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  1. #1
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    Default The real pioneer of the DC multiverse

    Everyone credits Barry Allen with discovering the DC Multiverse. In a way this is true because the Flash of Two Worlds story kickstarted some incredible multiverse stories and a new era for DC.




    However Barry Allen was NOT the first person to discover the multiverse, it was Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in #59 of her series way back in 1953





    As far as I know this story and the background of Earth 59 has never been touched upon outside of a Wonder Woman comic book. This issue is notable for me because it truly is the first example of an alternate "earth 2" style earth in DC Comics and also at the end, Wonder Woman's double Tara gives Diana her lasso! For a while the lasso Diana used was not the one from her earth.

    Would you like to see DC revisit this unappreciated piece of history and acknowledge Diana as the real pioneer of the multiverse?
    Last edited by Elmo; 04-19-2019 at 08:42 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Elmo View Post
    Everyone credits Barry Allen with discovering the DC Multiverse. In a way this is true because the Flash of Two Worlds story kickstarted some incredible multiverse stories and a new era for DC.




    However Barry Allen was NOT the first person to discover the multiverse, it was Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in #59 of her series way back in 1953





    As far as I know this story and the background of Earth 59 has never been touched upon outside of a Wonder Woman comic book. This issue is notable for me because it truly is the first example of an alternate "earth 2" style earth in DC Comics and also at the end, Wonder Woman's double Tara gives Diana her lasso! For a while the lasso Diana used was not the one from her earth.

    Would you like to see DC revisit this unappreciated piece of history and acknowledge Diana as the real pioneer of the multiverse?
    Nice find and maybe Sandy Jarrell good be the artist ��

  3. #3
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    I would love this, but unfortunately it would require DC to WANT to use more of Wonder Woman's Golden Age lore, and use the Multiverse more regularly. Neither of which seems likely to happen any time soon.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Elmo View Post
    Everyone credits Barry Allen with discovering the DC Multiverse. In a way this is true because the Flash of Two Worlds story kickstarted some incredible multiverse stories and a new era for DC.




    However Barry Allen was NOT the first person to discover the multiverse, it was Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in #59 of her series way back in 1953





    As far as I know this story and the background of Earth 59 has never been touched upon outside of a Wonder Woman comic book. This issue is notable for me because it truly is the first example of an alternate "earth 2" style earth in DC Comics and also at the end, Wonder Woman's double Tara gives Diana her lasso! For a while the lasso Diana used was not the one from her earth.

    Would you like to see DC revisit this unappreciated piece of history and acknowledge Diana as the real pioneer of the multiverse?
    I had never heard of this story before. I will be tracking down that issue right now.

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    Ultimate Member Phoenixx9's Avatar
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    I a!ways thought that myself, but it seems DC decided to just go with this being an alternate version of Wonder Woman, instead of an Earth 1 counterpart.

    I think that is the difference with the Flash story. In the Flash story, didn't they specifically mention E1 and E2?

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    Quote Originally Posted by SiegePerilous02 View Post
    I would love this, but unfortunately it would require DC to WANT to use more of Wonder Woman's Golden Age lore, and use the Multiverse more regularly. Neither of which seems likely to happen any time soon.
    I want Diana in WW2 again, I want her in WW1 again. Have her and Steve to go on an adventure through time in which a Wonder Woman appears at key points in history. Everything from the goofy 1940s original stuff needs to be back in all its kinky glory!

    They tried to backdoor it with Polly Post-Crisis, but it didn't feel right because it needed to be Diana & Steve, not Hippolyta & Ted (?).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Phoenixx9 View Post
    I a!ways thought that myself, but it seems DC decided to just go with this being an alternate version of Wonder Woman, instead of an Earth 1 counterpart.

    I think that is the difference with the Flash story. In the Flash story, didn't they specifically mention E1 and E2?
    Yeah, the entire modern construction of the Multiverse is built upon the Flash of Two Worlds. Multiverse stories had been around for a while. At National, Fawcett, All-American.

    I mean, the November 1940 Justice Society story establishes that Thunderbolt created what would become the DCU by merging together various comic book characters published by different comic book companies (in the story itself). That is Ground Zero for the interconnected loose continuity that would become the modern DCU.

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    The Fastest Post Alive! Buried Alien's Avatar
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    There was also another place called "Dimension 24" that appeared in the very early Silver Age FLASH comics, before FLASH OF TWO WORLDS.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bored at 3:00AM View Post
    Yeah, the entire modern construction of the Multiverse is built upon the Flash of Two Worlds. Multiverse stories had been around for a while. At National, Fawcett, All-American.

