The Multiverse / Comic Books

• Black Moon Chronicles: Apparently reality is made up of many different dimensions tied together by the four elements. After humanity leaves the Earth for a different world when it is about to be destroyed, it takes Lucifer one hell of an effort to find humanity again between all the different universes.
• Major staple of The DCU and Marvel Universe comics (although DC attempted to get rid of it in the '80s; it's back now after the events of Infinite Crisis and 52).
  • DC comics popularized the multi-universe concept with the story "Flash Of Two Worlds," where the Silver Age Flash and the Golden Age Flash crossed paths, learning that each was living in an alternative universe. After several cosmic upheavals, taking DC's number of universes from infinite to one to fifty-two, the DC Multiverse now consists of infinite universes grouped into sets of 'bubble' Multiverses suspended in a larger structure referred to as the Omniverse, these bubbles each having a different number of universes within. The 'local Multiverse' that the main DC Universe is set in is made up of 52 universes, some of which are recognizable from various Elseworlds stories, some of which are wholly new creations or amalgamations of worlds from before the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. Earth 2 of the New 52 deals with events that happen on one of these Earths, and Grant Morrison's The Multiversity series has six of its issues each dedicated to one Earth within the local Multiverse, plus a multiverse guidebook, with plans to explore these Earths and those beyond further in Multiversity Too. These 'local' universes are:
    • Earth-0, the main DCU.
    • Earth-1, the world home to the Earth One line of graphic novels, with young and inexperienced versions of the main DC heroes just beginning to appear, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Teen Titans.
    • Earth-2, as featured in the comic of the same name, where younger versions of DC's Golden Age heroes arose in the modern day in the wake of an invasion from Apokolips that killed Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
    • Earth-3, the Mirror Universe of Earth-0, ruled by the Crime Syndicate of America until the Anti-Monitor destroyed it in Forever Evil (2013). It was replaced by a new version following Dark Nights: Death Metal.
    • Earth-4, where the Charlton Comics characters — The Question, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, etc. — are the heroes of a Watchmen-influenced world.
    • Earth-5, the world of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family.
    • Earth-6, the world now home to the stories from Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe.
    • Earth-7, an Ultimate Marvel pastiche (later including elements of Marvel Zombies) that was destroyed by the Gentry in Multiversity. However, pastiches of DC characters can be seen among the dead, so it's likely this Earth was a mix-up in homage to the many DC and Marvel crossover stories; it also had an equivalent to Hellboy.
    • Earth-8, a Marvel Comics pastiche, for example featuring the Retaliators and the G-Men.
    • Earth-9, the Tangent Comics universe, with characters that have the same names as the main DCU heroes but are otherwise entirely different.
    • Earth-10, a world where Superman landed in Nazi Germany, and grew up to become Overman. With the help of reverse-engineered Kryptonian technology — and, when he was old enough, Overman himself — the Nazis won World War II. In guilt over the Nazis' atrocities, Overman turned his Earth into a pseudo-utopia; the last English-speaking rebels, Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, fight Overman's New Reichsmen.
    • Earth-11, which includes female versions of the main DCU's heroes and villains, and male versions of its heroines and villainesses. This is a world where the Amazons of Themyscira had greater influence on society's advancement, to the point that women were given more freedom and helped shape Earth's future.
    • Earth-12, the DC Animated Universe, currently in the era of Batman Beyond.
    • Earth-13, home to a dark, magical Justice League called the League of Shadows, including Superdemon, Hellblazer (based on the Batmanesque version from Doom Patrol #53 and Books of Magic Annual #3), and Fate (the '90s version with the ankh scar). The world is in a state of perpetual twilight, and there are 13 months in the year, and 13 hours in every day.
    • Earth-15, a perfect world that was destroyed by Superboy-Prime. All that's left is a Cosmic Grail that was hidden in another world.
