Common Knowledge / The DCU

The DCU

Batman

Batman

• Once upon a time, this was uncommon knowledge, but nowadays, it's common knowledge that Batman, at the time of his creation in The Golden Age of Comic Books, was a much "darker" character than he became in the '50s and '60s. Which is true to a point, but it wasn't long at all before the character was made Lighter and Softer. As in, depending on how you demarcate it, it lasted maybe a year, possibly somewhat less—Robin's debut, which pretty much every future telling of Batman's life defines as the point when he became more open and good-natured, was just eleven issues after Batman's debut, before he even had his own solo series! What was more, even in that period, he was hardly the grim and brooding vigilante popularized by The Dark Knight Returns; he was more of a swashbuckler, who frequently smiled or even joked in combat. As Eisner-nominated comics journalist and professional Batmanologist Chris Sims noted, "Sure, he might’ve fought vampires and carried a gun for like three issues, but by the end of that first year, it was pretty much all cat-wrestling and trips to Storybook Land."
  • However, this is sometimes taken to the other extreme, of claiming that Batman was having lots of fantasy/kiddie adventures in his Golden Age stories. The couple of Storybook Land stories mentioned by Sims are mostly an exception, and one of them was even revealed as All Just a Dream. Batman in the World War II period mostly fought gangsters and had plenty of Agatha Christie-style detective stories. Yes, he wasn't the grim and gritty vigilante some claim he was, and the stories had plenty of silly elements, but he hadn't yet evolved into the Silver Age version.^note The closest point of comparison would probably be the Basil Rathbone take on Sherlock Holmes—swashbuckling and sociable, but still inhabiting a fairly grim world.
  • Batman never used a pistol in combat in any known story from the Golden Age. He kills two dormant vampires using makeshift silver bullets in #32 (explicitly noting that a silver bullet is the only way to kill a vampire, which suggests it was merely the weapon needed for the job), and he uses a pistol to do it, but that's it. A handful of other stories and bits of artwork from the era suggest that he does carry a pistol, but the above is the only time he actually used it to shoot someone (instead using it to take objects out at range or alert policemen). The only time he uses any gun in combat is in Batman #1, where he uses a plane-mounted machine gun to shoot a truck and apparently kill the drivers. Golden Age Batman primarily used fists and feet, various gas capsules, and, later on, Batarangs. That isn't to say he wasn't a killer (he killed about one or two people an issue for his first year), but he was hardly a guy who drew pistols for any problem.
  • Related to this: while The Comics Code Authority and Frederic Wertham were responsible for certain Lighter and Softer additions to the Bat-mythos (like the introduction of Batwoman and the Bette Kane Bat-Girl), many others like Batman being an officially sanctioned police deputy and the Joker being more of a gimmicky thief who never (successfully) kills were instated during The Golden Age of Comic Books, long before Wertham came on the scene. In fact, the reason those elements were added had little to do with violence and everything to do with Wertham's claims that Batman comics contained Homoerotic Subtext, with Batwoman serving essentially as The Beard for the franchise.
• Batman is so badass he can beat Superman any time! Except not. Even the most oft-cited example, from the climax of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, isn't nearly as straightforward as many Batman fans seem to think it is. While Batman did undeniably hold his own against Superman in that story, many people seem to forget that he cut the fight short by faking his death, essentially making the battle a draw. Also, it happened after Superman was cut off from the sun's rays by a nuclear explosion, struck by lightning while in his weakened state, and shot with a Kryptonite arrow from Green Arrow... and even then, Batman was wearing enhanced armor. And needless to say, Superman didn't want to kill Batman, so he was holding back the entire fight. A later comic written by Miller would outright claim he had thrown the fight to some degree. These are the only circumstances in which Batman was able to even hold his own against Superman. In most of their other fights, Batman can maybe force a draw if he's in full Crazy-Prepared mode and Superman's holding back, and the fights where Batman decisively wins on his own can more or less be counted on one hand.
• It's often thrown around that during the Golden and Silver Ages, Batman and Robin shared a bed. This is used to tease them of being Ambiguously Gay. However, they didn't share a bed. The panels cited as "proof" are simply from a misleading angle. They had two beds with a night stand in the middle.
• Barbara Gordon is often considered the quintessential Batgirl and a symbol of Action Girls everywhere. It might be surprising for some to learn however that in the New 52 relaunch in 2011, she hadn't actually been Batgirl since the '80s. After the Joker had paralyzed her, she could never resume the identity again (it should be noted she was already retired by that point, however). An entire generation who read the comics knew her as Oracle, the wheelchair-bound Voice with an Internet Connection who assisted Batman and others, and was a unique fixture in the comic world as she wasn't portrayed as Inspirationally Disadvantaged because of it, instead having PTSD from the whole incident. During this time, there were two different Batgirls: Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that media adaptations would always use Barbara regardless of the comics. When she did return to Batgirl in 2011, many fans weren't pleased, citing it being poorly explained and contrived, that it would be like Dick Grayson returning to being Robin, and that DC (specifically Dan DiDio) mandated a blacklist on Cass and Steph from the entire DCU for that period.
• Dan Didio has been cited by fans as claiming to hate the two post-Barbara Batgirls, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, due to referring to them as "toxic." This is about half-true. Didio did indeed refer to them as "toxic" and was responsible for them being temporarily Exiled from Continuity, but his meaning was not that the two characters should never be used again. In fact, in an interview, he explained that the meaning of the phrase "toxic" was not that a character was bad, but that a character had picked up enough baggage that they needed to be sidelined for a bit until the controversies surrounding them had cooled off. Essentially, he was trying to treat them in the same way DC had treated, say, Hawkman after the character became a Continuity Snarl—put them on hold for a few years until the fandom has mostly forgotten the bad stuff and someone has a really good idea for how to reintroduce them—and indeed, that was exactly what happened, with Stephanie being reintroduced in 2014 and Cassandra in 2015, both under Didio's tenure. The problem was that this backfired horribly, because the main reason the fandom surrounding the characters had gotten so loud and angry in the late 2000s was a belief that DC's editorial staff was specifically trying to screw them over, and the attempts to avoid using the two only added fuel to the fire.
• Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) having been Batman's and/or Nightwing's love interest since the '60s. The original Bat-Girl (with the hyphen) was intended to be a love interest for Robin, but he was uninterested in her and Bette Kane was Put on a Bus shortly after debuting (only to reappear a decade later and then get retconned as never having been Batgirl). The Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl was almost a decade older than Robin, and their relationship never went beyond the occasional flirting. They didn't become a couple until the 1990s (after Dick broke up with Starfire), after the post-Crisis changes to continuity brought them to roughly the same age. In most continuities, Barbara's relationship with Batman is akin to that of a daughter or protege.
  • It's commonly thought that the original Bat-Girl Bette Kane never appeared again after Julius Schwartz became Bat editor or that when she re-appeared Post-Crisis as Flamebird, that she was never Bat-Girl in continuity. In relation to the former, whilst Bette didn't appear in any more Batman titles before Crisis (save for a cameo in a Batman Family issue), she did appear in the 70s Teen Titans run as part of the Titans West storyline and also being present at Donna Troy's wedding. In relation to the latter, whilst her history as Bat-Girl was retconned so that she was only ever Flamebird, this was restored in Young Justice Issue #20 when she commented to Cassandra Cain that she'd been Batgirl in the past as well as some minor flashbacks in Batman Inc.
• Everybody knows that The Dark Knight Returns features Batman in a distinctive revamped costume that's black and grey all over, with an oblong bat emblem that stretches across his chest.^note  That look is iconic enough that it was featured as an unlockable skin in Batman: Arkham City. Actually, he only wears that costume in the second half of the book, after his other costume is shredded to bits in a fight with the Mutant leader. In the first half, he wears a much more traditional costume with blue gloves, boots and cowl, and a bright yellow belt and chest emblem.
• Everyone knows Jason Todd as the second Robin was The Scrappy for being a carbon copy of Dick Grayson, and DC's attempts to differentiate him Post-Crisis only made him more hated, until everyone collectively voted to kill him off in the 1988 storyline A Death in the Family. It wasn't until he came back to life in the 2000s and became the villainous/super anti-heroic and edgy Red Hood did he start to get liked by our modern standard. In actuality, Jason Todd was pretty well-liked even as a clone, and his popularity did drop when he was made into a "bad boy" that would make him the Ur-Example of the '90s Anti-Hero (despite missing the '90s entirely); he was at worst a Base-Breaking Character. The difference between votes to have him live or die? 72, out of over 10,000 cast. There were also multiple accounts of Fixing the Game on both sides (one guy reportedly sold his car to pay for more votes), which makes determining the real answer difficult at best. While it's true that Jason Todd wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity at the time of his death, saying he was the scrappy is an exaggeration, and his death would shape DC and the comic universe for many years to come as a defining moment in comics history. It wasn't until the New 52 when he was widely considered a contemporary scrappy.
  • If anything, while there may have been a powerful antipathy towards Jason at the time (the vote wouldn't have been close and the storyline even considered if there wasn't), it had nothing to do with Jason Todd specifically as a character. Many Batman writers (including Jim Starlin, the writer of Death in the Family) had no love for the Kid Sidekick concept, seeing its presence as The Artifact, and had been doing whatever they could to downplay Robin's presence or write him out entirely, and readers broadly agreed with them. By all accounts from the era, readers and writers wanted Robin gone, period; Jason just happened to be Robin at the time. Notably, even in the version of the story where Jason was spared, the plan was still to have him suffer a Career-Ending Injury, and the story itself mostly critiques the idea of Robin in general rather than Jason specifically.
• It's commonly stated that Alan Moore's decision to paralyze Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke was made under the belief that it was to be published as a non-canonical Elseworlds story, and DC's retroactive decision to incorporate it in to canon was the final straw that convinced him to leave DC. This seems to be a misinterpretation of his stated regret for paralyzing Barbara in the first place, as nothing suggests that Moore intended for it to be an Elseworld story. DC had in fact published a Batgirl Special the week prior to The Killing Joke which detailed her final case and retirement specifically to set up the story, and going by Moore's own recollections of the decision, DC simply considered Batgirl an expendable character at the time and were thus not opposed to Moore's decision^note Barbara never held a solo series and had stopped appearing regularly by the late eighties. According to Moore, when he asked then-Batman editor Len Wein for permission to paralyze her, Wein responded with a nonplussed "Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch". Moore was already on the outs with DC prior to writing the story ^note Partly due to his dispute with DC over the Watchmen rights, and partly because he considered DC's new "Suggested For Mature Readers" label to be a revival of Comics Code-style censorship. and only wrote the story as a favor Brian Bolland (the comic's artist) before he moved in to self-publishing.
• A popular take on Batman is that he's a rich guy who beats up poor people for fun. In reality, a vast majority of Batman stories have him going up against one or more of organized crime, insane costumed criminals, Justice League-class supervillains and alien invaders, or evil ninja cults — all of which, while generally not as insanely wealthy as Bruce Wayne, still seem to have access to vast financial or physical resources. Yes, he also stops violent crimes by random strangers when he encounters them^note and he does punch henchmen protecting the current bad-guy-of-the-week, but that's barely a sideline for him. And he doesn't do it for fun — while there are many interpretations of his motivation, all of them come down to the fact that he is driven to fight crime.
  • This take is often accompanied by the claim that Batman completely ignores rich white-collar criminals. While it's less highlighted in the comics (because it generally doesn't make for particularly exciting stories), in fact Batman does do a lot of work against white-collar crime — but he does this by collecting evidence and delivering it to the relevant authorities, often through the Wayne Corporation. He doesn't punch corporate criminals in the face, because he usually only uses violence to prevent violence; that doesn't mean he ignores them entirely.
