic can still hurt Superboy-Prime, both Shazam and Black Adam quote "Shazam" which knocks out Superboy-Prime. It was mentioned that Superboy-Prime was handed over to the Justice League as the Shazam Family didn't know what else to do with him. The character would appear again, for perhaps the final time, in the pages of Dark Nights: Death Metal . In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new multiverse, Earth-33

2475-509: Is introduced in Grant Morrison 's The Multiversity series as the additional designation for Earth-Prime. This Earth continues the tradition of having minimal superhero activity – in this case, the minds of Earth-33's comic book readers have empowered a superhero named Ultra Comics . Ultra is the only metahuman on Earth-33, fighting the encroachment of the "Gentry" (the series' lead villains) by confining their presence on "our" world to

2574-502: Is once again recreated by higher beings from the Source, with Wonder Woman ascending alongside them to protect it. The New 52/Rebirth multiverse is restored largely as it was prior to the events of Dark Nights: Death Metal . As well as this, a new infinite web of multiverses appears, the Multiverse developing into an Omniverse. It is established that all events in DC's publishing history have occurred within this new Omniverse, with characters gaining

2673-437: Is still the last survivor of Trom, however the Trommites had been killed by the heat vision of Daxamite White Triangle terrorists who had decimated Trom from space. After a brief period of the traumatized Jan being brainwashed into becoming the villainous Starfinger , this version of Element Lad serves with the Legion for some time. Jan's previous history with Shvaughn Erin is erased in this continuity. After an encounter with

2772-508: The Infinite Crisis miniseries restore a close analogue of the pre- Crisis on Infinite Earths Legion to continuity. In the Last Stand of New Krypton storyline, Element Lad is part of a secret team sent by the late R. J. Brande to the 21st century to save the future, posing as a chemistry teacher at Smallville High School. In the " Watchmen " sequel " Doomsday Clock ", Element Lad

2871-521: The COVID-19 pandemic and the firing of publisher Dan DiDio, who was the main architect of 5G. The original plans for 5G were recycled into the Future State event, which followed Dark Nights: Death Metal . Dark Nights: Death Metal and its companion comics act as a conclusion to Dark Nights: Metal , Flash Forward and Scott Snyder's run on Justice League . Perpetua destroys much of the Multiverse while

2970-580: The Elseworlds imprint. None of these stories were ever intended to be included in the "real" continuity of the DC Universe. Certain characters were reinvented in a mature context and were published under the Vertigo imprint. Most of the times, the characters depicted within the Vertigo imprint had no relation to the original DC Universe's versions, nor did the events have influence over the new Universe. Later, under

3069-489: The Multiverse is a "cosmic construct" that is composed of the many fictional universes the stories of DC media take place in. The worlds within the multiverse share a space and fate in common, and its structure has changed several times in the history of DC Comics. The concept of a universe and a multiverse in which the fictional stories take place was loosely established during the Golden Age of Comic Books (1938–1956). With

Earth Prime - Misplaced Pages Continue

3168-584: The fourth wall , addressing the readers directly. Still others, such as the Earth's Watcher , Uatu , is possessed of the ability to see all alternate Earths in the Marvel Universe setting at will, including the real one in which he and all other beings are nothing more than fictional characters (in some early issues of What If? , the Watcher actually addressed the reader by showing them which issues of which comics

3267-622: The multiverse . He was stopped by the three teams of turtles from the Prime, 1987, and 2003 universes. Although the true "Earth Prime" of the movie would be that inhabited by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in the closing shot, shown putting the finishing touches on the first issue of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book. Multiverse (DC Comics) In most of the DC Comics media,

3366-558: The "mainstream" continuity appearing in DC comics was either a non-canonical story or happened in a completely different and separate reality/universe/multiverse. In 1999, the unexpected and overwhelming success of Elseworlds' Kingdom Come and other stories, led to the creation of the concept known as Hypertime in order to publish crossovers with those characters and the mainstream continuity. This structure gave "existence" to alternate timelines, stories in Elseworlds , appearances in other media and any other appearance of DC characters in

