My Nerd Meter is Peaking

For the sake of comprehension in my GL Retrospective, I've got to deal with a matter I'd hoped to never address. It is, quite frankly, one of the nerdiest aspects of comic culture. Ever. Just trying to explain it to a non-fan is a pathway to madness. Heck, I'm afraid I'll be beaten up and have my lunch money stolen just in the process of typing this up. And I'll deserve it.

Today, we're going to discuss the DC Multiverse.

See, the idea of alternate realities and timelines is an old classic for science fiction and subsequently superhero comics, but DC took it a step too far by essentially publishing two very similar alternate universes simultaneously, universes which would constantly cross over. Admittedly, at first I was going to explain some of the reasons behind these multiple titles, but the more I think about it...well, the more it makes my head hurt.

In fairness, this concept originated in the Silver Age, when DC wasn't as big on continuity as most comics are today. However, as the medium grew more advanced and the stories became more complicated, (and the number of alternate worlds grew), it got a little confusing. So, in an attempt to simplify their publishing line, DC released a maxi-series called Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Looking back, the idea that Crisis would "simplify" anything is a bit of a joke.

The basic premise for the first (of three) Crisis series is that a fairly powerful being known as the Monitor starts collecting heroes from various universes to prevent an oncoming catastrophe. A powerful entity from the anti-matter universe, called the "Anti-Monitor", is annihilating universes one by one, planning to destroy all the mutliverse until only his anti-matter universe remains.

Let's pause here for a moment to appreciate how incredibly not-threatening the name "Anti-Monitor" is for an omnicidal cosmic force. And frankly, it's a bit non-sensical. Yeah, yeah, he's the Monitor from the anti-matter universe, but he's absolutely nothing like the good Monitor watching over the multiverse. He doesn't really "monitor" anything. Or maybe he's called this because he's the opponent of the Monitor. But why would he define himself by his arch-enemy? It's just not particularly clever naming for an ultimate evil.

And let's question the wisdom of this event in the first place. Universes are destroyed. Entire universes. Before the heroes are even involved in the plot, untold trillions have died. Kind of depressing, when you think about it. Way to drop the ball, Superman!

Stepping back from the story itself, if DC's desire was to simply restart their universe with a more coherent continuity, why not just write endings to the currently-running titles and start over? Why make an "event" out of their fourth-wall breaking editorial decision?

Whatevs. The point is, after the conclusion of CoIE, there are four survivors of the multiverse: Superman and Lois Lane of Earth-2 (where the WWII stories were designated to have happened), Alexander Luthor (the son of the good Lex Luthor from a world where heroes are villains and vice versa) and Superboy Prime (the only superhero from a world where the DCU is a comic book serial, supposed to be "our" world.) They remained in a pocket dimension outside of space and time.

CoIE caused a ton of headaches when the effects of various continuity changes started to accumulate; no one was certain what events had or hadn't happened, now. And for some reason, DC decided twenty years later to celebrate CoIE's 20th anniversary with a new Crisis: Infinite Crisis.

Infinite Crisis revolved around Alexander Luthor and Superboy Prime deciding that the new universe created at the end of CoIE was unworthy of existence, suffering from such dark and twisted events as the death of Superman, Knightfall, Emerald Twilight, and generally the entire 1990's. Alexander Luthor slipped back into reality and replaced Lex Luthor, organizing just about every super villain ever into the largest Secret Society yet. He used these resources to keep Earth's heroes off-balance while he constructed a huge citadel from the remains of the Anti-Monitor's technology. Alex's plan was to create a new, "perfect" world.

Superboy Prime, on the other hand, simply wanted his own world restored. Looking at things objectively, SP most likely suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. It's hard for most to look at him objectively, though, because Superboy Prime is hated by a large number of fans for being an immature, whiny punk of a villain. I'm rather ambivalent on him myself; I find him unintentionally hilarious at worst, somewhat threatening at best. Most villains are as petty as Prime is when you really get down to it; Prime simply lacks the trappings of style and refinement your average supervillain tends to have.

The kid says things like, "I'll kill you to death!" We're not dealing with Victor Von Doom.

At the end of IC, Lex Luthor and the Joker kill the upstart Alexander, and Superboy Prime is imprisoned by the Green Lanterns in a cell held at the center of a red sun, keeping him completely powerless. However, seeing as Earth (and many a super-hero's life) was completely in ruins due to the events of the series, DC elected to skip ahead one year to set the books up in new status quos. This timejump was called "One Year Later", because the marketing guys were feeling particularly creative that day.

Another editorial side-effect of IC is the decision that all of Alex Luthor's tampering with the fabric of reality has allowed for new continuity changes. This is going to be more important when the GL Retrospective gets to Secret Origins.


A totally awesome maxi-series called 52 dealt with events during the year-long gap between the end of IC and OYL, showing that Alex's activities had also created a new multiverse, consisting of fifty-two parallel worlds balancing on the main Earth. At first, these universes are completely identical, but when Mr. Mind attempts to consume reality (there's a sentence I never though I'd ever type), it created alterations in these universes.

Bottom line? There's a new multiverse, consisting of 52 parallel worlds balanced on the original. Only a handful of these new worlds have really been explored. And as we'll find out in a couple weeks, the re-creation of the multiverse allowed for the rebirth of the Anti-Monitor.

I'll be honest: I hate the multiverse. With the exception of 52, just about everything related to the multiverse confuses, bores, or irritates me. And the multiverse only came into play in literally the last two issues of that series. The introduction of the Monitors is Final Crisis took attention away from Darkseid's crowning moment of victory, and generally took what had been a very enjoyable series off the rails. I just. Don't. Care. About the multiverse. But since Geoff Johns wrote Infinite Crisis, a couple characters and concepts from that series pop up in future Green Lantern stories, so I gotta' deal. Alas.