The Multiversity Guidebook #1 Annotations

Maps and Legends

DC Comics, March 2015, Color, 80pgs, $7.99

Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art by NICOLA SCOTT, GARY FRANK, KLAUS JANSON, CAMERON STEWART, DAN JURGENS, CHRIS SPROUSE, BEN OLIVER and others; Cover by RIAN HUGHES; 1:25 Variant Cover by TOM FOWLER; 1:50 Variant Cover by PHIL JIMENEZ; 1:100 Variant Cover by GRANT MORRISON

The guidebook to the greatest adventure in DC’s history is here!

With a detailed concordance featuring each of the 52 worlds in the Multiverse, a complete history of DC Comics’ universe-shattering “Crisis” events, a map of all known existence, AND an action-packed dual adventure starring Kamandi of Earth-51 alongside the post-apocalyptic Atomic Knight Batman of Earth-17 and chibi Batman of Earth-42, this 80-page mountain of MULTIVERSITY madness cannot be missed!

The MULTIVERSITY GUIDEBOOK contains everything you ever wanted to know about DC’s parallel worlds and their super-heroic inhabitants. Meet the Agents of W.O.N.D.E.R. The Light Brigade, the Super-Americans and the Love Syndicate! Meet the Accelerated Man, Aquaflash, BiOmac and more! Overflowing with today’s top artists and completely written by Grant Morrison himself, readers of the DC Universe can’t afford to pass up this oversized, sixth chapter of MULTIVERSITY!

Commentary

The Multiversity Guidebook, in which Grant Morrison and an all-star squadron of artistic collaborators cohere the DC Universe for the very first time into a singular tale spanning 75 years, more than a million pages and many thousands of chroniclers. Perhaps the most complex (...sentient?) fictional universe ever created?

DC cosmology given a Zoroastrian polish, Barry Allen cast as Jesus Christ, a framing story inspired by an issue of Kamandi completed in 1977 but not published until 2017 (nearly two years after the Guidebook itself appeared)... this one really has Got It All. There's even the beginnings of a biting commentary on corporate comics monstrous tendency to eat it's own young, though somewhat fittingly, that thread ends up To Be Continued in Ultra Comics, where the *real* meat is gnawed off the bones...

Let's get down to it then. The 25,000 or so words that follow took me about two years to write. Let's hope it doesn't take as long for you to read...

Annotations

Cover - The background of Rian Hughes' regular cover looks like a homage to the classic Looney Tunes opening titles. As for the insets, the top left is a collection of head shots, a few of which are easy to identify (Hawkman, Alley Kat Abra from the Zoo Crew, maybe Black Canary, Etrigan the Demon, the Crime Syndicate's Owlman, the New 52 Wonder Woman, Cyborg, maybe a couple of Green Lanterns), but most of them appear to be Hughes originals. Bottom left is the Hall of Heroes from Hughes' Multiversity Map, a small version of which also features bottom right. Top right is Kamandi and front and centre are the Batmen of Earths 17 and Earth 42, the stars of this issue's framing sequence..

Tom Fowler provides the 1:25 homage cover this issue, showcasing Kamandi in an unlikely tribute to Mike Zeck's 1991 cover for Deathstroke The Terminator #1.

Phil Jimenez handles the 'History of the DC Multiverse' cover, with an Infinite Crisis-inspired pin-up featuring (across the back row, left to right) Superboy Prime, regular-continuity Superman, the Golden Age Superman of Earth 2 and his wife, Lois Lane (also of Earth 2). Across the bottom, again from left to right, we've got Bart Allen as Kid Flash, Power Girl, Nightwing, Wonder Woman and Batman. On Batman's left is Alexander Luthor of Earth 3, and regular-continuity Lex Luthor at the end. Finally, in the inset underneath Wonder Woman (which, incidentally is shaped like the logo for the Infinite Crisis tie-in series The OMAC Project) is Wonder Girl mourning the death of regular-continuity Superboy, Kon-El.

And if you found that confusing, just wait until we get into the rest of this issue. Sheesh...

The 1:100 Morrison sketch cover features GM's heavily Buzz Lightyear-inspired oiginal design for the Batman of Earth 17. Nothing much of note to see here, but interesting to see Morrison's note regarding the colour of Atomic Knight Batman's suit - "Light blue on the costume but use swimming pool blue used on old covers like..." Like what?? Damn UPC boxes...

Page 1 - 'Maps and Legends' is a song from REM's 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction (also the source for 'Driver 8', one of Crazy Jane's personalities in Morrison's Doom Patrol run).

'Hannibal' Sivana returns from last issue. We don't find out for certain which world he's from, but Earth 40 seems a good bet given the comic in his pocket in panel 3. He's busy incinerating Earth 42 J'onn J'onzz, whose cry of "M'yri'ah!" (J'onn's long-dead Martian wife) echoes the Martian Manhunter's death at the hands of the Secret Society in 2008's Final Crisis #1. Chibi Cyborg and Aquaman are already done for by the looks of it.

In all likelihood, Chibi Sivana really hasn't ever killed anyone, given that everybody on his home planet is a mindless puppet robot in thrall to a terrible higher power, as per the conclusion of this issue..

Page 2 - Chibi Hawkman and (a beardless, natch) Chibi Green Arrow join the fray.

"We lost Wonder Woman and Steel to that box", they've already passed through the transmatter cube to the House of Heroes, as seen in The Multiversity #1.

The gag later in the issue is that Hannibal Sivana hasn't made the trip to Earth 42 to recruit his Chibi doppleganger into the Legion of Sivanas, but solely to grab a quick snack for his reptile counterpart from Earth 26.

The Legion of Sivanas' robot henchmen are significantly smaller than the one that popped up on Earth 23 back in issue #1, but a pretty good match for those we saw in Thunderworld.

Obviously we (deliberately) can't see what Sivana is saying in the final panel, but we learn in the The Multiversity #2 that the word-key for the transmatter array is "S.O.S.". At first glance that would seem not to jibe especially well with all the talk of super high frequencies later this issue.

Page 4 -The Batman of Earth 17 makes his debut, equal parts Buzz Lightyear and Judge Dredd. 'Krakkin' is subbing for Dredd's 'Drokkin' in the future swears department.

I think that's just a generic raygun on Sivana's workbench there, though the colouring suggests it might be a specific reference to something that I can't find. Looks like maybe a model of the Transmatter Cube next to it, or maybe a Mother Box?

The 'Dark Tower of Luthex' might be a nod to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which also features knights and radiation in some capacity (sorry, haven't read any of it and it's thousands of pages long); it's certainly meant to invoke some kind of Arthurian Quest-type deal anyway. The Cosmic Grail is whatever the sole object to survive the destruction of the Earth 15 universe was (as noted in the Earths survey later this issue). It may be a Green Lantern power battery as suggested by the picture (but not the text) accompanying that entry. Either way, we don't get any further update on Batman's quest for it either this issue or anywhere else for that matter.

Page 5 - We'll actually see the Rose and the Tomb from Batman's dream on page 13. The Four-Stone is probably the Mother Box as Rubik's Cube we see on page 26.

Muties, mockeries... More Dredd chat. 'Joker-dammit' = Goddammit (or Gruddammit in the Dredd-verse). Morrison is so good at suggesting background details with little throwaway bit like this - in a post-Apocalyptic world gone mad has the Joker been elevated to a deity? A devastating nuclear war as the accident that drove God herself insane...

Earth 42 Dick probably donned the cowl after Chibi Bruce was killled by Superdoomsday, as seen in flashback in Action Comics #9.

Page 6 - Members of the Legion of Sivanas seen here include a black Sivana from Earth 23, Count Sivana, a vampire from Earth 43, a lady Sivana from Earth 11, a snake Sivana from Earth 26 and a robot Sivana from Earth 44, all of whom also appeared briefly last issue. 'Goatee and sunglasses' Breaking Bad Sivana, baby Sivana and Luchador Sivana also popped up in Thunderworld, though it's not immediately obvious which Earth any of them come from. Somebody suggested the mash-up Earth 32 as the home for the guy in the Luchador mask - a combination of Sivana and Bane, and I kind of like that one. As per last issue, the rest of the screens are filled with generic non-specific Sivanas who could be from anywhere.

