Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Welcome to Dear Watchers in, um, Omniversal comic book podcast, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up the Omniversa fictional realities we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me Gito and Me Bohr.

That's Rob from the mirror diverse dimension.

I guess I could have been Guido of Earth. I don't know what Earth I'd be from. I'll have to come up with some explanation for an Earth I come from.

Well, before we begin our trip to our many alternate Earths today, gito, what's new in our Earth? Whatever earth this is.

Last week was episode 100. This is Earth here. This will be Earth 101 because it's episode 101. Does it feel different being triple digits?

Yes. Oh, gosh. Uh, we're old hats at this right now.

Kind of. So go listen last week to our countdowns because we did a bunch of countdowns. So if this is your first time tuning in, or if you skipped last week, we had a lot of fun counting down not just our top listen to episodes and our least listen to episodes, but a whole bunch of other multiversal stuff. So go listen mhm.

We talked RoboCop, we talked Cloud Atlas all over all things we hope to cover. And speaking of things that we covered, we also saw across the Spiderverse and on our Omniversity feed on Coffee. We actually did an episode about it, so you can look.

We did do a bonus episode. Yes, that was fun to see. And we have yet another multiversal movie coming to us this week, and I think we'll be talking more about that in a few minutes. But first, we have those giveaways that we revealed on our 100th episode last week. We will share about our first bundle soon. Remember that throughout the summer, we have four bundles of comics, some with some pretty major keys and great books. We have a what if and else worlds bundle, an MCU spec bundle, a DCU spec bundle and a signed books bundle. Could this be the first episode that we give one away? Well, stay listening and find out.

I don't even know it's true.

I tell you very little, though I write it in the notes. In my defense, you just don't read them.

Correct.

Our patrons are also getting a sleepover trading supply box with so many goodies that we're going to start sending out this week into next week. And we're happy to gift our patrons this to celebrate their support of us over all of these episodes. But if you want to become a patron, we'll include you in that gift box. Uh, if you join before we finish shipping them, we'll send you one so you can go over to Dearwatchers.com and click Join to find out more. If you want to become a patron and receive one of these cool boxes. Heading out soon and if you've waited.

To episode 101 to join us, well, welcome. And we have three parts of our journey today. Origins of the story, what inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity, we dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future.

And remember to leave us a review wherever you're listening. It helps us and we still want to keep growing through episode 200, which we'll eventually get to.

And with that, dear watchers, welcome to episode 101, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with our travels to today's alternate universe. And merciful. Minerva. Uh, today we take a rather complicated trip to a barely scratch the surface of this very complicated question. What if the flash of two worlds was incorrectly identified as the origin of the DC multiverse, featuring Wonder Woman and much, much more?

Yes. So this is not an Earth. This is, uh, maybe a moderately unusual episode, though it's going to feel very typical for us because it's more like we're in the orie of worlds, which is what they call it in DC. Along with the monitors or the Chroniclers, all the DC folks who oversee the Omniverse trying to catalog what the hell is happening. And, uh, it's a fun episode because we're almost getting a little meta on ourselves here. Instead of a single alternate universe, we are actually looking at the origin of the DC multiverse concept, not coincidentally timed to the flash film that is about to come out the week this episode releases. And the DC Multiverse concept is incredibly tricky. And we're going to explain why in each segment. But first, what the heck is a multiverse?

Mhm. So here's some background on the term multiverse. In 1895, philosopher William James, who's the brother of the novelist Henry James, he coined the term as an alternative to universe, using it to convey absence of order and unity. Truly, all we know of good and beauty proceeds from nature, but nonetheless so all we know of evil visible nature is all plasticity and indifference. A, uh, moral multiverse, as one might call it, and not a moral universe. And that is William James. That's a recording, by the way, of course, right?

Yes.

Recording of William James from the is life worth living? Address to the Young Men's Christian Association of Harvard University, May 1895.

What?

Yes, that's right. The YMCA did not just give us the Village People, but also the word multiverse.

There is a lot in that. My gosh. But it's fun.

Macho multiverse.

I know we should have a parody album of every Village People song, but with, uh, the multiverse, you know, I had a parody album where it was like Donald Duck doing Village People songs when I was growing up. That was fun. It's cool because William is not using it in the way that we're using it, but it's not too dissimilar, like just this idea that he's talking about that the universe is not unified universe, that in fact, there's a multiverse. It's something spread out and disparate and distinct. And so it's a ah, cool origin.

