Multiversity: Earth-12 and Earth-50

I am so glad for Multiversity.

Multiverses are one of the greatest elements of literature, but so often they're poorly used. DC, in particular, seems to have a love/hate relationship with them. Depending on the era, they either love to have them but hate to use them, or love to use them but not want them around. So it's nice to see Grant Morrison using the crap out of them in Final Crisis, Action Comics, and especially Multiversity. And now with the Multiversity Guidebook that was released this month (January 2015), it's nice to finally see a complete map of all the worlds - minus seven - that is fleshed out enough that each could have its own line of comics if DC wanted. But it's two worlds in particular we're here for today, and the first one actually DOES have its own line of comics!

Earth-12 is home to the Batman Beyond 2.0 and Justice League Beyond 2.0 specifically, and more generally the DC Animated Universe. I've written about this world pretty extensively. This universe first appeared in Countdown #21 (December 2007) and then more fully in Batman Beyond 2.0 #1 (August 2013). It also made an appearance in Countdown: Arena, but the less said about that, the better.

The next Earth, however, is one I didn't expect to see:

This Earth is based on an alternate reality from the DC Animated Universe in which the Justice League has become a totalitarian police force. It was first seen in the Justice League episode "A Better World" (2003) and later mentioned in the comics, which you can read about here. Because these Justice Lords are based on the present-day Justice League and the Justice Lords we see at that link are based on the Beyond-era Justice League Unlimited, I'm pretty sure this is the first appearance of these characters outside of Lord Superman (although they could've appeared in flashback, I'm not sure).

And this is a good example of not being sure how close the New 52 multiverse would be to the 52 multiverse, because Earth-50 was originally home to WildStorm characters (which are now on Earth-0).

Character Spotlight: Simon Trent

God bless Gotham Academy. It's starting to look like I'll be able to make new entries as long as it's being published, so I hope it never gets cancelled.

The newest member of staff they've introduced is Simon Trent, the school's resident drama teacher. He was first mentioned several times in issue #1 (October 2014) in dialogue, on a sign, and on a poster for a movie called "House of Secrets" (which he starred in with Basil Karlo, aka Clayface), but his first actual appearance was in issue #4 (January 2015). He even says he has "experience playing a ghost"!

Simon Trent, as I'm sure you know, was featured in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series called "Beware The Gray Ghost" (1992). In the episode, Simon Trent is an actor who played a superhero called The Gray Ghost in an old tv show Bruce Wayne watched when he was a kid. The Gray Ghost was part of what inspired Bruce to be Batman, but over the years the show faded into obscurity. In an ironic but terrible - and all too real - situation, the show is too obscure for Trent to live on the royalties or props sales anymore, yet still well known enough to have Trent still associated with the role, and therefore not being able to get any others. Nevertheless, Trent teams up with Batman to track down a bomber who's basing his crimes on an old Gray Ghost episode, which leads to a surge in the show's popularity and things turn out ok for Trent in the end.

Although this is Simon Trent's first appearance, the "Gray Ghost" persona - and the Mad Bomber - has appeared as well, which I talk about in the Batman The Animated Series Super Post.

Character Spotlight: Prince Daka

(Before we get to the post proper, I'd like to thank user Shadzane for suggesting this character in a comment on the Batman Not-So-Super Post over a year ago. I don't know if I had seen it before, but I saw it last week and was able to corroborate the information he provided, so here it is!)

Prince Daka has the distinction of being the very first villain Batman fought on screen, all the way back in the 1943 serial, Batman. As such, there's not much to him beyond being a racist caricature.

Prince Daka, known in America as Dr. Tito Daka, is part of a Japanese nationalist cult called the Rising Sun that plans to orchestrate a Japanese occupation of the United States from within. In addition to his secret base (called the Cave of Horrors), located in LA's Little Tokyo, and his elite gang called the League of the New Order, he also has a machine called the Electrical Brain that turns people into zombies - real, brainwashed-slave zombies, not flesh-eating, undead "zombies". He was, of course, defeated by Batman.

You'd think that a character like that, especially being so prominently featured, would be gobbled up quickly by the comics. But actually, he didn't appear until All-Star Squadron #42 (1985), and even then, his last appearance was the next issue.