3465-412: The 1970s, everything that was published or related officially to DC Comics' titles could become part of the Multiverse, although much of it remained largely uncatalogued. The names of the worlds were usually in the format Earth, hyphen, spelled numeral/letter/name . In the case of worlds with numerals, the "rule" of spelling the number was not always followed, even within the pages of the same issue. As

3564-439: The 50th anniversary of DC Comics drew near, major events were proposed for the celebration: an encyclopedia ( Who's Who in the DC Universe ) and a crossover of the ages, characters, and worlds appearing in DC's comics. As told in the letter section of Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, as the research started in the late 1970s, it became evident that there were many flaws in continuity. The way used to circumvent some of these errors

3663-501: The Anti-Monitor, who then devoured Pariah's entire universe (aside from Pariah himself) and began to do the same to other universes (Pariah originally believes that the opposite is true; that his experiment destroyed the universes, which awakened the Anti-Monitor, until the truth is revealed to him). The time period of Earth when this takes place or the name of this Earth are never revealed. Element Lad Element Lad ( Jan Arrah )

3762-589: The Batman Who Laughs reshapes Earth-0 according to his whims, creating the Metalverse. The Batman Who Laughs successfully steals Wally's new power, becoming a godlike being known as the Darkest Knight. He kills Perpetua and creates his own Multiverse of twisted worlds called "The Last 52". Wonder Woman gains the power necessary to fight him and eventually destroys him in the Death Sun at the end of time. The Multiverse

3861-477: The DCU. This miniseries brought back several heroes from the ages of DC Comics that were obliterated by the crisis events. They were trapped by a godlike incarnation of Brainiac outside of time (or Vanishing Point as this "place" is called). At the end of the crossover, Brainiac sent these heroes back to their own timelines, and also successfully sent Zero Hour Hal Jordan, pre- Flashpoint Superman and other heroes back to

3960-637: The Dark Multiverse. At the end of the series, Wally sits in the Mobius Chair, gaining omniscience and residual power from Dr. Manhattan. In an epilogue published in The Flash #750, Wally surveys the timestream and notices multiple contradictions and inconsistencies within history, the result of Manhattan's reckless tampering with time. This was originally intended to lead into the Generations miniseries and

4059-512: The Kromaggs slid onto Earth Prime and conquered it. Much of the action in the last few books of Stephen King 's Dark Tower series takes place in "the keystone world", essentially the Earth Prime concept under a different name, complete with appearances by King himself as a character. Though not using the term "Earth Prime", Roger Zelazny 's The Chronicles of Amber fantasy series features

Earth Prime - Misplaced Pages Continue

4158-662: The Modern Age still happening. In parallel, Captain Atom: Armageddon tells the story of how Captain Atom of the DC Universe causes the recreation of the Wildstorm Universe upon its destruction (and possibly its Multiverse as well). The recreated universe became part of the newly recreated DC Universe. The aftermath of Infinite Crisis and Captain Atom: Armageddon ( 52 , Countdown to Final Crisis and Final Crisis ) showed that

4257-520: The Modern Age was still being the main continuity, younger readers could not follow the stories of the mainstream versions of the DC heroes, just as had happened prior to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths . In order to overcome these new problems, a new event was created to restart the DC Comics' Universe. In the Flashpoint miniseries (May–September 2011), the Flash alters the timeline of Earth-0 creating

4356-644: The Multiverse but did have a twin in the antimatter universe: Qward. A satellite on each of these planets was created in the cataclysm and it was there where the embodiments of the Multiverse were born: the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor . The two battled to a standstill and eventually rendered one another comatose. The Multiverse had countless duplicates of planet Earth. Every Earth had a different history from one another but they always developed heroes and inspired heroic ages (which, according to Harbinger, it somehow made them

4455-484: The Multiverse for the first time, but it also presented key features of the Multiverse: all the universes vibrate at a specific frequency which keeps them separated; these "barriers" could be trespassed by "tuning" to that vibration. Because people could also "tune-in" these worlds in dreams, some people wrote comic books with the stories from those worlds they dreamed, which explained why Barry Allen knew about Jay Garrick as

