The different Earths need to be divided

[Jim Kelly]

The critique of Earth-Two by fandom was that it should have been Earth-One, since it was first. I see the same problem if you say the present Multiverse is 1. Shouldn't the original Multiverse be 1, the second 2, the third 3?

[adrikito]

That's what interests me now... new52 as another universe.. but they have done IMPOSSIBLE. Only for 1 character, superdad.

Now they going to change a modern universe(my only reason here) by another old(his superman, old costumes, old origins, etc) with the excuse that this was the old universe, only new characters are safe.. They could not recover the lost characters without returning to the old world? Imposible for DC..

Now to continue with the little that interests me(nothing of manhattan).. I left WW because is becoming in clasic in every way, even the origin.

[Sacred Knight]

The events of Convergence, which averted the original Crisis, had to have changed a hell of a lot more than we were led to believe. Think about it; no Crisis, then no post-Crisis Earth. At least, that's not the origin of that Earth anymore. So what is/was it now? What are its origins? My theory is that Earth-0 (which for all intents and purposes is the same place as "post-Crisis Earth" all the way up to the New 52, just changed), was originally Earth-Two. After the Crisis was averted this is the Earth Manhattan began tampering with. The template for his experiements, so to speak. All the various eras since 1986 have taken place on the original Earth-Two, just drastically changed and come to be known with a new designation of Earth-0. So all the New 52 characters? Their templates are the originals; the Golden Age. New 52 Superman was Kal-L, and so on and so forth. So what about characters like Superdad and the like? Well to answer that is to ask another question. If the Crisis was averted, and we are currently on what was once Earth-Two, what happened to Earth-One? Its hidden somewhere. Stowed away by magical means, perhaps within Earth-0 itself, to prevent it from being tampered with like Earth-Two was. And that's who Superdad, Lois, and Jon are. Not survivors of the post-Crisis Earth. Refugees of Earth-One. Lois and Clark don't remember this yet because they were present when time was changed as they took part in averting the Crisis. Their memories have not "caught up" to the reality of their new/old origins.

End result of all of this? Earth-One being found, and essentially going back to the pre-Crisis set up of two "main" Earths, which are technically the same ones pre-Crisis to boot. Just with new designations. Earth-0, and Earth-1. And the themes will be switched. With Earth-1 having been immune to Dr. Manhattan's reach, its been unaltered and thus is now chronologically the older Earth, with the older heroes, with kind of a yesteryear feel. Earth-0 is the modern Earth, with the younger heroes and the modern feel.

[GlennSimpson]

The events of Convergence, which averted the original Crisis, had to have changed a hell of a lot more than we were led to believe. Think about it; no Crisis, then no post-Crisis Earth. At least, that's not the origin of that Earth anymore. So what is/was it now? What are its origins? My theory is that Earth-0 (which for all intents and purposes is the same place as "post-Crisis Earth" all the way up to the New 52, just changed), was originally Earth-Two. After the Crisis was averted this is the Earth Manhattan began tampering with. The template for his experiements, so to speak. All the various eras since 1986 have taken place on the original Earth-Two, just drastically changed and come to be known with a new designation of Earth-0. So all the New 52 characters? Their templates are the originals; the Golden Age. New 52 Superman was Kal-L, and so on and so forth. So what about characters like Superdad and the like? Well to answer that is to ask another question. If the Crisis was averted, and we are currently on what was once Earth-Two, what happened to Earth-One? Its hidden somewhere. Stowed away by magical means, perhaps within Earth-0 itself, to prevent it from being tampered with like Earth-Two was. And that's who Superdad, Lois, and Jon are. Not survivors of the post-Crisis Earth. Refugees of Earth-One. Lois and Clark don't remember this yet because they were present when time was changed as they took part in averting the Crisis. Their memories have not "caught up" to the reality of their new/old origins.

End result of all of this? Earth-One being found, and essentially going back to the pre-Crisis set up of two "main" Earths, which are technically the same ones pre-Crisis to boot. Just with new designations. Earth-0, and Earth-1. And the themes will be switched. With Earth-1 having been immune to Dr. Manhattan's reach, its been unaltered and thus is now chronologically the older Earth, with the older heroes, with kind of a yesteryear feel. Earth-0 is the modern Earth, with the younger heroes and the modern feel.

Unless...all of the "on-screen" activities in Crisis still happened as published, but in the background the destruction of the Multiverse was averted. So a new fresh "cluster Earth" was created, but all of the other Earths still existed, but just hidden away where nobody could get to them. In that situation, nothing else really would have changed.

[Lee Stone]

Unless...all of the "on-screen" activities in Crisis still happened as published, but in the background the destruction of the Multiverse was averted. So a new fresh "cluster Earth" was created, but all of the other Earths still existed, but just hidden away where nobody could get to them. In that situation, nothing else really would have changed.

I'm sure there's at least one reality where the Satellite League never disbanded, and simply just added Vixen and a few other Silver and Bronze Age heroes to the team.

[GlennSimpson]

I'm sure there's at least one reality where the Satellite League never disbanded, and simply just added Vixen and a few other Silver and Bronze Age heroes to the team.

