The New History of the DC Universe #1-4

 The New History of the DC Universe #1-4

Originally released in 2025

Written by Mark Waid

Art by Todd Nauck et al.

Continuity can be a difficult thing in a long-running series.  People try to make sure that everything stays consistent, but sometimes there are little errors that get overlooked, or changes to characters' backstories (retcons, or retroactive continuity) either for the purpose of the plot or because the real world passage of time makes certain events impossible or unlikely. (The backstories of Iron Man and the Punisher were changed to take place during the fictional Siancong War because of the increasing implausibility of them taking part in the Vietnam War)

In the world of comics, DC is a testament to the difficulty of this, as there are at least four different continuities created as DC tried to revitalize or simplify their universe - the Golden Age (from Action Comics 1 in 1938 to some time in the 1950s; this later became Earth-2), the Silver Age (from Barry Allen's introduction as the Flash in 1956 to Crisis On Infinite Earths), post-Crisis (from the aftermath of Crisis On Infinite Earths to Flashpoint), and the current one (from the New 52 to the present day).  That's not even getting into various changes that have been made due to time travel, reality warping, and who knows what else. (For example, post-Crisis, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman were no longer founding members of the Justice League, but Zero Hour rewrote time so that Batman and Superman were, and Infinite Crisis added Wonder Woman back as a founder)

I thought that Avengers Forever had a daunting task of trying to make sense of Kang the Conqueror's convoluted history, but in this case, the New History Of The DC Universe is trying to do exactly what it says in the title.  At least Mark Waid is taking on the Herculean effort of trying to organize all of this - the post-Flashpoint era seemingly had nobody attempting to keep track of the new continuity, resulting in Batman going through four Robins in five years, and all of Batman and Green Lantern remaining canon despite everything else being rebooted.

The framing device is Barry Allen trying to record the history of the DC universe as someone who's particularly experienced with traveling through time and the multiverse, though given the sort of life that Barry lives, I'm half-expecting that the events that he records will have been altered at least twice by the Reverse Flash as he's in the middle of recording them.

I'm curious about how long it will take until I feel completely baffled by what's being described; even after reading DC's comics for several years, I still feel like I'm way behind, and I'm only familiar with some events in a broad sense and likely unfamiliar with plenty of other events, characters, teams, and so on. However, I'd think that it would be written so that it could be followed by newcomers and continuity-obsessed fans alike.

With the story being written in-universe by Barry, there are some decisions that indicate odd gaps in his knowledge. He knows the true names of the Spectre and Eclipso, beings older than humanoid life, and yet the birth name of Ra's al Ghul is "lost to time".  Still, it highlights how varied DC can be when a page recounting the rise of long-lived terrorist Ra's al Ghul includes "around the same time, a group of super-intelligent gorillas founded Gorilla City and hid it from the rest of the world using their advanced technology."

The first part covers a lot of ground, from the beginning of the universe to the destruction of Krypton. It's almost funny that, once the timeline reaches 1776, the focus is less about the history of the DC universe and more about the history of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!! in the DC universe, with every other country, and the rest of the universe, being treated like an afterthought. I get that, with trying to cram almost 90 years of continuity into 4 issues, the focus has to be narrowed, but it really highlights how US-centric DC is.

The cover of issue 1 is misleading; it shows Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, but Batman doesn't appear, we only see Superman's rocket as it's leaving Krypton, and the Wonder Woman who appears is Hippolyta, Diana's mother.  I'm not sure if Hippolyta being Wonder Woman in World War 2 makes her hypocritical (for not wanting Diana to leave the island when she did so earlier) or justifies her concern (since her main exposure to the outside world was from fighting the Nazis). Both the Justice Society Of America and other groups like "Justice Society Dark" (which includes Giovanni Zatara (Zatanna's father) and Dan Garrett (the original Blue Beetle)) are vaguely described as having encountered something that slowed their aging, justifying them surviving as long as possible (I think Zatara and Dan Garrett are currently dead, though), though the Justice Society was also described as being trapped in another realm and missing out on decades of time on Earth.