4554-684: The Omniverse and Hypertime exist alongside each other as parts of a larger Divine Continuum, with the Omniverse corresponding to Space and Hypertime corresponding to Time. It also organizes previous Crisis events into Omniversal Crises and Hypertime Crises, with the "Crisis on Infinite Earths", "Infinite Crisis", "Final Crisis", "Multiversity", "Dark Nights", and "Dark Crisis" being Omniversal Crises while "Zero Hour", "the Kingdom", "Flashpoint/New 52", "Convergence", "DC Rebirth/Doomsday Clock", and "Flashpoint Beyond/New Golden Age" were Hypertime Crises. The Multiverse

4653-548: The Silver Age version ( Katar Hol ) in the same continuity without a good explanation. The interaction of "possible timelines" also created continuity holes. This led to a new crisis to address the problem: the Zero Hour . The resulting universe had a slightly re-written story with no continuity errors even though it was acknowledged that reality-shattering events did happen (including the Crisis on Infinite Earths ). This Universe kept

4752-440: The Universe was "splintered" and the original Multiverse was restored briefly, showing that the entire Hypertime and many other appearances of the DC characters were part of the original Multiverse, including Tangent Comics which were published 12 years after the Multiverse was no more. In the end of Infinite Crisis , the multiverse is merged back as a New Earth with a new continuity with many stories re-written and many others from

4851-570: The body itself into a match for his own. In the Mark Waid / Barry Kitson 'reimagining' Element Lad is the lone survivor of a lost planet. This version's powers are triggered by touch and only last several minutes. This Element Lad and the corresponding Legion also appear in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds . He attempts to fight Superboy-Prime by transforming the ground around him into Kryptonite before being killed by him. The events of

4950-404: The collapse of the Multiverse. After the conclusion of Crisis on Infinite Earths , the concept of a single Universe containing most elements of the "surviving Earths" was established and heavily enforced to avoid the continuity problems of the Multiverse. However, alternate realities that affected the new DC Universe appeared very quickly. In Superman (vol. 2) #8, a Universe inside the Universe

5049-450: The concept of a Multiverse and the designation of names, Earth-One being the JLA reality and Earth-Two the JSA reality. The success of these crossovers spawned publications telling the further stories of the Golden Age heroes in the present-day parting from many of the stories told, thus establishing a more defined continuity for every universe. This concept of parallel Earths with differences in locations, persons and historical events became

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5148-446: The concept of one universe, one timeline. Such a timeline was "mapped" from the beginning to the present (1994) at the back cover of Zero Hour #0 that also included certain key dates in the future. The need to publish stories outside the strict DC Universe continuity led to the creation of certain DC imprints . Stories that set DC characters in different situations after the Crisis on Infinite Earths , were published by DC Comics under

5247-407: The creation of the JSA, where other heroes met for the first time, created the story " Flash of Two Worlds " in The Flash #123 (1961), where Barry Allen, the new Flash, is transported to the Earth where the original Flash, Jay Garrick, existed. To Allen, Jay Garrick's world was a work of fiction as it was in the real world. This story not only presented the encounter of two worlds and the existence of

5346-483: The creator of the Multiverse. Despite the heroes' best efforts they are ultimately defeated. At the end of Justice League #39, the defeated League are saved from destruction by the Quintessence, who grant them the power necessary to fight Perpetua. The team run into a portal for the final battle, but this conflict is not shown and from there Justice League follows the team on other adventures, written by new writers. In

5445-449: The destruction of Krypton over a millennium earlier, a few dozen surviving cities and their inhabitants reconstitute their world as New Earth. The SW6 Legionnaires remain, and their version of Element Lad assumes the code name Alchemist . After Legion of Super-Heroes (vol. 4) #61 (September 1994), DC Comics rebooted the Legion continuity as part of the Zero Hour company-wide crossover storyline. In post- Zero Hour continuity, Jan

