What Can/Should/Will DC Do In Honor of Crisis On Infinite Earths in 2025?

[All Star Superman]

We're two years away from the 40th anniversary of Crisis On Infinite Earths. DC has already destroyed the surviving characters from COIE (literally in some cases and just character in others) and Dark Crisis. They've also brought back the "Infinite Earths" twice now, if we count Convergence.

What's left for DC to do for the big 40th? Will we see another reset/reboot or will the pre-COIE Multiverse get its own titles in 2025. Will they bring Harbinger back and use her as a villain for a new Crisis?

I think the best thing they could do is launch a new Multiverse: Multiverse 2025.

Multiverse-1956: The pre-COIE Multiverse

Universe-1986: The post-COIE Universe

Multiverse 2005: The post-Infinite Crisis Multiverse

Multiverse 2011: The post-New 52 Multiverse

Multiverse 2023: The post-Dark Crisis Multiverse

Multiverse 2025: A New Beginning

This new Multiverse would launch with all new #1s and everyone starts from day one. For the first year or so, no sidekicks, no teams, limited crossovers as each character starts over completely. Books are published on several Earths/universes.

Earth-Zero: "Ultimate DC," ground-level reboot.

Earth-One: "Classic DCU," iconic versions of DC characters in books that are light on continuity.

Earth-Two: "Golden Age Earth," two books set in the 30s and 40s: JSA and World's Finest.

Earth-Three: "Syndicate Earth," with "Syndicate" and "The Adventures of Lex Luthor" the only two titles.

Earth-Four: Ground-level reboot of the Charlton characters, with Blue Beetle and Peacemaker titles at first.

Earth-Five: Ground level reboot of the Marvel Family, though now known as the Thunder Family. One title to start: Captain Thunder.

Earth-Six: Horror/thriller universe, with Swamp Thing and Hellblazer titles.

Earth-Seven: Sci-fi Earth, with a Challengers of The Unknown title reimagining the team in a sort of "Star Trek" format.

Earth 10: Earth where Nazis one WWII and the Freedom fighters fight on. Mini-series or one-shots.

[Dr. Poison]

I would read all of these:


Earth-One: "Classic DCU," iconic versions of DC characters in books that are light on continuity.

Earth-Two: "Golden Age Earth," two books set in the 30s and 40s: JSA and World's Finest.

Earth-Three: "Syndicate Earth," with "Syndicate" and "The Adventures of Lex Luthor" the only two titles.

Earth-Four: Ground-level reboot of the Charlton characters, with Blue Beetle and Peacemaker titles at first.

Earth-Five: Ground level reboot of the Marvel Family, though now known as the Thunder Family. One title to start: Captain Thunder.

Earth 10: Earth where Nazis one WWII and the Freedom fighters fight on. Mini-series or one-shots.

[JorgeJ77]

I don't want another reboot.

[WonderLight789]

Lose the rights to Wonder Woman. So they can't keep screwing her lore and franchise any further.

[j9ac9k]

I do like the idea of bookending "Crisis" and the end of the multi-verse with embracing the new multi-verse -- a "Rebirth of Infinite Earths" to borrow from another popular DC trope. No way they'd just reboot everything, but perhaps some event that relaunches a series of series that don't take place on Earth Prime - perhaps a mini using a group of Earth Prime heroes traversing the Multiverse to introduce/reintroduce the worlds where these series will take place.

A few possible examples:
-- Justice by Gaslight: In the "Gotham by Gaslight" world - or something very similar - that tells the story of the formation of a group of heroes that's a mashed JSA and JLA.
-- Earth One: I think there's still potential in that franchise. Bring back all the heroes introduced there, add a few more. Make it a loosely interconnected anthology and hopefully spin-off a few titles from the main one.
-- Freedom Fighters: I know it's been tried before, but really dive into this alt dimension with heroes fighting Nazis.
-- Mystery Men (and women): a total pulp hero series with minimum super-powers.
-- Infinite Earths: They tried it recently, but it seemed to go nowhere - a team made of Earth Prime characters that deals with the multiverse.

[Tomkatie]

Same as CoIE where they destroy the multiverse and only leave one Earth surviving, but it’s the universe where everyone’s a gorilla

[Lee Stone]

Celebrate it by not doing anything.

[John Venus]

I get 'Nam flashbacks just hearing the word reboot. Please, no more reboots.

Do what the Multiverse is supposed to do which is to explore different possibilities. Show us life on Earth-2 and where characters lives ended up, show us a world where the Marvel Family are the only heroes of that world or a world where Titans are fully grown or became villains or a world where there was no JL but the villains still existed.

[All Star Superman]

I do like the idea of bookending "Crisis" and the end of the multi-verse with embracing the new multi-verse -- a "Rebirth of Infinite Earths" to borrow from another popular DC trope. No way they'd just reboot everything, but perhaps some event that relaunches a series of series that don't take place on Earth Prime - perhaps a mini using a group of Earth Prime heroes traversing the Multiverse to introduce/reintroduce the worlds where these series will take place.

