Retro Review: The Long Halloween - Who is Holiday?

The Mystery

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's The Long Halloween is one of the classic Batman stories, telling the story of a year early in the caped crimefighter's career, working the existing origin tale of Two Face into a new mystery of their own creation. The story is, in large part, a whodunit, with a mystery serial killer named Holiday who attacks once a month on major holidays over the course of a year. Despite the abundance of information given to us, the identity of the killer remains somewhat in doubt at story's end because of contradictory confessions, evidence of multiple killers, and other ambiguous clues.

There are 13 dates on which Holiday strikes at one or more victims:

Halloween #1: Johnny Vito (dead)

Thanksgiving: The Irish Gang (5 dead)

Christmas: Milos Grappa (dead)

New Year's Eve: Alberto Falcone (faked his death)

Valentine's Day: Sal Maroni's men (4 dead)

St. Patrick's Day: Sal Maroni's men (about 10 dead)

April Fools Day: The Riddler (many shots fired, deliberately missing)

Mother's Day: The gunsmith (dead)

Father's Day: Luigi Maroni (dead)

Independence Day: The coroner (dead)

Roman Holiday: Carla Viti (dead)

Labor Day: Sal Maroni (dead, shot by Alberto Falcone)

Halloween #2: Carmine Falcone and Vernon Fields (dead, shot by Harvey Dent)

We know the killers on the last two dates. We also have two confessions, with Alberto Falcone telling the police that he committed all of the Holiday murders up until his capture, and Gilda Dent, speaking to herself, telling us that she carried out the first three murders and that she believes that her husband Harvey committed the rest. In addition, Harvey Dent says that there were two Holiday Killers; either he’s referring to Gilda and Alberto, or a third killer is implicated.

Years after the story was published, there is no universal consensus: Who was Holiday? Similar arguments have appeared in different corners of the Internet, and new readers keep following similar paths: Three suspects remain. But who really did it? Who is Holiday? Who killed who?

Solutions

Besides the known killings on the last two dates, there are three common solutions proposed for the first eleven Holiday events:

Solution A:Alberto was the only killer, excepting Harvey Dent committing the final two murders. This is what Alberto's confession asserted, and it's also what Batman concluded. This theory is strongest if it is assumed that Alberto's father, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone was coordinating and assisting the shootings. Solution A would mean that Gilda's confession is false, and because she's speaking only to herself, it would mean that she is delusional.

Solution GA:Gilda committed the first three murders, then Alberto committed all the rest. Nobody in the story actually believes this, but it's perhaps the most common reader theory. It accepts Gilda's confession as true insofar as the facts that she could know of, and Alberto's as partly true but partly exaggerated.

Solution GAH:Gilda, Alberto, and Harvey each committed some of the murders. This theory contradicts every person in the story, to some extent, but some readers still favor it.

I believe that a careful examination of the facts strongly discredits Solution GAH, and goes a long way to disprove Solution GA. Solution A is the best explanation of the story, but there's a small chance that Loeb had Solution GA in mind.

There are five lines of reasoning that strengthen Solution A. Most or all of these have been discussed before.

Evidence 1 - Opportunity: It is evident that Gilda would have had a tough time committing the three crimes she claims. This is especially true for the second one, on Thanksgiving. Gilda was hospitalized and on an I.V. at the time, but she claims that she snuck out of the hospital. Here's what that would have entailed:

Although she was so impaired that she needed one more month in the hospital, and even in late December, she was still advised to take it easy. But she claims she snuck out of the hospital and returned undetected. While outside she needed to obtain a "Holiday" gun. Her house was blown up, so either she retrieved one from the wreckage, or bought one and had it prepared, or she had stored one somewhere outside her home (even though she was injured very shortly after the first Holiday murder). Then she needed to find the Irish Gang. This wouldn't be easy, because as of hours earlier, they were in jail and there was no evidence they would be freed. The location where they were found was not where Mickey lived (Batman confronted him there). The door had a DO NOT DISTURB sign, which should probably mean the door was locked, but Holiday opens it somehow. Then the shooter outgunned five men. Then Gilda returned to the hospital, without anyone noticing that she was missing.

Few of these difficulties would apply to Alberto. The Irish Gang was picked up from jail in a limousine, certainly paid for by Carmine. Carmine would have arranged their suite, and could have allowed Alberto a way in. His comings and goings would not have been limited in any way that we know of. Outshooting the whole gang is still hard to explain, no matter who the shooter is, but Alberto, at least, was not suffering a head injury at the time.

Similar, but less compelling, constraints apply to Gilda's opportunity to commit the Halloween and Christmas shootings. Moreover, as the Dents were short of money, even the means to buy and dispose of several guns is somewhat strained, whereas the Falcones were literally overflowing with cash.

Batman finds metal filed off of a gun in the Dents' basement, but this does not implicate Gilda. We know that Harvey had a Holiday gun at the end: He could have made it in their basement. Moreover, if Gilda had filed metal off a gun for the first two killings, it probably wouldn't have remained in their vise after their home was blown up. (Although perhaps the vise would have been salvaged in a clean state from the wreckage.)

Evidence 2 - Coincidental Coordination: Solutions GA and GAH posit that multiple killers who were not coordinated somehow managed to strike once and only once on several consecutive holidays without missing a month or striking twice on the same night. It is particularly implausible that the three switched on and off many times while maintaining the pristine pattern. It is somewhat less unlikely if there was only one "switch," with Gilda committing the first three, then Alberto the rest. The New Year event actually took place in the final moments of December (there was no Holiday event in January), and only 6 days after the Christmas one. This might have given "Holiday #2" the best chance to pre-empt "Holiday #1" without an overlap, but it still requires that Holiday #1 stopped after Holiday #2 struck for the first time.

There is also an implausible coincidence if we imagine that two different killers both chose the same disguise. We know that Alberto wore a hat when he shot Sal Maroni. We saw that Holiday wore a hat from May through September, but didn't see Holiday's head for any of the other shootings. Gilda claimed to have worn a hat (Harvey's) as well. How could they choose the same disguise? Gilda could have read about Alberto wearing a hat in the newspaper after he was arrested (we know that she had such a newspaper). It's much less likely that Gilda would have chosen such a disguise first, and then Alberto accidentally copied it.

