With a story that runs across five hours of television in December 2019 and January 2020,
Crisis on Infinite Earths is set to include not just all of the current DC shows, but
also a roster of heroes drawn from a long history of television.
It's exciting stuff, but it raises a question: just how did we get here?
The CW's version of Crisis on Infinite Earths is notable for being the first event of its
kind to take place on television, but the comic book history that leads up to it starts
all the way back in 1961, or, depending on how you look at it, maybe even before then.
Back in the '40s, after Superman was introduced to the public and proved to be wildly popular
and extremely profitable for its publishers, he inspired a whole wave of brand-new superhero
comics.
Eventually, the company that would become DC Comics decided to put a few of them in
the same book, creating the Justice Society of America and the first shared universe in
comics.
By the late '40s and early '50s, however, superheroes fell out of popularity.
Only the most consistently successful heroes stuck around, while the rest, like the original
Golden Age versions of the Flash and Green Lantern, were canceled and seemingly condemned
to obscurity.
But then, a decade later, DC decided to dust off a few of those pulpy concepts and reboot
them in a slightly more sci-fi direction, kicking off the Silver Age of Comics with
an all-new, mostly different version of the Flash.
Right from the start, though, there was something weird: in that first story, Barry Allen was
inspired to take the name "The Flash" because he'd read comics about Jay Garrick, the Golden
Age Flash.
With that, DC began to flirt with the idea of a multiverse, where different versions
of their characters existed in different realities.
This all came together in 1961's famous "The Flash of Two Worlds," where Barry and Jay
met up for a single adventure.
It turned out that this was just the beginning.
By 1964, DC had a multiverse centered on Earth-One, the somewhat arrogantly named primary DC universe
that featured the ongoing adventures of the present-day heroes.
Meanwhile, the Golden Age versions politely allowed themselves to be called Earth-Two
despite the fact that they came first.
Clearly, there was only one thing left to do: a crossover!
Justice League of America #21 and 22 featured "Crisis on Earth-One" and "Crisis on Earth-Two,"
in which the Justice League teamed up with their Golden Age counterparts in the Justice
Society to battle for the fate of two universes.
This kicked off two important DC traditions.
First was the idea of an annual JLA/JSA crossover, which continued for the next 20 years.
The second was that almost all of these crossovers, which spread out throughout the DC Multiverse,
were called a "Crisis," making that the shorthand word for a threat that went beyond the scale
of a single universe.
Eventually, though, things spiraled to the point of being as big as they possibly could.
In 1985, DC made a very bold promise for their new series.
"Worlds will live.
Worlds will die.
And the universe will never be the same."
For the most part, they delivered with a year-long event called Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The company was restructuring their entire multiverse into a single streamlined whole,
but rather than just rebooting all the comics, they made it part of a story.
A villain called the Anti-Monitor (who presumably did not monitor things) was wiping out universes,
and the ones that remained coalesced into a single unified timeline.
In the process, major characters like the Flash and Supergirl were killed off with as
much permanence as there can be in superhero comics, which is to say, they were dead for
about 20 years before they inevitably came back.
That wasn't quite the end, though.
The "Crisis" brand was so strong that DC kept it around even after they bailed on the multiverse.
Another event devoted to fixing up the complicated DCU timeline was called Zero Hour: Crisis
in Time, and there was a modern-day JLA/JSA team-up against the fifth dimension called
"Crisis Times Five."
In 2006, Infinite Crisis, as its name implies, came along to reverse all the changes and
reintroduce the multiverse.
The branding loomed large in the minds of fans as the biggest worlds-shattering event
in DC's long history.
One of the things that makes the TV version of Crisis on Infinite Earths so interesting
is that it's following in the same tradition as its comic book counterpart.
Once Arrow's surprising success led to a series of spinoffs and other shows debuted in their
own universes trying to cash in on the massive popularity of superheroes these days, seeing
them team up became inevitable.
Much like it had in the comics, the idea of an annual crossover quickly became a tradition
for the Arrowverse.
It started with Ollie Queen teaming up with the Flash for a couple of story arcs that
ran through their respective shows in 2014…
"I get it, Barry, I get it.
You're fast."
….and then a backdoor pilot for Legends of Tomorrow the following year.
Things really started to pick up in 2016.
That March saw the Supergirl episode "Worlds Finest," which saw the Flash vibrating his
way to Supergirl's universe, now called Earth-38.
That then led to a full-on three-part Arrowverse/Supergirl crossover called "Invasion!" and then, just
to cap things off, March 2017 saw "Duet," an episode of Flash where Supergirl showed
up for a singing, dancing team-up that took advantage of the stars' musical theater backgrounds
with a few catchy tunes.
"We're not singing for you!"
"No!"
"...anymore…"
"Anymore."
"...I mean."
It's worth noting that both "Worlds Finest" and "Invasion" were both named after crossover
comics: the long-running Superman/Batman team-up title and a 1988 event in which three alien
races invaded Earth at the same time, respectively.
That tradition was continued with "Crisis on Earth-X," which, like the comic it was
named for, featured the introduction of a world ruled by Nazis, complete with an evil
Supergirl.
It turned out that Earth-X was a secret fifty-third Earth that nobody ever talked about because
they all agreed it was terrible.
In December of 2018, the Arrowverse launched "Elseworlds," a crossover that ran through
Green Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl, and to call it ambitious is underselling things quite
a bit.
For one thing, it involved twisting the setup of the previous crossovers by also throwing
in a body-swap between the Flash and Arrow, which gave us a truly delightful moment of
Grant Gustin growling Oliver Queen's catchphrase at a robot.