  • There's also a frequently-attached claim that Bruce Wayne could "solve poverty" in Gotham, but (implicitly) prefers to spend the money on his revenge crusade. In most continuities, Bruce's charitable efforts through the Martha Wayne Foundation are public and very sizable. He once met a Wayne Corp mail boy in the elevator, heard about his college funding troubles, and handed the mail boy a full-tuition scholarship application form^note It's not clear if Bruce keeps them in his briefcase at all times, just in case, or he staged the situation specifically to help the young man.. The qualification? "You work for me!" And in another story he fought goons, while he made a mental note of all the charities he would donate to, to help rehabilitate and support those goons. These critics also ignore or don't know that Gotham is notoriously corrupt and economically depressed, which is a large part of why Batman even exists. Even Bruce Wayne's money can't do everything.
• Some regarding the Kate Kane version of Batwoman:
  • A common misconception is that she regularly carries and uses guns, either using standard ammunition or rubber bullets. However, this is only true for her appearances in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies universe, primarily Batman: Bad Blood. In the comics, while it's true that Kate is much more comfortable with guns and using lethal force than Bruce is, she almost never carries any type of gun while on patrol, and the total number of times she's even held a gun on-panel could probably be counted on two hands.
  • Another common belief is that Kate is always stubbornly at odds with Batman in terms of how they both do their job. In actuality, their only real disagreement is about the subject of guns and lethal force, which has occurred only a couple times. They otherwise get along pretty well and remain professional.
  • It's popularly believed that Kate has a wild, rebellious, anti-authority personality. However, in the comics this is only true during the several years immediately after she left West Point and before she became Batwoman. Bad Blood and the CW series in particular depict her this way, but in the comics Kate has consistently been shown to be mature and fairly reserved throughout most of her life, and was a highly dedicated athlete and cadet.
  • The Kane family is commonly described as frequently moving when Kate and her sister Beth were young, but this is not supported in the source material. They only underwent the fateful move from Fort Bragg to Brussels, and then Kate and Jacob later moved to somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area.
  • Misunderstandings about what West Point does (or even is) lead to some believing that it's the same as Basic Training and that therefore Kate is not that skilled. Though Kate did not graduate from West Point, she was there for about 38 months (out of 47) as opposed to Basic's approximately 10-week schedule, and excelled in the three areas of academics, physical fitness, and military skills to the point that she was assigned to the third-highest rank in the cadet hierarchy for her final year.
  • Kate's past as a cadet is commonly thought to have originated in Batwoman: Elegy, but it actually existed as far back as 52, the comic she debuted in, since Renee Montoya comments on a photo showing Kate wearing a West Point uniform.
• Everybody knows that Robin was originally named after the bird. Except he wasn't: he was named after Robin Hood—hence the green tights and the tunic. The idea of him being named after a bird wasn't suggested until 1969, and it never really caught on until after the Bronze Age, when bird motifs became a common unifying theme in the Batman books (with Nightwing, Red Robin, the Birds of Prey, the Court of Owls, etc.).

Superman

Superman

• While everyone thinks of Clark Kent changing into his Superman clothes in a phone booth, the truth is that he's hardly ever done so in the actual comics. He does, however, do so in the Superman Theatrical Cartoons.
• As for Lois Lane, everyone thinks she's a Damsel in Distress, can not figure out Clark's secret, prefers the powers to the man, and would not survive their wedding night... Except not: she's the poster girl for Damsel out of Distress, as she's◊ actually◊ mastered martial arts◊ and has been able to handle herself since very early on◊ (and when she does need rescuing, it's less her being helpless and more her Intrepid Reporter tendencies putting her in dangerous situations). She's known Superman's secret identity since 1993 (after actually suspecting it for decades), and in numerous instances settled down nevertheless with a depowered Clark. Lois not only survived their wedding night in 1996 (and all the following) but also their son's birth.
• Lana Lang was Supes' love interest back when he lived in Smallville... aaand when he lived in Metropolis, too. People tend to forget Superman had a long-lasting Betty and Veronica situation with the two of them that lasted decades, not unlike Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy/Mary Jane Watson. And it was only resolved in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", the epilogue to the Silver Age Superman's story. So it's not as though Lana wasn't a part of Clark's life following his Superboy days.
• Everyone knows Supergirl (especially her Pre-Crisis self) is a gender-flipped weaker Superman, a submissive sweetheart with no distinctive traits to distinguish from her cousin, who does not even has her own villains. Her comic-books, though, have gone to great lengths to establish her personality is different, depicting her as more hot-tempered, more reckless, and focusing on her alienation and survivor trauma). Jerry Siegel himself established she is as powerful as Superman in "The Unknown Supergirl". And she has her own recurring villains.
• "The Super-Steed of Steel"'s second half, wherein Comet the Super-Horse develops a crush on Kara, started the "Silver Age Supergirl dated a horse" meme. Too bad that Kara never dated a horse. To start with, Comet was not a horse but a centaur, and he flirted with Kara while in human form. Kara never knew who that handsome cowboy was, and although she kissed him once, she never dated him, the whole thing being forgotten after two issues and never brought up by the characters again.
• Due to the Supergirl (2015) show, the general public believes that Lena Luthor is a mainstay of the Supergirl comics, filling the role of best friend/rival/friendly enemy. In reality, Supergirl and Lena have not been friends for decades. The original Lena was in fact conceived as a Lois Lane's supporting character (first appearing in Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane#23) before being transferred to the Supergirl strip in "The Girl with the X-Ray Mind", made an smattering of appearances during the 60's, and then she almost completely vanished, reappearing briefly in "The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor" to complete her character arc before heading into comic-book limbo for good. Althought she would be replaced by other versions, Lena Luthor and Kara Zor-El have not talked or even known each other in the main continuity since that 1981 storyline.
