New History of the DC Universe #1 review

Posted on by martingray1

In 1986, over two issues, Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Karl Kesel and Tom Ziuko told us the new history of the DC Universe. Readers had questions after the Crisis on Infinite Earths shmooshed together five parallel DC Earths. In 2025 we’re getting four issues and we’re not coming out of a Crisis event. We’re coming out of about a dozen, spread over the past four decades. The DC cosmology has been twisted again and again, so while there’s no special reason for Mark Waid, Todd Nauck, Jerry Ordway, John Kalisz, Matt Herms and Todd Klein to bring us their update right now, right now is as good a time as any.

And New History of the DC Universe #1 certainly gave me a good time. Instead of cosmic PA and enthusiastic 30th Century shopper Harbinger recording the then-new history of the reformed DC Universe, here we have Silver Age Flash Barry Allen. And it’s rather a good fit.

OK, so there’s Ma Hunkle’s pan, the Demons Three’s jar, wheel and bell, two Legion flight rings…

And so it begins. Over the next 29 pages hero histories from the time before time to the explosion of planet Krypton are laid out. It’s all-encompassing in terms of scope, which is a good and bad thing. Good in that such obscure fan favourites as Anthro and Arion are in there, less good in that such bad turns as Perpetua make the cut.

There aren’t many surprises – it’s the nature of the beast – but there are some, such as the presence of this wee tyke on the current DC Earth.

Aren’t the Milestone characters on their own world in the post-Infinite Crisis DC continuity?

And then there’s a previously unheard of main Earth group of heroes.

Tell me more.

Less surprising, but equally nice to see, is this group, from one of my favourite New 52 books.

I don’t think they’ve been mentioned since 2023, so it’s good to see the Demon Knights are still available for use.

This intense moment feels new to me.

Atlantis sunk by a bondage Eclipso… and wasn’t the Great Deluge the biblical Flood?

Also intriguing is this bit.

Didn’t FDR suggest the organising of an All-Star Squadron to the already former JSA? Mark Waid doesn’t make mistakes, so is it too much to hope DC has plans for new A-SS stories? That might also explain the return to continuity, a page later, of Queen Hippolyta as the Golden Age Wonder Woman… plans!

This scene made me giggle.

Rubber masks! Even I could be that proficient at ‘disguise skills’.

Waid’s script manages to get all the information across without being completely dry – a project such as this doesn’t require bags of personality in the narration. Heck, he has my admiration for getting things straight, and sewing things together. Helping Waid with the research, we have credited Benjamin Le Clear and Dave Wielgosz, and John Wells gets a special thanks, so well done to all these gentlemen.

Apart from Todd Nauck returning to the Lost Children and Jerry Ordway the JSA, the art duties seem to be split pretty randomly. I’m a big fan of both artists, though, so it’s all good. Every page is a treat, with standouts including Nauck’s page of cowboys (including Ke-Woh-No-Tay, his traditional cover billing being not quite acceptable these days) and Ordway’s Injustice Society. And colourists Matt Herms and John Kalisz do a fine job lighting the millennia.

The slight different in format between this and the original History is that the dull typesetting is replaced by the more attractive lettering of Todd Klein. He does his usual sterling job, ensuring every character is bolded up on first mention… given the sheer number of people, even tiny logos would have been too much to hope for.

The only page I really don’t like looks to be bringing a particularly horrible plot point from the Doomsday Clock series into DC canon. Perhaps, though, Waid is exhuming it to debunk the Superman Theory once and for all.

Backing up the story we get 14 pages of notes written by Wielgosz, with pics culled from down the years, giving us references for info in the main story.

I love this kind of thing!

And a tip of the hat to book designers Megen Bellersen, Louis Prandi and Curtis King Jr – I’m guessing the latter, DC’s art director, is behind the attractive DC bullet-style logo.

Chris Samnee’s double cover is, you will notice, gorgeous – definite Darwyn Cooke vibes, there.