Further, Alberto finally provides an explanation for why holidays were chosen for the crimes: He was born on a holiday and chose the dates to assert his significance. It is utterly implausible for Gilda to have chosen the first three dates on the basis of Alberto being born on a holiday. This only makes sense if Gilda chose the holiday motif and it's purely a coincidence that Alberto was born on one. However, if Alberto was being guided by Carmine, it requires that Alberto chose the holiday motif while Carmine set the overall direction.

Evidence 3 - Handedness: Some readers have noticed that the gun hand changes from one Holiday shooting to another. Harvey is seen to shoot Carmine using his left hand, while Albero and Gilda appear to be right-handed. This would support Solution GAH. (It is also indicated by blood on Harvey's right hand and sleeve that he shot Vernon Fields with his right hand, making him an ambidextrous shooter.)

However, this unravels upon a closer look. One, the gun hand in the Christmas scene switches from left to right, which suggests that gun hand is simply a detail that artist Tim Sale wasn't concerned with. Two, it is possible that the shooter had a gun in each hand, which would require that both hands be used. Three, in the sequel, Dark Victory, we see Alberto shoot with his left hand, even though he used his right hand in Long Halloween, making Alberto himself ambidextrous, or the detail simply unimportant.

Moreover, when we see a Holiday gun being made in September, there is one panel showing the hands on a vise in such a way that we should see the gun-maker's body behind the hands, but instead we see a wall of tools. This minor error reinforces the idea that the art is subject to mistakes, and therefore, the handedness does not constitute significant support for Solution GAH.

Evidence 4 - Gilda's Logic: Gilda's confession has multiple logical problems suggesting that she is delusional. Most salient is this: Her stated motive is that by killing gangsters she would be reducing Harvey's workload. This is dubious in the best of circumstances, but we have seen earlier that she herself doesn't believe it: On New Years Eve, she tells Barbara Gordon that the Holiday situation is increasing Harvey's workload. And that shouldn't have been an unexpected outcome: Of course, a serial killer on the loose could only add to Harvey's worries, whereas killing a few marginal gangsters would do nothing to eliminate his larger problem concerning the Roman. Gilda shouldn't, and doesn't, believe her own motive.

Gilda claims that she got the idea for Holiday by reading Harvey's files. But when she confronted him about a gun in their basement, and he said that he brought evidence home, she seemed surprised by that. If she read Harvey's files, they were presumably at home, unless she read his files in his office. Moreover, she was upset by having found the gun, not supportive of it. The 180° turn in tone between the basement scene and her confession indicate that she is idolizing Harvey and whitewashing the crimes that she thinks he committed by adding a role of her own.

Additionally, she believes that Alberto was actually shot, which we know didn't take place. She might have incomplete knowledge of the details, but the fact that Alberto turned up alive should have caused her to question if he was shot at all.

Finally, Gilda's confession is the only reason whatsoever to believe that she committed any of the crimes. But it directly contradicts Alberto's confession. If we have to assume that one confession is false, hers is the more likely false, as it creates so many other contradictions. The only reason to suspect Alberto's as false is because of Gilda's, but Alberto unquestionably committed at least one murder, and almost certainly more, whereas we have no proof of Gilda having committed any of them.

Evidence 5 - The Carmine Falcone connection: Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Carmine Falcone was directing the entire sequence of Holiday crimes.

Superficially, the first four Holiday shootings struck at Carmine's interests, while most of them after that targeted his rivals. However, none of the first four actually killed anyone that wasn't in some way suspect from Carmine's perspective. Johnny Viti had earlier been targeted by Carmine. The Irish Gang were outsiders, and Harvey Dent imagined that Carmine might kill them if their allegiance was suspect. Milos had failed to protect Carmine from repeated invasions of his homes. And Alberto seemed to be a killing that was intolerable to Carmine, but it was faked and didn't actually take place. The logic of someone deliberately performing a hit that worked against them to remove suspicion from themselves is offered elsewhere in the story.

The timing of the Holiday crimes, of witnesses and victims coming and going, suggests that Carmine was choreographing the events around many of the Holiday shootings. This is especially true of the later events, but true of the very first ones as well.

Known coordination:

Thanksgiving: The Irish Gang was picked up in a limousine and taken to a fancy hotel. This presumably put them in a time and place that Carmine Falcone arranged.

New Years: Carmine told Carla to go find Alberto, and because of his command, she "discovered" the evidence of the (fake) killing.

St. Patrick's Day: Sofia, under Carmine's orders, arrives shortly after the killing took place, making it appear to be a Holiday killing instead of a hit ordered by Carmine Falcone.

April Fools: Riddler is confronted by Holiday in a time and place exactly where Carmine had just sent him. Sofia avoids being a witness or interfering because Carmine told her to "come right back."

Mother's Day: The gunsmith is killed very shortly before Sofia arrives.

Plausible coordination:

Halloween: Carmine could have known that Johnny Viti was home, or ordered it to be the case. Gilda could not have made this happen.

Christmas: Carmine could have known that Milos was about to go outside. Gilda could not have predicted this.

Roman Holiday: Carla was pursuing the Holiday case with Sofia. The lead that sent her to the coroner's office could have been sent to her by Carmine.

Protecting Alberto:

Presumably, killing the gunsmith and the coroner were two events that only served to protect Alberto's identity. The gun metal found in the Dent's basement probably came from Harvey making the gun he used for the final killings. The gunsmith made the other guns for Alberto, and he was killed to keep him silent. Consider the timing: He was killed immediately after his identity was discovered by Sofia; this, plausibly, could have been arranged by Carmine. The Dents couldn't have possibly have timed this correctly. The coroner also knew of Alberto's fake death, and was killed to assure his silence.

The first gun:

If we take the sequence in the art literally, the first Holiday gun was made many weeks before the first murder, on the same night that Johnny Viti killed Richard Daniel, and before the Dents (or Gordons) learned about that murder. This timing would have been wildly coincidental if Gilda or Harvey were preparing the gun, but is plausible if Johnny Viti's return from Italy set into motion a plan by the Falcones to kill several people, starting with him.

Carmine and Alberto:

On the surface, Carmine seems to disrespect Alberto. He makes comments that are dismissive of Alberto in June and August, but only when other people are listening. On Thanksgiving, Carmine seems affectionate with him when they're alone, and on New Years Eve, Carmine thinks (one of the few thought balloons in the entire story), "If it weren't for Alberto, there'd be nobody I could trust." This supports the idea that his disrespect for Alberto is a sham to facilitate using Alberto to commit the killings unsuspected.