Yeah. And Google Books actually was tracking the word. And it's fascinating because it is barely actually used until the 1930s. So William was really using it pretty early. And then it's used even in pretty small quantities in the 1930s. It's not really until the 1980s, it begins to rise and of course, exponentially spikes into the we talked about that on our 100th episode. There fascinating language stuff with this word.

Yeah, it is cool because even though the concept clearly is out there, it's cool. Uh, Google Books has a little, actually, graph. And there's years where it's not even used now. This is just everything Google Books has archived, but there's years it's not even used. And then it just really spikes in the last 30 years.

Yeah. Ah. I thought in one of his memoirs, winston Churchill in the 30s was even talking about it, but not using the term, but referring to all these universes out there and kind of the scary concept that that is. But as a concept, it has many different origins. Some placing it back in ancient Greece with the concept of infinite worlds, others as an 1890s. Modern scientific discovery received more popularization in the 1950s when physicist Hugh Everett speaks about the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, though that theory is not popularized until the 1980s. Also talked about by Erwin Schrodinger of cat fame, sounds like cats, star of cats, jellico cats, and then very much in the fiction of the 1960s. And I think, Guido, you're going to tell us a little bit more about some of its uses in fiction.

Yeah. So the many worlds concept, obviously a huge trope in comics, Sci-Fi, pulps. And the concept itself exists in fiction. Once you broaden it to include, like, parallel worlds and subdimensions and other dimensions and alternate realities, then obviously there are just countless examples. Mythology, for example. So many similar things exist. But if we narrow it a little to try to understand a multiverse as like a direct alternate universe, you get this 1884 story called Flatland, a romance of Many Dimensions, which is about a world of dimensions, of shapes. I, uh, kid you not. The characters are shapes. It's a mathematical thing. Asimov loved it. Yeah, it is square. I think the Square is like the protagonist, maybe.

I don't know.

I've never read it. I don't want to. But it sounds trippy. And then, of course, you get stuff in the 1890s, like time Machine and speculative fiction with numerous examples, though none are quite the alternate universe. So maybe an origin is there's this 1930s story, Sidewise in Time, which is published in Astounding Stories by Murray Leinster. And it uses alternate universes in geography and creates this idea that if you time travel but sideways you get to another universe. So instead of going to the past or the future, you can time travel sideways and get to an alternate universe. So that sounds solid to me as a good place of the origin. Of course, then you end up with big popular things like Chronicles of Narnia in the 50s, visiting other universes.

I throw in wizard of Oz, which comes before that, and also Alice in Wonderland, too. Those are all things to other universes.

Yeah, so you get other universe stuff. It's just the multiverse part isn't always present in those stories. So it's actually 1961. There's the parallel world comic that we read for our main segment today that's often credited as creating the modern concept. So that is definitely incorrect, but maybe we can say that popularized it. And it's right after that, 1963, that classic Sci-Fi writer and creator Michael Morcock starts to use the word in the Sundried worlds, which is credited and pretty well established as probably the first fiction use of the word multiverse. So, 1963, and we're going to go more into the DC use of it and really dive into the comic book multiverse in just a few minutes.

Yeah. So let's do that and talk a little bit about our background with the DC multiverse. And I'll go first, which is that it always confused me as a kid. The biggest thing I read, if listeners of the podcast have heard me talk about this before, but I was a huge reader collector of DC who's who I read that more probably than actual DC comics. And I would always be confused when, oh, uh, wait, there's this Superman with gray on his temples. Okay, wait, he's from another Earth. And then Superman was also Super Boy, but I was reading Superboy comics at the time when he had the leather jacket, it's like, wait, that's not Superboy. Wait. Clark Kent was also superboy. So that was always so confusing to me. And as a reader of the JSA and then reading, oh, wait, they're on a different planet than everyone else, I never really fully got it until years later when I read more. And especially, I think, also the DC CW shows, which lean so heavily into that kind of alternate creating a cohesive world while also embracing the multiverse. Something I really learned much more about it. But how about you?