    • Earth-16, with the children of the main DC universe's heroes and villains — Chris Kent as Superman's son, Damian Wayne as Batman's son, etc. — plus DC's '90s supers, who live as shallow celebrities with all evil having been wiped out by the previous generation.
    • Earth-17, an Earth ravaged by atomic destruction. Humanity lives in domed cities, and the Atomic Knights of Justice are led by Adam Strange.
    • Earth-18, a Western-style world featuring the Justice Riders, who ride on Steampunk horses. On this world, the Time Trapper froze the state of progression so that, even with many 21st Century based technological advances, society is still a frontier world.
    • Earth-19, a world currently in the era of Edwardian England, home to the Bat Man, the Wonder Woman, the Accelerated Man, and the Shrinking Man. Bruce and Diana are based on Gotham by Gaslight and Amazonia respectively ^note Although those books have completely different Jack the Rippers, so can't actually be the same universe.
    • Earth-20, a pulp-style world featuring Doc Fate and the Society of Super-Heroes, who include Abin Sur's Green Lantern, Immortal Man, the Mighty Atom, and the Blackhawks.
    • Earth-21, the 1960s DC: The New Frontier universe, where John F. Kennedy was never assassinated and the Justice League of America protects a newly spacefaring USA.
    • Earth-22, the Kingdom Come universe where a new generation of heroes has run amok, forcing Superman and his allies to come out of retirement to try and fix things.
    • Earth-23, home of President Superman, where the world's greatest heroes are black (which can mean that they're black in the main DCU, as with Steel and Vixen; that a black holder of the legacy in the main DCU is Earth-23's primary holder, as seems to be the case with Green Lantern; that they're black versions of the hero, as with Superman; or that they're completely unique). The major exception is Batman.
    • Earth-26, an Alternate Tooniverse where Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! reside.
    • Earth-29, the cube-shaped Bizarro Universe.
    • Earth-30, the Superman: Red Son universe where Superman landed in Russia and became the leader of the USSR.
    • Earth-31, a world ravaged by tsunamis and earthquakes, where modern pirates roam the seas. Captain Leatherwing and his crew of the Flying Fox act as a force for good.
    • Earth-32, a world partially based on Batman: In Darkest Knight. Bruce Wayne is Green Lantern, and fights alongside heroes such as Super-Martian, Wonderhawk, and Aquaflash in the Justice Titans.
    • Earth-33, a.k.a. Earth-Prime, our own real world.
    • Earth-34, an Astro City pastiche, home to Goodfellow and the heroes of Cosmoville.
    • Earth-35, a pastiche of Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios comics, including Supremo and Majesty, Queen of Venus. The premier superteam of this world is the Super-Americans.
    • Earth-36, a world home to a team called Justice 9, based off Big Bang Comics, whose main hero Optiman has been killed by Super-Doomsday of Earth-45.
    • Earth-37, a world based off the works of author Howard Chaykin, such as Batman: Thrillkiller and Twilight.
    • Earth-38, the Superman & Batman: Generations universe where Superman debuted in 1938 and Batman followed in 1939; they aged normally and had families, including the modern scion of both, Knight-Wing.
    • Earth-39, a world based off the works of artist Wally Wood, home to the Agents of W.O.N.D.E.R.
    • Earth-40, an Evil Counterpart to Earth-20 where villains rather than heroes triumph, featuring Lady Shiva, Vandal Savage, Count Sinestro, Blockbuster, and Doctor Felix Faust as the Society of Super-Villains.
    • Earth-41, home to Spore and Dino-Cop, a world where so many heroes differ in terms of style and ideology, it's as if they were each dreamed up by individuals who had specific images and ideals of their heroes.
    • Earth-42, home to imp-like versions of the Justice League known as the Li'l Leaguers. They're actually robots.
    • Earth-43, which has a Vampire League and is home to the Batman Vampire Elseworlds trilogy.
    • Earth-44, the world of the Metal League, a fusion of the Justice League and the Metal Men, led by Doc Tornado.