5544-588: The end of the mini series, it's revealed that Earth-Prime has been reborn and that Superboy-Prime was returned there. It was also revealed that the Threeboot Legion are from Earth-Prime's future. After the events of Flashpoint Superboy-Prime was not seen again until Geoff John's "Shazam and the Seven Magic Lands". During that appearance the character is shown imprisoned in the Dungeon of Eternity, and when he

5643-503: The entire Superman timeline. Where there had been two Superman, their realities have now been fused into one timeline with just one of them". It is revealed in Doomsday Clock that the New 52 was created by Doctor Manhattan as he experimented with reality, manipulating events to prevent many Golden Age heroes from gaining their powers and continually moving Superman to different points in

5742-500: The established New 52 Multiverse continuity, as well as to revisit other characters and concepts from DC's history as the conclusion of Convergence suggested that although the core 52 universe that now exists is the evolution of the multiverse, all the worlds still exist in some form. This was confirmed by Convergence writer Jeff King, as he stated that the reconstituted DC Multiverse is now infinite and there might be more than one Multiverse. The 2016 DC Rebirth initiative returned

5841-568: The events of Crisis on Infinite Earths so that the collapse of the Multiverse could be averted. From July 2015 onwards, The New 52 marking ended with the continuation of several publications and new others that did not necessarily take place within The New 52 multiverse. Advertised as DC YOU (a pun of DCU or DC Universe and the phrase "it's about you, the fans" appearing in the advertisements), DC now has an "open doors" policy to continuity, granting writers greater freedom to explore stories set outside

5940-436: The fact that many of these universes were mostly unchronicled or merely glimpsed and that Final Crisis also changed the Multiverse slightly, many stories featuring alternate worlds and their interactions were published, which led certain inconsistencies and retcons to appear, such as Earth-1 being originally a "mirror" of Earth-One and later being the reality of J. Michael Straczynski 's Superman: Earth One or Earth-16 being

6039-463: The first modern intercompany crossovers within the established continuity of the Universes instead of being "imaginary" and showed that there could be other universes or even multiverses outside the new DC Universe. In a similar way to Worlds Collide , the crossover event DC vs. Marvel showed another in-continuity crossover with another reality completely separated from the DC Universe and that has

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6138-554: The help of the Justice League and the Spectre , is able to restore matters on both Earths in Justice League of America #124 (November 1975). The character Ambush Bug in the DC Universe is technically the only canon character that is aware he's a character in a comic book and therefore he, and the rest of the DC Universe, only really exist on Earth Prime. He often addresses readers directly as he did in Ambush Bug #3 (1985) when he explained

6237-459: The higher beings within the Source who contained the aberrant Multiverse within the Source Wall, imprisoned Perpetua within the Wall and remade the original positive matter multiverse into a single positive matter Universe, which Krona , the rogue Maltusian, would eventually splinter into another infinite Multiverse. The beings within the Source decided to give the Multiverse a chance to achieve perfection,

6336-539: The home of an alternate Superman/ Christopher Kent , the home of the Super-Sons , and later the reality of the Young Justice TV series. Also, some universes appearing in the new continuity were never given a proper place within the 52 Universe, such as Prime-Earth. The new restored universe with only 52 worlds opened myriad possibilities for new stories and crossovers with different versions of heroes interacting with

6435-488: The keystone Earth, looks directly at the readers and reaches out towards them to grab our reality. In 2004, DC revisited the Earth-Prime concept in the miniseries Superman: Secret Identity . Writer Kurt Busiek states in the introduction to the collected volume of the series that the original appearance of Superboy-Prime was the inspiration for his graphic novel. The 2008 Final Crisis tie-in series Legion of Three Worlds makes various references to Earth-Prime during

6534-401: The logo THE NEW 52! would only appear in publications with stories occurring in the new continuity, while those taking place outside of this new continuity (such as Smallville Season Eleven or the Batman Beyond universe) would not bear this distinction. At first it seemed that there was not going to be a naming convention for the Earths as it happened with the 52. The mainstream continuity

