Hang on…it’s gonna get nerdy.

§ January 14th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Hang on…it’s gonna get nerdy.

So customer Kevin asked us at the shop the other day which of DC Comics’ multiple Earths that the Charlton heroes hailed from. I knew they only hailed from said Earth briefly, and I believed that the specific number of Earth was noted just once when Blue Beetle was introduced into the Crisis on Infinite Earths series.

Okay, I was otherwise occupied, and I should have remembered that it was in the very first issue of the series where the Beetle appeared…but I decided I didn’t want to go searching through the comics and went straight to the source of all that is good and holy in the world, the internet, and looked it up there.

And yes, of course, Wikipedia has an entry on the topic. And Blue Beetle’s Earth was Earth-Four, complete with a notation that this Earth was first named in Crisis #1, like I’d thought.

However, when I got home, just on a whim I whipped out the original Crisis hardcover and flipped through the first issue…and didn’t spot any reference to Earth-Four. I mean, Blue Beetle’s in there fightin’ crime and such, but I don’t see a reference as which particular parallel Earth we’re looking at. I even went to the original comic, checking the text pages in case the name was dropped there, but no dice.

Am I missing it? I went through the comic and its reprint in the hardcover several times…I can fully believe that I’m repeatedly overlooking it, and that one of you is going to leave a comment to the effect of “You chowderhead, it’s on Page 8, Panel 2” and I’ll then proceed to feel really dumb. But I’m not seeing the phrase “Earth-Four” anywhere.

I know it didn’t come out of nowhere…does this designation appear later in the series? Or was it just in supplementary material, like the Crisis index series published later?

Also, on the two-page spread in Crisis #1, across 26 and 27, we see all the heroes Harbinger gathered, including Blue Beetle, and they’re described in the caption as being from Earths-One and Two. Perhaps Beetle was intended to be from one of those Earths originally (if the “no Earth-Four mention” stands), and it was later retroactively decided to make him from a different universe in order to explain why none of the Charlton heroes had appeared in DC books previously.

And another thing…Wikipedia calls the parallel Earth in Detective Comics #500 (a world where the Earth-One Batman travels to in order to save the lives of that Earth’s Thomas and Martha Wayne) “Earth-Five.” Yeah, says who?

And another another thing…was I the only person annoyed at the time that the original Who’s Who series, despite dealing with parallel universe versions of the same characters early in the run, did not have an entry on DC’s multiple Earths? I suppose I can understand the reasoning (they were attempting to get rid of the parallel universe thing, after all), but still, I was fanboy enough to want it. Ah, well.


Okay, since the majority of this post can very easily be invalidated by, as I noted, someone finding the reference to Earth-Four that I missed (and if you do, be gentle, friend), let me ask you folks a question:

Which of DC’s parallel Earths is your favorite…I mean, aside from One and Two, either of which would be the easy answers. C’mon, you’ve got Earth-Twelve (home of the Inferior Five) and Earth-Three (Crime Syndicate), among others, to choose from. I think my favorite is Earth-Prime, which, according to the DC Universe “mythos,” is the Earth where we live…the real world, where superheroes are just characters in comic books, and yet, in those comics, the heroes would occasionally journey to Earth-Prime anyway…. That was a pretty wild concept for a ten-year-old Mikester to have to deal with, way back when.

So, anyway, pick an Earth, internet friends, and let me know your fave.

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