The Sivana's synthetic copy of the Rock of Eternity - home of the wizard Shazam - functions like a reverse TARDIS - smaller on the inside.

Page 7 - 52 Sivanas with a collective IQ of 80,000 works out at a mightily impressive IQ of 1,538 each

Dr. Hoot, a perennial thorn in the side of Captain Carrot and the Justa-Lotta Animals, hails from Earth 26 and first appeared in Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #14 by E. Nelson Bridewell and Scott Shaw. As per Action Comics #9, the Lex Luthor of Earth 23 also built his own Transmatter Array after seeing it in a dream.

Page 8 - The Marvel Family's appearance here recalls the triumphant final panel of Thunderworld.

Is that chibi Sivana's lab coat they're casting aside before re-entering the Transmat machine? Poor guy/weird big-head baby/evil robot...

Page 9 - Red skies have, since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, traditionally signified universe-in-peril levels of Bad News in the DC Universe.

Eliot R. Brown's Gotham City map - heavily referenced in Morrison's Batman Incorporated - shows the Finger River running right through the middle of the city, but it appears to have been renamed Gotham River for the map used in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight movie. In the 1966 Batman movie the headquarters of the United Worlds Convention stood on the banks of the East Gotham River

'Rad-pits' are straight out of the Judge Dredd playbook. "Mumdads" and "Shamblers" are presumably just more post-apocalypse 2000AD-style jive talk.

Heavily talked-up by Morrison in pre-publicity for the series, the device of one world's comic books showing what's actually happening on another Earth in the Multiverse is a little bit underused to my mind for most of the series, but it gets some heavy play here.

Page 10-11 - And we're away to Kamandi's Earth 51, with Prince Tuftan, Ben Boxer and Kamandi (all Kirby originals who first appeared in Kamandi #1) washing up on the shores of the Island of the God Watchers. Tuftan has a copy of Jack Kirby's famous 'Earth A.D.' map in his hands, originally seen in Kamandi #32.

Kirby never got around to visiting the Island of the God Watchers, but Jack C. Harris, who eventually took over as Kamandi scripter after Kirby left the book to return to Marvel in 1976, did in 1978's Kamandi #57. There, Kamandi met the surfing, fish-faced God Watchers and ended up fighting the Legion of Super-Heroes' Karate Kid inside a magical movie screen (...and people say the book went off the boil after Kirby left).

From what we saw of the Island back in 1978, the Aztec pyramid is new (well, not *new* but you know what I mean...), as are the idol heads up on top of the cliff. Obviously, both are Very Kamandi though.

The skulls on spikes that our heroes encounter here on the beach are the skulls of God Watchers, and the drive-in theater on the beach is presumably that same movie screen from Kamandi #57-58.

Page 12 - Flower, Kamandi's missing beau, first appeared in Kamandi #5, but was killed by Puma Men in the following issue. Just a few months later Kamandi hooked up with her twin sister, Spirit (the wag...), who remained with him on and off until the series abruptly ended mid-storyline with issue #59. This Post-Crisis, Post-Infinite Crisis, Post-52 Kamandi doesn't seem to have visited the Island of the God Watchers before, so maybe his first girlfriend is still alive too? Or maybe all involved forgot that Flower and Spirit were two separate (though all but identical) characters? Who knows...

Of course Darkseid's tomb has big stone carvings of his head either side of the door. *All* of Darkseid's stuff has big stone carvings of his head on it...

Page 13 - I've definitely read somewhere (but can't find the source now, bugger) that Harris was intending way back in 1978 to reveal that Darkseid's tomb was located here on Kamandi's Earth, and that The Vortex on the Earth A.D. map would be both the inside of the tomb itself and a gateway to the larger Multiverse (as it pretty much is here). I also remember reading (probably in the same place, wherever that was) that this was pretty much Kirby's intention from the get-go, he just never got around to it while he was on the book. Certainly the until-recently unpublished Kamandi #60 (printed for the first time 'officially' in 2017's Kamandi Challenge Special #1, it had previously been included in the Canceled Comics Cavalcade #2 ashcan from 1978), where Kamandi first enters The Void, would bear at least some of this out as accurate.

"Maybe the Gods are the watchers..." Tuftan is looking up at us, the readers of course, as well as the New Gods, providing off-panel commentary.

Presumably Tuftan's found the Rose That Grows In Winter from Bat-Dredd's dream back on page 5. The Tomb of Ages would be Darkseid's tomb (tying back to the Daksied-centric 'Rock of Ages' storyline from Morrison's JLA). The Rose seems to give some indication that Flower has been here and that the Kamandi gang are on the right path.

Page 14-15 -The Screaming Mountains fit right in with the other landmarks on the Earth A.D. map, though I think they're new for this issue. Supertown, the floating home of the New Gods here on Earth 51, was the capital city of New Genesis in Kirby's original New Gods run. As shown at the end of Final Crisis, after Orion and Darkseid's death the New Gods have relocated here to Earth A.D, though 'emanations' of them still appear throughout the Multiverse. This is pretty much the 'idea of a bullet' stuff from Final Crisis writ large.

Clockwise from the far left here in panel 2 we have Takion, who first appeared in 1996's Takion #1; former Female Fury Big Barda (1971's Mister Miracle #4); her husband Mister Miracle (1971's Mister Miracle #1); Izaya, the Highfather (1971's New Gods #1); based on the costume this looks like Himon, creator of the Mother Box, who first appeared in a flashback in 1972's Mister Miracle #9, though the colourist has (mistakenly?) coloured the figure as though he's Orion, Darkseid's son (still dead at this point following his murder in Final Crisis), who first appeared in 1971's New Gods #1; next up is Lonar from 1971's Forever People #5; Fastbak (1971's New Gods #5); Avia, wife of Highfather (she first appeared - and died - in 1971's New Gods #7. Looks like she got better though); and Lightray (1971's New Gods #1).

All of them were created by The King, Jack Kirby, as part of his original Fourth World Saga, except Takion, who was added to the mythos significantly later by Paul Kupperberg and Aaron Lopresti.

All this jazz about 'emanations' and 'touching many worlds' is designed to reconcile Morrison's more esoteric take on the New Gods with the more standard super-hero fare of e.g. Geoff Johns' New 52 Justice League, which has featured Darkseid prominently throughout.

"What dread hand unlocked his tomb?" Capitalist market forces, if The Multiversity #2 is anything to go by. More on this later.

Ben Boxer has always had the cyclo-heart and the ability to transform into a silver armoured form, but Morrison melds this with Kirby's OMAC here, adding the Brother Eye satellite from that series too.

Page 16 - BiOMAC's were referred to in Final Crisis too, both in the series proper when the Question led the Black Gambit group through to the Earth 51 universe, and in Greg Rucka's Resist one-shot that Morrison (and everybody else) largely ignored. They're definitely one those elements of Final Crisis that never really got the development or resolution it needed, becoming little more than a throwaway reference in the end.

Page 17 - The Kangarat Murder Society, residents of Australia here on Earth A.D. were featured just an issue of two prior to the God Watchers in Jack C. Harris' Kamandi run. They were first mentioned on Kirby's map but again I don't think he got to them during his time on the book.

Comic books as cave paintings inside the tomb of a God. "Be careful Kamandi. Stories can be dangerous.", a concise summary of one of the main points of this whole Multiversity series, explored in depth in the Ultra Comics one-shot.

The panels of the tomb show the beginnings of the story that starts over the page - first the flaw, then the eyes of the Monitor-Mind, examining it.

Page 18 - "AND THEN!" The DC Universe's creation myth starts (and ends, as we see in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond), with 'To Be Continued...'.

Monitor/Anti-Monitor as Ahura Mazdā/Ahriman, the primal creation/destruction spirits of the dualistic doctrine of Persian Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest documented religious systems.

The bottled flaw is the Orrery, the 'flesh' of the multiverse itself; the physical world, the toil through which the DC Universe characters must transcend to regain the perfection of the Void and rejoin the Monitor-Mind.