6633-415: The main Universe, the whole Multiverse could be affected as well, thus a new Multiverse of 52 worlds was also recreated. This new Multiverse is called The New 52 . This time, not all universes were revealed right away, only a couple were revealed in the first two years of The New 52 . In addition, in a similar fashion as the Elseworlds logo would appear in comics that did not occur in the "real" continuity,

6732-407: The main versions of heroes as well as the stories resulting from the new integrated characters from Milestone and Wildstorm. However, it became chaotic in just five years. Many stories and situations of other Universes were not followed well. The number designations could be completely disregarded from story to story and some universes were recreated over and over. In addition, as most of the history of

6831-458: The memories of all their prior incarnations. Infinite Frontier reveals that awareness of prior incarnations is widespread but not ubiquitous. It also identifies Multiverse 2 as the "corpse" of the pre-Crisis Multiverse. Dark Crisis calls the Omniverse into question, and adds infinite Earths taken from Multiverse 2 into the Orrery of Worlds, expanding it to contain infinite Earths. Concurrently with Dark Crisis , Flashpoint Beyond reveals that

6930-400: The modern "New-Earth" Superman (Kal-El). In issue #6 of the Infinite Crisis mini-series, a now anti-heroic Superboy-Prime convinced Alexander Luthor that Earth-Prime was the ideal world and urged him to draw his inspiration for making a new Earth from Earth-Prime. Luthor began searching through the myriad Earths for Earth-Prime and, in a metatextual nod to Earth Prime's original status as

7029-429: The most notable event being Armageddon 2001 in 1991. An Antimatter Universe existed as well, which had some "reversed" events in a similar way as the former Earth-Three. The Earth within this Universe was called "Earth 2". In addition, there was a Limbo, where some heroes and characters that could not be brought back to "existence" after the Crisis on Infinite Earths lived outside the Universe. An important rule in

7128-431: The most obscure parts of the universe. The first superhero of Earth-Prime is Ultraa, introduced in Justice League of America #153. Like Superman, Ultraa was the sole survivor of a destroyed alien world, rocketed to Earth-Prime as a baby. After his first encounter with the Justice League, Ultraa decided Earth-Prime was not ready for superheroes and relocated to Earth-One. Post- Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, when there

7227-420: The new DC Universe was that there could only be one timeline, so any change caused by time travelers caused the destruction of their timelines of origin. Changes in the past were often "fixed" or have to comply with the present to prevent continuity errors. Nevertheless, continuity errors appeared. The retold origin of Hawkman presented errors regarding the existence of the Golden Age version ( Carter Hall ) and

7326-402: The new DC Universe, which were still separated just like Milestone and Marvel. In 2005, a new universal crisis story arc was published as a way to update once more the superheroes of DC Comics, bring together other "realities" (namely, Milestone and Wildstorm) and bring back the Multiverse, this time with a limited number of Earths instead of an infinite one. During the event Infinite Crisis ,

7425-541: The original Wally West to Earth from the Speed Force and reveals that time has been stolen from his friends' memories, and the Superman of the pre- Flashpoint world, stranded in the new timeline following Convergence , assumes the role of that Earth's Superman. In Action Comics #976, the pre- Flashpoint and New 52 Supermen's histories are merged. Peter J. Tomasi explained that "the events of Action #976 reset and reshape

7524-494: The pages of an 'entrapment comic book' built around the title character. In the fictional Marvel Universe, the 'Earth Prime' of that setting is designated by extradimensional cartographers as Earth-1218, where real-life readers buy Marvel Comics. On some occasions, various characters of the Marvel Universe, looking for their version of God, encounter 'real world' figures such as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee . Yet other characters (such as She-Hulk and Deadpool ) are capable of breaking

7623-410: The past exploits of a given character could be found in). Having a similar name, "Prime Earth" is the new designation of "Earth-616". Earth Prime, as used in the television show Sliders , is the name of the alternate Earth where the four original sliders (Quinn Mallory, Wade Welles, Rembrandt Brown, and Maximillian Arturo) started their journey. This Earth was the same as ours until 1997 or 1998, when