• You will be hard-pressed to find a comic fan who does not believe that Pre-Crisis Lex Luthor hated and wanted to kill Superman because Superboy caused his baldness...even though this is false. "How Luthor Met Superboy", the story where Jerry Siegel narrated their feud's origin, shows that Luthor came to hate Superboy because Clark accidentally ruined his life-creating experiment (while saving Lex from a lab fire which Lex himself recklessly caused, mind you), and Lex convinced himself that Clark did it on purpose. Through the story, Lex only complains about his baldness twice in the same scene in an added-insult-to-injury fashion, whereas he rants on and on and on about Superboy being a treacherous rat who is attempting to ruin his career as a scientist because he is jealous from his genius.
• Everybody knows that Darkseid is Superman's other nemesis alongside Lex Luthor, serving as the Greater-Scope Villain of the Superman mythos. While this might be true now, it's a fairly recent development, and it started in the adaptations rather than the original comics. For most of his early history, Darkseid was the Big Bad of the Fourth World family of comics (of which New Gods is the most famous), which largely existed in their own corner of the DC Universe, and hardly ever featured established DC superheroes. Their connection to Superman was pretty tenuous: the spinoff series Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen was part of the Fourth World epic, but it only featured Darkseid as The Man Behind the Man for Intergang, and only his agents Simyan and Mokkari actually battled Superman and Jimmy. ^note  Though the series did feature Darkseid's very first appearance in issue #134, albeit in a very brief cameo. Superfriends was the first DC adaptation that portrayed Darkseid and the Apokoliptians as adversaries of Superman and his comrades, paving the way for Superman: The Animated Series, Smallville, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which did the same. Before that, Darkseid was always far more likely to clash with his son Orion than anyone else. ^note  If you're familiar with Jack Kirby's bibliography, this shouldn't be too surprising: Kirby was never a regular Superman writer, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen was the only Superman book that he ever wrote for.
• During The Golden Age of Comic Books, Superman was nowhere near as powerful as his Silver Age Superpower Lottery levels, right? Well...he started that way, but after a couple years, he was blowing out stars and flying through time without a care. Later comics played up that Golden Age Superman was always at "leaping tall buildings, nothing less than a bursting shell can penetrate his skin" levels in order to contrast him with the Silver Age Superman, in the same way as they pretended he'd "always" worked for George Taylor at the Daily Star, when Perry and the Planet came in with the radio series.
• It's commonly said of the Silver Age Superman that he had New Powers as the Plot Demands, and that all he had to do was add "super" onto a given word and that was something he could do, while his Post-Crisis incarnation removed all of that and codified his powers while removing a bunch of others. In point of fact, Superman's powerset was pretty much set in stone by the mid-50s, and the only powers he really "lost" after the Crisis were hypnosis, ventriloquism, and altering his facial structure^note That last one may actually not be a power at all; back in old '30s pulp, The Hero being able to change the shape of his face through muscle control was a common trope, usually as a way for him to be a Master of Disguise without needing to wear makeup. (Super-Breath and high intelligence were initially removed, but came back), all of which had been shown pretty consistently. Powers like "super-weaving" were just him being flowery about saying "I will use my super speed to weave very fast." The closest thing to New Powers as the Plot Demands he had was using Hollywood Science to apply his powers—for instance, using Super-Speed to "break the time barrier" or spin or vibrate objects—or various gadgets he'd invented with the aforementioned intelligence. In point of fact, the Silver Age Superman was more of a Science Hero than anything, and usually defeated his opponents with his intellect. The main change the Post-Crisis series made was limiting the scope of his power, attempting to restrict him to city-scale battles rather than cosmic-scale ones and focusing more on the straightforward physical aspects of his abilities—and even then, being Strong as They Need to Be, he often fought on a cosmic scale anyway (albeit a noticeably lower one).
• Continuing further, the idea that the Silver Age Superman was completely unstoppable and all-powerful. While he does have far more impressive high-end feats than most other incarnations of the character (i.e. pulling planets), he was very much not portrayed as omnipotent on average, and in many, many issues, he was shown to be threatened by common-but-clever mundane criminals (albeit ones who usually had access to one of his weaknesses), forcing him to outwit them. And superpowered villains frequently outright defeated him: for instance, Brainiac (the character often held as his first Silver Age villain) decisively crushed him in his first appearance, and Superman ultimately only won by way of being able to escape his prison after Brainiac had put himself in stasis.
• It's commonly stated by fans authoritatively that "Clark Kent is the 'real' identity, not Superman." In point of fact, this is probably one of the biggest points of Depending on the Writer in Superman comics, and even in stories that do utilize the idea, he's still shown affecting a personality and planning out specific mannerisms as Clark Kent to some degree or another. It's less a fact and more an Alternative Character Interpretation. Even if you specify "post-Crisis", it's still only a "most of the time" thing. (Some post-Crisis writers have proposed that there are three personalities, the two public ones and "Smallville Clark", which is who he is around Lois and his parents, just as some pre-Crisis writers said there were the two public personas and "Kal-El".)
• Superman's foe Bizarro has entered the pop cultural lexicon as an inverted, anti-Superman being that is supposed to behave like his exact opposite, and is therefore ridiculed by the way writers try to portray him. The thing is, Bizarro himself is invoking the "exact opposite" trope to define himself, and he often fails at it - that is to say, Bizarro's failure as Superman's opposite is an In-Universe flaw.
• Superman's other main weakness (besides kryptonite) is magic....except not really. A large portion of comic book fans and the general public at large seem to equate the Man of Steel's ability to be affected by magic spells, mystic weapons and such to be a vulnerability inherent to him and/or others who share his Kryptonian origins as a debilitating and potentially fatal chink in his otherwise invincible aura, like the green rock from his doomed home planet. This is not actually the case. Most writers nowadays convey the notion that Superman, despite his Nigh-Invulnerability that enables him to laugh off bullets, fire, and even high explosives, affords him no more protection against say, a spell cast by a minor sorcerer to make him burn, turn into a rabbit, or just sneeze uncontrollably, than a regular, non-enhanced human being. But it's not as if just being near a mystic talisman (like Dr. Fate's helmet or Dr. Strange's Eye of Agamatto) will cause him to weaken and possibly die, like being in the presence of a chunk of kryptonite would. Muddying the waters further is that some stories do suggest he is somewhat vulnerable to magic, but only in the sense of offensively-minded magic (i.e. a magic sword would cut him more effectively than an equally invulnerable character who isn't a Kryptonian).