Well, depending on one's theory, there's a reality where pretty much every combination of things happened.

[Bill Lange]

Well, depending on one's theory, there's a reality where pretty much every combination of things happened.

You're right. If the Multi-Multiverse is Infinite, mathematically, there would even be copies of every Multiverse combination.

[Lee Stone]

You're right. If the Multi-Multiverse is Infinite, mathematically, there would even be copies of every Multiverse combination.

In a sense... every issue of a DC Comic could be set in its own continuity.
Maybe every panel, even!

Just because someone appeared on the first page of an issue, it doesn't mean they still appeared on the first page in the continuity of page four. It could've been someone else entirely.

The possibilities are endless.

The JLA can depart to handle an earthquake evacuation and end up at the scene of a hurricane, and that was where they were going all along.
Then when they get back to HQ, they're not returning from the hurricane but from diverting an asteroid.

[GlennSimpson]

The possibilities are so endless, in fact, that I would posit that what they actually kinda spell out in the books is really the only thing that can be defined as "existing" or "not existing". So, for example, in Convergence they said that the pre-Crisis multiverse evolved into the current one. Ergo the original Pre-Crisis Earth Two no longer exists.

[bat39]

I think the true answer is "it depends on the writer". How DC continuity and the Multiverse worse, and the approach to past continuities and past configurations of the universe has varied over time.

Hell, about a year ago, the stated position was the Post-COIE Earth was a different earth from New 52 earth and that Post-COIE Superman was a totally separate entity from the New 52 Superman.

Now...New 52 Earth is basically Post-COIE Earth worked upon by Doc Manhattan...and Post-COIE Superman has always been the Superman of this earth apparently (well, it hasn't been confirmed yet but its about to), with New 52 Superman being...something.

When it comes to the level of the characters too, it depend on the writer's interpretation and the reader's. Is New 52 Batman the same guy as Post-COIE Batman, and was HE the same guy as Pre-COIE E1 Batman? There are answers both in favor and against that notion within the comics themselves and the statements of various creators over the decades.

[colonyofcells]

In the case of many characters like Batman and Joker, it is easy to imagine pre coie Joker, pre flashpoint Joker and new 52 Joker as the same person. Batman has more details about his life so it is easier to imagine there being several Batmans from different universes. Pre coie earth 2 Batman was married to Catwoman and had a daughter Huntress. Pre coie earth 1 Batman, pre flashpoint Batman and new 52 Batman can easily be thought of as the same person. With Superman, there are also 2 main versions : the married Superman and the unmarried Superman. Pre coie earth 2 Superman is married. Pre coie earth 1 Superman was not married except for the Alan Moore imaginary story were Superman lost his powers and got married and had a kid. Pre flashpoint Superman was married and later on revealed in Convergence to have a kid. New 52 Superman is not married.
Justice Society and Justice League have a lot more history so can have more universes based on them. Pre coie earth 2 has the Justice Society with Superman that went thru world war 2 and had many legacies like Infinity Inc. Pre coie earth 1 had no Justice Society. Pre flashpoint clutter earth had a Justice Society minus Superman that also went thru world war 2 and had many more legacies in addition to Infinity Inc. New 52 dcyou rebirth Justice Society looks like it will be very similar to pre flashpoint clutter earth Justice Society. Based on the differences in the Justice Society, you can get 4 universes out of them.
There have been about 3 versions of earth 2 : pre coie earth 2, pre flashpoint earth 2 Justice Society Infinity, New 52 earth 2.
About 4 universes are possible based on Justice League founders. Pre coie earth 2 had no Justice League. Pre coie earth 1 had 7 founders including Martian Manhunter. Pre flashpoint Justice League had a slightly different list of founders that included Black Canary. New 52 dcyou rebirth Justice League had Cyborg as a founder.

[Jim Kelly]

So maybe the period between 1986 and 2010 has to be divided into two different periods. For most of the post-Crisis period, DC insisted that it didn't have a Multiverse--so maybe this earlier period is distinguished by having a singular DC Universe--even though I think this was a lie, because we certainly saw a lot of different continuities during that period.

[Lemurion]

I like multiverses with hypertime, with different things fading in and out of canon for different books and characters semi-independently. The comics version of "there is no one true way."

Looking back, I think the real change from Crisis was not the removal of the multiverse, but its separation into disconnected universes. Elseworlds were just alternates by another name: the real difference was no crossovers from one continuity to another.

[Dataweaver]

My take on this is to borrow the concept of versioning from software development:

DCU v0.0, i.e., Earth-α/Earth-Alpha (as in “the Alpha Release”) or “the Golden Age DCU”. According to the Multiversity Guidebook (and CoIE), there was originally a single Earth. This is where all DC comics published between 1938–1951 took place, as well as a few of the stories from 1951–1961: the Golden Age and the Interregnum. This was a very unstable Earth, with the timeline constantly in flux. This allowed for such things as Alfred dying and then his death being retroactively annulled, or Superman spontaneously developing a childhood career as Superboy. This reality ended when Earth-α's Krona probed the Dawn of Time, letting the Monitor into reality and shattering Earth-α into the first Multiverse.