Both the Riddler and Batman see this solution from different sides, with the Riddler guessing that Carmine is Holiday, while Batman ends the story convinced that Alberto committed the killings and Carmine knew about them.

Evidence 6 - Two Face's Comment:

Harvey "Two Face" Dent makes a surprising comment when he remarks to Jim Gordon and Batman, "You both know, don't you? There were two Holiday killers." This would seemingly contradict Solution A and indicate that either Harvey or Gilda performed some of the rest.

However, Batman provides the logical way out: Harvey killed people with a Holiday gun on Halloween. He was the second Holiday killer, but not responsible for any of the other events. His strange phrasing that seems to indicate a reveal is explained by his obsession with the number two. This is highlighted by his previous utterance, "One second" ("second" has two meanings; the time unit and the second in a sequence).

Conclusion

By any realistic reasoning, Gilda could not have committed the Thanksgiving shooting, and the massive web of circumstantial evidence indicates that there was only one Holiday shooter, who was Alberto Falcone, working for his father, Carmine.

The only argument for Gilda's guilt would be this: It is a comic book story, inhabited by fantastic people such as Batman, the Joker, and Solomon Grundy, and the problems with her carrying out the shooting and the enormous number of coincidences indicating that Carmine Falcone is ordering the hits have to be forgiven as things that happen in comic books.

But this would make the mystery a weak mystery. Yes, in the DC Universe, where little blue aliens command a race of green space cops, and psychics and the undead team up with magicians and robots, we can imagine anything to be possible. But who is really capable of sneaking out in the middle of a two-month hospital stay and carrying out an intricate assassination? Batman is, to be sure, but, as the Joker tells Harvey Dent, "You're no Batman," neither is Gilda Dent in the Batman class of capabilities.

I can imagine a writer shrugging off such pragmatic concerns and feeling that a last-minute confession is a great ending that trumps realism. But the sheer number of clues that implicate the Falcones weren't likely placed there by coincidence. I think Jeph Loeb intended Alberto Falcone to be recognized as the only Holiday. Ultimately, solving the mystery depends not on the story, which leaves a slim chance of Gilda's guilt, but on reading the author's intentions. And I can't be sure that Loeb meant for a reader to find all of the pieces of evidence that make Gilda's confession seem implausible, but I suspect that he did.

Multiversity: Ultra Comics

Ultra Comics is real. (I’m using italics very consciously to distinguish the character and the comic book.) Of all the superheroes, you've ever read about, this one, set on Earth-33, which is our world, is actually real. I was part of him, and when you read Ultra Comics, so are you. Everything that happens to him is real, and when you put the comic book down, he dies. When you pick it up again, he lives. Ultra Comics is in a time loop, like the ones Grant Morrison used in Final Crisis and elsewhere, but unlike those, this one is real, and when you read Ultra Comics again, Ultra Comics, the superhero, comes back to life. His death is so tragic every time the issue ends, how do you have the heart not to read it again?

Ultra Comics is in a trap, and it's real. It's an allegory for the comic book industry as a whole, but as far as it – he – is concerned, it's real. Made of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (just like all your favorite comic books), Ultra Comics begins majestic and pristine a few pages into the story, then quickly goes through the history of superhero comics, with four consecutive panels representing, roughly, the Forties, Sixties, Eighties, and 2000's. In this sequence, he goes from fighting crooks to fighting monsters plaguing a sexualized young woman, mourning a death, and then bloodily causing one.

Then, when Ultra Comics is sent on his first adventure, into what looks like the ruins of New York, his corporate creator tells us that Ultra Comics and all of us have been led into a trap, and readers who aren't going too quickly will notice that the man in a suit has the dark bat wings of the Gentry's Intellectron behind him.

As Ultra Comics examines the unpopulated ruins of New York, he finds a faded billboard showing the 1939 comic book character Ultra-Man, a character like John Carter of Mars who debuted, then appeared in All-Star Comics #1 before being cut from the series when the Justice Society took it over two issues later. There is a caption, incidentally, in the "Kryptonese" font, but this appears to be nonsense, deciphering as "ABC EDH G G K N." Soon, he battles an amalgamation of an evil Justice League and Ultra-Man’s original cast of villains set in the world of 2240 (three hundred years after they were written). It is because Ultra-Man was set in the future that he was, in essence, the first DC superhero who couldn’t join the Justice Society.

Ultra Comics soon finds, and saves, a version of the Newsboy Legion, but they're all twisted and sinister, and his namesakes Ultra-Man and Ultraa. It turns out that Ultraa, who debuted in JLA #153, is the dark leader of this band of cannibals. Ultra Comics is condemned by a jury of history’s (and comicdom’s) villains in a court led by the Devil in a scene out of “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” They subject Ultra Comics to an apathy ray, and Ultraa takes a bite out of Ultra Comics' head, eating the crystal that gives him his greatest powers. All the while, captions representing fan opinions (and seeming very true to the spirit of them) complain about the quality of what we're reading.

This is true to the original Ultraa. When the Justice League visited Earth Prime, they happened to encounter Ultraa immediately after his public debut. Almost immediately, Ultraa, Earth Prime’s first superhero, was pursued by a supervillain. At the end of the story, he felt responsible for the existence of the supervillain, that his presence “infected” Earth Prime with superpeople, good and bad alike, and left Earth Prime for Earth One to save his home dimension from further trouble. In a later pre-Crisis appearance, he decides to rid Earth One of superheroes, and uses an apathy gun in an attack on the Justice League. This apathy weapons is used on Ultra Comics in Ultra Comics. Post-Crisis, Ultraa (whose home dimension, Earth Prime, no longer exists) is retconned as a resident of Maxima’s homeworld of Almerac, something he refers to as his origin in this story, too.

Ultra Comics apologizes to the reader just as Ultraa did to the people of Earth Prime back in 1978, for exposing us to evil. After he cleverly disposes of Ultraa, he faces the now-unmasked Intellectron, who also admits that he exposed us to evil, but isn’t apologetic about the fact. It is because corrupting influences have been disguised as something benevolent that Little Red Riding Hood is the central figure of the children: The comic book is her grandmother, but beneath its clothing is the wolf, images of destruction and bloody murder, sex and violence, and all of the corrupting influence that Ultra Comics was seen to have on characters in Multiversity. And in case we forgot that this story is real, Intellectron downplays the harm that he revels in, saying, “This is only silly comm-ix. Makes no sense. Only pretend! Go on – read on! What harm can come to yu?” And lest we forget who “yu” is, he goes on, “Earth-Prime. There yu are,” with his malevolent eye looking at us. This moment hits home powerfully when he looks at us again and says, “Kneel before yur new master. Turn the page. Do it. Slave.” And I did. You did, too, didn’t you?