On a more Christian tip, you can read 'Science Monitor' here as 'Angel'. Dax Novu (possibly from the Latin Dux Nova - "New Leader"), sent down to study the flaw, is corrupted by it and becomes Mandrakk/Satan. The Fallen One. His ultimate fate is documented in Final Crisis.

Page 19 - "And so begins all things... with a Flash..." Here and over the next few pages, Morrison is essentially painting Barry Allen as the Jesus figure in his revised DC chronology. The discoverer of the multiverse and the first to transcend it's immutable boundaries. Hence, Allen dying to save and reconstitute the Multiverse in Crisis on Infinite Earths *was* a perfect ending for the character. If only they hadn't ever brought him back...

Page 20 - A lightning flash; clean-cut police scientist Barry Allen doused in esoteric chemicals. The pointing hand device was introduced by Flash artist Carmine Infantino in the early days of the strip. From Jim Amash and Eric Nolen-Weathington's book Carmine Infantino: Penciler, Publisher, Provocateur:

"That was my idea. When I was a kid, I never once read a caption. No one did. So I figured, "I'll fix that." I took the caption - it was one big piece - and broke it into three sections. I put the pointing hands on the boxes, and everybody liked that."

The comic book Barry is reading is Flash Comics #24 from December 1941. Though it does feature the second appearance of Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, there doesn't appear to be anything in it that's especially significant to what's going on here in the Guidebook.

Given it happened back in the olden golden days of super-compression, all of the Cosmic Harmonics shenanigans detailed in the captions here happened in the space of one issue - 1961's The Flash #123, by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino - really, the first appearance of the DC Multiverse. Panel five is a reproduction of Infantino and Murphy Anderson's cover to that issue, featuring the first meeting between the Flashes of Earth One (Barry Allen) and Earth Two (Jay Garrick). Bryan Hitch's take on a scene from this story was featured on the 'History of the Multiverse' variant cover for The Multiversity #1.

Panel six is a reproduction of the cover to 1963's Justice League of America #21 by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson, an issue that saw the first meeting of the JLA and their Earth Two counterparts from the 1940's, the Justice Society of America. Representing the JSA here, from left to right, are Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Black Canary, the original Green Lantern, Hourman and the Atom. Representing the JLA here are an almost-but-not quite Big 7 of Wonder Woman, J'onn J'onzz, Batman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Aquaman, Superman and Green Arrow. Guillem March (barely) reinterpreted this cover for the 'History of the Multiverse' variant of The Multiversity: The Society of Super-Heroes #1.

Page 21 - Panel one references a gathering that doesn't actually happen until The Multiversity #2, released a couple of months after the Guidebook itself. From the left along the front are the original Flash, Jay Garrick - formerly a resident of Earth 2, though as of this writing he doesn't exist in DC's 'current' continuity; next to Jay is what looks like John Wesley Shipp from the short-lived 1990 Flash TV show - his is the only Flash suit I can think of where his mask covers his nose (though as with all of the various TV and movie versions of DC's characters, he isn't usually considered a part of the 'official' DC Universe); front and centre is Earth 0's Barry Allen, Prime-Flash if you like; in the yellow costume with the red 'Zoom!' streak is Speed Freak from Earth 47's Love Syndicate of Dreamworld; and down front next to her is the Earth 42's 'chibi' Flash.

Next row up, starting from behind tin-helmet Jay Garrick, is the Flash from the New 52 Earth 2 comic, confusingly also called Jay Garrick; next to him is Red Racer from Earth 36; the Accelerated Man from Earth 19; the robot Mercury Flash from Earth 44; Johnny Quick from Earth 3; Earth 18's Trigger Twins; and finally on the far right Danica Williams, the Flash of Earth 12.

Across the back, once again from the left, is Wally West, the original Kid Flash, who, like Jay Garrick, doesn't really exist in DC's current continuity (or didn't until 2016's DC Rebirth anyhow); Blitzen, the Nazi Flash of Earth 10; probably the black-clad Flash from Frank Miller's Dark Knight Strikes Again (in which case he'd be from the junked Earth 31 - see below for more details); a Flash in a blue jacket?; and finally on the right what looks like the original Reverse Flash, Professor Zoom.

More details for most of these Flashes in the individual Earth entries below.

Panel two references Neal Adams and Dick Giordano's iconic 1971 cover to DC Comics' 100 Page Super Spectacular #6. Across the back row is a tiny bit of Power Girl; Plastic Man; possibly the original Doctor Midnite; Earth 2's Robin (sporting his 1970's 'adult Robin' costume that Morrison wanted Damien Wayne to wear in his and Quitely's Batman and Robin); Blue Beetle Ted Kord; possibly the Red Tornado in his original red and purple costume; the Spectre and, on the far right, someone in white trunks, don't know who though. Down front are Aquaman; Al Pratt, the original Atom; Hawkman; Superman; Wonder Woman (or more accurately, the Earth 2 Wonder Woman in her 1940's bathing suit costume as per the Adams/Giordano original - the Diana Prince of Earth 1 was at that point a super-powerless kung-fu kicking Emma Peel-a-like); Batman; the Ted Knight version of Starman; Black Canary; and Captain Marvel.

Plastic Man, Blue Beetle and Captain Marvel weren't in the original Adams/Giordano piece. They're presumably included here as a nod to their pre-Crisis status as natives of various alternate Earths parallel to the main continuity (X, 4 and S respectively). Of the various Earth icons in front of them, only the square Bizarro Earth is easily identifiable.

Panel three shows Superman and Wonder Woman battling the Anti-Monitor's Shadow Demons from Marv Wolfman and George Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths #12. As detailed in the captions, 1985's Crisis was DC's first and arguably most successful effort at cleaning house as far as their parallel Earths are concerned. Apparently inspired by Wolfman's decree that DC's 'infinite Earths' model was "too confusing" for the casual reader, Crisis' ultimate goal was to compress all of the wonderful insanity of DC's first 50 years into one consistent, tonally-even continuity, ditching too-far-out concepts like the Zoo Crew, Kamandi and Ultraa (all of whom, not coincidentally, feature heavily in The Multiversity) along the way. Going all the way back to his run on Animal Man, Morrison has long been vocally opposed to the editorial mindset that took effect after the Crisis - the Inferior Five are too silly, Ultra the Multi-Alien doesn't exist anymore - while using the details of the mini-series itself in series like Final Crisis and Superman Beyond as a tool to establish his own, more inclusive take on DC's infinite cosmology.

Page 22 - Panel one is a recreation of page 22 of 1994's Zero Hour #1 by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway, minus the time-travelling Waverider and Extant (whose backstory is much too convoluted to go into here - he's basically an evil Hawk from Hawk and Dove). From left to right across the back we have Captain Atom, Green Arrow, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner (inbetween Hal's legs), and a time-lost Batgirl. In the foreground is former Green Lantern Hal Jordan as the villainous Parallax, standing over a stricken and be-mulleted Superman. Hal's holding Wally West's empty Flash suit, though Wally's apparent death in the story was quickly revealed as a fake-out.

Zero Hour was an effort by DC editorial to 'fix' the confusion that had arisen after the uneven implementation of the new post-Crisis status quo - Superman was all-new as of John Byrne's Man of Steel, but Batman and the Justice League carried on with at least some of their historic baggage intact. Was Superman in the Justice League? Sort of, but not 'officially'. Was Wonder Woman? Definitely not; her place being taken by Black Canary (who had her own set of continuity headaches given her powers supposedly came from her being transported from Earth 2 to Earth 1 as a child...). Zero Hour would solve all of this by resetting the timeline once again, with the point of difference this time being a rock solid DC Universe timeline established at the series conclusion (indeed, it was included in Zero Hour #0 - the last issue of the series - on the inside of the fold-out back cover). This would prove to be a mixed blessing to say the least, with Bat-office chief Denny O'Neil leveraging the hard reset to carve out ludicrous edicts like the world at large believing Batman to be nothing but an urban legend, and that pretty much every Batman comic written by Mike W. Barr was now out of continuity (including Year Two and the Son of the Demon graphic novel that inspired Morrison to create Damian Wayne). Interviews at the time suggest that Morrison believed Zero Hour's brief revival of various silly old Silver Age parallel Earth concepts - only for them to be absolutely erased from existence once and for all at the series' conclusion - owed a heavy debt to his concluding arc on Animal Man, though its fair to say in execution Zero Hour is at best a glossy and vacuous Hollywood remake that's not a patch on the arthouse original, and at worst it's aims were in direct opposition to what Morrison was trying to say in Animal Man.