Issue 2 starts with the introduction of Superman to the world, along with Batman coming onto the scene at the same time.  Considering that Barry is including everyone's secret identities in this, he'd better hope that nobody gains access to his computer.

I get that he (and Mark Waid) presumably want to be thorough, but it seems odd to see that in a double page spread dedicated to Wonder Woman and other core Justice League members, they also take time to show off Adam Strange and the Challengers of the Unknown.  Adam Strange has some relevance (he played a role in Infinite Crisis and 52, along with having a Tom King mini-series), and maybe it's my ignorance about the Challengers of the Unknown talking, but it seems weird to highlight them so prominently when (from what I can tell) they're a sort of prototype Fantastic Four, created by Jack Kirby, but not as interesting. (if the early issues are available, I might look into them when I'm reading DC comics next)

I'm not sure if some details in here had been established beforehand, but I like how it tries to clear up some of the questionable long-standing elements of DC canon.  For example, Batman taking in an orphaned child and having him wear a costume that has extremely bright colours like a traffic light seems questionable given the danger involved, but at least the bright yellow cape is justified as being bulletproof.

The book tries to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to the Justice League's origin.  The New 52 origin is still canon, though Darkseid's motivation for coming to Earth was changed to viewing its growing superhuman population as a threat.  However, they weren't technically a team yet, and Cyborg was placed in suspended animation afterwards so that he could join the Teen Titans afterwards and still be around the same age as its other members.

However, the Justice League properly formed with a mix of the Silver Age and post-Crisis origins. This means that Martian Manhunter is back to being a founding member when he wasn't one in the New 52, and Black Canary is also a founding member like she was in Justice League Year One, which was also written by Mark Waid, along with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash (Barry), Green Lantern (Hal), and Aquaman. It seems to needlessly complicate things, though I guess it wouldn't be fair to cancel out the New 52 origin, and the lack of Martian Manhunter in the New 52 Justice League seems like it was seen as a mistake.

The history also ties to the Doomsday Clock story and how certain "accidental" transformations into superheroes were engineered by a group of scientists like Martin Stein. (Niles Caulder, a.k.a. The Chief, also engineered the Doom Patrol's accidents, though this was revealed before Doomsday Clock or The New History of the DC Universe)

A lot of issue 2 is dedicated less to the history of the universe and more to the rise of individual heroes and villains, with each page serving as a montage of different early eras in the pre-Crisis period and the characters who emerged during that time. Events continue roughly along the time period of when the books were published - Kirby's run on the Fourth World books, John Stewart and Guy Gardner becoming reserve Green Lanterns, the creation of Swamp Thing, and so on. (Though oddly enough, despite Guy coming first, this history changes it so Guy couldn't serve until "much later" due to an injury, so John took up the Green Lantern mantle first between the two of them)

This section also goes over the evolution of the Teen Titans.  I wasn't a fan of what I've read of their earlier years, feeling like they were a junior Justice League (rather than a team that stood on their own) that lacked the character dynamics that make the Wolfman/Perez run so interesting. Maybe that's only true of the earliest issues and I should give it another chance, but the Junior Justice League criticism is brought up here.

Issue 2 ends with Crisis On Infinite Earths, naturally; the end of the multiverse makes for a fitting point to stop at. One of the points brought up is the death of Barry Allen; it's normal for characters to die in comic books and come back (at least, if they're popular enough and undoing their death won't cause issues), but it's a little odd to hear it brought up in what's partially an autobiography.

Issue 3 summarizes events immediately following Crisis On Infinite Earths, including heroes that existed in comics beforehand but were added to the main universe post-Crisis (like Captain Marvel, who's referred to as "the Captain", and Power Girl), along with major storylines like the Death of Superman, Knightfall, and The Killing Joke.

It also covers characters who were introduced in the Milestone Comics line; I thought there were legal issues surrounding DC's use of those characters, but I guess the situation was resolved if characters like Static and Icon can be mentioned here. (I thought that they were only covered in a one-shot called "The New History of the DC Universe: The Dakota Incident", so it was a surprise to see them mentioned here as well)

Reading through this does give me ideas for stories that I'd like to read, such as the marriage of Clark Kent and Lois Lane.  It's a pretty big change to the status quo that would have been going on for over half a century by that point, so I'm curious to see how it came about.