Ultra Comics counterattacks in three ways: Readers ask for a happy ending and get a happy ending (or happy middle, in this case.) Noting that “Text is vulnerable to criticism,” Ultra Comics observes as realistic fan responses criticize the worthiness of Intellectron as a character. And, finally, Ultra Comics, though dying on the last page, knows that he’ll be reborn whenever another reader opens Ultra Comics, allowing him to be reborn, though bloodied, on the first page. And lest we feel too badly for Ultra Comics in his ever-recycling purgatory of existing and dying every time a reader opens this issue, remember that he’s going to outlive us. One day, I’ll die. So will you. But Ultra Comics will live on, and sometime after my death, and yours, some reader will open this comic again, and Ultra Comics will live, temporarily, after we’re gone.

This is dark stuff, and it’s powerful. It, like Flex Mentallo, discusses superheroes as fictional constructs, and like Superman Beyond, discusses the superhero’s power of having a positive, likeable idea at the core and being able to rejuvenate by coming back to be read about again, responding to death with, “To Be Continued.” Morrison has the voices in this issue articulate some very serious criticism of the darkness in comic books, and he’s not dismissing that perspective. He sees some real harm at stake here, and that’s what the Gentry has always represented, the infection of darker subject matter that we allow into our heads when we wanted a good time. And we may wonder if it’s coincidence that Grant Morrison is delivering this message now, as he effectively ends his run on monthly DC superhero comics, just as Alan Moore denounced the medium just as he wrote his final works in the genre. There is redemption for the genre, yes, as Morrison has said in interviews, and as he says in this issue, but the criticism sticks. The characters in preceding issues of Multiversity have been disturbed by what they read in Ultra Comics, and not without good reason. Maybe good and productive members of society have better things to do with the limited time we have on the planet than to read about zombies sucking the eyeballs out of people’s heads. The favorable response that readers had to Multiversity:Thunderworld is an implicit answer to that what’s worth celebrating in these stories doesn’t require all the blood and gore and rape that has become increasing common as the decades go by.

Retro Review: Batman: Year One

If there has ever been a modern Batman story more influential than Frank Miller's 1986 masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns, it was Frank Miller's 1987 masterpiece, Batman: Year One. It's remarkable that the same writer scripted two such extraordinary stories a year apart, but truly incredible that the two stories approach the character so differently and accomplish such different things. Yet, there is no contradiction between the two works: Year One depicts a young man who is about to leap, literally, into his life's work, while DKR stars an aging man who accepts that his mission is something he can never leave behind. But these two moments are so far apart that we can barely fathom that the same character's life contains them. Year One stands separate from DKR, not as a prequel.

Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC characters were significantly redefined by post-Crisis reboots, but Year One leaves the facts of Batman's life much the same as before. Year One, rather, fills in small details during a legendary year; the time frame that Year One spans is covered by just four panels in an earlier origin story, 1980's The Untold Legend of the Batman. This gives Miller freedom to blend existing stories and new elements into a new work that feels familiar just often enough to make Miller's inventions resound.

Year One has a particular quality that is shocking to the reader, a quality that virtually all previous superhero comics had energetically rejected: Realism. Could Batman be real? Of course not. But could the Batman in Year One be real? Still, the answer is no, but many scenes play so close to real life that we feel like we've jumped right out of the superhero genre and into a different world. Year Oneshows Bruce Wayne going into action eight times, and three of them go badly. He is stabbed once, shot four times, beaten over the head once, and trapped by the police twice. True, he escapes both time he's captured, and the most unrealistic thing in the story might be that he heals well enough to continue as Batman, but for a while here and there, we forget that Year One's world isn't our world. This draws the reader into thinking about Batman's weapons and tactics on the practical basis that Batman's voice-over narration provides, and so the story works on a level that a Green Lantern or Flash story never could, and earlier Batman stories usually did not. Year One's realism has spun off a new "How To" subgenre of Batman story, with narration exploring Batman's training and tactics filling many pages in post-Year One stories and at least three entire published books. The practical details of being Batman show up in every Batman movie since 1989's Batman, and provides much of the basis of Batman Begins and was a major focus of a new title, Legends of the Dark Knight, which focused on key events early in Batman's career when his crime fighting approach was being shaped.

In addition, Year Oneintroduced the organized crime family of Carmine Falcone, who, unlike many "disposable" mobster characters seen in Batman stories over the years, provided a substantial basis for future stories exploring the same era. Year One's take on the Falcones and a younger Harvey Dent recurred in The Long Halloween and other stories, building up a rich Godfather-like early history of Batman continuity. This created a timeline in which Batman faced more realistic, organized-crime opponents, rather than masked super villains, early in his career. While Year Onedevotes considerable time to developing Selina Kyle as a third focus, and mentions the Joker in the very last panel, the emphasis on realistic criminals further grounds the series in realism.

At the heart of Year One are two men: Bruce Wayne – who has the inspiration, on panel, to become Batman – and Jim Gordon, then a junior officer new to Gotham. The narration alternates between the two men with calendar dates in the captions, showing us a year in their lives as Wayne figures out how to fight a war in the streets and Gordon fights one at work and another one in his marriage. Both men are fiercely principled, physically tough, and in way over their heads. In time, they learn to trust one another, but not until the titular year reaches November. Along the way, they square off against one another, directly and indirectly, with Gordon gradually figuring out how to wrest himself from the clutches of the corrupt Gotham City police force that prefers its criminals to the new caped crime fighter.

Gordon is yet another element who grounds the story, even down to his Chicago (a real city) origin. It is his story that makes the narration work, filling in the blanks between long stretches of time (according to the dateline captions) in which we don't see Bruce Wayne at all. Between January 4 and March 11, we don't see Bruce Wayne do anything at all except return home and kick a tree trunk. What is he doing in the meantime? Certainly not "nothing." The blank spaces invite the reader to contemplate that question and imagine what elaborate preparations of Wayne's body and equipment must be taking place. But they are left unseen, while Gordon begins a long and difficult road to fight temptation in the form of an attractive female partner and a very dirty police department.