Apparently Mike Carlin, then-DC Universe head-honcho and co-architect of Zero Hour alongside Jurgens and editor K.C. Carlson, *really* hated what Morrison did on Animal Man, seeing it as a direct violation of the consistent tone that editorial were trying to achieve across the line. Maybe it's best to consider Zero Hour - in effect a retread of the last arc of Animal Man as the editors would like it to have been - as a historical precursor to Dan Dido's wrong-headed proclamation of Countdown as "52 done right"?

Ten years after Zero Hour was published, in Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis' 2004 Green Lantern: Rebirth mini-series, it would be revealed that Hal Jordan - Zero Hour's main villain - was being manipulated into madness by an evil yellow space monster (also called Parallax). Parallax was also referred to as the "Fear Thing" back in the Society of Super-Heroes one-shot.

Panel two is a recreation of page 16 of Infinite Crisis: Secret Files and Origins 2006 by Marv Wolfman, Dan Jugens, Jerry Ordway, Cam Smith, Art Thibert and Nelson. After a bit of a lay-off, Infinite Crisis was DC's third attempt to reboot their universe, though when all the shouting and dismemberment was over, it didn't seem to even have as questionably noble a purpose as Zero Hour - continuity-wise, everything was much the same after it had finished bar a few minor details (Batman once again captured his parent's murderer, Power Girl was once again unequivocally from Krypton and definitely not from Atlantis). Series writer Geoff Johns managed to keep interest up in the early issues by cannily aping iconic moments from older, better comics (primarily Crisis on Infinite Earths itself, but also much of Alan Moore's DC Universe milieu), but in the end it wasn't so much a story about anything as a celebration of comics about other comics.

The panel here features angry teenage dickhead Superboy Prime "punching reality" so hard that it corrects a bunch of continuity headaches bothering the editorial teams at the time. The images inside the shards look like they've been Photoshopped in from the Infinite Crisis panel (which, in fairness, looks to have Photoshopped them in from the original source in some instances - Jim Aparo's Death in the Family cover especially) in a slightly different configuration. Clockwise from the top they show the original 1970's Dave Cockrum version of Wildfire from the Legion of Super-Heroes; what looks like a scene from issue #10 of Crisis on Infinite Earths when all of Earth's heroes witness the recreation of the universe after the Anti-Monitor has destroyed the Multiverse; Mark Waid and Barry Kitson's 'Threeboot' Legion of Super-Heroes, first seen in the debut issue of their eponymous 2004 series; three versions of the rocket that brought Superman to Earth from Krypton (from the Golden Age, the John Byrne post-Crisis era, and a third rocket I don't recognize); a back-from-the-dead Jason Todd as he appeared in Judd Winick and Doug Mahnke's 'Under the Hood' arc from 2005; Batman holding Todd-as-Robin's lifeless body from the 1988 'A Death in the Family' arc; Robotman, Beast Boy and Elasti-Girl from John Byrne's continuity-busting 2004 revival of the Doom Patrol; Robotman, Rebis, Mister Nobody and The Quiz from Morrison's Doom Patrol; Robotman, The Chief, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl from the original Arnold Drake/Bruno Premiani Doom Patrol (over two shards); Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy, the original three Legionaries as they appeared in their 1960's Adventure Comics run; Power Girl as she appeared in 1970's All-Star Comics; and finally Crazy Jane and Rebis (again) from Morrison's Doom Patrol (again).

Panel three references page #1 of 52 #52 from 2007, written by Morrison, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka and originally featuring art by Keith Giffen and Mike McKone. 52, a year-long weekly mini-series that followed hot on the heels of Infinite Crisis,was originally conceived (by DC Publisher Paul Levitz) as a Grand Tour of the revitalized post-Infinite Crisis DC universe over a 12 month period where Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman had retreated from the public eye. The huge gulf between what was asked for and what Morrison and pals eventually delivered probably accounts for the rumoured heavy editorial rewriting that later issues in the series suffered from. The finale of 52 would see the creation of a brand new, finite, DC Multiverse, out of the ashes of (though heavily indebted to) the old infinite model.

Featured here are Rip Hunter, Supernova (Booster Gold's ancestor Daniel Carter - he wasn't there in the original page from 52), Booster Gold and the head of the Red Tornado navigating Hunter's Time Sphere through the revitalized Multiverse, newly (re)created by by the monstrous butterfly form of Shazam! villain Mister Mind, a sinister caterpillar from Venus.

Though it's likely the creation of a new DC Multiverse wasn't on the cards when 52 was first planned out, that's what we ended up with, and intentional or not, the germ of what would eventually become Multiversity begins here at the end of 52. The plan was that each of the series' writers would follow 52 with a book set on one of the new parallel Earths - Morrison would take Earth 10, where the Freedom Fighters were still battling a Nazi war-machine that had long since won World War 2, Waid would write a comic set on the Marvel Family's Earth 5, Johns would take the Golden Age and legacy heroes of Earth 2, and Rucka would handle the grim 'n' gritty Watchmen-esque Charlton world of Earth 4. This set-up is even trailed after a fashion in the final issue of 52, where each of those selected worlds is briefly glimpsed. Obviously that didn't pan out though and the task fell to Morrison to write an introduction to the 'new' Multiverse solo - a plan that would take another 6 years to come to fruition, largely due to Frank Quitely's difficulties in completing the art for Pax Americana while suffering from a chronic back injury.

'Hypertime' was a framework developed by Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer in the late 90's - largely ignored by DC management of the time - that essentially forms the backbone of the cosmology he's detailing here in the Guidebook. Under Hypertime, everything in every DC comic ever published 'happened' in the continuity, there's just a bunch of characters that don't remember it because their personal timeline has branched off from the original. The timelines can re-convene at any time though, hence something like the Club of Heroes or 'Robin Dies At Dawn' suddenly popping back into continuity during Morrison's Batman run. The concept would have been fully explained and explored in Morrison's proposed Hypercrisis crossover had it ever appeared. Proposed, rejected and subsequently abandoned when Morrison left DC for Marvel in 1999, the idea was re-submitted upon his return in 2003, but was rejected yet again by publisher Paul Levitz in favour of Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis.

Finally, in panel 4 we see a scene of the Monitors overlooking the Orrery from Final Crisis #1 - adapted from the original by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones - of the Monitors tending to the Orrery itself. The "fictions of Earth 33" would be these here DC comic books we've been reading for the last 75+ years.

You can read a bunch more stuff about Final Crisis here.

Page 23 - Another scene from Final Crisis #1 in panel one, this time its Nix's final farewell to Weeja Dell before his exile to Earth at the end of that issue, though the overlaid captions are talking about the end of Final Crisis, where all of the Monitors bar Nix cease to exist.

Panel two is a recreation of Andy Kubert's cover to 2011's Flashpoint #2, featuring an alternate-present Thomas Wayne as Batman kickstarting Barry Allen's Flash powers with the help of an electric chair. Flashpoint, DC's last (to date) comprehensive line-wide cosmic reset, would lead into DC's rebooted 'New 52' continuity, essentially the status-quo for almost all of their titles from 2011 until 2016's DC Rebirth one-shot.

In panel three, we see the Empty Hand cradling the orrery at the dawn of creation.

Page 24-25 - The Map of the Multiverse. Jim Harbor already covered this one in some depth here, here and here.

Page 26 -The "latest issue of 'Lil Gotham" is the (real) issue #12 of that series by Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs, cover dated May 2014. The "Who's That Knocking At The Door? TRICK OR TREAT!" cover copy has been added onto the cover art for this panel and doesn't appear on the actual comic. Nor, unfortunately, is there a secret Multiverse tie-in within it's pages or any warnings about an approaching cosmic invader, or at least there isn't here on Earth 33...

Morrison used the Rubik's Cube to represent the New Gods Mother Box waaay back in Seven Soldiers, and again during Final Crisis. Is this the Four Stone that Batman is looking for?