Teen Titans

Teen Titans

• Fans have this perception that comic book Starfire is so much more violent than her more well-known Teen Titans cartoon counterpart. While she is more violent, so is pretty much everyone else. The show tones nearly everyone down as it's aimed at a younger audience than the comic and is also heavier on the silliness. This idea has made many think of the comic version of Starfire as being an aggressive alien Ms. Fanservice woman when she's normally sweet. Starfire comes from a species of Proud Warrior Race aliens, but she's also quite emotional and loving. The only thing the cartoon did that it didn't do to the other characters was make her act more like a stereotypical teenage Foreign Exchange Student.
• A common misconception is that Beast Boy can't speak when transformed, because that's how he was portrayed as in the animated series. However, in the comics he can speak while in animal form without any issue. The DC Universe Animated Original Movies also had him capable of speech to be in line with the comics. Given that the animated series was generally Denser and Wackier and Lighter and Softer than the original comic, this is understandable.
• While Roy Harper is commonly considered a classic Titan, he was not a founder like some people may think. Rather, he replaced Aqualad when the writers thought the latter was useless. Teen Titans: Year One didn't help as it presents Roy (and Donna) as being in the team from the start.
• Terra is well-known for being a Broken Bird and a Tragic Villain who was manipulated by Deathstroke (or "Slade") into joining the Titans and striking close with Beast Boy (Changeling in the comics at the time) before betraying them, but ultimately regretted it and redeemed herself in the end when she saved her friends and the city in the battle against Slade, getting turned to stone in the process. Like many misconceptions regarding the Teen Titans, this is strictly a product of the show. In the actual comics, Terra was a monster. Plain and simple. To give you an idea of her evilness: even Deathstroke was afraid of how evil she was. Terra was portrayed as an unrepentant sociopath and a sadist who gladly infiltrated the Titans and sold them out, played with their emotions (most of all being Garfield's), and practically every moment after The Reveal was a Kick the Dog for her. She died in the comics, but it wasn't a Heroic Sacrifice. Rather it was a failed homicide when she thought Deathstroke betrayed her (he didn't — Jericho possessed him into attacking her), and she was crushed under a pile of debris. While both the versions play it as tragic, it was played differently in the comic versus the show. In the show, it was played as Terra's tragedy. In the comics, it was strictly Garfield's tragedy and not hers. This has become so misconceived that even the animated movie Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, a Truer to the Text version of the storyline, still gave her the Adaptational Heroism and Death Equals Redemption treatment. Surprisingly, while the episode "Teen Titans: The Judas Contract" in DC Universe Online also takes some liberties with the source material, it went back to portraying Terra as a nasty unrepentant monster, who is attacked by Jericho-possessing-Deathstroke, and when defeated, she is buried in debris due to her own volcanic temper tantrum.
• Thanks to the 2003 animated series, it's commonly thought that the "classic" lineup of the Teen Titans is Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy. In reality, this lineup has never existed outside the animated series and its Gag Series sequel. The actual original Teen Titans is from the '60s, and consisted of Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Wonder Girl ^note And if you really want to split hairs, it was just Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad who formed the team, but back then it didn't have an official name. Wonder Girl joined them when it was officially formed as the Teen Titans, a line-up that has largely been displaced due to both the TV show and a massive case of Sequel Displacement, since the later New Teen Titans run from Wolfman and Perez (which introduced characters like the aforementioned Cyborg, Raven and Starfire) proved to be much more popular than the original 60s series. While all of the aforementioned five have been members together at one point, and to be fair it was the most acclaimed run which the animated series took inspiration from, the comics have never had the roster consist of just them. In fact, there have been quite a few more members than one would expect, and multiple runs have had the Titans without any of these members. It's telling when the 2003 revival meant to capitalize on the show still didn't portray the lineup this way.^note It had Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy, but the Robin was Tim Drake, and it also featured Impulse/Kid Flash II, Wonder Girl II, and the Kon-El Superboy. The primary reason for why those five made up the roster in the show was due to Adaptation Distillation, to avoid having too much to work with, combined with some rights issues: it's essentially the initial Wolfman/Perez lineup with the non-Robin sidekick characters (Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, and Speedy) removed. Many characters in the TV show who were considered "honorary Titans" were full-time members in the comics. It makes perfect sense, as it's not strictly a team as much as it's a full-blown organization with many members similar to the Justice League — in fact, it's often considered the organization young heroes join before the Justice League. This lineup has become so ingrained into the minds of the younger audience that later installments, such as Teen Titans: The Judas Contract and Teen Titans (Rebirth), would closely recreate it to attract fans of the show, but even then it wasn't a total replica. Also tellingly, the Titans (Rebirth) comic portrayed the lineup as a grown-up reunion of the most classic members, and it's not who some people might think. It was Nightwing, Donna Troy, Tempest, Flash (Wally West), Arsenal, and Omen, who were later joined by Bumblebee.
• Despite what is believed by many, Donna Troy was not a student when she met Terry Long. She was a professional photographer during their relationship.

Other

• The Flash:
  • Barry Allen snapped Professor Zoom's neck during his wedding to Fiona Webb, his second wife, not Iris West, who had died several years earlier. The confusion is somewhat understandable, because Zoom also disrupted Barry's first wedding day, albeit unsuccessfully.
