A Beginner's Guide to the DC Universe

Here's your everything you need to know about DC, its heroes, and its movies.

Image via Complex Original

While Marvel continues to dominate the big screen and make advances on the small, DC is still trying to catch up. But with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on the horizon and a number of (pretty good!) shows on the air, the big M could soon have some competition. DC's Batman-without-Batman prequel, Gotham,is set for its season finale tonight on FOX. And with the recent introduction of a kid Joker named Jerome, the show has truly gone in a strange (and sort of awesome) direction as of late. But how does the TV show fit into the larger DC Universe? Is Gotham considered "canon" or just its own weird thing? Was the Joker named Julian in The Dark Knight?

Last month, Complex took a look at the Marvel Universe—a complicated, convoluted, and confusing place itself—and attempted to set the record straight for newcomers. And now, with a similar goal in mind, we've decided to take on Marvel's biggest competition. Below find out how Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern's various comic book histories intersect, and what's in store for DC own cinematic universe. On the eve of Gotham's season finale, this is a beginner's guide to the DC Universe.

The DC Universe began before DC even existed.

The idea that comic book characters all occupied the same world was first introduced in 1940 by the comic All Star Comics #3. Before then, superheroes existed in their own realities and had their own adventures. At the time, DC as it's known now didn't exist yet, and its superheroes were spread out between All-American Publications and Detective Comics, Inc. (The two companies had the same CEO, though they operated as independent publishers. Both later merged into National Periodical Publications, which changed its name to DC—confusing, I know!)

Writer Gardner Fox, inspired by the National Baseball League, thought it would be neat if all All-American heroes came together to form a team. Thus, The Justice Society of America was born. The crew, featuring The Sandman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and more (Batman and Superman were still part of Detective Comics at the time), combine their powers to fight evil. Even so, it would be a long time before a solid continuity between the characters was expected by fans or created by the writers.

The Silver Age ushered in comics' first multiverse.

Even though it was established that various heroes could interact with each other, it would be a long time before DC took its shared world very seriously. The Golden Age (the 1930s through the mid 1950s) had occasional crossover issues, but didn't care much for matters of continuity. By the time The Silver Age arrived, which featured revamped backstories for many of the heroes, DC tried to make its various titles more coherent.

In Flash #123 it was explained that all the characters existed in a "multiverse"—a.k.a. a universe with infinite alternate realities. While most contemporary stories took place on Earth-One, DC could bring back Golden Age heroes or create alternate versions with the explanation that they were just visiting from another universe. Still, many origin stories didn't fit together and constant retcons made thing confusing. The DC Universe was still a mess, continuity-wise.

DC rebooted completely with Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In 1985, DC made history by deciding to wipe the slate clean for all its heroes and start again with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Unprecedented at the time, the 12-issue arc was a way for DC to merge all the characters, with all their disparate backstories and conflicting histories, into a single plane of existence. Rather than Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-99, or any infinite number of Earths, in Crisis, each hero would live on the same planet in the same universe.

Since the reboot, DC's strategy has become the model for how a publisher can get away with completely revamping its lineup. Marvel's upcoming quasi-reboot Secret Wars, which puts all its heroes into a singular "Battleworld," has a remarkably similar format.

"The New 52" ushered in DC's contemporary universe.

While Crisis did a good job unifying the DC Universe, it also posed some new problems—namely handling the passage of time in the books and failing to update all its heroes at once. (Some characters were updated directly following Crisis on Infinite Earths while others were updated years later.) There was also the matter of establishing a "shared future" between the books—was The Dark Knight Returns the official future, or something else entirely? The inability to have alternate realities is remarkably constraining when it comes to comics.

While DC tried to answer the growing continuity issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths with new events, such as Zero Hour and, later, Infinite Crisis, theconfusion reached the point that DC once again decided to start over. In 2011, DC canceled all of its issues and started from scratch with 52 No. 1 issues across all of its major franchises. Once again, DC had revamped its whole lineup. Called The New 52, the current universe incorporates a multiverse, albeit one that's more streamlined and less convoluted than the pre-1985 days. This is the DC Universe of the current comics and, hopefully, will be so for some time to come.

The Multiversity is still shaking things up.

The New 52's multiverse has allowed DC to do some pretty wild stuff with its new alternate realities. For instance, The Multiversity is a new series from writer Grant Morrison that mixes elements from all of the past DC universes, jumbling them together to create an epic adventure that superfans and newcomers alike have latched onto. In the newest issue, The Multiversity: Mastermen #1, for example, Nazis have won World War II, and Superman (called Overman) battles a freedom fighter named Uncle Sam. Still, in the new DC Universe the original heroes you know and love mostly live and fight on Earth One. It's like Crisis on Infinite Earths never happened, except everything makes a whole lot more sense now.

Can the DC Cinematic Universe compete with Marvel?

Unlike in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (where everything connects between series), DC's movies have largely been self-contained entities. The Dark Knight trilogy, for instance, is Christopher Nolan's interpretation of Batman, but it doesn't connect to any other movie series. That's all about about to change with the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Though Man of Steel was technically part of this new united world, Batman v Superman will be the first to feature multiple DC heroes, such as Batman, Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman battling it out together.

Future films, like Michelle Maclaren's Wonder Woman and Scott Snyder's Justice League series, will take place in the same universe. It's the beginnings of a franchise similar to Marvel, but it remains to be seen how successful DC (and its parent company, Warner Bros.) is at replicating Disney's blockbuster-churning abilities.

DC moves to the small screen.

DC has more than a few shows on TV, including FOX's Gotham, NBC's Constantine, and The CW's The Flash and Arrow. As of now, The Flash and Arrow take place in the same world, while Gotham is doing its own thing over on FOX. It should be said that none of the television shows exist in the same world as the Justice League movies. This is in stark contrast to Marvel, where the television (and upcoming Netflix) shows are all in the same cinematic universe.

It'd be cool if DC could figure out a way to bring all their shows together, but, as we've seen with the comics, that's easier said than done. That said, as far as quality goes, it could be said DC has a better track record than Marvel. Unlike the spotty Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., DC's current roster of shows are all pretty good for what they are.