Crisis On Infinite Earths To Countdown
Starting in the early 1960s, DC Comics maintained some aspects of its continuity through the use of a multiverse system of parallel Earths. A cosmic event in the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths merged all of these realities and their respective characters into one universe, allowing writers to rewrite from scratch such long-running characters as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman and also as an attempt at simplifying the DC Universe. In some ways, this helped revitalize DC's characters, though some fans debated (and continue to debate) whether such changes were necessary to begin with or truly beneficial. Events such as the deaths of Supergirl and Barry Allen augmented debate with many fans.
Since Crisis, the trend of such retconning/revamping of characters' histories has increased in superhero comics, as has such large-scale crossover events. Even DC found cause to revamp its universe again (but on a smaller scale) with 1994's Zero Hour crossover storyline. In the late 1990s, the concept of Hypertime was introduced as an attempt to satisfy fans of alternate realities, by stating that all comics published by DC (whether pre- or post-Crisis) had taken place in some corner of reality.
In 2005, the Infinite Crisis series revived the idea of a multiverse. Following the events of the Infinite Crisis series, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have temporarily retired their costumed identities. The remaining heroes attend a memorial for Superboy in Metropolis. Time traveler Booster Gold attends the memorial, but when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman do not arrive, the change in history makes his robot sidekick Skeets malfunction. This results in Skeets reporting other incorrect historical data. Booster and Skeets search time traveler Rip Hunter's desert bunker for answers, but find it littered with scrawled notes (See "Rip Hunter's lab" below).
The series continues, exploring many of the changes wrought by the events of Infinite Crisis, introducing new characters, killing off old ones, and putting others in new situations. The series concludes when Rip Hunter reveals that a new multiverse exists, of exactly 52 universes, from Earth-0/New Earth (The primary Earth in continuity) to Earth-51. The new Multiverese is temporarily threatened by Mr. Mind, who has developed the ability to travel to each universe and "Eat" portions of it, altering its history. Each new universe was initially identical to New Earth, but Mr. Minds rampage altered each universes history, altering them all, returning the D.C. Multiverse after a fashion. Once Mr. Mind is stopped, and 52's World War 3 crossover concludes, it is revealed that new Monitors exist for each of the new universes, making 52 monitors in all. Many of the new universes resemble either popular Elseworlds Earths (Kingdom Come, Batman and Dracula) or are similar to the pre-Crisis Earths 2, X, S, etc. (Although Grant Morrison has stated that while they are similar, they are not the actual pre-Crisis worlds.)
52, World War 3, 1 Year Later, and Crisis Aftermath indirectly lead in to Countdown, which is confirmed to be counting down to the next big event, Final Crisis.
Read more about this topic: Events From The Modern Age Of Comic Books
Famous quotes containing the word infinite:
“Henry B. Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was, or was not, true. He did not even care that it should be proved true, unless the process were new and amusing. He was a Darwinian for fun.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)