  • As far as non-comic readers are concerned, the Flash is just the "guy who runs really fast". While not wrong, that doesn't even come close to describing the full scope of his abilities. Through speed, he can time travel, travel between dimensions, become intangible (and make other people or things intangible), become invisible, cure himself of detrimental conditions, increase or decrease the speed of other people and objects (including turning someone into, effectively, a living statue), create whirlwinds strong enough to lift others aloft (sometimes just by spinning his arms), extinguish fires, melt large amounts of snow and ice, fly, and power large machinery, among other things. Oh, and the best one? Infinite Mass Punch, which is exactly as powerful as it sounds and can KO anyone with a physical form — yes, even Superman. It's been debated if "the guy who runs really fast" is actually the most powerful superhero in DC.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman didn't wear a skirt in her first story (All-Star Comics #8), she actually wore a pair of culottes—a style popular among athletic young women in the 1940s that resembles a skirt, but is actually a pair of loose-fitting shorts. And even those quickly evolved into tight shorts that lost the "skirt" look entirely. Nevertheless, whenever a modern artist wants to evoke a "Golden Age Wonder Woman" look, she's almost invariably drawn wearing a skirt.
  • Another common misconception is that Wonder Woman was the first superheroine to debut in American comics, or at least the first superheroine in what would eventually become The DCU. While she was the first solo one, Shiera Saunders debuted as Hawkman's partner/helper/love interest in January 1940 before becoming Hawkgirl in July 1941, while Wondy herself didn't appear until October 1941.
  • Brian Azzarello is often accused of turning Wonder Woman from someone peaceful and compassionate into a bloodthirsty warmonger in the New 52. However, his run perfectly captures Wonder Woman's love for all things. It was Geoff Johns who wrote her an as overly eager Blood Knight during this period. Azzarello did heavily darken the Amazons and Wonder Woman's overall origin, though.
  • Many fans who weren't all that familiar with Wonder Woman assume that her killing Maxwell Lord was the first time she had killed a villain in Post-Crisis. However, Diana had shown that she did not have a rule against killing as early as issue #4 of of the George Perez run.
• Watchmen:
  • Not only is there no superhero team called "The Watchmen", the story isn't about a team of superheroes at all. The six characters in the core cast were part of a proposed team called the Crimebusters that never actually formed (they disbanded after just one introductory meeting), but they spend the bulk of the story as independent and/or retired superheroes who just happen to have some close personal relationships with each other. Rorschach and Nite Owl are the only main characters who ever teamed up to fight crime. The title is a reference to Who Watches the Watchmen?, a real-life quotation which became an in-universe graffiti meme after citizens became disillusioned with superheroes. The confusion is furthered by the movie, where the proposed group is named "The Watchmen."
    • The only long-serving team in the comic (or film) was a golden-age grouping called the Minute Men that included Captain Metropolis, the Comedian and the original Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. But the team only exists in flashbacks, and none of the heroes alive for the main story were ever a part of it.
  • Everybody knows that Watchmen takes place in a completely realistic universe—barring the presence of Doctor Manhattan—where the superheroes are treated exactly like people in real life trying to be superheroes. In fact, the story features quite a good number of Speculative Fiction elements straight out of an old pulp story (even aside from Doctor Manhattan) like psychics, genetically engineered hybrid creatures, a Cool Airship that defies gravity, and even a superhero from the 1940s with a fully functioning flight suit. Charles Atlas Superpower is also fully in effect: multiple characters successfully fight off dozens of enemies at a time with nothing more than training and exercise, and one character can catch bullets. The story makes it pretty clear that, within its universe, a person could become a superhero with the right gadgets and training. It just also deconstructs the Black-and-White Morality associated with superhero stories, implying that no sane person would want to (nor would superheroes be effective at anything besides catching petty criminals). ^note Notably, this idea is so pervasive that it has even affected how many later writers have written other stories set in the Watchmen universe. Case in point: in one issue of the prequel series Before Watchmen, it's retroactively revealed that a "solar death ray" mentioned in the original book was just a prop, even though a real solar death ray would hardly have been the most outlandish thing in the book's universe.
  • Conversely, some people have a tendency to claim that Manhattan himself is truly omnipotent, able to do literally anything. Though he is an undeniable Superpower Lottery winner, a Person of Mass Destruction, and the only living named character to have truly superhuman abilities, he actually has a set of abilities that are clearly laid-out and consistent: his body is ageless, needless, and very difficult to harm, he can visualize and alter matter at the atomic level, he can maintain consciousness after having his body destroyed, and he perceives his entire life at all times. Everything he does in the story is an application of one of those abilities, and he never goes beyond those limits. He doesn't seem to be able to, say, move at superhuman speeds, travel through time, read or control minds (notable when, as mentioned, psychics are known to exist in-universe), heal or resurrect people, or any manner of other things. Moreover, the story does not suggest his abilities are limitless within their confines, giving him multiple weaknesses (his senses can be baffled by tachyon emissions, and his body can be destroyed, if only briefly, by removing its intrinsic field) and a hard upper limit: he would not be able to stop a full Soviet nuclear launch, only taking out a large percentage of missiles but not enough to really affect the outcome. In short, while characters say he can do anything, it's clear there's a fair bit of hyperbole involved. Muddying the waters a bit on this issue are works by other writers, such as Doomsday Clock, which do make him omnipotent, displaying a level of power he never came close to in his original story.
  • A minor, non-narrative detail: most people will insist on calling Watchmen a "graphic novel", partly because the sole format it's been released in to this very day is as a trade paperback, partly because it sounds classier than saying it's a "comic book". However, Watchmen very much was a typical monthly limited series, with its 12 issues released between 1986 and 1987 like almost all comic books at the time, and its publishing as a singular compilation coming later.
• Green Lantern:
  • "Green Lantern" isn't the name of a singular superhero, but a superhero name shared by several different characters over the course of the franchise's history. Green Lantern is also the name of the law enforcement agency that these characters work for.