But when Bruce Wayne first goes into action, amid scenery right out of Taxi Driver, and fails badly, we find out that his unseen preparation wasn't nearly enough. Wayne barely escapes with his life and identity intact, and beats a self-imposed deadline – a literal deadline, in which his blood will run out of his body if he doesn't summon Alfred to save him – to devise a better way to fight crime, a way that comes to him in crashing glass and a vow to become a bat.

Nothing goes right for the new Batman on his first try, and not always on his second. Year One tells us succinctly about his dozens of encounters interdicting street criminals and focuses, instead, on showing us how he uses skill and brilliance to bring down the city's big criminals, some of whom were elected. He fights a many-front war against ordinary crooks, big bosses, and even the Gotham police. His victories ultimately break up the logjam of corruption that made Gotham "no place to raise a family." By story's end, Gordon is free to call Batman to help on a case. That is the story arc that Year One brilliantly travels, taking an almost plausibly real city and introducing Batman into it, giving us for the first and arguably only time, a compelling explanation for the set-up that other Batman stories have simply assumed, that a man who dresses like a bat is the police's ally (and their superior) in fighting crime.

Batman: Year Onestays with you. You don't forget Batman's failures and successes, the new Selina Kyle, the struggling Jim Gordon, or the Falcones. Miller's plot and dialogue and David Mazzucchelli's art create a new world, and although many creators have tried to take us, we've never really gone back to that place since.

Retro Review: John Byrne's Superman

Now, decades after John Byrne’s six-issue Man of Steel was published, it reads like one of many alternative Superman origin stories that we’ve seen over the years. The details of Superman’s life have been malleable in the hands of DC’s creators, with various Supermen in alternate timelines and alternate dimensions encompassing multiple variations on a theme.

But in 1986, the decision to allow John Byrne to reboot DC’s flagship character was a radical move, a revolution on the printed page. Striking changes were made in the nature and tone of the series, but even more significant was the fact that the entire accumulated history of the iconic character was being erased, giving Byrne the opportunity to start a new history from scratch. This was welcomed by many fans, while reviled by others who denounced it as “Marvelizing” Superman, and saw it as eliminating and replacing their favorite character rather than as evolving the existing character into something similar but not identical.

Man of Steel is thus a revolutionary work, but unlike some of the other landmark comic book works in the mid-Eighties, it was a revolution in particulars rather than in form. But the particulars that changed were many, and include:

• Krypton as sterile rather than a high-tech utopia.

• Superman born upon his arrival on Earth rather than arriving as a toddler.

• Powers developing gradually over years instead of at the moment of arrival.

• Debut as a young adult and not as Superboy.

• No memory of or attachment to Krypton; identifies only as an Earthman.

• Adoptive parents remain alive into the present.

• Clark Kent persona tough rather than meek and mild.

• Ventures into outer space rarely instead of being a frequent space traveler.

• Smart, but not an inventor with knowledge far beyond Earth technology.

• Strength, speed, and vulnerability powers at much lower levels than pre-Crisis.

• Tense working relationship with Batman, and they are not friends.

• Not a founding member of the Justice League.

• Only survivor of Krypton.

• Lex Luthor is a Machiavellian businessman rather than a mad scientist.

These many changes are not haphazard or arbitrary in design: They all support one overarching aim, which is to humanize Superman, making his life and interactions more like an ordinary man’s life, and less a thing of pure science fiction.

Detractors of Byrne’s run saw humanizing Superman as counterproductive, as the concept of Superman was always intended to make him something far better than a real man, and being far better, he was also by definition removed and apart. Nonetheless, Byrne’s choice was to make him less removed. Nowhere is this more evident than in doing away with the Fortress of Solitude. The Bronze Age Superman owned a house in the Arctic (isolated), bigger and more wonderful than any real man’s house, housing a museum and a zoo of interplanetary specimens, for the sole viewing pleasure of Superman himself. Yes, it was wonderful, but it was in equal measure a fortress of solitude. The pre-Byrne Superman was a strangely lonely man, self-absorbed, twice orphaned, confiding his secret identity to not one person on Earth who wasn’t also a superhero. He said that he could never marry Lois or Lana, because that would expose his wife to danger, but in what was a major plot hole, he still identified his friends and girlfriends publicly. Byrne changed all that, making Lois a romantic interest without the puerile games around whether or not Superman could marry her. Byrne moved the center of gravity in Superman’s life away from superheroes and towards ordinary people. In this regard, he did more for the characterization of Superman than had been done in all the decades before.

But Man of Steeland Byrne’s run as a whole are not a literary masterpiece. It hits some nice notes at times, but the language is stilted and relies far too often on exposition. Superman often says and thinks things that nobody would say or think, in order to deliver an essay from Byrne to readers about how the character had been reinvented. These are often awkward comments about how the Byrne Superman’s world is different than what came before, and rejecting the truth that in storytelling, it’s better to show than to tell.

Perhaps the high point of Byrne’s run is in Superman #2, when Luthor’s efforts to probe Superman’s life result in beatings to the people he loves, and an explosion that callously kills two of Luthor’s henchmen right in front of Superman. Then, when the enraged hero confronts Luthor, he is exposed to kryptonite and mocked. The Silver Age Lex Luthor had to kill Superman to win. Byrne’s Luthor manages to stalemate Superman simply by remaining in business and hating him. It’s a dramatic shift in their dynamic and makes for far more powerful storytelling than the Silver Age Superman-Luthor war, which always came down to gadgets and pseudoscience.

Byrne began the run with a well-thought-out plan. He plants small clues that grow into major plots, such as the chunk of kryptonite that sticks to Kal-El’s rocket, and the stranger in the brimmed hat watching the site where the rocket came down. Small investments of this kind paid off later, with the serial taking on more complexity than the issue-after-issue formula of previous years. This was a Superman for a more grown-up audience than the Superman that came before, and that was precisely what the era called for.

Byrne’s era relaunched Superman, took him through a couple of major crossover events, and resolved the paradoxes of the post-Crisis Legion of Super-Heroes by introducing a Pocket Universe. John Byrne left the series after Superman #22, with Superman having executed three Phantom Zone criminals in the Pocket Universe. This event, and Byrne’s work as a whole, led into other creators producing some good and impactful work, with the fondly-recalled Triangle Era, Superman’s death at the hands of Doomsday, and later his marriage to Lois Lane. With time, the stamp of Byrne’s work faded as more writers put their own touches on the feature, and it became something considerably different than it was when Byrne left in 1988. In some respects, the Byrne continuity is still with us in 2015, as at least some elements of the post-Byrne Superman are still in continuity after Flashpoint. The Byrne run was a bold effort, and it worked.