Yeah, and you've certainly never read either any of the major comic events that deal with this, which we will ultimately have to cover, um, all of them, if we continue the show forever. But yeah, you've never read Crisis on Infinite Earth? Infinite Crisis multiversity, uh, I was obsessed.

With as a kid, was Zero Hour, but by that point they had that.

Is a piece of it, mhm.

But they had 0 hour apiece together. Yeah, because the JSA had been functioning then in the world with the other heroes by that point.

Yeah, well, my background with the DC multiverse is much deeper, I'd say. Uh, being a fan, particularly from the last 30 years of comics I've more leaned into my DC fandom, especially the last decade. But I read Christ and Infinite Earth like most comic fans did. And Zero Hour. And, uh, the only major event with multiverse I probably didn't read was Army Gadd in 2001 which Mike from Tencent Takes is really obsessed with and helped me get all the issues of. So one day I think we're going to do a crossover and cover that. But I love Infinite Crisis. It's one of my favorite stories out there. Final Crisis. Multiversity is just a cool, cool project by Grant Morrison that we will absolutely have to cover and is kind of mind numbing and breaks your brain a bit. So I'm very familiar with the DC multiverse, but I'm no expert I don't think there is an expert on the DC multiverse because it's so complicated because you're dealing with almost 100 years now. We're approaching 100 years of, uh, storytelling and it was disconnected and disparate for so long. So I am very familiar and then, of course, in multimedia, like you said, very familiar with CW and the project of the DCEU and thinking about the future of the DCU. So I am very familiar with the DC multiverse but it is still hurts my brain at times. We're going to keep it simple today, though. I promise our listeners that promise not.

To hurt your brain too, too much. So let's go back to the 1950s with our origins of the story. Right now, on this very show, you're going to get the answer to all your questions. Our amazing story begins a few years ago. And first up, we've thrown our magic lasso around Wonder Woman Vol. One, issue number 59 from DC Comics. This is from May 1953 and it's entitled Wonder Woman's Invisible Twin which isn't really accurate, but sure.

So only William Moulton Marston is credited as Charles Moulton here, as he was often. But this was probably written by Robert Kennegar pencils by Harry G. Peter who also did the inks and edited by Whitney Ellsworth with Bob Kennegar. So Bob Kennegar had, at this point, over 20 years on Wonder Woman or? No, not at this point. There aren't 20 years. But had, uh, in total, over 20 years on Wonder Woman and wrote a lot of war comics and a whole bunch of other stuff for DC. Harry G. Peter was one of the original artists on Wonder Woman. So why did we read this? Well, we read this because no matter what anyone says, this is the birth of the DC multiverse. This is the first parallel Earth story in DC Comics. And when we're done explaining why and the summary we can talk about why people don't seem to know that or think that one quick.

She's a woman.

Because she's a woman. I think that's a big part of it, but we'll explore if there's other pieces. One quick side. I mean, if we're talking DC Comics 1947, there is an alternate Earth in Real Fact Comics Number Six. But I don't consider it. I did go read it. It's a character, Tommy Tomorrow, who ends up on Mars. And so it's just basically a universe where he ends up on Mars. So it's more Sci-Fi than an alternate universe. And it's certainly not taking place in the hero universe of DC. And then why don't we do a real quick summary of this issue? Because, like a lot of Golden Age issues, sadly, it is so hard to find. It has as best I can tell, it has never, ever been recollected. It's not in any of the Golden Age Wonder Woman omnibuses or trade paperbacks or classic Wonder Woman. They just never got to this issue. They kept printing everything before this issue and never got to this issue. So why don't we start off with the summary? Rob, want to start us off?

Sure. Wonder Woman starts getting attacked by an invisible force every time she sees her reflection in a window, in a mirror, in the water. And because she is vulnerable gangster, she's chasing after get away.

Yes. And then all the criminals decide they're going to come after her. So at one point, they try to steal her lasso. She goes back to grab her lasso, lightning, uh, strikes her, and she gets transported to what we now know is Earth 59. So numbered because this is issue 59. And there she meets Tara Teruna, who is that Earth's Wonder Woman, who's identical to her in almost every way and is facing Duke Dazam, who is her arch nemesis and has been attacking Wonder Woman, Tara Teruna. And every time our Wonder Woman was getting attacked, it was the time Duke was attacking Tara Teruna. But together they can beat him. And after he's defeated, she gets hit by lightning again back to our Earth, which at this point is Earth Two on DC, where she can now defeat the gangsters.