Maybe they were introduced earlier and only covered now, but it surprised me to find out that apparently Ursa and Non (Zod's henchmen from the movie Superman 2) were only introduced in the comics around the introduction of Damian Wayne as Robin and the start of the Sinestro Corps. War (which would have been around 2006 or 2007, after Infinite Crisis)

The third issue comes to an end with Final Crisis, where Barry recaps the events of that comic and how he was trapped in the Speed Force after his supposed death and the events of that story resulted in his freedom.  He said he would use that freedom to destroy everything, which is a rather dramatic description of Flashpoint.

The start of issue 4 has some rather pointed commentary about the issues with the New 52, saying that entire legacies were forgotten (Tim Drake's generation of heroes seems to be highlighted, though the Justice Society and Legion of Superheroes were also effectively written out for a while) and the whole universe was completely unstable.

Another thing that gets criticized is DC's apparent overreliance on Crisis events and rewriting history.  Stories like Crisis On Earth-Two or Crisis On Earth-Three existed before Crisis On Infinite Earths, to the point where they were an annual event in Justice League Of America comics, but since Crisis On Infinite Earths, it seems like there's this desire to go bigger, or to have a universe-rewriting Crisis event every few years to tweak the DC universe in whatever way a particular writer wants.  It leads to what's called "event fatigue" after a while.

This issue revealed to me more recent teams that I didn't know existed, like a Justice League line-up that involves Darkseid and, apparently, Brainiac.  I've read Marvel books for similar reasons - I got into Al Ewing's run on The Ultimates because the team included GALACTUS, DEVOURER OF WORLDS - so I'll at least look up the book that this team came from.

One character who is built up since the very early days of the history of the universe is Perpetua, the mother of the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor and one of the oldest beings in creation.  As a result, it's unintentionally hilarious when her contribution to this grand tapestry of the DC universe lasts for less than half of a page, as she breaks free from her prison, teams up with The Batman Who Laughs, and seemingly immediately gets betrayed and re-imprisoned by The Batman Who Laughs somehow. (no explanation is given; he's just Bruce Wayne infected by Joker's poisons, so this seems slightly beyond what Batman can do)

At this point, it kind of feels like they're just throwing characters out there, and there are plenty that I haven't heard of at all. (On this page, I have heard of Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, who had been mentioned earlier in the book so I'm not sure why they're brought up again here as though they're just starting out, but everyone else is unknown to me, with Grifter looking like a dollar store Deadpool)

The description of Dark Crisis, a more recent event that I haven't read, makes it sound kind of anti-climactic.  In a story where Pariah Dark works with the Great Darkness from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run to remake reality and restore the pre-Crisis multiverse (even though it feels like that's been restored three or four times now), and with all of the villains from past Crisis stories involved, the entire thing comes down to... a fistfight between Nightwing and Deathstroke.

The book also teases some kind of crossover with the Absolute Universe, though I'm not sure if it's meant to be building up to the DC KO event instead as that was ongoing at the time. (I guess it's more acknowledging to the audience that this universe exists, even if Barry himself doesn't know about it)

After a double page spread showing the potential futures of the DC universe (the time of Reverse Flash, the era of Batman Beyond, and so on), the mini-series ends on an optimistic note while acknowledging that reality isn't as upbeat as the world(s) of DC. (the book also has an extensive list of citations, with dozens of pages listing what issues each part of the book references)

This works well as a crash course on DC.  With so many characters and teams involved, some of them are limited to just a sentence or two, or a cameo in a single page, but that's the beauty of media like this - there are so many characters, each having their own story, and every one has a writer or artist who can see the potential in them. (in theory)  There were a lot of artists involved in this story (at least eight of them, as far as I can tell), and with this miniseries being light on story, it seems to serve as a way for the artists to show off their talent, summarize entire events in one or two pages, and include as many characters as they can. (Mark Waid also did a similar history for the Marvel Universe, so clearly, he knows his stuff when it comes to comics)