"We thought it was just a comic book story. But it was a warning." Again, see Ultra Comics.

Page 27 - They're knocking at the door calls back to the Gentry's introduction in The Multiversity #1

"Tap my suits atomic battery... Here's your krakkin' power" is a reference to the starting the engines of the Batmobile - "Atomic Batteries to Power!" - from the 1966 Batman TV show.

* * * * * * * *

And now, the meat of the Guidebook, a 34 page tour through all the worlds of the (current) DC Multiverse...

Page 28 - Earth 0 - The main line New 52 DC Universe. Pictured are the New 52 Justice League who made their debut in 2011's Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee; from left to right, Cyborg (created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in the New Teen Titans insert included in 1980's DC Comics Presents #26); Aquaman (created by Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger in 1941's More Fun Comics #73); Batman (created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in 1938's Detective Comics #27); Wonder Woman (created by William Moulton Marston in 1941's All Star Comics #8); Superman (created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938's Action Comics #1); The Flash (created by Robert Kanigher, John Broome and Carmine Infantino in 1956's Showcase #4, based on the original Flash created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert in 1940's Flash Comics #1) and Green Lantern (created by John Broome and Gil Kane in 1959's Showcase #22, based on the original Green Lantern created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger in 1940's All-American Comics #16)Prior to The Multiversity, all of DC's main line superhero books since 2011's Justice League #1 (with the exception of the Earth 2 title launched in July 2012) took place on Earth 0.

Page 29 - Earth 1 - DC's standalone graphic novel line, consisting at the time of the Guidebook's release of three volumes of J. Michael Straczynski, Shane Davis and Aidan Syaf's Superman: Earth One, two volumes of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Batman: Earth One, two volumes of Jeff Lemire and Terry Dodson's Teen Titans: Earth One, and the initial volume of Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette's proposed Wonder Woman: Earth One trilogy. There seemed to initially be some confusion over whether the Earth One line should be included as part of the Multiverse - DC Executive Editor Dan Didio stated in a number of interviews that the books were meant to stand apart completely from DC's ongoing continuity and that they don't even share a common continuity between themselves; an impression shared by Jeff Lemire in an interview to promote his Teen Titans book. Cannily, that confusion is addressed in the entry itself - "Time and space are still pliable, and nothing here is certain."Morrison and Paquette's Wonder Woman book wasn't released until April 2016, over a year after the Guidebook was published, making this issue technically the Earth One Wonder Woman's first appearance.

Earth 3 - Evil counterparts to the JLA, the original Crime Syndicate - from left to right Power Ring, Superwoman, Ultraman, Owlman and Johnny Quick - first appeared in 1964's Justice League of America #29 by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. Atomica, a Latino female take on the Atom who's pictured here sitting in Johnny Quick's palm, appeared briefly in DC's 2012's Free Comic Book Day offering, but didn't make her debut proper until 2013's Justice League #18 by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis. Deathstorm, mentioned but not pictured here, is Earth 3's counterpart to Firestorm. He also first appeared in Justice League #18 but seems to be heavily based on a zombie version of Firestorm that appeared in 2010's Brightest Day #7 by Johns and Joe Prado (jeez, Brightest Day... remember that??). After nobly sacrificing themselves in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the original Crime Syndicate briefly resurfaced in the 1990's - bald, bug-eyed and relocated to the antimatter universe of Qward - before being rebooted once again (retaining the anti-matter but losing the bug-eyes) by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely in the 2000 JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel. 2014's line-wide, Geoff Johns-steered Forever Evil event featured a New 52 Syndicate heavily informed by Morrison and Quitely's version. The lead-in to that tale - the destruction of Earth 3 by the Anti-Monitor - is briefly summarised in the extended write-up on DC's Multiverse Map site.Also mentioned in the extended write-up but not seen here, The Sea King and Grid were both introduced in (or in the run up to) Forever Evil. Sea King, an evil counterpart to Aquaman, first appeared in Justice League #18, but apparently died soon after. Grid, a sentient computer virus who took over Cyborg's original robot body, was first mentioned in Justice League #18 and fully appeared in Justice League #23, again by Johns and Reis. Though it did go on to become a member of the Crime Syndicate, Grid is originally from Earth 0, not Earth 3.

Earth 7 - Analogous in part to Marvel Comics' Ultimate line - an early 00's grittier, more 'realistic' interpretation of Marvel's crown jewels spearheaded by Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis - we first saw Earth 7 already decimated by The Gentry in the opening pages of The Multiversity #1. The Crusader, on the far left and Thunderer front and centre, are the Essential Major Comics versions of Earth 8's American Crusader and Wundajin (or Marvel's Captain America and Thor if you'd prefer). Behind Thunderer is "Doc" Future, Earth 7's equivalent to Marvel's Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, alongside his Futire Family teammate Golem (an analogue of The Thing). Next to Doc Future is Walküre, a riff on Neil Gaiman's Angela, currently sister to Marvel's Thor and Loki (though she was originally created by Gaiman for Todd McFarlane's Spawn series in the 90's before he sold the character to Marvel in 2013). Curiously, Earth 7 also seems to be home to a couple of analogues of Dark Horse Comics' more popular properties - Devilfist is pretty obviously a riff on Mike Mignola's Hellboy. Initially I didn't have a clue who Microbot was intended to be - Prado looks to have just drawn a tiny 90's Iron Man, with red and yellow colour scheme intact - but over on Twitter, @DDRFalke suggested he might be a stand-in for Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow's Rusty, the Boy Robot (himself an anologue of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy/Mighty Atom). I think he's probably right. Oh, and "The sole survivor of Earth 4..." is a typo, it should be "The sole survivor of Earth 7...".

In an interesting twist, Morrison takes credit in Supergods (backed up by various historical interview comments from Millar) for the idea of basing Marvel's Ultimate Thor character on conspiracy theorist and one-time self-professed Son of God, David Icke. Essentially, Morrison has the only survivor of this analogue Ultimate world be a version of the one and only Ultimate character that he created.

Page 35 - Earth 10 - A world where World War II was won by the Nazis, Earth X, home to the heroes formerly published by Quality Comics in the 1940's and acquired by DC in 1956 when Quality went out of business, was first introduced to the DC Universe via the annual Justice League/Justice Society team-up in 1973's Justice League of America #107 by Len Wein and Dick Dillin. Re-branded as Earth 10 when the 'new' Multiverse was revealed in the final issue of 52 - echoing Morrison's repositioning of Wolverine's 'Weapon X' designation as 'Weapon 10' during his New X-Men run - this world is the setting for The Multiversity: Mastermen #1.The New Reichsmen were almost certainly created by Grant Morrison either during or soon after 52, and Leatherwing, a Valkyrie Wonder Woman and a blonde Overman (all of whom were visually much closer to their Earth 0 counterparts than the Reichsmen) appeared alongside a Nazi Hawkman and Hawkwoman as part of the JLAxis (alias Die Gerechtigkeitliga - "The Justness League") in Countdown to Adventure #4 by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Fabrizio Fiorentino (most likely working from Morrison's notes) .

Pictured from left to right are Earth 10's Batman analogue Leatherwing; Blitzen, this Earth's female Flash (who appeared on the originally solicited cover for The Multiversity #2 as part of the Cosmic Neighborhood Watch but didn't make the final cut); the Valkyrie Brünhilde (named for a character in Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, she appeared briefly in 52 #52 and again in the aforementioned Countdown to Adventure #4); and the tortured Overman, Earth 10's Superman analogue who first appeared in 52 #52 and played a significant role in Morrison and Doug Mahnke's Final Crisis: Superman Beyond. Mentioned but not seen on the New Reichsmen side is their version of Aquaman, Underwaterman, who was also mentioned but not seen in 2008's Final Crisis: Secret Files. A Nazi villain named Underwaterman appeared in a strip starring the long-forgotten Mouthpiece in 1942 Police Comics #12, published by Quality and also featuring strips starring future Freedom Fighters the Human Bomb, the Phantom Lady and Firebrand, but the idea that they're intended to be the same character seems a bit of a stretch to be honest.

