DC Comics General

Wasn't there a decent-sized controversy over Africa being run by literal gorillas in the Flashpoint Universe?

Wow, what a weird pagetopper.

edited 4th Aug '15 1:25:49 PM by HamburgerTime

I think europe had more reason to be offended considering most of it was underwater and the rest of it was dead

No, the controversy was due to the fact that racists often compare black people to monkeys.

Oh dear....

Oh crap i inadvertantly did that! I am terrible i am so sorry

I think you could make a case for the DC equivalent of Latveria being either Queen Bee's Bialya, or possibly Brother Blood's Zandia. I'd say Atlantis is most like Wakanda, but then Marvel has an Atlantis, too.

As far as Shield, DC has the aforementioned Argus, Spyral, and Checkmate...and before that, there was the CBI (the Central Bureau of Intelligence) headed by King Faraday, which frequently dealt with extranormal matters. Faraday worked with the Titans a few times, in the Marv Wolfman era.

If we take the Kree and the Skrull as alien empires, DC's got the Guardians, obviously, but also the Khunds, the Controllers, the Spider Guild, the Citadel, and I'm sure others I'm forgetting. They inherited all the alien stuff from Wildstorm (the Kherubim) too.

Lots of supervillain groups to choose from on that front. The Hive was originally supposed to be a collection of otherwise minor and seldom-seen DC villains (the only one I ever heard named was Dr.Tzin-Tzin, an old Wonder Woman baddie) who pooled their resources. As with many of Marv Wolfman's ideas, it never really got fully fleshed out, at least not the way he intended it.

What about Kahndaq (sp) for Latveria?

Is Khandaq led by a super-villain?

Black Adam. So, yes.

I was thinking maybe Vlatava though Count Vertigo isn't the ruler he is the last descendant of the royal family.

Edit* in the New 52 he is the ruler of Vlatava.

edited 5th Aug '15 3:09:42 AM by Halberdier17

Don't the White Martians fit more as DC's equivalent of the Skrulls?

Not really. The White Martians are trapped in the Phantom Zone, ruling nothing, and have never had an empire on-page (in the backstory sure). Hell, even Pre-Crisis they were nothing more than genocidal bastards, who wiped themselves out along with the Greens.

Did they ever explain what was the big cosmic threat which necessitated merging three universes into one with New 52? Now that Convergence shook up the universe yet again, I imagine that's never going to come up if it has not by now.

edited 7th Aug '15 5:51:46 PM by timotaka

presumably bleediac at all. Because Stormwatch helped take him down and pokeball him. And constantine alerted Superman to what was happening.

Did they ever explain what was the big cosmic threat which necessitated merging three universes into one with New 52?

It was called Money.

' There is nothing in the world like money money money... '

Might have been in whatever series Pandora was in.

It wasn't its never been explained in universe

Since we are doing comparisons of the two universe, I should point out the obvious:

- Green Lantern Corps: Nova Corps (intergalactic space cops obviously) - Legion of Super Heroes: Guardians of the Galaxy (before the 2008 retool, Got G was basically Marvel's Lo S for being an alien super team from the future) - Doom Patrol: Fantastic Four (a team of deformed heroes who gain their powers from an accident) - Justice Society: Invaders (WW 2 inspired team) - Skartaris and Dinosaur Island: Savage Land and Monster Island (both being isolated lands where time has forgotten) - HIVE: AIM (science based organization with a bee motive) - Kobra: Hydra (snake theme terrorist organization . . . I know, Kobra is a character but I am going to assume the organization is also name Kobra due to ego) - Suicide Squad: Thunderbolts (supervillain based team that seeks to reform said villains) - Thanagarians: Kree (this is more like going by the JL cartoon, but other than that both are an alien race who believes they are above other lifeforms which justifies their goals of conquest) - White Martians: Skrulls (shapeshifting aliens bent on conquest, nuff said) - New Gods: Asgardians (which is the whole point of New Gods to begin with, be a direct sequel to the Thor comics) - Teen Titans: X-Men (B-Team of their universe and being properties no one care for until the 80s) - Justice League: Avengers (A-Team of their universe which contains all the heroes everyone loves and have awesome cartoons based on them)

One thing I do wonder is what is DC's equivalent to the Inhumans?

Doom Patrol: Fantastic Four (a team of deformed heroes who gain their powers from an accident)

Actually, the Doom Patrol had more in common with the X-Men: they were a group of outcasts that protected a world that hated and feared them and were led by a man in a wheelchair.