This is a comic to savour, not review, and I ate it up. If you’re reading this, I’m probably safe in assuming you’ll be picking this comic up – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

31 thoughts on “New History of the DC Universe #1 review”

  2. On page 33 of DC Special 29 (The Untold Origin of the JSA, 1977), FDR did indeed suggest that the various mystery men who banded together to thwart a Nazi invasion of Washington DC (and an attempt to assassinate the President) should remain together as a team, saying they would make “a snappy army regiment”…

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    1. Thank you, I really must reread that story! Did you ever see the cover for the UK black and white reprint in DC The Superheroes Monthly? I shall see if I can tweet it or whatever.

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  3. This was a good, meaty read! Lots of characters and stories to explore and Waid does a pretty seamless job of weaving together any number of various continuities into what seems like a coherent timeline. When he gets to the point that the Legion needs to be discussed, I’ll be curious to see what he does with all the various reboots that have been floating around out there. I’d like to see them all acknowledged and valued in some way.

    In any case, this book is a cool snapshot of where DC is at this moment. It would be nice to think that DC creators will make use of this resource as they tell their tales going forward, but honestly… that’s not that big a deal to me.

    Any kind of “history” book really just sets the stage and puts the current universe into context and then folks tend to move on and start mucking about with things again. Which is the nature of the beast. I don’t need everything to be completely spelled out or fit into a particular point of time on the timeline.

    Both Ordway and Nauk work well together. I wasn’t sure how well their styles would mesh, but I liked the finished product. It was easy to see which artist did which page, but it didn’t interrupt the flow of the story. Nauk in particular, impressed me. I often find his work to be cartoony (which I love) but in this book some of that cartooniness was toned down. Some of his scenes were reminiscent of Perez in the way he depicted characters (particularly scenes of the Amazons and Wonder Woman).

    I think my favourite page is the opening splash page. Barry looks completely at home and I love that he’s surrounded by a collection of DC artifacts. It’s going to be fun to go back and try to figure out what they all are. The Legion flight rings floating in a couple of jars were what immediately caught my eye, but there were so many little Easter eggs on that page that I had fun identifying.

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    1. Oh, I do love a page of Easter eggs, even more than I love a whiteboard.

      So, what do we have – Ralph’s gingold, Captain Cold’s mask, Skeets, the Guardian’s shield, LSH flight rings, Ollie’s bow, Jack O’Lantern’s lantern, Superman’s cape, Starman’s gravity rod, the Demons Three’s jar, wheel and bell, Blue Devil’s trident, Ma Hunkle’s helmet, some very spiky batarangs…

      The Book of Destiny? Is that Iziya’s staff with the globe on top? What’s the blue gun on the wall? The little key? The paraffin lamp? Mad Hatter’s Hat? Or is it the Shade’s? Or the Gentleman Ghost’s?

      As Penelope Pitstop would say… ‘HYALP!’

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      1. I think you’re correct in identifying Izaya’s staff. I wonder if the “blue gun” is Morpheus’ helmet thing that he wore in his first story arc? That’s what I see when I zoom in on it (but it could also be a gun that maybe we’ve seen in World’s Finest at some point). The top hat clearly belongs to all three of those characters. I’m pretty sure they just shared it and tossed it back and forth between the three of them depending on who was appearing when. Mr. Element’s face mask is right beside the top hat.

        I agree! We need someone doing annotations STAT

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      2. Excellent hat theory!

        Gosh, I forgot to mention Wild Dog’s mask and what looks like Mr Element’s helmet… did Neil Gaiman ever link Al Desmond to Dream’s imprisonment a la Wesley Dodds?

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      3. D’oh! I forgot Wild Dog’s mask too and I was looking right at it. I don’t think Mr. Element was ever connected to Morpheus in any way. But they definitely share a penchant for helmets. with appendages. I’m sure there’s at least an 8 page story waiting to be told

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      5. I believe the cane with the globe is the Orb of Ra from the Metamorpho stories (I first saw it in JLA-Avengers)…

        I wonder if the blue gun is the B.B. Gun wielded by the Ted Kord Blue Beetle. I recall the Paris Cullens comic depicted it as really huge..

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  4. It’ll probably be another week before I get my mitts on this, but I’m super excited to read it, and your review makes me even more so!

