DC Universe

"It's the DC Universe. The end of the world isn't even an excuse for getting off work anymore."
—Linkara, Atop the Fourth Wall

The DC Universe is the Shared Universe belonging to DC Comics, established in 1934 and now the oldest major comic book publishing company. This is mostly used as a vehicle for their extensive Superhero mythos, although the nature of the universe allows for almost unlimited storytelling potential in many different genres.

The DC Universe is primarily responsible for establishing the concept of the super-hero in popular culture, with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as some of their oldest and most popular characters. Their introduction of the Justice Society of America during World War II was also the first real super-hero team book, using the cross-over to establish the first shared universe in comics history. Their massive early popularity was stunted by the invention of the Comics Code which nearly killed the industry, and many of the bowdlerised stories from this era are responsible for several negative stereotypes about the medium. There was a revival in the late fifties and early sixties with the creation of newer more imaginative updates of characters like Green Lantern and The Flash, leading to DC's biggest characters forming the Justice League. To explain the difference in continuity, they established a Multiverse with the different versions of the heroes occupying different world. The popularity of this team book also inspired Marvel Comics to publish their own team book Fantastic Four, leading into an era of more maturely written super-hero stories dealing with the development of characters and more serious problems.

One of their most controversial moves was the epic storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths during the eighties, an effort to untangle their years of Continuity Snarl by destroying the Multiverse and establishing one linear continuity for all of the characters to co-exist in. This included revising much of the universe's history and updating the origins of many characters. The Multiverse has been brought back during Infinite Crisis, although the mainstream continuity has only been changed in minor ways reflecting the story-telling needs of the writers. There was a second, much more widespread reboot of the DC Universe in September 2011 with all titles being restarted back to number 1, with these titles referred to as the "New 52".

Their distinguished competition is the Marvel Universe, published by Marvel Comics. The two lines appear similar at first glance, but there are some very subtle differences between the two. While there are many exceptions, the main difference is that the super-hero community tends to have a stricter sense of black-and-white morality at DC. This is written as a mature philosophical stand-point, dealing with the heroic archetype and their place as trusted members of society; in the DCU the general public tend to have greater respect for their heroes and treat them with higher esteem.

The defining characteristics of The DCU
  • Canon Invasion: DC has quite a few character who initally belonged to other companies prior to being bought out. Examples include:
  • City of Adventure: To each hero his own.
    • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Perhaps each hero has his own city because he can't locate anyone else's.
      • This is being averted in modern days, where it's been established that Gotham is in New Jersey and Metropolis is in Delaware.
      • Gateway City (where Wonder Woman used to hang out before she moved to Washington) is in California.
      • So is Coast City (Green Lantern Hal Jordan's town.)
      • Keystone City (home of Golden Age and modern-day The Flashes) is in Ohio, according to JSA #15.
      • However, it's since been retconned as being located in Kansas, like Smallville, but near the border with Missouri (where Central City, home of the Silver Age Flash, is located), as per Flash vol.2 #188 (published in 2002), in which Wally West builds a bridge between both cities.
      • Speaking of California, they inverted the usual DC practice of fictional adventure towns based on real places, by taking a real place (San Diego) and sinking it into the ocean, transforming its inhabitants into merpeople in the process. Thus it became the fictional underwater city of "Sub Diego," which Aquaman protected, natch.
  • Continuity Nod
  • Continuity Snarl: To the extent that at times it feels like the whole purpose of DC's output is trying to resolve its own continuity problems.
  • Crapsack City: While New Earth as a whole is a much better place to live than Earth-616, there are a lot of cities where it sucks to live. Gotham City is the most iconic, with its sister city Bludhaven actually being worse. Star City has gone to hell following Cry for Justice, as it had the misfortune of occurring so close to the Blackest Night. But the single worse place to live in the DCU is Hub City.
  • Crisis Crossover
  • Crossover Cosmology
  • Department of Redundancy Department: People who say "DC Comics" are really saying "Detective Comics Comics".
    • Debatable. "Detective Comics" could be considered the adjective. Effectively, it'd be "The comics of Detective Comic."
      • This could be "Detective Comic's Comics", but that isn't obvious from just "DC Comics".
        • If we're going to be this pedantic, "Detective Comics' comics" (note the apostrophe location).
  • Descriptive Ville: Major offender, a lot of cities have rather bland names.
  • Easily-Conquered World: Alien invasions Tuesday, underground monsters Thursday, and evil masterminds on Friday. If you're looking for an excuse to get off from work, you damn well better have lost your entire city, and even then, you're lucky.
  • Easy Road to Hell: In both the DC and Marvel 'verses there have been examples of people getting sent to Hell with magic, rather than through any fault of their own. Granted, in most such cases they were able to get out later.
  • Elseworld: The Trope Namer. During the '90s and early '00s, DC's Elseworlds imprint showcased a great many "what if" tales that carried on the tradition of Silver Age "imaginary stories"; the best-known was Kingdom Come. Since The Multiverse was brought back, many of these have become full-fledged Alternate Universes.
  • Leotard of Power
  • The Multiverse: The DCU has a long tradition, recently revived, of having numerous alternate universes.
  • No Communities Were Harmed: The aforementioned Cities Of Adventure.
  • Present Day: Mostly. Time Travel is common, as are series set in The Wild West, World War II, or The Future.
  • Shout-Out
  • Superhero: Of course.
  • Underwear of Power: Trope Maker, really. (Although they are technically exercise trunks, not underwear.)