    • Earth-45, an Earth where Superman as a concept became perverted and corrupted by mass marketing and turned into the hyper-edgy Superdoomsday, whom later went on a homicidal rampage killing the Supermen of other Earths before being stopped by the Superman of Earth-0 in Action Comics (New 52).
    • Earth-47, a world where The '60s never ended, home to the Love Syndicate of Dreamworld and immortal teenage president Prez Rickard.
    • Earth-48, the new home to Lady Quark and Lord Volt. A world bred as protectors of the Multiverse, where everyone is a superhero and every event is a Crossover.
    • Earth-50, home to the Justice Lords from the DCAU.
    • Earth-51, the world of Jack Kirby's DC creations such as Kamandi and OMAC.
    • The guidebook covers 45 of the Earths, leaving 7 over for other writers to develop: 14, 24, 25, 27, 28, 46 and 49. There is also mention of Hypertime, a former method of incorporating infinite universes devised by Morrison and Mark Waid.
    • Earth-14 shows up in the Superman (Rebirth) story "Multiplicity", where it's home to the Justice League of Assassins. From what's shown, it looks to be an After the End Mad Max-style world.
    • Earth-1098 is the Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl universe, where Kal-El died before becoming Superman and Bruce Wayne never became Batman. Batgirl — Barbara Gordon — is Gotham's near-dictatorial protector, Wonder Woman leads the Justice Society and is Supergirl's — Kara Zor-El — foster mother, and Lex Luthor backs — and manipulates — the Society.
    • Earth-25 appears in The Terrifics, where it turns out to be Tom Strong's world.
    • 1981 storyline Superboy 1980 #15-16 saw Pre-Crisis Earth-1 Superboy accidentally end up on Earth-2 in its early 1930s, where he met the teenaged Clark Kent of Earth-2. Since the Golden Age/Earth-2 Superman didn't have a Superboy career, Clark was merely a youth living on his adoptive parents' farm outside Smallville, though he was still learning about his developing powers.
    • Morrison drew up a map of the DCU multiverse◊ as it stood circa The Multiversity. Basically, the entire multiverse exists on a vibrational spectrum from red (matter) to blue (thought). At the centre, covering red and orange, is the Orrery of Worlds, with the 52 universes and the Rock of Eternity contained within the Bleed. Marking the boundary of the Orrery is the Speed Force Wall. Further out, from yellow to green, is the Sphere of the Gods, containing all of the DCU's various gods and archetypes — this is where Apokolips, New Genesis, the Dreaming, the Silver City, etc., are. At the border of the Sphere is Limbo, where the lost and forgotten of the Orrery end up, characters like Merryman that were lost to history. Blue is the Monitor Sphere, where the Monitors used to oversee the Orrery before their unmaking in Final Crisis. Marking the final boundary of the multiverse, and the limit to thought, at furthest blue-shift is the Source Wall, beyond which is the Overvoid, where lie the Monitor-mind that spawned the Monitors, the Source, and the Unknowable; in Morrison's conception, the white of the printed page panel borders in which all comics are enclosed.
    • In Doomsday Clock Doctor Manhattan discovers the multiverse changes itself in relation to the primary DC Universe, or the Metaverse.
    • Dark Nights: Metal introduces the Dark Multiverse, spawned of the hopes and fears of the local Multiverse's inhabitants, and begins adding new Earths to the bubble, starting with the 53rd Earth, where the Justice League are non-human primates.
    • One thing that should be noted about DC's local Multiverse is that the universes are connected through comic books, each Earth producing comics that recount what's happening somewhere else in the Multiverse, even if most people think they're fictional. This has long standing at DC — in the Silver Age, Earth-One's Flash, Barry Allen, read comics about Earth-Two's Flash, Jay Garrick.
  • The WildStorm multiverse consists of a 196833-dimensional snowflake-shaped arrangement of universes, flat sheets of information that their inhabitants interpret as three-dimensional (or what have you). Between them is the Bleed, red swirly stuff of vaguely-defined properties. The Bleed, if not the snowflake, was incorporated into The DCU.