Easy.

And our story ends.

Mhm.

So before we dig into the multiversal aspect, did you enjoy this story? Any first or general impressions?

Yeah, I enjoyed it because it's, uh, a super quick, easy read. It's certainly kind of silly because the first half of the book is Wonder Woman getting pushed into things.

It's funny. All the invisible stuff is quite funny. Like, she's getting pulled out the window. She's then like, feeling choked by the mirror. Then she walks by a shop window and she just gets flung into it.

I was thinking there it's like, I know Amazon is destroying brick and mortar businesses, but this is ridiculous.

Oh my gosh, that is ridiculous. That is one of the worst puns ever.

She falls in a lake at one point and just also then everyone just feels bad for her because she tries to capture these criminals. And in fact, her lasso drives away from her on the car, and then everyone is just like, oh, uh, poor Wonder Woman. She's lost it.

Yeah, all the headlines are like, that's it. Wonder Woman just can't do anything. She's finished. Yeah.

Literally, this feels like it should be a meme where she's just walking down the street and a man with a briefcase and a fedora just says, Poor Wonder Woman. So, yeah, that's really like, half of the book is basically dedicated.

Well, because it's one I mean, at this point, Wonder Woman, like most comics, is an anthology. So this is a shorter story than usual because there's another Wonder Woman story in it. And then a few other unrelated stories and even prose and stuff.

Comparing m women's hair colors.

Yes. Uh, but staying on Wonder Woman, I'll say my overall impression is it's a really fun one, actually. Sometimes I think the golden age is a slog to get through. But, uh, this was not this was fast paced. It did have a little bit of funniness, or just fun to it. Uh, and it's simple enough, but interesting. So I really loved this a lot. It was my first time reading it. I had never read it before. It was only in researching the multiverse that we came to this issue. So let's talk the multiverse here. Obviously, we have Tara Taruna, and it is her language that translates into Wonder Woman. I don't get that she's talking to Wonder Woman in English in what we're reading. But she is known as Tara Turuna, which is translated to Wonder Woman on her planet. And her planet is this is where it's really just a multiverse, I guess, because it's like our planet. But I guess in, I don't know, whatever the time is that people wore, I guess, like, ancient Rome or Greece or Egyptian times because she's kind of fighting a pharaoh.

Yes, it's a weird mix of different ancient worlds that we have. The villain is dressed like a pharaoh, but the ships are very much Viking ships, and then the soldiers are like you were saying ancient Roman soldiers. So it's kind of all put together.

It is. But I think what makes this definitely the birth of the multiverse is not just that this other universe, this alternate universe has its own Wonder Woman. So I think that aspect of it makes it a multiverse very clearly. But what's really cool to me is that there is a page in this where there's a panel showing Wonder Woman saying Earth must have a twin world existing simultaneously alongside it, but developing differently. And everyone on it is a double of everyone on Earth. The electrical storm somehow must have hurled me from my world to yours. And it shows the two parallel Earths with lightning between it. What's so cool is that image, like, recurs in the Flash in Crisis, um, infinite Earth. Every time the DC multiverse is being brought up. There is this image and it starts here. So it's cool. Maybe if that image didn't even appear in this book, one could argue this is more an imaginary story than it is an alternate Earth. But I think because it's Wonder Woman and because of that image and, uh, explanation, I think this is really clearly the multiverse.

Yeah, and I think another thing attached to that is something that's going to come up in our next issue as well. But she says that this proves that evil will always be challenged by a Wonder Woman on Earth or on other worlds. So it's establishing this concept again, not like you were saying, it's not an imaginary story in the fact that every world will always have someone who's a Wonder Woman to battle evil. Now, in this world, she happens to look exactly like our Wonder Woman, but you could see that she could be in another world, a Wonder Woman who looks totally different.

Mhm, it also importantly establishes the mode of transportation between the Earths. So here it's that as, ah, she explains the electrical storm somehow does this. So the combination of the storm, the lightning, and the magical powers of her Lasso of Truth get her to shift between Earths. So that's going to be important because we see that as a core part of the multiverse is travel between the universes.