On the Freedom Fighters side are the Human Bomb (created by writer/artist Paul Gustavson in 1941's Police Comics #1), the Phantom Lady (created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger's studio with art by Arthur Peddy, she first appeared in the same 1941 issue of Police Comics); and the Spirit of America, Uncle Sam (created by Will Eisner in 1940's National Comics #1, based on the 'personification of the United States' who's been around since the early 1800's).

Mentioned in the description but not pictured are The Ray (created by Lou Fine in 1940's Smash Comics #14); Black Condor (created by Will Eisner and Lou Fine in 1940's Crack Comics #1); Doll Man (created by Will Eisner in 1939's Feature Comics #27) and Doll Woman (originally Doll Girl, she also debuted in Feature Comics #27, but didn't appear in costume until 1951's Doll Man #37. In pre-Crisis continuity, Doll Girl died on Earth X before the Freedom Fighters short-lived series began in 1976). All of them first appeared in the DC Universe in 1973's Justice League of America #107. Morrison's take on the Earth 10 heroes reframed them as representatives of minority groups persecuted by the Nazis - Black Condor is actually black, The Ray is gay, Phantom Lady is a Romany gyspy etc.

Earth 12 - The setting for a bewildering array of Digital First comics featuring Batman Beyond and his Justice League compatriots, Earth 12 also figured heavily into the plot of the weekly The New 52: Future's End series in 2014-15. Batman Beyond first appeared in the cartoon of the same name in 1999 and was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, who, alongside Alan Burnett, were responsible for a run of highly successful DC Universe cartoons in the 1990's and early 2000's. Though I don't think it's ever explicitly stated (a rights issue maybe?) Earth 12's history is heavily implied to encompass all of the cartoons that fall under the 'DC Animated Universe' umbrella (Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Static Shock, The Zeta Project, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited). Neither the Glen Murukami-created Teen Titans cartoon nor the various DC animated projects that followed the 2006 finale of the Justice League Unlimited are generally regarded as taking place in the same continuity as these series.Though DC published a great deal of Batman Beyond tie-in comics prior to 2010 (and an alternate version of the character featured briefly in 2008's Countdown), Batman Beyond's first 'official' appearance as part of the mainstream DC Universe was in 2010's Batman #700, in a sequence by Grant Morrison and David Finch.

Pictured along the back row from left to right are Green Lantern Kai-Ro (named for Kairo - Hal Jordan's sidekick in the 1960's Filmation Green Lantern cartoon); Mareena, daughter of Aquaman, alias Aquagirl; and Micron, a future version of The Atom. All three were created by Alan Burnett and Paul Dini and first appeared in the 2000 Batman Beyond episode 'The Call (Part One)'.

In the middle row are Warhawk, son of Green Lantern John Stewart and Hawkgirl (who also first appeared in 'The Call'); and Danica Williams, Earth 12's Flash, who first appeared in 2013's Batman Beyond Unlimited #13 by Adam Beechen and Dustin Nguyen.

Down front, from left to right, are Superman, who technically first appeared in DCAU continuity in the 1996 premier episode of Superman: The Animated Series, 'The Last Son of Krypton (Part One)', though his 'Superman Beyond' revision seen here is the work of writer Paul Levitz and artist Renato Guedes and was first seen in 2010's Superman/Batman Annual #4; Terry McGinnis, the titular Batman Beyond; and Barda, one of Jack Kirby's New Gods of New Genesis, who was revealed as a member of this Earth's Justice League in that same Superman/Batman Annual story.

Like Earths 20 and 40, Earth 12 sits opposite a twisted and corrupt version of itself on the Multiverse map; in this case the totalitarian world of the Justice Lords of Earth 50.

Page 44 - Earth 22 - The world of Alex Ross and Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, an Elseworlds vision of the future of the DC Universe first seen in 1996's Kingdom Come #1.

In the front row, from left to right, are Earth 22's counterparts to The Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman (who would later travel to the mainline DC Universe during Geoff Johns interminable 'Thy Kingdom Come' storyline beginning in issue #9 of the 2006 Justice Society of America series and probably still going on whenever you're reading this), Green Lantern (based on the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott, supposedly because Waid and Ross were forbidden by editorial from using the then-dead Hal Jordan and Ross refused to use his replacement Kyle Rayner as he hates the character) and, on the far right, Power Girl.

Second row from left to right are Starman (a time-lost take on the Legion of Super Heroes' Starboy created by Otto Binder and George Papp in 1961's Adventure Comics #282), Deadman, Red Robin (who appeared in Kingdom Come with this name and outfit a good ten years before Tim Drake adopted it in the mainline DCU) and Batman.

Back row we have Atom Smasher (a grown up version of Infinity Inc.'s teenage hero Nuklon, created by Roy Thomas, Jerry Ordway and Mike Machlan in 1983's All-Star Squadron #25, another hero who eventually adopted the costume and name he'd been given in Waid and Ross's series in the regular continuity), Atlas (a one-shot Jack Kirby creation from 1975's First Issue Special #1, he appeared briefly in a one-panel cameo in Kingdom Come before James Robinson re-introduced him as an antagonist for Superman in 2008's Superman #677), and finally, one of Batman's robot drones.

The Kingdom Come Earth first received it's Earth 22 designation and recognition as one of DC's official parallel Earths in the closing pages of the weekly 52 series in 2007.

Assuming that Alex Ross and Jim Kreuger's 2007 Superfriends fanfic tale Justice was also intended to take place in the 'present' of Kingdom Come Earth, this world - like Earth 21 - also has a super-villainous Grant Morrison analogue in Brainiac. You can see some of Ross's heavily Morrison-referenced sketches for the character here.

Page 46 - Earths 24 and 25 - The second and third of seven mystery Earths. Some speculated that these Earths were left blank so as to house the remnants of what would be left of DC's previous timelines in the wake of the truly awful Convergence mini-series. It's fair to say I thought that idea sounded pretty disappointing at the time and I'm really glad it didn't happen, but I'm coming to accept that I'll find it disappointing no matter what they fill these Earths with seeing as how Morrison won't be the one deciding.

Earth 26 - The home of Captain Carrot and his funny animal compadres, first seen in a special preview insert in New Teen Titans #16 in 1982 by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw!, and then in their own series, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!, which ran for 20 issues through to the end of 1983. Earth 26 (also known as Earth C pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths), was apparently destroyed at the end of the 2008 mini-series Captain Carrot and the Final Ark by Bill Morrison, Scott Shaw and Phil Winslade, though as we learn here it's bounced back into ship-shape thanks to cartoon physics, with a planet-sized band-aid to mark its previous trauma (though the band-aid seems to have been a late addition - it's not on the original Channel 52 map).

The heroes of Earth 26 are, from left to right, Fastback, a turtle with super-speed powers; American Eagle, created by Geoff Johns and Scott Shaw in 2006's Teen Titans v3 #30; Rubberduck, the Malleable Mallard; Alley-Kat-Abra, who was exposed as a mouse-murderer in Johns' Teen Titans story (it turned out to be her evil twin, Dark Alley); Pig Iron, the superheroic alter-ego of Peter Porkchops, one of DC's Golden Age funny animal characters who first appeared in 1947's Leading Comics #23; Yankee Poodle, whose look, according to the DC Wikia at least, inspired Geoff Johns' design for Stargirl's costume; Little Cheese, a size-changing mouse who first appeared in a strip by Scott Shaw in 1983's Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! #12 and was the unfortunate victim in the Alley-Kat-Abra mouse murder debacle; and finally the good Captain himself, alias Rodney (originally Roger) Rabbit. All of the Zoo Crew except American Eagle and Little Cheese first appeared in the preview strip in New Teen Titans #16 by Thomas and Shaw.

Page 47 - Earths 27 and 28 - The fourth and fifth of seven mystery Earths. On the map included with the 'Director's Cut' version of Pax Americana (and on the board cover map beneath the dust jacket of the hardcover), there's a very faint electron ring around Earth 28. There's no electron ring present on any of the maps distributed prior to the special edition of Pax, which came out weeks after the series proper had finished.

