Which characters should still have their own universe?

[Godlike13]

Another amusing one I found was a superhero called Minimidget.

That’s amazing, hahaha.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I think giving all the disparate flavors of the DCU space to do their own thing is a good idea, but there should also be a status quo that allows them to interact with one another without the need for inter-dimensional shenanigans.

Hypertime was kind of an ideal solution for this, but DC Editorial never seemed to get on board with it.

[caj]

Kingdom Come characters for sure.

[9th.]

Shazam immediately came to mind.

[superduperman]

I think most of their "add on" lines would work fine on their own. Shazam! Charlton. Milestone. Most of them are allegories for already established characters anyway. Particularly the Shazam! family. Icon is a black Superman. Blue Beetle is a cheerier Batman. To some degree, it's almost like DC acquired them for one or two characters. Charlton for Blue Beetle and Question. Milestone for Static. The rest were a package deal. I don't think they have a lot of plans for Peacemaker or Judomaster. I would love to see a Charlton line and someone goes into a convenience store or something and there are Superman and Batman comics on the shelves.

[CaptCleghorn]

The Shazam! crew. The flavor is more fun and far less dark than the general DCU. Lt Marvels, Uncle Marvel, Tawny Talky, etc. lose something if adjusted to fit in with current heroes.

The Freedom Fighters nazis win WW2. What more reason is necessary?

JSA/Infinity, Inc. The effects of decades of superheroics on the planet. For heroes who have fought for over a decade, settled down, raised their own next generation to young adulthood should change a planet.

[Adekis]

Lots of folks are saying the Shazam Fam, and I couldn't agree more. Thunderworld was my favorite Shazam comic in a long time, and I concur that Captain Marvel being the # 1 hero on his own world is a hundred times better than "Shazam" playing seventh fiddle to the Justice League.

That said, I would still keep some of the Shazam Fam elements from the New 52, like Darla, Pedro and Eugene, but I still think I'd rather see them on Earth 5 or S or whatever, rather than in the main DCU itself.

Also Freddy should always, always, have a truly vehement hatred for Nazis that nobody ever problematizes or questions. It's part of his history and I really miss it.


Hm, the other obvious one is the Charlton universe, but there's an interesting element to that, which is that there's really three different versions of the Charlton family, or at least, three versions of what people mean when they say that. I'll only describe the three highest profile Charlton characters, mostly.

The first is the original run of action heroes. Captain Atom is the Superman figure, a high-powered do-gooder, admittedly more authoritarian-leaning than Superman is, with Allen Adam's military and intelligence ties and all that. Blue Beetle is a hero, dashing and true, if with a little Spidey style snark and self-deprecating humor. And the Question? Real name "Mr. A," The Question is a moral paragon whose every seeming anti-hero quality is actually a critique of the more conventional Silver Age moral code and its inconsistencies or failures - at least as Ditko saw them through his Rand-tinted worldview. Even Q's secret identity indicates his effortless moral authority - he's a Sage. As Ditko said, Mr. A / the Question's power is knowing the Right Thing to Do, and then doing it.

Then there's Watchmen. Sometimes, people say Charlton, and they mean "a version of Charlton retrofitted to be like Watchmen." The Question's a bit psycho. Blue Beetle's occasional tongue-in-cheek self awareness becomes a full blown inferiority complex. And Captain Atom's increasingly distant from humanity. Morrison did this in the clearest way during Pax Americana, but it's popped up a lot of places. JLU's conspiracy theorist Question is obviously based on Rorschach, the New 52 Captain Atom definitely reads a lot like Doctor Manhattan, and Ted Kord has not infrequently been described as a bit past his prime, like in JLA when he confides that he's wearing a girdle while fighting.

Finally, there's whatever DC has done with the characters on their own in the late 80s after Watchmen, usually independently from each other. For Blue Beetle, that means the goofball antics and his friendship with Booster Gold, which have become virtually character defining for both of them. For Question, it means moral complexity and ambiguity far beyond anything Ditko envisioned for his paragon hero. O'Neil even changed his name from Sage, retconning that to be self-given! For Captain Atom, I've often seen a prevailing presentation of Adam as a Good Solider Boy, a military yes-man whose duty is to his country above all, right or wrong - and usually wrong. I think this mostly comes from JLU, as in the immediately post-Crisis Captain Atom series, we've got the much more interesting portrayal of a self-interested and cynical man with a fantastic sense of humor doing a glam performance as a super-hero. That's definitely something I'd like to see more of.