  • Over the years, many non-fans of the franchise have gotten a good laugh from pointing out the apparent stupidity of a superhero having a Weaksauce Weakness to the color yellow, believing that yellow is GL's Kryptonite Factor. Actually, none of the Green Lanterns have been harmed by the color yellow, their power rings were just originally said to be ineffective against yellow objects (the same way that Superman's x-ray vision can't see through lead) because of an impurity within the Corps' power battery. That was retconned as a deliberate flaw meant to keep Green Lanterns from getting too full of themselves. ^note In the same issue, Alan Scott's ring's weakness to wood was explained as the previous owner having been a legendary Green Lantern who was almost killed by a yellow monster, so his ring's weakness was removed, making him invincible. He tyrannized the people he was meant to protect, so his ring was given a weakness to wood, allowing the villagers to club him to death. And even that part was retconned out: in current comics, the power ring's ineffectiveness against yellow is said to be a rookie weakness that more experienced Lanterns can overcome.
  • Emerald Twilight is famous for being "the comic where Hal Jordan turns evil and massacres the entire Green Lantern Corps". Turning evil was correct (at least until later retcons revealed he was actually brainwashed into villainy, though that's besides the point), but in actuality, Hal only actually killed one Green Lantern (Kilowog, whose death was an accident). Hal's intent was instead to simply steal all the power rings for himself, becoming the last remaining Green Lantern not because the others were dead, but because they were depowered.
  • It's frequently claimed that Tom Kalmaku got his In-Series Nickname "Pieface" because of the ice cream brand Eskimo Pie, since he's Inuit. In reality, it came from period slang for somebody with a round face and a blank expression. The whole Eskimo Pie explanation was actually an Author's Saving Throw devised decades later to try and make the nickname seem less racist.
  • People loosely familiar with the "Green Lantern/Green Arrow" era of the book often claim it shows Hal Jordan to be an arch-conservative to contrast with Oliver Queen's strident leftism, or use it to justify Hal being one of the more right-leaning heroes in DC. However, while Ollie was indeed written as a leftist, Hal wasn't written as opposing him very often. The entire impetus of the series, in fact, is that Hal is genuinely conflicted after hearing one of Oliver's lectures and goes so far as to vacate his usual duties to learn from his perspective. Throughout the run, he's less written as someone who fundamentally disagrees with Ollie's viewpoints, and more someone who agrees with his goal but not necessarily his methods, or simply hasn't thought about the issue very much—closer to a liberal-leaning centrist than a right-winger. Additionally, this happens to be his starting point; over the course of the series, he becomes increasingly willing to agree altogether.
• A general misconception by the public is that any comic with a #1 on the cover is worth a lot of money. Whilst it's true for some issues - Action Comics #1, Fantastic Four #1 - the more important thing to collectors is which character(s) debuted in that issue, leading to things like Detective Comics #27 and Amazing Fantasy #15 being amongst some of the most valuable comics. This was a belief encouraged by comic companies in the 90's, where some comic collectors were making big money on classic issues. This resulted in everything having a "special limited edition"◊ with Feelies thrown in or having various #1 issues◊ proclaim them a "collector's item" to drive up demand (and thus the price) to a gullible public who believed that comics were the next gold rush. ^note  Real comic collectors were smart enough to stay away though. Most of them aren't even worth the cover price today.
  • One thing that is true about #1s is that they tend to be the highest-selling issue of a comic. Part of it is the above belief, while the other part is the simple idea that a #1 is where a new reader can get started. Because of this, stores tend to order the #1 issues the most, since any reader looking to pick up a run of comics or find a new series is obviously going to value the first issue over the twentieth. (Publishers have been known to try to exploit this by relaunching a book to give it more #1s - Captain Marvel received a total of four #1s over the course of about five years.)
  • It also helps that the most valuable #1 issues, such as Action Comics #1, were published at a time when comics were disposable and not collector's items (and were published in modest numbers as nobody suspected they'd be massive hits), meaning that there are just plain few of them in any sort of condition to go around.
• A long-standing Running Gag of the Internet is reminding people that DC Comics once had a superhero called Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, who had the power to pop his arm out of its socket and wield it like a club, usually to either mock or wax nostalgically on how comics used to be silly stuff. Thing is, while the character existed, he was not actually a hero. He was an applicant for the Legion of Super-Heroes, and needless to say they didn't hire him. He didn't even make the cut for the Substitute Legion, a sub-team made explicitly for characters with lame or unstable powers. He was already a Joke Character from the beginning. Oh, and he wasn't even from the Silver Age, either; he was from the Legion's first Post-Crisis reboot in 1989, where the writers were a lot more willing to do meta-humor like this (though if you really want to split hairs, he technically debuted as an in-joke among some Legion fanzines of the '70s, becoming an Ascended Meme about a decade later).
• Green Arrow
  • Oliver Queen became inspired to be Green Arrow because of Robin Hood, right? Nope. Ollie's more leftie personality was created by Neal Adams in the 70s and develped further in Grell's run during the late 80s. Oliver Queen is actually meant to be a vigilante version of Robinson Crusoe with Mort Weisinger taking inspiration from the 1940s serial The Green Archer.
• Black Canary:
  • She's named after her superpower. Except, she's not. The original Black Canary was a Badass Normal without her daughter's supersonic scream for the first several decades of her existence. The scream didn't appear until over 30 years after the character debuted.
  • As a Ms. Fanservice superhero, she's often imagined as wearing Combat Stilettos to round out the set (even providing the trope picture!). While some alternate versions of her are portrayed with heels, she generally sticks to practical flat boots or shoes even when played at her most sexy, which is admittedly unusual for Ms. Fanservice superheroes but is true for her.
  • Black Canary is the "Blonde Bombshell" so many mistake her for a natural blonde. She actually has naturally black hair. Prior to the early 1990s, she wore a blonde wig while Clark Kenting. Afterwards, she dyed/bleached her hair blonde. There was a brief retcon in the New 52 that depicted her as a natural blonde, but that was later retconned itself when an issue showed her bleaching her roots. Arrow would later reference the dichotomy between blonde & brunette Dinah through their distinct versions of Laurel Lance and Dinah Drake, respectively.