Page 49 - Earth 31 - Originally seen in Frank Miller's 1986 Dark Knight Returns, Earth 31 is the libertarian fascist-porno setting for much of Miller's DC output, from All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder to...

Oh, hang on a minute. Looks like Miller's DKR world (probably with art by frequent Frank the Tank collaborator Klaus Janson, who was prominently featured in the solicit for this issue but doesn't feature in it) got pulled at the last minute. Maybe something to do with DC getting Miller back on board for Dark Knight III? Frank's previous comments on the shared continuity of super hero universes - "Continuity is the hobgoblin of small minds" - would suggest he's probably not much of a fan of this sort of endeavour, though Keith Champagne did manage to sneakily include Dark Knight Returns Superman in Countdown: Arena back in 2007. The world icon for Earth 31 (which was indeed Dark Knight Returns Earth in Arena, though only ever "unofficially" - it wasn't featured in the Countdown: Arena scorecard) sure looks like it's covered in 'Frank Miller-style scratchy lines' that Morrison mentioned back when the map was unveiled at Comic Con too. But we'll have no more of that now. You'll just have to think of something else...

Pirates!

Captain Leatherwing and his swarthy compatriots first appeared in 1994's Detective Comics Annual #7 by Chuck Dixon and Enrique Alcatena. part of that year's Elseworlds-themed Annual event. Initially I thought this apparently minor Elseworld might have gotten the nod to replace DKR over something more substantial by virtue of Chuck Dixon's herculean efforts during Morrison's DC One Million event in 1998. Dixon wrote 4 of the tie-ins - Detective Comics, Nightwing, Robin and Green Arrow - all of which appeared in the same month. Dixon's long tenure at DC in the 90's also placed him high in the Premier League of most prolific scripters at the company - at one point only Robert Kanigher had more scripted pages for DC to his name. Consequently his Batman efforts are referenced often during Morrison's run, most obviously when the League of Assassins pop up in the second volume of Batman Incorporated - probably 75% of the assassins featured are Dixon creations or co-creations.

However, what I'd failed to take into account was artist Alcatena, who not only co-created (with Dixon) Argentinian heroes Cimarron and the Super Malon and re-introduced the Gaucho in 2000's Flash Annual #13 (all of whom featured in Morrison's Batman Incorporated), but also drew four of Morrison's Starblazer digest strips for DC Thompson way back in the early 1980's - the first of Morrison's pro-work that he didn't draw himself. From Alcatena's website -

Though I was allowed great artistic freedom, the drawback was that the stories were published without credits, which was quite common in olden days. Thus it was that it was only many years afterwards that I learnt that I had worked with great writers like Mike Chinn, Martin Gately and a very young Grant Morrison before he became world-famous (his run on Doom Patrol and the impressive Invisibles remain some of my all-time favourites), and others who unfortunately I don’t recall. I have a special attachment for the work I did for Thomson, as it enabled me to develop as a fantasy illustrator.

I think I'd much prefer to regard Captain Leatherwing's inclusion as a hat-tip in kind to Alcatena rather than as a desperate editorial scramble to replace Earth Miller when the powers that be decided it was off-limits.

Capitana Felina (alias Contessa Maria Conseula Esperanza Fortuna Domingo DeSantis, this Earth's version of Catwoman) and Captain Leatherwing are front and centre and the only Earth 31 residents shown here who appeared in the original Leatherwing story (alongside Robin Redblade, who's mentioned but doesn't appear here - he does feature on Aaron Kuder's Earth 31 variant cover for Mastermen though in a homage to George Perez's classic 1980 New Teen Titans #1 cover).

Though Dixon and Alcatena's Leatherwing tale is obviously the main inspiration here, I think the post-Apocalyptic tone of the description is meant to suggest the far-future 'Dead Earth' setting first seen in a couple of the 1994 Elseworlds annuals and later expanded upon in the 'Legends of the Dead Earth' series that ran across all of the DC annuals in 1996. Also, Earth 31's Superman at far left looks to be a similar character as the one seen in Action Comics Annual #6 by John Byrne, an Elseworlds tale set during the American Revolutionary War with Superman on the side of the British.

The Green Lantern analogue next to Superman looks familiar but I can't quite place him. He could be inspired by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy's 2001 Elseworlds mini, Green Lantern: Dragon Lord, where a monk in 7th century feudal China gains the power of the Green Lantern, but really there's very little visually in common between the two - he kind of has the young Buddhist monk look of Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Next to Green Lantern is a steampunk pirate take on Cyborg, who I'm pretty sure is a new character. He also appears on Kuder's Mastermen cover alongside Robin Redblade. Similarly, I don't think that viking Aquaman next to him has appeared anywhere prior to this either, which is surprising as potentially that's a great take on the character (the Viking King anyone?). Finally, pirate Wonder Woman on the far right also looks familiar, but yet again I couldn't tell you where from. If by some cruel quirk of fate anyone out there has actually read all of the 1994 Elseworlds annuals or all (any?) of 'Legends of the Dead Earth' and some of these guys are from there, please do let me know.

Update: In a raft of interviews conducted to mark the release of the Multiversity hardcover, Grant Morrison confirmed that the change in setting for Earth 31 was indeed a last minute editorial decision made at Frank Miller's request.

Page 50 - Earth 33 - "Our" Earth, originally called Earth Prime in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe, was first seen inside the pages of a DC Comic in 1968's The Flash #179 by Cary Bates and Ross Andru. Numerous DC heroes would pay a visit over the years, often interacting with real-life DC staffers, most often editor Julius Schwartz. In an interview given about Seven Soldiers, Morrison named the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp as the various DC writers and artists like Schwartz who'd appeared as characters within the comics themselves (including himself, thanks to his star-turn in the last issue of Animal Man). Earth Prime got its own super-hero, Ultraa, in 1978's Justice League of America #153 by Gerry Conway and George Tuska, though the Justice League eventually unilaterally decided that we 'weren't ready' for our own super-folks and whisked Ultraa away to imprison him back on Earth-1. The powers-that-be decided that Earth Prime, like many of DC's more outre concepts from the Golden and Silver Ages, was a step too far for the Post-Crisis DC Comics Aren't Just For Kids Universe and erased Earth Prime from the continuity. Ultraa himself suffered a particularly ignominious fate, killed off in the biography section of his Who's Who entry. He wasn't seen again until Kevin Dooley and Greg LaRocque rebooted him as an alien beefcake love-rival for Superman in the pages of 1993's Justice League Quarterly #13. Both versions appear in the Multiversity Ultra Comics one-shot.

Geoff Johns would later bring back an obscure one-shot Earth Prime version of Superboy - who first appeared in 'The Last Earth Prime Story' by Eliot S. Maggin and Curt Swan from 1985's DC Comics Presents #87 and featured briefly in the back end of Crisis on Infinite Earths itself - in 2005's line-wide Infinite Crisis crossover. Superboy Prime (or Superman Prime as he was swiftly renamed following complications over the ownership of Superboy arising from a lawsuit against DC by Jerry Seigel's family) was reframed as an entitled brat who wanted to remake the DC Universe exactly how he thought it should be and damn the consquences - a weak-sauce satire based on Johns' unflattering perception of certain elements of comics fandom. The character rapidly escalated from whiny annoyance to universe-obliterating maniac over the next year or so, destroying the Earth 15 universe in the pages of Countdown to Final Crisis (a plot point almost unbelievably referenced as still in-canon in this issue's entry for that Earth) before returning in various Johns' comics over the next few years, including 2008's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds and Blackest Night. He was finally imprisoned within the Source Wall in 2011's Teen Titans v3 #100 by J.T. Krul and Nicola Scott, released the month before DC's New 52 relaunch.

Earth 33 is the setting for The Multiversity: Ultra Comics one-shot, which I'll definitely (maybe) get to eventually...

It looks like the icon for this Earth might be a photograph, which is only fitting I suppose.

Earth 35 - Like Earth 34, Earth 35 is explicitly based on characters owned by another comic company (in this case Rob Liefeld's, whatever it's called this week) that themselves drew heavily for inspiration on their DC Universe counterparts. In this case it's the universe of Image Comics' Supreme; or very specifically the Silver Age Superman pastiche comics of Alan Moore's run on the title from 1996 to 1998.