"AMAZO, YOU HAVE FAILED THIS CITY."
More importantly, "Elseworlds" served as the Arrowverse's introduction to Batwoman.
In the comics, the modern Batwoman, Kate Kane, had been introduced in 2006 before taking
over Detective Comics for a year.
As a lesbian, she was DC's most high-profile queer character, with a backstory that saw
her being dismissed from the Army while at West Point under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
policy.
She's also Bruce Wayne's cousin, and on the show, Batman's absence from Gotham City has
inspired her to take on a heroic identity of her own.
Her appearance in the "Elseworlds" crossover, where she was portrayed by Ruby Rose, paved
the way for Batwoman to join the CW's lineup.
The thing is, "Elseworlds" was not the self-contained crossover that "Crisis on Earth-X" was.
The specific body swap story was wrapped up, but the crossover also spent a lot of time
with the Monitor, the Anti-Monitor, and the Psycho Pirate, all of whom were key characters
in the comic book version of Crisis on Infinite Earths, setting up the next big crossover
a year in advance.
They even have the other major character introduced in the original Crisis, Harbinger, who was
actually brought to TV way back in Arrow's first season as Lyla Michaels, head of Argus
and wife of John Diggle.
Right now, the CW shows have a huge amount of characters and parallel worlds to play
with when they're setting up a gigantic multiversal crossover.
There's the Arrowverse, of course, anchored by Green Arrow and the Flash, with heroes
like Vibe, Mr. Terrific, Black Canary, Killer Frost, and even more obscure characters like
gun-toting weirdo Wild Dog showing up in their supporting casts.
There's also Legends of Tomorrow, with Firestorm, the Atom, White Canary, Vixen, and more.
Plus, they folded in John Constantine, bringing actor Matt Ryan back for the role after the
cancellation of Constantine, and brought in Western hero Jonah Hex in an episode where
a twelve foot-tall Care Bear fought a demon.
And, of course, we have Batwoman.
Outside of that specific universe, though, the CW also has Supergirl and the heroes of
Earth-38, including Kara Danvers, J'onn J'onnz (the Martian Manhunter), the Guardian (the
masked heroic identity of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen), the Legion of Super-Heroes (a team
from the 31st century with a sprawling roster all its own) and, you know, Superman.
And the network also airs Black Lightning, which features the title character, along
with his daughters Jennifer and Anissa, the heroines known as Thunder and Lightning, and
Grace Choi, who was a member of the Outsiders alongside Thunder in the comics.
But wait!
There's more!
Those are just the shows going on now.
Before the current run of successful shows, the CW and its predecessors also ran Smallville,
which started as a teen drama focused on a younger Clark Kent but ran for ten years and
wound up including everyone from Hawkman to Zatanna.
In 2002, there was the short-lived Birds of Prey, another take on a female-focused, Batman-free
Gotham City about Batman and Catwoman's daughter, the Huntress, plus Oracle, and Black Canary.
Those are all in play for TV's Crisis on Infinite Earths...and that's just the heroes.
The stage is set for Crisis on Infinite Earths to hit the airwaves in December, and from
everything we know so far, it's going to be big.
"One where the Nazis won World War II, one where Kennedy was never assassinated…"
"Wait, one where all of us are evil?"
"Been there, it sucks."
We already know that characters from Smallville are going to be showing up, with Tom Welling
and Erica Durance reprising their roles as that universe's Clark Kent and Lois Lane.
Perhaps surprisingly, Birds of Prey is back in the mix, too, with Ashley Scott stepping
back in the role of Helena Kyle, the Huntress, 17 years after Birds of Prey was canceled.
There's even more stunt casting, too.
Kevin Conroy, who has been the voice of Batman in various video games and animated projects
since he took on the career-defining role for Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, will
be playing a live-action Bruce Wayne for the first time.
The details have yet to be released by the CW, but he definitely looks like he'll be
playing the older version of Bruce that he voiced on Batman Beyond.
Even more intriguing?
Burt Ward, who played Robin on the 1966 Batman television show alongside the late Adam West,
has also been cast in an unannounced role.
Also, if Tyler Hoechlin and Tom Welling weren't enough Supermen for you, Crisis on Infinite
Earths also marks Brandon Routh's return to playing the Man of Steel.
The weird thing here is that while he starred in 2006's Superman Returns, Routh already
has a role in the Arrowverse as Ray Palmer, better known as the Atom.
Seeing him get another shot as an older Superman with a costume inspired by Mark Waid and Alex
Ross's Kingdom Come storyline is intriguing.
It's not just that Routh will presumably be pulling double duty, but because whatever
the big problem is in Crisis, it's going to need at least three Supermen to solve it.
Even more than the destruction of the DC multiverse, the Crisis on Infinite Earths comic book is
remembered for featuring the deaths of Supergirl and the Flash.
That might seem pretty ominous, considering that the TV version is going to prominently
feature both of those characters, but in reality, they're probably the two major characters
who have the least to worry about.
They are, after all, the stars of their respective shows, which from all indications are both
going strong into the indefinite future.
With the CW announcing that Arrow's eighth season will be its last, Oliver Queen, on
the other hand, might not be so safe.
Even there, though, it seems unlikely.
There are still two more episodes of Arrow scheduled to air after Crisis on Infinite
Earths ends, and while one wrap-up episode about Ollie's pals dealing with his death
would be understandable, two would be pushing it.
That doesn't mean they won't pull it off, though, stranger things have happened.
Once you've done an interdimensional team-up musical, nothing's out of the question.
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