Comics series and characters set in The DCU:



Other notable characters:



TV series set in (parts of) The DCU:

Superman-based (mostly in Metropolis, but given ol' Kal-El's range all bets are off):

Batman-based (in Gotham City, with rare field trips):

Justice League of America-based:

  • Superfriends (Along with its many sequels and permutations.)
  • Legends of the Superheroes (A short-lived 1970s series which attempted to bring the campy style of Batman to the JLA, and failed miserably.)
  • Justice League of America, a failed Pilot Movie based around the post-Justice League International incarnation of the team.
  • Justice League (Crawling with minor and obscure heroes and villains, especially in the Unlimited seasons.)

Other single characters:

Other comic series:


Other TV series:

  • Aquaman (Failed Pilot)
    • Although a successful 1960s cartoon was why he was included in the Superfriends to begin with.
  • Wonder Woman
  • Shazam! (Not actually the hero's name. His name is Captain Marvel. The wizard who gave Billy Batson his powers is named Shazam. However, no series using the character can use the "Captain Marvel" name because Marvel Comics has its own character with that name and regularly publishes comic book series with that name. He was featured in a 1974 live-action series, 1981 cartoon (both produced by Filmation), and a planned 2008 cartoon.))
  • Swamp Thing (1990 live action series, 1991 cartoon, plus movies made in 1982 and 1989)
  • Static Shock (Originally a Milestone title)
  • Isis (Originally by virtue of crossovers with Shazam, though DC did eventually publish a short-lived Isis comic book. More recently, they've added a DCU version of the character as Black Adam's consort and, eventually, wife, though they killed her off not long after. She's now alive again though.)
    • And she was a statue for a while. Then she came back. Go fig.

Other team shows:

  • Teen Titans (The last season is full of the same mix, albeit focusing on the TT and Doom Patrol characters. This may or may not also be in continuity with the DCAU below, despite its very different look and style, and fan debates over this continue as the Word of God has been lacking, instead giving what amounts to the continuity version of a Ship Tease.)
  • Legion of Super-Heroes
  • Young Justice (Though it shares the title of the comic book series it is not a straight up adaptation of it and includes a wide variety of DCU stories, including Teen Titans and Justice League.)

A subset of The DCU is the DC Animated Universe (AKA the "Timmverse" or the "Diniverse"), consisting of Batman the Animated Series and every other series that takes place in the same universe. It has its own Canon, with more than one Crossover between series, and is best known for its distinctive artstyle, based on the works of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. This universe has ended with the final season of Justice League Unlimited.

Series in the DCAU:

DC and Warner Brothers recently began a new series of animated movies, released straight to DVD, called DC Universe Original Animated Movies. Mostly they focus on individual characters, including some, like Wonder Woman, who have never had their own animated series. All movies with the exception of the Superman/Batman titles (which are loosely related to each other) are standalone stories.

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