Moore's Supreme was itself a very self-reflexive, 'meta' work so the convoluted description that marks this universe out as significantly different amongst the others seems fitting.

The Justice League analogue in Moore's comics were the Allied Supermen of America; here they become the Super-Americans. From left to right they are Starcop, this universe's version of the Martian Manhunter, who (I think) is represented in Moore's run by a guy called Spacehunter; Mercury-Man, this Earth's Flash and the equivalent to Supreme's original Doc Rocket; Miss X, who look like she might be analogous to the Allied Supermen's Alley Cat; Morphin' Man, who I think corresponds to Polyman, a Plastic Man-type hero; Majesty - Queen of Venus, who looks pretty much exactly like Supreme's half-Amazon half-demon princess Glory; and Olympian, who I think is supposed to correspond to Shaft from Youngblood (himself a thinly disguised version of DC's Speedy) - weirdly if he *is* supposed to be Shaft then that means there are two separate stand-ins for this sub-par Rob Liefeld character on two separate Earths, as there's another one on Earth 41.

Next to Olympian is Supremo/Supreme himself, who made his first very brief appearance as part of the Multiversal Superman Army in the last issue of Final Crisis, back in 2008. Finally, next to him is The Owl, who manages to be both another character from Pasko and Broderick's 'If Bruce Wayne Had Not Become the Batman' strip from Batman #256 (like Stingray from Earth 34), *and* a pretty on the nose stand in for Moore's own Batman analogue from his Supreme run, Professor Night. Bravo sir.

Rob Liefeld contends that Moore's ABC Comics line (Tom Strong, Promethea, Top Ten and the associated one-shots and anthologies) drew heavily on script materials originally intended for the Supreme-verse titles before Moore left Liefeld's employ in 1999. Maybe that goes some way to explaining why ABC (which is owned outright by DC Comics thanks to their 1999 buy-out of Wildstorm) doesn't appear here as part of the Multiverse, though given the strained (to say the least) relationship between Moore and Morrison there may well be other reasons involved...

Supreme, Glory and Shaft were created by Rob Liefeld. The rest of the Allied Supermen of America were created by Alan Moore and artist Joe Bennett. The Earth 35 versions were all 'created' by Grant Morrison, Camunc Ii "& Friend" (?) and make their first (and likely last for the most part) appearance here.

Note the Liefeld-esque speed-lines on the Earth 35 icon. I had a look to see if this drawing of the Earth was from an actual Liefeld comic (like the Wally Wood Earth 39 icon is), without any success. Turns out a Rob Liefeld drawing with an actual background (as opposed to a solid block colour or a bit of Photoshop) is a rare beast indeed...

Page 52 - Earth 36 - The last of three "analogues of DC analogues" worlds in a row, Earth 36's Justice 9 owe a heavy debt to Big Bang Comics' Justice League-inspired team The Round Table of America. The Big Bang universe, an outlet for Gary Carlson, Chris Ecker and friends' tales of superfolk inspired by superhero comics of the Golden and Silver Ages, debuted as a mini-series from Caliber Comics in 1994 before moving to Image (where it's 35 issue run featured a crossover with Alan Moore and friends' 1963 universe) and finally to it's own self-published imprint in the 2010's. I'm pretty sure I've read a Morrison pull-quote for Big Bang Comics though I can't find any trace of it now, maybe on one of their trades? Whatever, it's abundantly clear that Big Bang were the inspiration here - the artist, Evan 'Doc' Shaner mentioned on Tumblr when the issue was released that the notes he was given from Morrison confirmed as much. I haven't seen that anyone's solicited an opinion from Gary Carlson on Morrison's hat-tip here, though I'd imagine that, like Kurt Busiek and Savage Dragon creator Erik Larson, he'd be understandably much happier with them remaining a one-panel gag than if they were spun out into their own book.From left to right we have Green Lantern analogue Flashlight, a nod to Big Bang's The Beacon (though obviously based on Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, rather than The Beacon's more Golden Age inspired look); Cyberion, a (female?) version of Cyborg referencing Big Bang's She-Borg; War-Woman, this Earth's Wonder Woman equivalent and counterpart to Big Bang's Venus; Mer-Man, the Aquaman of Earth 36, a take on Big Bang's The Human Sub (later The Atomic Sub); front and centre is Optiman, who also appeared in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond as part of the Multiversal Superman Army, and was mentioned (alongside Flashlight, Red Racer and the Iron Knight) in Morrison and Gene Ha's Action Comics #9 where he was apparently killed by Superdoomsday, as referenced here; next to Optiman at the top is Blackbird, a version of Big Bang's Bluebird, who herself is a version of Black Canary; beneath her is The Iron Knight who, like Earth 35's The Owl, is both a version of Big Bang's Knight Watchman and a callback to Pasko/Broderick's 'If Bruce Wayne Had Not Become the Batman' from Batman #256; next to Blackbird is Bow Boy, a nod to Big Bang's Kid Galahad, sidekick to the Knight Watchman and thinly-veiled Robin pastiche; and finally, Red Racer, inspired by The Flash via Big Bang's The Blitz.

The icon for Earth 36 recalls the logo of now-defunct airline Pan-Am, perhaps intended to invoke the simpler, more innocent times when Pan Am ruled the skies.

Earth 37 - Or Earth-Howard Chaykin as it's known in our house, Earth 37 brings together a number of out-of-continuity and Elseworlds projects that writer/artist Chaykin has been involved in over the years and dumps them all on the same earth. From left to right we have Robin, Batgirl and a female version of the Joker from Chaykin and artist Dan Brerton's 1997 Thrillkiller mini-series (and it's 1998 one-shot sequel, Thrillkiller '62). Next to the Joker is Chaykin's take on Silver Age DC space hero Star Hawkins, originally created by John Broome and Mike Sekowsky in 1960's Strange Adventures #114, who featured in the 1990 Elseworlds mini-series Twilight (which features some absolutely jaw-dropping stuff from veteran artist Jose Luis Garcia Lopez and is *well* worth picking up if you have the means). Somewhat typically for Chaykin, the previously pretty vanilla Hawkins is a real asshole in Twilight, though he pales in comparison to Hard-Battlin' Howard's space-Hitler characterization of Tommy Tommorow. Created by Jack Schiff, George Kashdan, Bernie Breslauer, Virgil Finlay, and Howard Sherman way back in 1947's Real Fact Comics #5, Tommy was a member of interplanetary police force The Planeteers and a DC staple via features in Real Fact, Action Comics, World's Finest and Showcase through to 1963. He didn't appear much after that - too glib for the social realism of 70's and 80's comic books - though an unusual retcon caused by Crisis on Inifinte Earths revealed Tommy as the 'real' version of Kamandi, rescued from the Command D bunker by Horatio Tomorrow, now his adopted father. Kamandi was summarily erased from post-Crisis DC continuity, a headache that nobody had to think about anymore thanks to DC's now "consistent" future timeline. Ridiculous. He disappeared again for a few years before Chaykin cast him as the villain in Twilight - a series that brought together all of DC's disparate but generally fairly upbeat 50's and 60's sci-fi series into one miserable, dystopian, highly enjoyable whole.

Finally on the far right we have 61st century outlaw Ironwolf, created by Chaykin in DC's Weird Worlds anthlogy series in 1972. Denny O'Neil scipted (over Chaykin's plots) and studio mate Walt Simonson lettered three Ironwolf tales for Weird Worlds, all of which were reprinted in a 1987 one-shot. Chaykin wrapped the story up with artists Mike Mignola and P. Craig Russell in the 1992 graphic novel Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution, and I don't think (?) Ironwolf has appeared since.

I think "underground Mars base colonies of the 80's" is a sly reference to Chaykin's 1980's creator-owned series American Flagg!, in which the American and Russian governments left the Earth and set up shop on Mars to rule from afar. Not sure what - if anything - the "Europa bases of the 90's" is in reference to though. Maybe Chaykin's 1996 series for DC's Helix imprint Cyberella? Seems unlikely, but one of the villainous corporations in it is called KorperschatEuropa... yeah, reaching a bit there I think. Anyone have any other ideas?