I know. But it seems like the formula for the team is going for an even more outcast version of the Fantastic Four, who happens to be a super power version of the Challengers of the Unknown.

And of course Swamp Thing and Man-Thing, developed independently yet arriving in print about the same time (and both inspired by the classic Theodore Sturgeon story "It".)

Were the Fantastic Four ever outcasts, though? They were treated as superstars pretty quick, it seems to me. The Doom Patrol and the X-Men, while they have superficial and thematic elements in common (heroes considered freaks/outcasts, leader man in a wheelchair) apparently developed independently of each other, with the Doom Patrol first appearing in June 1963, and the X-Men first appearing in September 1963. The freak/outcast/outsider thing was pretty popular in comics in the 60's (along with misunderstood youth) but in the Doom Patrol's case, it seemed kinda forced. Why were the Doom Patrol freaks, and, say, the Flash, Superman, etc, not? There didn't seem to be any substantive difference. In the X-Men's case, they were "mutants," which was established as something separate from folks like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four, but how the Doom Patrol were any different from any other super-hero (aside, perhaps, from looking unusual, as many of them did - Mento and Elasti-Girl didn't, though) always escaped me. Metamorpho got called a "freak" alot, too.

edited 10th Aug '15 5:16:00 PM by Robbery

To overgeneralize: The Doom Patrol are the Fantastic Four if Reed's stretching power and intelligence were split between two characters, and Grimm's struggles with the transformation spread to the rest of the team.

edited 10th Aug '15 6:01:41 PM by StateOfBedlam

One case you can make is that Robotman, Negative Man, Beast Boy and Metamorpho simply looked a lot more unsettling compared to the much more normal-looking Superman, Batman, Aquaman, etc, though that still wouldn't explain the Chief, Elasti-Girl or Mento.

The second and more likely case is that a Shared Universe just wasn't that much of a thing for DC until the 70's. (Maybe the late 60's?) Sure, you had the JSA, JLA, the Titans and World's Finest, but outside of those books, everyone was off in their own little words, not really interacting all that much or sharing much if any continuity with one another. This got so bad that there were at least three different versions of Atlantis at one point until, after the writers made a more concentrated effort to have a true Shared Universe, they did their best to merge them together, but it wasn't until Peter David wrote his Atlantis Chronicles series in the 90's that anyone made a focused effort at doing so. As far as the different writers were concerned, everyone could just do whatever they wanted without worrying about whether or not it would impact one book or another, with the only exceptions being Flash&Green Lantern and possibly Atom&Hawkman, (as the first two were written by John Broome and the last two by Gardner Fox respectively,) and maybe Superman/Batman, but even then, it wasn't perfect. The point is, since DC wasn't that concerned with how their different books fit into a larger picture, they didn't really care about Doom Patrol not making a lot of sense compared to the other books they put out.

edited 10th Aug '15 6:04:13 PM by kkhohoho

Were the Fantastic Four treated as freaks? No. Would the team be treated as such if Reed didn't publicly announce the team as a non-profit group formed for the benefit of humanity? Oh god yes!

Looking back at Marvel Comics, the public are quick to lynching characters they don't understand and have no knowledge of. This dates back to the early days of (Golden Age) Human Torch of which the public's first reaction to the character is fear rather then seeing him as a hero.

Reed, being the genius he is when it comes to the public reaction, decided to have the four of them become a publicly known team in order to avoid being treated as outcast. This (base on knowledge of the Lee/Kirby comics along) worked out with various results. While for the most part they are treated like celebrities, the public was quick to turn on them when they mess up in some ways. I say the comic where the team went bankrupt is a good example where everybody just shun the team when that information is leaked to the public. Or how about the time that angry mob assault Human Torch when they believed he is responsible for the fire in the sky in the first issue of the Galactus Trilogy. And lets not forget about the Thing; the guy is a hero who relies on a combination of strength and skills to get the job done, but he is still looked upon by everyone else as a hideous rock monster who just smash.

So while the team were treated as celebrities in the comics, they are still viewed as freaks and would of been treated as such when the opportunity arise.

Now that I mentioned how the team is formed to turn the character's tragic accident into a benefit towards humanity, does that origin sound oddly similar to a team of outcast that does that? No, that's stupid. Doom Patrol in no ways have any similarities to the Fantastic Four besides team origins, recurring iconic line up, overly sci-fi tone, freak themed heroes, and jump suit attires.