    • After the New 52 reboot/relaunch in 2011, there is no known "Wildstorm multiverse" anymore, with all the Wildstorm characters and stories incorporated into the rebooted DC Universe. It may still exist, however, somewhere within the larger 'Multi-Multiverse'.
    • 2017's rebooted Wildstorm universe is separate from the DCU, with both having their own versions of Wildstorm characters. As yet, the rebooted 'verse has no assigned number.
  • The DCU and Marvel Universe are also part of one omniverse as evidenced by crossovers that have been referenced later by both companies (making them canon). Both also contain multiple alternate futures and the characters from the past and future of other universes. Now, go back and read that again.
  • A number of Marvel stories deal with and take place in these; appearances of the heroes in other media also fall under this category. Most prominent (and Alternate Continuity examples) are listed below. Notably, the main continuity is not Earth-1 or Earth-Prime, it's Earth-616.
    • Age of Apocalypse (Earth-295)
    • Earth X (Earth-9997)
    • House of M (Earth-58163)
    • Marvel 1602 (Earth-311)
    • Marvel Cinematic Universe (Earth-199999 - that's five nines)
    • Marvel Comics 2 (Earth-982)
    • Marvel Mangaverse (Earth-2301)
    • Marvel Zombies (Earth-2149)
    • Squadron Supreme (Earth-712)
    • Ultimate Marvel (Earth-1610)
    • Marvel Anime (Earth-101001)
  • The Spider-Verse storyline. Just... The whole thing.
  • With the massive multiversal shake-up Secret Wars (2015) is causing, it remains to be seen if we'll have a new, entirely renumbered Multiverse (most cross-media franchises not counting).
  • X-Man (Counter-X) utilizes another conception of the multiverse, where in addition to Alternate Universes, there's a "spiral of realities" stretching above and below, with the universes "downspiral" being significantly more chaotic and difficult for life to develop/survive in than the relatively advanced and idyllic universes located "upspiral".
  • There are in fact two types of alternate universe in the Marvel Universe. The first are different dimensions adjacent to the regular 616 verse, such as the Microverse and the various magical verses; the second are parallel universes, which are usually alternate timelines, and presumably each has its own adjacent verses too. It's not always clear which is which — the Negative Zone, for instance, is vague on if it is the first or second kind, so the one encountered by the regular Fantastic Four and their Ultimate counterparts could actually be one and the same (and the Nihil encountered by the latter wasn't a counterpart of the regular FF foe Annihilus, but a member of the same species — which is why he referred to himself as a member of a "caste" and already knew who Reed Richards was in their first meeting).
• Fables mainly features our own world, but also an indefinite number of Fairy Tale worlds which are connected by gates. The gates to our world are closely guarded by the New York Fables since they were conquered by the Adversary. This latter plays a role in the War against the Adversary.
• Ghostbusters (IDW Comics) establishes that there are multiple Ghostbusters universes: one in which Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II, the 2009 video game, and the IDW series take place, one in which the animated series The Real Ghostbusters takes place, and the films are fictional; one in which time's further ahead than in The Real Ghostbusters universe, so it's in the Extreme Ghostbusters era; further universes featuring other Ghostbusters media and fan productions; and most recently the Ghostbusters (2016) universe. There have been several crossover events, leading up to an Infinite Earths-style event. Incidentally, the Ghostbusters got their interdimensional crossover tech from Donatello during a crossover with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW).
• The Invader Zim (Oni) comics have had this concept show up a few times:
  • In Issue #5, Gaz mentions she had to look through various alternate universe before finding the one dominated by gamers, represented by a montage of panels showing alternate versions of Zim and GIR in a few of those universes.