DCU v1.0: the first Multiverse, a.k.a. “the Silver Age” — the first “stable release”. Earth-α was split into the Infinite Earths, which included Earth-1–3, S, X, and the Antimatter Universe. Of these Earths, Earth-2 most closely resembled the defunct Earth-α; but every Earth was based on Earth-α in one way or another. For instance, Earth-1 inherited Superboy, Krona, and the Guardians of the Universe from Earth-α. DCU v1.0 covers the Silver Age, from c.1956–1968.

Note that I'm not using DCU to refer to Earth-1, but to the entire multiverse. If you wish to specify that you mean the primary Earth of the Silver Age, you might refer to it as “Earth One v1.0”.

DCU v1.1: the Bronze Age “soft reboot”; this is sometimes known as “pre-Crisis”. This is where the Fourth World entered the picture, among other changes. This covers 1968–1986, and ends with the Crisis on Infinite Earths. There is no in-universe explanation for this change; but it is every bit as significant a change as the more formal “soft reboots” that come later. This version ended in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

If you wish to reference this version specifically, use v1.1; if you want to reference the more general version of the first multiverse without fine-grained distinctions, use either v1.x or just v1.

DCU v2.0: a.k.a. “post-Crisis”. Originally, the Multiverse was destroyed by the Crisis, and this eri primarily featured one Earth, which was never given a designation. This version, like Earth-α, was unstable and experienced a sequence of “rolling reboots”. This version covers c.1986–1995, and ends in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.

Even here there was some multi-Earth action, such as the pocket universe of the Legion's Superboy and then the Matrix Supergirl; also the various futures explored by Waverider during the original Armageddon: 2001 storyline, and at the tail end of it the “Worlds Collide” story arc where the Superman titles encountered the Milestone universe. It's also when the Elseworlds were first discovered.

DCU v2.1: a.k.a. “post-Zero Hour”. The biggest alteration in this version was the first reboot of the Legion of Superheroes; the present day was largely an evolution from pre-Zero Hour. The version covers c.1995–c.2005, although the last two years were marked by a new wave of instability caused by an exiled survivor of Earth Prime v1, culminating in Infinite Crisis.

This version of the DCU saw the formal discovery and naming of Hypertime, though Hypertime itself has arguably been there from the start.

DCU v2.2: During Infinite Crisis, two major changes took place. A new Multiverse (the Orrery of Worlds) was created, and the primary Earth of DCU v2 was officially named “New Earth”. The subsequent Final Crisis also designated it as Earth-0. A case could be made that Final Crisis ushered in a DCU v2.3; but the general instability of v2.2 and the tendency for Final Crisis' changes (primarily folding the Milestone universe into New Earth) to get lost in the noise renders such a designation moot in my opinion. This version was ended by Flashpoint in 2011, and is often referred to as “pre-Flashpoint”.

DCU v3.0: the first version with an official designation, “New 52”. Nearly every world in the Orrery was changed by the Flashpoint: some changes were minor (e.g., Earth-22, the “Kingdom Come” Earth, went from Superman forming a new Justice League to Superman forming a new Justice Society — a change in name only — and Earth One's changes, if any, were so minor as to be lost in the general noise of its “birth pains” instability); others were major (Prime Earth, Earth 2, Earth 16, Earth 31, etc.)

It's too soon to say whether there's a DCU v3.1 yet. DC rebranded itself from “New 52” to “DCYou” during Convergence, an event which retconned this versioning scheme in ways that are unclear (other than a general statement that “the Crisis was prevented from destroying the Multiverse, and the current Multiverse evolved from the original one”). In its wake, Rebirth has initiated a process of reintroducing elements of DCU v2 into DCU v3; though as of yet, its changes arguably don't (yet) rise to the level of a Bronze Age or Zero Hour transformation, let alone a Crisis on Infinite Earths or Flashpoint. Given that Rebirth is planned to run its course over the next two years, I'm going to speculate that DCU 3.1 will start in 2018, coinciding with Action Comics #1000.

[Dataweaver]

The events of Convergence, which averted the original Crisis, had to have changed a hell of a lot more than we were led to believe. Think about it; no Crisis, then no post-Crisis Earth. At least, that's not the origin of that Earth anymore. So what is/was it now? What are its origins? My theory is that Earth-0 (which for all intents and purposes is the same place as "post-Crisis Earth" all the way up to the New 52, just changed), was originally Earth-Two.

My theory is that the original Crisis wasn't averted; it played out exactly as written right up to the battle at the Dawn of Time. That's when the heroes that were sent back from Convergence intervened; and their intervention resulted in the Multiverse being preserved, with the addition of a new “Primary Earth” featuring elements from Earths 1, 2, 4, S, and X (the post-Crisis DCU).

Every Earth became isolated, and forgot about the Multiverse. This continued up through Infinite Crisis and 52, which connected fifty-one Earths to the Primary Earth and transformed them from their DCU v1 forms to their DCU v2 forms.