Multiversity: Mastermen

Multiversity: Mastermen is set on a world that was created in stages. The Quality Comics characters that appeared as separate features during the Forties were put together on a team for the first time in JLA#107 in 1973. This story re-imagined the Freedom Fighters as the Resistance to a Nazi regime that had won World War Two on Earth X thanks to a mind-control machine. The next stop on the path to Mastermenis a panel in 52 #52 that shows the Freedom Fighters battling Nazi superheroes on Earth-10 (perhaps a conversion from the Roman numeral X). Since then, Grant Morrison has shown us more of Overman in Superman Beyond and Final Crisis, establishing his origin, the loss of his cousin, Overgirl, and that the man has a moral sense despite his use as the wonder weapon that gave Adolf Hitler control over the world.

Mastermen begins, unforgettably, with Adolf Hitler committing a necessary biological function. He is reading a comic book that appears to be akin to "What If Superman Ended the War?” which appeared in Lookmagazine in early 1940. A fictional version of World War Two entered Superman stories a couple of months later in Action Comics and soon, well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nazi threat became a staple of American comic books, including Captain America (homaged in Mastermen) and in Quality Comics, whose characters are here, as in JLA #107, the resistance to Nazi rule.

In Mastermen, Overman's troubled conscience drives him, at last, to action. He is converted to the rebel side and watches from afar as a tiny flash of light that we see on the Moon indicates that the Freedom Fighters are destroying a lunar base, with Overman's aid and approval.

The Multiversal aspect of the story that begins with Hitler's comic books continues with a Nazi Sivana (who is therefore good? evil?), in league with the resistance, helps Uncle Sam form the Freedom Fighters, whose members are survivors of groups that the Nazis had almost exterminated. From their base, adorned with symbols of things the Nazis hated, from a 48-star American flag, to jazz music, and Rosie the Riveter, they launched the attack that failed, tactically, but converted Overman to their side. The other Multiversal intrusion is Lord Broken, of the Gentry, infesting Overman's dreams. Here, as with Sivana, the inversion of good and evil makes a double negative into a positive, as Lord Broken's malevolence helps awaken Overman's goodness.

This issue is memorable for its gut-punch ending. The typical superhero comic shows a threat, and once it manifests, the heroes battle back to their inevitable victory. The violation of this pattern in Mastermen calls attention to how much we readers expect it. Here, the future of the story is told with exceeding brevity in narration from the Nazi Jimmy Olsen, with selections from a memoir that he wrote after the fact. In the story's main action, we see Overman permit the Freedom Fighters to launch a massive blow, devastating Earth-10's Metropolis. We know from the spare excerpts of Jürgen's memoir that what happens next is the end of the Nazi regime, with Overman's assistance, and that in time, Jürgen helps destroy Overman. But we see only the first part of this drama, with Overman kneeling, overcome with emotion, in the ruins of a devastated Metropolis. The war obviously follows, Overman and the Freedom Fighters end the Nazi rule, and Overman is somehow, eventually, destroyed.

For how little is shown, there is a complex and brilliant blend of influences and themes in those few pages. The flash of light seen on the Moon to indicate rebels overthrowing an evil regime was used by Morrison at the end of his Justice League story Rock of Ages, as Batman then tells Darkseid to look up so as to see the same thing. The one and only act that we see of the rebellion begins and ends with Overman at the opera, where Wagner's Götterdämmerungis being performed. This opera depicts the "Twilight of the Gods," and ends with the hall of the gods on fire. That parallels the way the Nazi Justice League, the New Reichsmen, is destroyed by the Human Bomb's attack, with superheroes standing in for gods, a theme important in Morrison's work. It also hearkens back to Alan Moore's unpublished, "Twilight of the Superheroes," which would have ended the timeline of DC's superheroes while making the same parallel. A possible cinematic inspiration for Uncle Sam's gigantic, looming apparition at the opera is Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which begins the destruction of the Nazi leaders during the screening of a film in a theatre with all top Nazis in attendance. Then, as Overman brings the exploding Justice League satellite to Metropolis, the scene resembles the September 11 attacks, with a vehicle coming by surprise from clear skies to topple towers in America's preeminent city. After this, we don't need to see more.

The title, "Splendour Falls," describes the revolution that follows, but it also acknowledges that the aftermath of Nazi victory is splendour, a painful moral conundrum that Overman faces: When the victims have long since been killed, what form can justice take? However much Overman publicly regrets the Holocaust, what is to be done after it is utterly complete? Jürgen notes that the postwar Earth-10 is a virtual paradise. Even if the "Hitler era" was full of sin, is there anything just for the Aryan survivors to do but enjoy the results? The Freedom Fighters think so, and Overman, unhappy with his marriage to Earth-10's Lana Lang, unhappy with his victory, and at heart, deep down, always a good man, begins to atone for his sins. In some way that we don't see, this destroys him, and in our judgment, it profits the man that he loses the world but gains his soul.

This is the last of five "middle" issues of Multiversity that is dedicated to showing one alternate world full of superheroes facing the Gentry's attack. The Guidebook was something more intricate, and the upcoming Ultra Comicspromises to be something different, leading into the finale. Multiversity has been a showcase of Morrison's wonderful ability to synthesize original concepts into wonderful new variants, from Earth-40's brain-transplanted version of Blockbuster to the intricate translation of Watchmeninto a new story to all the many alternate Sivanas and superhero names translated into German-language equivalents like Underwaterman. Multiversity has been a wonderful success in terms of style. Even with two issues remaining, it begins to appear that when Multiversity ends, many readers will be left wishing it could continue.

History of the DC Universe: 1935-1985

Introduction

The Multiversity Guidebook is the most recent of several publications to offer a summary history of the DC Universe. Similar, somewhat longer, histories have been published in the past, and are already somewhat out of date.

It’s not easy to write a History of the DC Universe (or Multiverse), and it never was. Before anyone cared to piece the logic and the timeline together, it was already complicated and full of contradictions. Sometimes, the creators have published a retcon to try to correct the contradictions, sometimes they offer silence and perhaps a shrug. Reconciling eighty years of stories into a logical whole would fill a book, but here I hope to offer some cogent history of how the DC Universe took shape, something that might best be called “The History of The History of The DC Universe.” One simple observation – perhaps surprising to many – that I'd like to convey is that DC continuity didn't truly begin for decades after the superheroes debuted. Unbeknownst to me at the time, DC had adopted a full-fledged continuity across its titles not all that long before I began reading them in the early Seventies.