  • In Issue #32, during the final portion of the Physical Fitness competition, Zim and Dib are so determined to win that they do infinite pushups, somehow causing themselves to transcend out of their universe and into multiversal space, where each universe is represented by giant sentient ab muscles. The muscles warn that the ongoing pushups threaten the fabric of reality, and offer to send the pair to their choice of paradise universes if they stop. However, they're both too stubborn and keep going, causing versions of themselves doing pushups to appear in multiple universes.
  • In Issue #40, a "cosmic mistake" causes Recap Kid (the comic series' omniscient narrator) to get sucked into the space between universes. There, they meet their counterpart the Recap Brain, who shows them numerous other universes in an attempt to get them back to their own. These include one where the basic Invader Zim plot is medieval fantasy instead of science fiction, one where Zim is a superhero and Dib is his Evil Genius nemesis, one where Zim and Dib's lives are the plot of a musical play, one where everyone in the world is blatantly nice, a universe that takes the form of a "depressing indie film", and one where Zim and Dib are sentient beans.
  • This is a major plot point in the Battle Void arc (Issues #46-#49), as Zim and Dib end up in a Portal Crossroad World populated entirely by alternate counterparts of Zim from various other universes.
• Issues #17-20 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) features a magic mirror that takes explorers to various Alternate Universes. The focus of the arc is on one Bizarro Universe, with evil versions of the good characters and vice-versa. The crisis occurs because Celestia falls in love with the alternate world's King Sombra, but their travels have weakened the bonds separating the realities, allowing the alternate world's Celestia to try and take over both.
• Pathfinder: Worldscape takes place in a demiplane that draws living beings from three separate worlds — Earth, Golarion (Pathfinder's setting) and Barsoom (better known as the planet Mars where John Carter of Mars/Warlord of Mars takes place), and even individuals from different versions. For example, Red Sonja and Kulan Gath hail from the Hyborian Era, a period in Earth's pre-history that is radically different from the Earth that John Carter came from. Likewise, the White Martians encountered in the Worldscape are noted by Carter to not be the same ones he fought in his past and they must have belonged to another version of Barsoom.
• Very early on, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) parodied the DC multiverse with a literal "superhighway" connecting the various worlds. In a Bizarro Universe, Dr. Eggman is a kindly veterinarian, while Sonic and his cohorts are evil hooligans in biker outfits. In another, Dr. Eggman was nearly defeated by the Freedom Fighters, but turned himself into a robot as a last resort (and he's even more kill-crazy than the original).
• Scooby-Doo comic "Scooby-Doo! Team Up" # 50 has an adventure where Bat-Mite and Scooby-Mite invokes all Batmen and Scooby gangs from different universes to confront a giant Scrappy-Doo that was trying to conquer the Multiverse. Apart from the main continuity (the classic Mistery Inc. gang), there were versions from the The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo (2002), Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue!, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! and Scooby Apocalypse. It turns that the villain was built by former sidekicks of the different continuites that were looking for extra recognition.
  • Every Sonic game and television show is canon to the comic, except that most exist in multiple universes, or 'Zones'. This includes: The 'Prime' Universe, the Sol Dimension, the Sonic Underground Universe, the (inevitable) Sabrina the Teenage Witch crossover, and a Sailor Moon-inspired universe where Knuckles wears a tuxedo. Go figure. The "real" world is yet another universe, and features lawyer-friendly versions of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, hot on the trail of a giant blue talking hedgehog. (Sonic Live)
    • The lawsuit-forced Cosmic Retcon following Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide caused the entire multiverse to collapse on itself and be reborn. That basically put a stop to the universe hopping in the entirety of the comics, and the concept died completely when the Archie comics were cancelled in 2017.
• The comic books Those Annoying Post Bros and Savage Henry focus on Bugtown, a infinite-sized City of Adventure which connects to an infinite number of alternate worlds.
• Zenith, a 2000 AD series, features this. Perhaps not surprisingly, its author Grant Morrison is one of the creators responsible for bringing back the DC multiverse.

---