What do you think about her name? Tara Taruna. And then we also have Duke Dazam, obviously classic alliteration comic names. But do you think there's something to that in terms of no, I don't.

It might be someone Bob canagar new. I mean, who knows? I have no idea why it's Kara Teruna.

Is there an anagram or so I was trying to make them or is like because there's so much with the mirror here, I was thinking, wait, is it backwards to something? And it's like, no, neither of those.

Names are any no, it really does. And even if you search for, like, Taruna, this is the only thing that comes up. Like, that's not even an existing name that I can find because it feels.

Like it could have been taken from Astounding or one of those other compilations.

That you were or like a Latin word or something. But, um, totally, as far as I can tell, it's totally made up for this. Mhm so very cool to see the birth of the DC multiverse and astoundingly this issue is pretty gettable and it is quickly at the top of my must get comics. But you can get this book for a couple hundred dollars and that's not bad for a 1953 Wonder Woman that births the DC Multiverse. I've even seen it selling for graded for a couple of hundred under $1,000 over the last three years. So very cool. And I'm hesitant to release this episode because our listeners are going to go out there and increase the value of this book.

Before we know it, we're going to see Tara in the DCEU.

Of course, not the EU anymore, but yes, sure.

Okay.

Yeah. Tara. Teruda will have to bring her back.

Mhm.

All right, so, uh, let's get struck by lightning, grab onto the lasso, and.

Move on to exploring multiversity.

I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question what if?

And out of our Ring Pops not our superhero suit, but instead this issue. The Flash, volume one, issue number 123 from September 1961, DC Comics. And it is called, of course, the Flash of Two Worlds.

Super famous issue. Written by Gardner Fox penciled by Carmen Infantino, inked by Jojella colored by Carl Gafford, lettered by Gaspar Saladino and edited by Julie Schwartz. Julie Schwartz side notes autobiography is later titled man of Two Worlds. So definitely inspired by this incredibly famous issue. A little background before we get to this issue, why we read it and what it is. It's 1961. In this issue in 1960, Strange Adventures 117 from DC had an alternate Earth. It's a post atomic earth. So, again, more of a Sci-Fi story. Green Lantern, issue two in 1960, uh, mentions an alternate Earth because he fights this little villain alien that comes from some antimatter universe, but I'd call that basically alien, and you don't see an alternate Earth. And then the same year as this issue, 1961, we have Wonder Woman 124. And that's considered to be what's called an impossible tale, not an imaginary tale because it just simply could not have happened. It has all Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman, and Hippolyta all teaming up together as the Wonder Family, and it just could not have happened. And then Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen and some other titles at this point are doing imaginary tales. But this issue, the Flash of two worlds, is an attempt to bridge, of course, the Golden Age Flash and eventually the golden age DC. Heroes to the Silver Age heroes. And in this story, we have the Flash, Barry Allen, the Flash that we know who vibrates so fast while doing a magic trick at a community center benefit that he ends up on. What we later find out is Earth One because we later find out that we are on Earth Two in DC continuity at this point. And so he's in Keystone City, and he realizes somehow to find Jay Garak and tells him his origin. And Rob, how does Barry realize that Jay is there and how to find him?

Well, because he's read about Jay in comic books, in comics that are written by Gardner Fox, who wrote this very issue.

Yeah. So in a weird, weird meta twist, this means that it is established in Earth Two. Gardner Fox writes flash comics. He just writes them about golden age. Flash j Garrick So that's how Barry knows to find Jay. They end up teaming up. And I'm sure you'll want to talk more, but they end up teaming up against these three villains, these three absurd villains of the Golden Age flashes, the Thinker, the Fiddler, and the Shade. And, uh, basically the book is a team up. They're separated and realize they'll be better together. And now this brings Jay Garrick out of retirement. But Barry, of course, vibrates back to our Earth. And this sets up what becomes stories for decades through to today of shifting between multiverses and using multiverses to retcon and bridge gaps and all that kind of stuff.

I love one of the features that they mentioned is, uh, Barry says that Gardner Fox says that he sees these stories in his dreams when he's sleeping. And Gardener Fox also created the Wesley Dodds Sandman, who has these visions in his dreams. And then that is a power that's bestowed on our central character in Kingdom come as well, to see these visions in the dream. So it all, again, seems like very self referential in that way that Gardner Fox is kind of giving himself the Sandman powers.