Roots: The Golden Age, 1935-1951

From 1935 to 1952, there was, with minor exceptions, no DC Universe: Most features stood alone. Features were published in a single title, or sometimes, such as Superman and Batman, were popular enough to be printed in multiple titles, but by and large, there was no thought in anyone’s head that the assorted titles were part of an integrated whole. This may come as a surprise to newer readers, familiar with stories printed in later decades that imagine the Golden Age stories as an early DC Universe. But this was nothing one saw in the majority of those early stories themselves.

Three exceptions, however, are worth noting. The Justice Society feature in All Star Comicsmerged the worlds of over a dozen different features that had started off separate. I've earlier written about the origin of the Justice Society. What’s important to note is that although the Justice Society feature placed all of these characters into the same fictional world, this never carried over to the solo features. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Starman, etc., in their own features never acknowledged that the Justice Society existed, and there was a distinct sense, often repeated, that each hero was the only hero in the world of his or her own feature. No police chief ever said, “I could call Superman or Starman. How about Starman?” Likewise, there was no indication that the Gotham City that Green Lantern lived in was the same Gotham City that Batman lived in, or that anyone on the Justice Society had ever heard of, say, Aquaman or Green Arrow. Later Justice Society stories placed the whole team in Civic City, with no mention of the heroes' respective home cities from their solo features.

Similar to the Justice Society feature was the Seven Soldiers of Victory feature in Leading Comics. This team appeared about a year after the Justice Society, also teamed up heroes who had been created as solo features, and also stood apart as its own fictional world.

One sort of tie-in which did link different features was the reference, in one feature, to another one as a comic book in the world of the other, an idea which was later used in the origin of Barry Allen, who was an avid reader of Jay Garrick comic books, and is a plot element in Multiversity. In the Golden Age, both Red Tornado and Wildcat were inspired by the comic book adventures of Green Lantern, and Batman and Robin interacted with Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman. The early Justice Society stories, beginning with the very first panel, made Fourth Wall references to their own comic books, and even to the editors.

Many efforts in later years would tie DC’s Golden Age stories, and characters such as Doctor Occult, Slam Bradley, Speed Saunders, Superman, and his super hero successors into a unified continuity, but during the Golden Age itself, there was no unified continuity to be found.

Unification: 1952-1968

The Justice Society went out of publication in early 1951. Just over a year later, as though to replace the team concept that had been extinguished, the first Superman-Batman meeting took place in Superman #76. In truth, Superman and Batman had previously appeared together in action and in many cameos in the Justice Society feature, but Superman#76 retconned that all away, and presented a story of their “first” meeting. In July 1954, World’s Finest began running a regular team-up of the two heroes, and their fictional worlds have been merged together, between and through reboots, ever since.

In the meantime, DC had several other superhero features, new and old, but for the most part, only Superman and Batman were part of a unified continuity. The mid-Fifties origins of Martian Manhunter and the Flash, Barry Allen, conspicuously avoided any mention of Superman as a part of their universe, something that almost certainly would have entered into the discussion at some point if he had existed in their worlds. The Fifties neared their end with DC Comics having one fictional world for Superman and Batman, with many other features that were presumed to be separate.

However, a story in early 1959 told the tale of Superboy meeting a young Oliver Queen, before he became Green Arrow. In late 1959, the origin of the new Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, mentioned Superman. These two stories began a process that would turn the Superman-Batman continuity into a unified DC Universe over the course of a decade.

In just a few months, the Green Lantern reboot and the first Justice League story turned DC Comics in a new direction. Now there was a feature that unified the worlds of a whole team of superheroes, and for the first time, their solo features were – at least in some ways – implied to be part of that unified continuity.

But by the end of 1961, the editors hadn't really commited to a unified continuity just yet. At the end of the third JLA story in Brave and Bold #30, an editorial note read, "With this issue, we close the case book of the Justice League of America! We'll be glad to re-open it – and continue the adventures of the JLA in a magazine of its own – if enough of you readers request it! Please write and let us know!" For about two years after the JLA was introduced, the Justice League members’ solo features made little or no mention of the Justice League, just like the Justice Society before it.

And then, that changed. In June, 1962, an appearance by the Flash in Green Lantern #13 made it the first crossover that put a JLAer besides Superman or Batman into another hero's solo title. Three months later, Green Lantern was a guest in Flash #131. Crossovers tying the heroes together remained rare, besides JLAand World's Finest. A story in Action #309 in early 1964 had "all" of Superman's friends with no mention of the Justice League besides Batman.

The years from 1963 to 1967 were when the idea of a unified DC continuity really took root. Brave and Bold began regular team-ups with an adventure starring Martian Manhunter and Green Arrow in issue #50 in November, 1963. The editorial voice is again instructive: "Here it is, fans – the magazine you've been asking for – two heroes from the DC Hall of Fame teamed together in a full-length spectacular adventure!" The implication is that fans' letter-writing was the impetus for the creative decision. Moreover, the phrase "DC Hall of Fame" is intriguing, being the concept they had in mind before a "DC continuity" or "DC Universe" had begun. Month after month, Brave and Bold tied two more characters' worlds together until it was devoted to team-ups with Batman in October, 1967.

By 1968, the Teen Titans had joined the JLA as a team that tied several older features together in one title, Brave and Bold had run over a dozen team-ups,

and many characters had made guest-appearances in other heroes' solo titles. By this point, it was natural for a reader to assume without question that most of DC's characters shared one continuity across all its titles.

Earth Two

Overlapping the same time frame that DC created a continuity around Superman, Batman, and the rest of the Justice League, they also developed the Earth Two concept to publish new content utiltizing Golden Age characters who didn't fit into the new Silver Age setup.

After the landmark meeting of Barry Allen and Jay Garrick in Flash #123 in September, 1961, almost two years passed before Barry Allen met the full Justice Society in Flash #137, and the first JLA-JSA meeting in JLA #21. In the same month that the third annual JLA-JSA meeting took place, in August 1965, the purely Earth-Two teamup of Starman and Black Canary was published in Brave and Bold #61 and #62, and later in the year, Alan Scott had a guest appearance with his younger counterpart in Green Lantern #40. This handful of stories established the Earth Two concept as a sidestage for DC, one that would later be developed into its own monthly series.