7722-419: The past. The main timeline or "Central Timeline" was like a river and all of the alternate stories were branches of it. Hypertime was similar to the former Multiverse as it allowed each and every reality ever published to co-exist and interact as most branches tend to return to the original stream (explaining some retcons as well as crossovers). However, all realities existed within only one Universe. Originally,

7821-452: The people not noticing that some of the characters in those comic books existed in "real life". In addition, many universes had multiple alternate timelines, such as Kamandi and the Legion of Super-Heroes both being from Earth-One. Writer Marv Wolfman took this crossover event as an opportunity to reform all the fictional universe of DC Comics to avoid further continuity errors and update the DC characters to modern times. The whole Multiverse

7920-436: The positive matter multiverse or destroyed; and an antimatter multiverse ruled over by the Anti-Monitor to shield the Multiverse from danger in the wider Omniverse. Perpetua was supposed to move on to create new Multiverses, leaving her creation in the hands of her children, but instead she remained, creating ever more aggressive forms of life to forge the Multiverse into a weapon to be used against her own kind. Her sons contacted

8019-408: The publication of All-Star Comics #3 in 1940, the first crossover between characters occurred with the creation of the Justice Society of America (JSA), which presented the first superhero team with characters appearing in other publications (comic strips and anthology titles) to bring attention to less-known characters. This established the first shared "universe", as all these heroes now lived in

8118-448: The same world. Prior to this publication, characters from the different comic books seemingly existed in different worlds. Later, Wonder Woman #59 (May 1953) presented DC Comics' first story depicting a parallel "mirror" world. Wonder Woman is transported to a twin Earth where she meets Tara Terruna, who is exactly like her. Tara Terruna means "Wonder Woman" in the native language of that world. Wonder Woman describes this world as being

8217-529: The sorcerer Mordru , Jan's powers change so that he can transmute himself into elements as well; he is subsequently often seen in metal or crystal forms, exploring the nature of his physical self. In Legion Lost , Element Lad is lost in deep space for billions of years, driving him insane and leading him to become the villain Progenitor . Live Wire sacrifices himself to defeat Progenitor, but Kid Quantum recovers crystals from Progenitor's body which grow into

8316-566: The special event comic Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen , the Batman Who Laughs joins with Perpetua. The resolution to the Perpetua story arc was advertised in Justice League #39 as "The Encore", which would eventually be published as Dark Nights: Death Metal . Published roughly contemporaneously, a six-issue miniseries titled Flash Forward follows Wally West being enlisted by a cosmic being known as Tempus Fuginaut to stop an incursion of

8415-589: The stories appearing in WildStorm Productions ' comic books occurred in a universe that was part of the Image Universe along with other characters appearing in Image Comics publications. It was separated from it during the event called "Shattered Image" consolidating the separate WildStorm Universe which had its own multiversal structure. After the purchase of WildStorm by DC Comics, crossovers occurred with

8514-522: The stories appearing mainly in the pages of JLA that created new Earths, the acquisition of other comic book companies and characters by DC Comics incorporated these new properties as Earths in the Multiverse which would interact several times with the "main" Earths, One and Two; two of the most notable being Earth-S for the Fawcett Comics characters, and Earth-X for the Quality Comics characters. By

8613-426: The stories he writes are not only based on events on Earth-One, but can actually influence these events as well. This power turns for the worse in Justice League of America #123 (October 1975), when Bates is accidentally transported to Earth-Two. The interdimensional trip temporarily turns Bates into a supervillain, and he quickly kills the Justice Society of America . Luckily, fellow DC writer Elliot S. Maggin , with

8712-506: The stories that were told in Milestone Comics publications now occurred in New Earth and the Dakotaverse ceased to exist as a separated Universe. A naming convention was established and followed this time in the format Earth, hyphen, numeral , from Earth-0 to Earth-51. Even with a new Multiverse, not every published or related work had an "Earth" within the 52 and there were no in-continuity intercompany crossovers. Taking advantage of

8811-524: The three previous "crises" did not occur in this new continuity, but other events such as Zero Hour still happened, without ending in a crisis/reboot. However, writers continued to make references to the crises, and the full history of the structure of the DC Multiverse, detailing previous crisis events, was given in Grant Morrison 's The Multiversity (2014–2015) limited series. The Convergence (2015) crossover event later explored this concept within