    I mean, the November 1940 Justice Society story establishes that Thunderbolt created what would become the DCU by merging together various comic book characters published by different comic book companies (in the story itself). That is Ground Zero for the interconnected loose continuity that would become the modern DCU.
    A retcon I'd love to see would be Jay showing up at JSA HQ and going "Guess what?" WW replies, "Been there, done that." and tosses him her documented adventure.

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    The Fastest Post Alive! Buried Alien's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Phoenixx9 View Post
    I a!ways thought that myself, but it seems DC decided to just go with this being an alternate version of Wonder Woman, instead of an Earth 1 counterpart.

    I think that is the difference with the Flash story. In the Flash story, didn't they specifically mention E1 and E2?
    The WONDER WOMAN story was intended as a one-off that wouldn't go anywhere, and didn't really have a purpose beyond telling that one story. FLASH OF TWO WORLDS not only told that story, but also retroactively explained how Superman, Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman could be contemporaries of both Jay Garrick (a fictional character) and Barry Allen (a "real" person in their world). It became the springboard to the Multiverse.

    So it's sort of like the difference between Leif Ericsson and Christopher Columbus. Ericsson arrived first, but left behind nothing permanent. Columbus arrived later, but his visit changed things permanently.

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  11. #11
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    This kind of reminds me that an upcoming fill-in issue by Steve Orlando will have Wonder Woman visiting an AU Themyscira...

  12. #12
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    I have never seen this WW story. Great find!

  13. #13
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bored at 3:00AM View Post
    I want Diana in WW2 again, I want her in WW1 again. Have her and Steve to go on an adventure through time in which a Wonder Woman appears at key points in history. Everything from the goofy 1940s original stuff needs to be back in all its kinky glory!

    They tried to backdoor it with Polly Post-Crisis, but it didn't feel right because it needed to be Diana & Steve, not Hippolyta & Ted (?).
    Oh definitely. I loved Rebirth, but I feel like both it and post-Crisis Perez missed the opportunity to take advantage of Diana's immortality on a merged Earth (with both the JSA and JLA) and include as much of her history as possible. That means debuting during WWII with Steve, the Holliday Girls, Paula von Gunther and Priscilla Rich Cheetah, and then modern day adventures with Donna Troy and Barbara Minerva, etc. DC doesn't want her debuting before Superman I guess, yet they're fine with the JSA coming first? Like if we have to have a public superhero before Superman, she's earned that right over almost anyone else.

    Never cared for the Hippolyta retcon. It makes Diana a superhero legacy when she was never meant to be, and still doesn't accurately reflect the published older material.

  14. #14
    Ultimate Member Phoenixx9's Avatar
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    Wonder Woman had a few counterparts that were really meant as nothing more than individual stories. In addition to my earlier reference of the WW story, there was a later story where there was an evil Wonder Woman wearing the same costume and everything that fought Diana.

    I understand that they meant for the Flash story to be the start of the Different Earths.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Buried Alien View Post
    The WONDER WOMAN story was intended as a one-off that wouldn't go anywhere, and didn't really have a purpose beyond telling that one story. FLASH OF TWO WORLDS not only told that story, but also retroactively explained how Superman, Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman could be contemporaries of both Jay Garrick (a fictional character) and Barry Allen (a "real" person in their world). It became the springboard to the Multiverse.

    So it's sort of like the difference between Leif Ericsson and Christopher Columbus. Ericsson arrived first, but left behind nothing permanent. Columbus arrived later, but his visit changed things permanently.

    Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)
    I dunno. Seems to me most stories were written to be a one-time thing with the possibility of revisiting the concept if it got a good response and the folks involved wanted to go back to that well. Julie Schwartz published a lot of tales that seemed to promise another instalment, only for none to ever appear again.

    The Three Dimwits had just appeared in THE FLASH 117 (December 1960)--also written by Gardner Fox (the guy reponsible for the Earth-Two stories), which seems to suggest that he and Julie had planned to reboot other things from the old continuity as new continuity, rather than creating a whole new world where those old things still existed. What if Earth-One Winky, Blinky and Noddy had developed a strong following--with Fox and Schwartz spinning off several more Dimwits stories? Then that would have overtaken any plans for a parallel Earth.

    Sure that didn't happen and other stories were created. But it's those other stories that retroactively make a bigger deal out of FLASH 123. This is important when we're looking at vintage comics. We have to have two minds--one mind that knows what happened afterwards and one mind that excludes all the later knowledge, reading the story in isolation.

    Reading the Vinland Sagas, there were several excursions by Erik the Red's extended family. It wasn't a one time thing and there could have been more exploration but for circumstances in Greenland and Iceland that prevented that. Just as it was always possible that the voyages of Columbus would have been a footnote in the history books but for further voyages of discovery. In Canada, we learn in school about John Cabot (first voyage 1497) and Jacques Cartier (first voyage 1534), but even before them there were European fishermen sailing to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in search of cod since the early 1400s.

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