So how would I give the Charlton characters their own space? Frankly, I'd have a hard time picking how. I think the original versions have been extremely shortchanged over the years, especially for the Question, but there's no doubt that some of the later DC takes have been really interesting in their own right, and it's doubtless that the Watchmen versions have a really massive amount of staying power and appeal. I think I'd be least likely to go in for the Watchmen take, just because I figure, it's been done, right?

[Jim Kelly]

Earth-C should still exist with its universe of talking funny animals.

But sometimes you want to tell a story where two characters that don't fit in the same universe nevertheless meet up--and you don't want to get into some complicated explanation for how this happens. In the old days, a lot of the stories coming out of Murray Boltinoff's office--especially many stories from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD--were attributed by fandom to Earth-B. And I would say that an Earth-B universe must exist. But the funny rules of this universe are that anything can and will happen at any time against all logic to to the contrary. So characters can team-up without explanation--the 1976 and 1981 tabloid team-ups of Superman and Spider-Man, for example.

DC should grab the Earth-B and Earth-C names before Marvel gets to them. Marvel seems to have taken every good idea DC ever had and made a meal of them.

[Photon Torme]

Give everyone their own reality and events in Teambooks would be their own reality. The artwork would be a little different so that readers would know the difference. In His Solo Book, Superman, for instance would still Belong to The Jla but it would be a minor detail. The league and team ups would normally be unnecessary. Sure they get together once a month and maybe there's been an adventure but its just something mentioned in Passing. In The Jla world- The Heroes and all events would be about the team and you'd rarely see members going solo on an adventure.

[Tzigone]

Lots of folks are saying the Shazam Fam, and I couldn't agree more. Thunderworld was my favorite Shazam comic in a long time, and I concur that Captain Marvel being the # 1 hero on his own world is a hundred times better than "Shazam" playing seventh fiddle to the Justice League.

Convergence: Shazam #1 for me. I always wished Captain Marvel had the chance to change the way others did in the bronze age, and yet still keep the good kids and the basic backstory they had (without the time out of time, as was done). The characters not to be not taken seriously, just because they acted like many other heroes of their era did. But what I really love was them still doing all they did without their powers. Tawny was great, too. Even Dudley and Mr. Morris got to shine.

[CaptCleghorn]

Earth-C should still exist with its universe of talking funny animals..

I'm sure this should be pretty much a fact.

And I am upset I didn't come up with it first.

[SiegePerilous02]

Lots of folks are saying the Shazam Fam, and I couldn't agree more. Thunderworld was my favorite Shazam comic in a long time, and I concur that Captain Marvel being the # 1 hero on his own world is a hundred times better than "Shazam" playing seventh fiddle to the Justice League.

That said, I would still keep some of the Shazam Fam elements from the New 52, like Darla, Pedro and Eugene, but I still think I'd rather see them on Earth 5 or S or whatever, rather than in the main DCU itself.

Also Freddy should always, always, have a truly vehement hatred for Nazis that nobody ever problematizes or questions. It's part of his history and I really miss it.

Agreed, I would definitely transplant the new kids and their foster parents over to Earth-5.

I feel like you could move the current series over to Earth-5 and it would barley change anything.

[mathew101281]

None of them. Crossovers and shared universes are the bread and butter of superhero comic these days. Most characters won’t gain much from making it harder to crossover regularly with other supers. Take for example the post new 52 version of the JSA. Do you really think being in their own universe helped them ?

[SiegePerilous02]

None of them. Crossovers and shared universes are the bread and butter of superhero comic these days. Most characters won’t gain much from making it harder to crossover regularly with other supers. Take for example the post new 52 version of the JSA. Do you really think being in their own universe helped them ?

It's not really easy to tell. It's not like we got a classic take on the JSA on their own Earth again that was allowed to succeed or fail. There was too much controversy surrounding the changes to the classic characters, erasing others and cutting ties to WWII.

If we had a Earth-2 with the classic WWII era JSA (including the Trinity) that had a timeline stretched to the modern day with their legacies, it might be a different story. They existed that way pre-COIE and seemed to be doing fine (better than they were immediately after COIE), including having annual Multiverse team ups with the JLA. And even if they are on the main Earth, the JSA is a property that really needs editorial support and a strong creative direction or else it gets ignored anyway because none of the marquee characters are in it.

Similarly, Shazam barely crosses over with anyone so if it were moved you'd barely notice a difference. And it would likely still sell as long as Geoff Johns was writing it.

[Sandy Hausler]

(The Real) Captain Marvel and every one associated with him. They've never belong in any DCU since the mid-1970s when DC started trying to take itself as seriously as their main competitor.

I agree and the same is true of Plastic Man.