And although I haven't read the issue, it seems like there's even less to him than in the serial. I'm going to assume that much of his backstory is the same, but in the issue proper, his goal is to attack America with a squadron of invisible jets and a team of Japanese nationalists known as Tsunami, Kung, and Sumo the Samurai. The two issues were published in the 80s, but they take place during World War II, making him a period-appropriate villains.

Superboy: "Rajah's Ransom"

In 1960, DC considered making a Superboy tv show called The Adventures of Superboy. George Reeves's The Adventures of Superman had just ended a few years prior and they were trying to prolong the cachet of that show. It didn't work. They did produce a pilot, however, called "Rajah's Ransom", which you can see the first half of here. And that pilot was later turned into a comic book story for Superboy #88 (1961), called "The Saddest Boy in Smallville!". Another story in that issue is called "The One Man Team" and is adapted from a non-produced tv script.

Below are two pages from "The Saddest Boy in Smallville!" which feature some characters from the pilot: John and Tommy Hunter, and the bad guys The ABC Gang.

Who Raised Bruce?

Everyone knows the story - especially because adaptations won't let us forget - of how young Bruce Wayne's parents were killed in front of him and he was raised by the loyal family butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Gotham (2014) has been getting a lot of mileage out of this, although we've also seen it in the Batman movies and most other adaptations. That wasn't always the case, though.

In fact, before Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), Alfred started working for Bruce as an adult. He first appeared in Batman #16 (1943) as an actor/amateur criminologist whose father had once been the butler for the Waynes, and he became Bruce's butler to fulfill his father's dying wish. With Alfred not around during his childhood, Bruce was instead brought up by his Uncle Philip (a guardian in absentia), Dr. Leslie Thompkins, and the Wayne housekeeper Mrs. Chilton (who was secretly the mother of Joe Chill, the killer of Bruce's parents). All of this information was introduced at different times, but you can find it all in one story in The Untold Legend of Batman (1980).

But then, in 1985, the animated series The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians (the last season of Super Friends, renamed to match a line of Kenner action figures at the time) produced an episode called "The Fear", which featured the first ever depiction of Batman's origin outside of comics. In the episode, Scarecrow has attacked Gotham City, and Batman, dosed with fear has, finds himself in Crime Alley and remembers his parents' deaths.

It's here where we learn that not only did Alfred raise Bruce, he also helped train him. (And I think it's worth noting that the shot above looks like it could've come straight out of Batman: The Animated Series. We unfortunately can't say the same of the shots below.)

Frank Miller would use this idea in The Dark Knight Returns (1986), and then like most things he introduced in that book, incorporate them into the DC Universe proper in Batman: Year One (1987).

Scott and Jean's Marriage

I don't want to accidentally plagiarize anyone, so I'll note that I read about this on Comics Should Be Good and you can read a more in-depth version of it at that link. But the long and short of it is that there had been plans for Cyclops and Jean Grey to get married as far back as 1990, but they kept getting put off or cancelled by creators shifting books, leaving books, and higher-ups not wanting it to happen. However, when Bob Harras learned that X-Men: The Animated Series was planning a similar storyline, he used that to convince Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco to have it happen in comics as well and coincide with the show. And it did, in the summer of 1993.

Gadget Spotlight: Lasso of Truth

Everyone knows the story: Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, who also invented the lie detector. This is why Wonder Woman has her Lasso of Truth. Makes sense, right? After all, Marston didn't have any problems injecting other parts of his life into the book, such as his love of bondage or his idea that women are superior and should rule the world, so why wouldn't he include a reference to his day job?

Well...it's not that simple. First of all, although Wonder Woman first appeared in All-Star Comics #8 (1941), she didn't get the lasso until Sensation Comics #6 (1942). And the lasso - then called the magic lasso - didn't compel people to tell the truth. It actually forced people to do whatever Wonder Woman wanted, and sometimes that happened to be answering her honestly. So you see, the lasso has more to do with his night life than his day job.

In the Wonder Woman tv series (1975-1979), however, perhaps because of standards at the time, Wonder Woman only used it to make people tell the truth. So it follows that after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the lasso would be reintroduced as the Lasso of Truth in Wonder Woman #2 (1987), which it's been called ever since.