• Aquaman:
  • Everybody knows that Aquaman is the laughingstock of the DC Universe who's only kept around out of tradition, and that he's a useless wimp whose only powers are breathing underwater and "talking to fish". In reality, not so much. Even setting aside the fact that his powers are not as useless as they're often depicted^note  In addition to being able to breathe underwater and swim really fast, he has the Required Secondary Powers of super strength and invulnerability, which is why he can survive the intense pressure of the ocean floor. His ability to "talk to fish" is also a form of telepathy that allows him to control all sealife including sea monsters, and at least one version has shown that it can have limited effect on humans based on the fact that, when you get down to it, all life on Earth comes from the sea., his reputation as a "laughingstock" is a pretty recent phenomenon that likely owes itself to the Internet age.
  • Also, he does not "talk to fish"; he telepathically controls them using his mind, as fish on their own aren't intelligent enough to "talk". This has been pointed out in the comics many times.
  • Quite a few people also think he possesses hydrokinesis, which he does not. It's actually Mera, as well as Aquaman's sidekicks Tempest and Aqualad II, who have the power to magically manipulate water. This misconception stems from the old 60s Aquaman cartoon from Filmation, which gave the title character the ability to throw hard water projectiles. This depiction was influential enough that subsequent adaptations, such as Smallville and Batman: The Brave and the Bold (not to mention parodies such as Mermaid Man) also gave Aquaman this power. These days, it's common for Aquaman to have hydrokinesis through his trident.
• Justice League of America:
  • The core team is often said to be the founding "Big 7" heroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Flash and Green Lantern. Many subsequent iterations of the team (including Grant Morrison's 90s relaunch) deliberately call back to this original Silver Age roster, as did the TV show. In reality, Batman and Superman were both Advertised Extras at the start of the series, with DC editorial mandating that writer Gardner Fox utilize those two as little as possible to avoid overexposure. Thus, many of the early issues would give them a Written-In Absence or have them quickly taken out by the bad guys so that the main focus would be on the other five heroes. The cast also quickly expanded, with Green Arrow joining the team in issue #4, followed by The Atom in issue #14 and Hawkman in issue #31. Also, perhaps most notably, Martian Manhunter was Put on a Bus in issue #71, and would not return to the book full time until issue #228. Readers who'd gotten into the series in the late 60s or most of The '70s would probably be more likely to associate someone like Zatanna or Black Canary with the Justice League than they would Martian Manhunter. The Manhunter's return to the group also coincided with the departure of most of the original cast in order to make way for the new Detroit-era Justice League, meaning that even once he was back in the series, he didn't really spend much time interacting with his former teammates. This continued after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot (which saw the death of the Flash) and the eventual ReTool of the team into the Justice League International, which had Martian Manhunter as the sole founding Leaguer for most of its run.^note Batman did show up as well, but his role as a founder had been retconned away by the Crisis. By the time Morrison launched their Big 7 reunion in 1997 (albeit with Wally West and Kyle Rayner replacing the original Flash and Green Lantern, respectively), that specific incarnation of the team hadn't been together in decades.
  • Everybody knows that Starro the Conqueror was the first villain that the Justice League ever fought—except he wasn't. While the Justice League did fight Starro in their very first appearance in 1959, that wasn't their first adventure: the first Justice League of America story (in The Brave and the Bold #28) took place after the team had already formed, as did the first issue of their solo series. The Justice League's actual first battle was against the Appellaxian aliens, as shown in a flashback in Justice League of America #9.
• Those vaguely familiar with the organization Kobra will usually describe them as an Alternate Company Equivalent or outright ripoff of Marvel's HYDRA. In point of fact, the two don't have a lot in common beyond the barest possible similarities of "bad guys themed around snakes." HYDRA is famously defined as a paramilitary terrorist group with heavy ties to the Nazis. Kobra, meanwhile, is written as more of an apocalyptic cult and crime syndicate with heavy mystical beliefs, closer to the classic idea of The Hashshashin. Furthermore, the original comic featuring it had its leader as a Villain Protagonist who was opposed by his twin brother due to their Twin Telepathy, something with no basis in HYDRA (if anything, it's more a ripoff of The Corsican Brothers). Not to mention, the two organizations were both created by Jack Kirby, so the idea of Kobra being a ripoff is kind of absurd. Part of the confusion may come from G.I. Joe, whose main evil organization, Cobra, pulled traits from both groups, resulting in future writers bleeding traits of all three into each other.
• Astro City:
  • The titular city is the "city of heroes", and the comic takes place there. Most people assume that means a) Astro City is the only city in the setting supers live in and b) The main characters are all Astro City locals. Not quite true. Lots of important characters are based on other cities, such as the Black Rapier (New Orleans) and MPH (Detroit). Plus, characters like Samaritan and Silver Adept are powerful enough to work worldwide. Astro City is more like a superhero hub, similar to New York in Marvel, than "the" superhero city (which coincidentally, is the perfect descriptor for the setting of Dueling Series Top 10).
  • It's often believed that pretty much every character in the comic is an Expy of an existing character. While a lot of characters are indeed some stripe of "inspired by", just as many are original concepts or based on cultural trends (in a meta-Fad Super kind of way), and most of the ones that are Expies tend to have many original elements or at least pull inspiration from multiple characters. Busiek himself made fun of this at a convention, noting that the Wikipedia page for the series claimed that Noah of the Crossbreed was based on Storm of the X-Men, since they have the same powers... even though they have nothing else in common, and the entire theme of the Crossbreed suggests he's based on, you know, Noah.
• It's thought by many people, including the DC Wiki and Lewis Lovhaug, that the "World's End" arc in The Sandman (1989) was a tie-in into Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! — except, as as pointed out by the "Hey, Kids, Comics" wiki, "World's End" was published in 1993 — a full year before Zero Hour (1994). It's more likely that the reality storm that caused the events of "World's End" was solely caused by the attacks on the Dreaming and the death of Morpheus by the titular villains of "The Kindly Ones", especially given Destiny outright said the actions would cause a reality storm and "World's End" included an early glimpse of Morpheus's funeral.

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