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  5. I loved this issue! A couple of things

    1. Was this the 1st time that Jerry Ordway drew the Young All stars?
    2. Maybe it was just how it was phrased Was is Amazing Man NOW a member of the JSA?
    3. It was weird that the lost children was mentioned yet no word about them in the recent JSA series

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    1. Glad they haven’t been in JSA. I don’t want them in anything that dark and could you see the confusion with that many characters not being name checked or having their powers or situations even hinted at?

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    2. 1) I have to admit, for whatever reason I never transitioned over to Young All-Stars post-All-Star Squadron – Neptune Perkins, for goodness’ sake! – but I now have loads of issues and the DC app, I need to catch up. I bet you’re correct.

      2) ‘Alongside such heroes as Dr. Mid-Nite, Mister Terrific, Amazing Man, and Wildcat, the JSA battled…’ Talk about ambiguous writing. If anything, it seems to be kicking Dr Mid-Nite, Mister Terrific and Wildcat OUT of the JSA, which is incredibly unlikely. So it seems more likely it’s telling us the members seen on the previous page were joined by these others… but was Will with the known JSA members due to his All-Star Squadron status or did he sign up? I’m happy either way, so long as he gets due respect.

      3) Yes indeed, I get that Lemire might not wish to deal with the Lost Kiddies, but at least mention them and write them out… send them to whatever passes for Titans Academy these days.

      Thanks for the comments, sorry I can’t be more help… it’s lovely to have someone else from Scotland drop by!

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  6. Hey Martin – did you ever read “DC Universe Legacies” from about 15 years ago? Loved that, especially the great artists involved. I’m VERY excited about this series and can’t wait to read it. I thought Waid did a great job chronicling Marvel’s history about five or six years ago, although the final issue or two got depressing and kind of absurd – sooooooo so many events, so many deaths. I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be a commentary on modern comics and how the industry has changed but kinda turned out that way. Will be interesting to see how he handles the grim-n-gritty section of DC’s history with the death of Superman, Batman’s broken back, Hal Jordan going insane, Barbara Gordon being shot, etc. – Brian

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      2. I started out doing my usual way with Events that didn’t interest me and bought the last issue as ‘homework’ for the new line status quo until I noticed no book I read was affected by them.

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  8. We’ve already covered a lot of cool stuff in the issue, but I wanted to highlight a continuity fix that I never even considered since Crisis wiped away the original infinite Earths: Uncle Sam’s original Freedom Fighters (with Neon the Unknown and such) now defended against this earth’s Pearl Harbor attack, and lost? I’d be really interested in seeing more of that story — particularly how Uncle Sam could know about it, but it still somehow manage to be a sneak attack that surprised the US military.

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    1. I’m exhausted and don’t even have the will to Google but memory says that this actually appeared in All Star Squadron Pre-Crisis and came before Sam took the rest of the team to Earth X.

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  9. Yeah, my memory of it was a little hazy too. But the attack was on Earth X from the beginning. Basically, Uncle Sam had “visions” of the attack on another earth and recruited heroes to cross dimensions and stop it; a lot of them died, but they managed to foil the Japanese attack. Which ultimately meant (if I’m interpreting this correctly) that America didn’t enter WWII until later than December 1941, which meant the Axis forces were stronger by the time the U.S. entered the war, leading to their eventual Earth X victory.

    But now, with a single Earth, Uncle Sam’s visions were about this Earth’s Pearl Harbor, and he gathered heroes to defend against the attack, but failed. But it raises the question of why didn’t he tell the military or the government, or if he did, why didn’t they respond?

    If you’re writing that story (and don’t want to open up a can of conspiratorial worms suggesting FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen, a rabbit hole I think it’s best to avoid), it’d probably be best to have a communications breakdown somewhere along the line. Maybe Sam told someone he trusted to relay the message, but he was killed or otherwise taken off the board. Or maybe there’s a mystic explanation, and the same force that gave Sam the visions prevented him from communicating any specifics about them, and he only managed to get a few heroes onboard in the time he had.

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    2. Good reasoning, Rob. That’s such an interesting story point, it’s amazing Roy Thomas never addressed it… then again, he never had much post-Crisis time, he’d likely have got there eventually.

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Published by martingray1

Journalist, comic reviewer, theatre critic, film lover, biscuit fan, cat indulger