In fact, the Multiverse has been a long-standing custom in DC Comics, ever because the legendary story “The Flash of Two Worlds” (1961’s Flash #123, by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino) established that the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen lived on Earth-One and the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick lived on Earth-Two. The Multiverse allowed for DC to inform a wide range of totally different tales and to permit characters acquired from different firms to maintain their very own continuity. When DC determined to streamline its continuity with the 1984-1985 occasion Disaster on Infinite Earths, the Multiverse was destroyed, leaving the universe with one Earth and a single, coherent(ish) continuity.
To the shock of nobody, DC couldn’t maintain strict continuity, and alternate realities and conflicts continued to exist. So within the 2005 company-wide occasion Infinite Disaster, Superboy Prime punched actuality and Shazam villain Mister Thoughts turned a cosmic moth with actuality shaking wings (Infinite Disaster stinks as a narrative, however these two components dominated), and the Multiverse returned. Particularly, 52 totally different Earths, to match with the corporate’s arbitrary determination to make 52 crucial quantity.
Whereas DC did instantly determine a few of the alternate Earths (for instance, Earth-3 was the house to evil variations of the Justice League), they avoided setting guidelines on most, properly leaving room for later creators. Nonetheless, of their pleasant metatextual crossover Multiversity, Grant Morrison revealed many of the 52 worlds. A few of these they confirmed in stand-alone tales printed below the Multiversity headline; Peacemaker followers particularly could wish to to take a look at The Multiversity: Pax Americana, by which Morrison and Frank Quitely use Peacemaker, the Query, and others to riff on Watchmen. Nonetheless, many of the worlds obtained not more than a designation and a blurb.
The Map remains to be utilized in present DC Comics continuity, and the latest Darkish Nights: Steel occasions revealed a Darkish Multiverse printed on the bottom of the Map. Nonetheless, the Darkish Nights occasions additionally ended by reestablishing the idea of Hypertime, by which actuality is all the time in flux and all tales are all the time already in continuity. Hypertime doesn’t essentially imply there have to be greater than 52 worlds, nevertheless it actually opens the likelihood for shifting past the Map.
However that’s not a headache that James Gunn has, at the least not but. As he instructed Den of Geek, Gunn considers himself “a balanced canon man,” and he’s extra involved with telling a narrative than justifying the world round it. However he’s additionally been very open about his love of Grant Morrison, so it is sensible that he would look to the Scottish scribe as a information for dealing with world-bending tales.
Given Gunn’s feedback that there are at the least 100 alternate universes, it wouldn’t be too stunning if the case is certainly a Map of the Multiverse and that we’ll see Harcourt and the eleventh Avenue Youngsters journey to Earth-20 and encounter Pulp Novel variations of DC Heroes or possibly even the Marvel analogues residing on Earth-8. Or it’s simply as doubtless that Chris or Adrian will drop the case and shatter the system, making the entire thing an enormous joke. Which is precisely what we love about Peacemaker.