A few possible examples:
-- Justice by Gaslight: In the "Gotham by Gaslight" world - or something very similar - that tells the story of the formation of a group of heroes that's a mashed JSA and JLA.
-- Earth One: I think there's still potential in that franchise. Bring back all the heroes introduced there, add a few more. Make it a loosely interconnected anthology and hopefully spin-off a few titles from the main one.
-- Freedom Fighters: I know it's been tried before, but really dive into this alt dimension with heroes fighting Nazis.
-- Mystery Men (and women): a total pulp hero series with minimum super-powers.
-- Infinite Earths: They tried it recently, but it seemed to go nowhere - a team made of Earth Prime characters that deals with the multiverse.

Love these ideas!

Celebrate it by not doing anything.

It's definitely not something to celebrate, at least not its outcome. However, we all know DC will do something to mine that nostalgia...

I get 'Nam flashbacks just hearing the word reboot. Please, no more reboots.

Do what the Multiverse is supposed to do which is to explore different possibilities. Show us life on Earth-2 and where characters lives ended up, show us a world where the Marvel Family are the only heroes of that world or a world where Titans are fully grown or became villains or a world where there was no JL but the villains still existed.

That's a valid way to go, too. I just want complete distance put between something new and everything DC has done since 2005. Outside of some good stories here and there, it's largely been a nightmare.

[Kaijudo]

Rather than do yet another big reboot event, I'd like to see a story dealing with the ramifications of all of the previous reboot events. Something like some great disaster is possibly going to occur (maybe with a malevolent perpetrator behind it, maybe not) and to stop it the heroes have to track down, say, seven characters who have been stranded on the current main Earth who do not belong in this timeline...think along the lines of characters owned by the companies acquired by DC who were never used or introduced to the "New Earth" for whatever reason, like a Lieutenant Marvel or Quality's Wildfire or Charlton's Yellowjacket. Or maybe a Golden Age or Silver Age DC character, be it hero, villain, or supporting character who was never reintroduced. Or some alternate version of an existing character where certain elements of their history never happened, like Alfred Pennyworth turning into the Outsider in the late 60s.

Anyway, these characters have made lives for themselves, with varying levels of success, in the New Earth they don't belong in. The existing heroes have to track them down (using Psycho-Pirate and Harbinger, to tie it back to the original series) and find a way to use their aberration status to stop the impending unraveling of the timeline/multiverse/what have you. And in the end, the more heroic characters are more fully integrated into the regular DCU with the help of the various existing heroes, while the more villainous characters are locked up or escape back into the shadows, making plans for future schemes.

[Korath]

Have a few miniseries set in the Multiverse from recognizable era :
One for Pre-COIE
One for New 52
One for Golden Age
One for Silver Age etc

And just see use those to tell great foundational stories for a sort of Elseworld line, so in the future if writers want to touch a certain era they just have to respect those new books.

[bat39]

I dunno, honestly. We've already had a couple of sequels to it. The ending of COIE has been undone a couple of times. The Multiverse (several different iterations) has been back for a while now, not that it gets used much. Pre-Crisis characters, elements and continuity have returned on and off, and the timeline has been changed back and forth numerous times to first be more Pre-Crisis, and then to be more Post-Crisis again. So what more can possibly be done to follow up from COIE, celebrate it, or undo it?

Is there really an upside to going back to the Pre-Crisis era? That was not just another era of DC comics, it was practically another era in world history at this point. Bronze Age DC fans are in their forties, fifties and sixties now, and Silver Age DC fans are in their seventies or even eighties. Moreover, the Post-Crisis era, in some form or the other, has now been around longer than the entire Silver Age/Bronze Age 'Multiverse' era. It's just a fact of life now for DC fans, reinforced by innumerable adaptations.

I suppose one thing DC could do is go back to the spirit of the Pre-Crisis era and make other earths actual settings in ongoing books. Or, celebrate the spirit of both the Pre and Post-Crisis eras by introducing one new 'New Earth' that serves as a launchpad for a new Ultimate Universe-style reboot that, if successful, the DC line can then mostly transition to.

[Jim Kelly]

I don't see 40th anniversaries as being such a big deal. We tend to give greater attention to the 10th, the 25th, the 50th, the 75th and the 100th anniversary of anything. In 2035--January 11th, 2035, to be exact--it will be the 100th anniversary of NEW FUN no. 1--and the 50th anniversary of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS no. 1--on January 3rd in fact. There's bound to be all kinds of celebrations at that time--if the publisher still exists and the company that owns them even cares. Which means any changes in 2025 are likely to be swept away in 2035.

[superduperman]

Undo it.

Have all the heroes wake up in containment tanks on Apokolips where the last 40 years never happened and were just a dream. The constant reboots were the program resetting itself because the heroes kept resisting. COIE never happened.

[caj]

Undo it.

Have all the heroes wake up in containment tanks on Apokolips where the last 40 years never happened and were just a dream. The constant reboots were the program resetting itself because the heroes kept resisting. COIE never happened.

I'm not sure if I want this but at this point, I'm willing to do almost ANYTHING to get Katar and Shayera Hol back the way they were in the Silver and Bronze Age.