So, while DC continuity developed most actively between the Justice League characters who represented Earth One, it was at almost the same time that Earth Two became an integral part of that continuity, one that was separate most of the time, but could be bridged by the Flash or other cosmic events.

The Birth of Linear Time

The fact that DC’s Golden Age could proceed without an overarching continuity points to a more general truth: The stories of that era were simply not bothered with consistency of any kind. Retcons happened often, without apology, as though the creators simply hoped no one would notice. A feature that began in Detective Comics#1 started in San Francisco and suddenly jumped to New York. Superman went from working for George Taylor at the Daily Star in Cleveland, Ohio to working for Perry White at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. Hour-Man’s boss turned out to a criminal in one story and then was back as Rex Tyler’s boss in the very next issue. Note also that Hour-Man’s nametold his enemies how to defeat him. Details like this were swept under the rug because it suited the creators’ in some way (Superman’s creators decided that they didn’t want to tie the character to Toronto or Cleveland), or because the creators themselves just weren’t concerned with details.

Going into the Fifties, comic book stories took place, primarily, in circular time. If you grab a random Superman story from 1943 and another one from 1949, you can probably read them in opposite order and not notice any inconsistencies. Nothing much was changing in the lives of these characters, and every story ended neatly to allow the next one to start with a fresh beginning. There were exceptions: Villains often returned after their first appearance, beginning in 1939 with the Ultra-Humanite and Doctor Death who returned to pester Superman and Batman, respectively, in the very next issue after their respective debuts. Immediate recurrences were also true for Luthor and the Joker when they arrived on the scene about a year later. Batman’s life changed with the addition of Robin and his butler Alfred in the early Forties. But, by and large, time did not move for DC characters in this era, just as it rarely did for many lighter cartoon features.

Nowadays, readers take for granted that the characters inhabit linear time in which, like the real world, changes take place in stories and then the changes carry over to subsequent stories. This transition from circular to linear time was ushered in by a few important events between 1952 and 1969.

First, the Superman-Batman meeting in 1952 “counted”, unlike their previous meetings in All-Star Comics. When they next met in 1954, their 1952 meeting was considered to have happened, and so both of their worlds had changed, in a shared continuity which accumulated new history from then onwards.

Second, the landmark Action#242 in 1958 introduced Brainiac, but more significantly, the bottled city of Kandor. Suddenly, a huge number of surviving Kryptonians joined Superman who had met only a few Kryptonians before this.

A third, important shift took place with the second introduction of Supergirl in 1959. A story one year earlier introduced a magical “Super-Girl” who died at the story’s end. The character was popular, so a permanent Supergirl, Superman’s cousin from Krypton, was created the next year. Like the case of the Superman-Batman association, the early story didn’t “count,” and was never mentioned again, but the newer one did.

Then several important events marking the transition to linear time happened in rapid succession in early 1961. Just as Supergirl was introduced twice – once not counting, the second time counting – Mon-El was introduced twice, once as “Halk Kar” in 1953, then as Mon-El in a very similar story in 1961. Halk Kar never appeared again, but Mon-El became an integral character in continuity. Also in early 1961, DC’s two superhero teams, the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes, both got new members for the first time in issues printed the same month, with Green Arrow joining the JLA, whereas the LSH was shown to have multiple members, beyond the three LSH founders who had been introduced earlier. Almost simultaneously, the Phantom Zone was introduced, which was a permanent version of the criminals-from-Krypton idea first explored with Mala, Kizo, and U-Ban in 1950 and 1954. As with Supergirl and Mon-El, an earlier idea that was subsequently ignored was given a permanent replacement. These four revolutionary events, published within only three months, switched the Superman and Justice League features from circular to linear time, and with this change, the continuity became much more fertile for accumulated history for fans to explore.

The revival of the Justice Society in Flash later in 1961 also indicated that time moved for the characters, as Jay Garrick and other JSAers were revealed to have retired and grown older in the years since their earlier stories had been published.

For Batman, the change to linear time occurred later than it did for the Superman continuity. The “New Look” Batman of 1964, besides putting a yellow oval around his chest emblem, eliminated more fanciful aspects of Batman’s stories, erasing the characters Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat-Hound; for many years afterward, those characters were simply gone and assumed never to have existed at all. Then, in 1969, perhaps the most pivotal “linear time” change in DC history took place, with Robin ­– Dick Grayson ­– growing up and going to college. That same year, a JLA story bid J'onn J'onzz farewell, as the Martian Manhunter went on an indefinite leave of absence in space, and did not return to DC stories for several years.

Linear time brought life and death to the characters. The first stories with significant characters dying (temporarily) involved Lightning Lad in 1963 and Alfred Pennyworth in 1964-1966. Both of these plots unfolded over many issues, told as mysteries with subtle clues and misdirection intensifying the drama before Lightning Lad and Alfred were both resurrected. In 1966, the Flash married Iris West. In 1967, the Legionnaire Ferro Lad died and – in a first for DC superheroes – remained dead. Now, the DC characters were going through all the major changes in life. The reader could perceive the characters of the DC Universe growing older, acquiring new associations, making life changes, and moving on. The lives of the characters moved at a much slower rate than real world time, but the implication was that time did march forwards for the characters.

The shift to linear time went hand-in-hand with DC features crossing over and joining together in one shared continuity. Characters could meet, team-up, grow up, age, and die. There was a significant backstory accumulating all the time, and the casual reader might be a bit adrift picking up an issue of DC Comics, but devoted readers now had an ever-more complex continuity to learn and explore.

The Bronze Age

Thus, the Seventies were the first full decade where a shared DC continuity ruled by linear time was in effect. Things changed slowly, but they did change, opening up more complex narrative possibilities. DC's creators and fans could conceive of a full-Multiversal history. The past included the Big Bang, the Guardians of the Universe, the New Gods, and eventually the World War Two era when superheroes began on Earth Two. The present included the Justice League on Earth One, an older Justice Society on Earth Two, and many adjunct characters on those and other parallel universes. And there was a future including the Legion of Superheroes, the Reverse Flash, Abra Kadabra, Rip Hunter, and other characters. DC's titles followed dozens of characters on many teams, acquiring a stable of hundreds of villains on various planets, dimensions, in various eras. About twenty years after DC continuity had finally gotten up to speed, it would be perceived as cluttered and overly complex, and DC's editors made plans to sweep much of it away.

Further reading: History of the DC Universe 1986-2015.