8910-499: The time of the passage of Halley's Comet in 1985. Just after manifesting his powers, Superboy-Prime met Earth-One's Superman. Very soon thereafter, Earth-Prime was destroyed in Crisis on Infinite Earths #10. Superboy-Prime escaped his universe's destruction and later joined Earth-Two's Superman, Earth-Two's Lois Lane-Kent and Earth-Three's Alexander Luthor in a "paradise dimension". Superboy Prime also possesses powers far exceeding those of

9009-470: The timeline, resulting in superheroes emerging later in history. After a confrontation with Superman, Manhattan attempts to erase his tampering and restore the Pre-Flashpoint and Pre-Crisis multiverses, as well as elements he had previously removed from the history of Earth-0 such as the Justice Society of America and Legion of Superheroes . It is later revealed that he failed, only managing to destabilise

9108-482: The timestream further as it attempted to accommodate events from previous versions of reality. Meanwhile, Dark Nights: Metal , written by Scott Snyder , introduced the concept of the Dark Multiverse, a multiverse below the main DC Multiverse of nightmare worlds created from heroes' deepest fears. A being named Barbatos launches an attack from the Dark Multiverse on reality, spearheaded by a force of villainous versions of Batman led by The Batman Who Laughs . The invasion

9207-536: The underlying structure for the multiverse was revealed in a detailed map in the back of several comic books, for which an interactive online version was maintained and updated on the DC Comics website. In addition, the sixth issue of The Multiversity constituted a 'guidebook' to the worlds of the current DC multiverse and was published in January 2015. In October 2011, Dan DiDio posted on his Facebook page that in The New 52,

9306-490: The world of a revived post-apocalypse Atomic Knights after a mid-80s World War III once more. Many important stories from the Elseworlds imprint were later also given their own alternate Earths within this new Multiverse. In the miniseries, Milestone Forever , in a similar fashion as Captain Atom: Armageddon , the events that led to the end of the Dakotaverse and its integration to the new DC continuity are revealed. Most of

9405-559: Was known as Prime Earth, although it was not a similar world to the real world as Earth-Prime was. J. Michael Straczynski 's re-envisioning of Superman and Geoff Johns ' reimagining of Batman were released as part of a series called Earth One . In Grant Morrison's The Multiversity (2014–2015), the Earths are named in the same format as in the former 52 Multiverse (Earth-6, Earth-7, Earth-8 etc.). Morrison intended for The Multiversity to reveal remaining universes of The New 52 multiverse, and

9504-458: Was no longer an Earth-Prime or greater Multiverse, Ultraa was retconned into being from the planet Almerac, homeworld of Maxima . The second superhero (later turned super-villain) of this Earth is Superboy-Prime, revealed as the true Superman from which all the other Supermen originate. He first appeared in DC Comics Presents #87 (Nov. 1985). This Superboy's powers first manifested around

9603-485: Was originally created by Perpetua, a member of a race of cosmic beings known as "Hands", referencing the common imagery in DC of a giant Hand creating the Universe. She also created the Monitor, Anti-Monitor and World Forger. The original Multiverse consisted of an infinite positive matter multiverse to be overseen by the Monitor; a dark matter Multiverse where the World Forger would create new universes to be either added to

9702-462: Was revealed to have been created to preserve the Legion of Super Heroes' 30th century in New Earth. This world was used to allow crossovers with certain characters of the Legion of Super-Heroes and recreate characters that otherwise could not exist in the new continuity (such as Kryptonians , as in the New Earth Superman was the only survivor of Krypton). Alternate timelines were also used,

9801-478: Was the "Multiple Earths", which also showed a chaotic nature that brought even more continuity problems that were not easily explained or were simply left unexplained. Examples of this included: 1) the Black Canary of Earth-One being the daughter of the original Black Canary of World War II even though the original Black Canary was a resident of Earth-Two, and 2) the existence of Golden Age comic books on Earth-One and

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