Yeah, it's fun. So was this your first time reading this classic issue?

Yes, definitely was my first time reading it. I'm struck by while it's funny because while it introduces these very meta, uh, concepts, which in a way seems very modern, oh, we're going to have the writer referencing himself and comic books and putting this together. It combines that with such a silly sensibility that you read it and go, oh, you can see why people were turning to Marvel, where Marvel was, oh, we're going to be dealing with real human issues and drama and angst. And here it's like, oh, it's these very silly villains in the whole kind of first quarter of the book where it's like the magician hasn't showed up for the party so that the Flash has to do it. And of course, literally, Barry Allen says to Iris West, like, oh, I'm going to go call the Flash. And he'll come, but I have to go right now. And then he leaves, and it's like, oh, really? Iris? How dumb is Iris that she can't pick up? So it's all that silliness. And you go like, you can see Batman 66 and all that other stuff in the colorfulness and the kind of absurdity that you get here that you don't even get over at Marvel at the same time.

Yeah, I agree. And actually, I found that fun about it. I found it fun that the stakes aren't that high, that it's silly. I mean, even what the Riddler, um, the Riddler, the Fiddler, the Thinker, and the Shade are doing is like they're just trying to steal some gems.

Gems, art.

So it's such a silly plot. But I think because A, I think because they do a cool job bridging the two universes, and then B, because these villains are really quirky, uh, it ends up being quite fun. The bridging of the. Two universes is of course, why this is so famous and why this is put up there as an iconic and classic introduction of the multiverse. Mhm because.

It works so well in that it is just this kind of sudden moment. It works actually better than the lightning of the Wonder Woman issue because it is something inherent to the Flash's powers.

That this well, and what of course that does really well is that sets up that they can do this again. So they actually about 15 issues later, they do it again in Flash, jay Garrick comes and Vandal Savage is introduced and they battle. And then right after that, of course, um, you get Crisis on Earth One, crisis on Earth Two. So the Justice League and Justice Society meet. So it does help to build in this mechanism for transporting between the Earth and this vibrational frequency idea scientifically makes it sound, uh, like it could be real and imbues.

Also, this character who has somewhat limited powers. Oh, he can run super fast, and his villains are all very fun, but a little silly. We've got the turtle and the top and the fiddler. So he's just a super fast guy. He's not like Superman who can do all this stuff, or Wonder Woman or the Green Lantern. So it elevates this character in a way that they found, oh, who's going to be the guy that can go through time and go to alternate world? It's going to be the Flash because of that. And it kind of gives him this extra ability that these other characters who have kind of more cool powers can actually do.

Yeah, I agree. Uh, and that becomes really important. I mean, not to spoil the 35 year old crisis on Infinite Earth for you, but Flash's, uh, powers become critical to saving the Omniverse in that, and it's really famous for that reason. So it's cool then that is used again, that Gardner Fox creates it and it's used throughout, I'd say, the telling of DC multiverse stories.

Mhm, why did they want to really bring some of these characters back? As Jay Garrick is talking about, oh, I was been in retirement, but I was thinking about getting out of retirement. This adventure actually prompts him to kind of come back. Were they figuring like they do now, hey, no character should really just sit on the shelf. We should utilize these characters in some way.

Probably. I mean, I don't actually know. I'm sure there are tons of interviews with Gardener Fox and certainly Julie Schwartz about why they chose to do it. And I didn't do research about that, so I'm not totally sure. It's less than a decade at this point that the new characters have been introduced. And so perhaps there is just maybe he himself was a fan and just thought, let me bring these back, or yeah, he thought there'd be interesting stories to tell. I think that element of it is what's so cool. And that's the dimension of it that the wonder woman story doesn't have is that the Jay garrick origin, even in this, Barry and Jay realize their origins are very similar, even though they ended up being different characters. So it's cool to again, it's sort of retconning, but it's taking things that, uh, in 1961, a lot of readers of comics would know and then mushing them together to tell this story, which is I think, really fun, really reminiscent.

Of and this, I don't think, is a spoiler for anyone. Especially if you saw the first movie of the uh, Spiderverse movies as well. And probably into the comics also, but where everyone gets bitten by spider. But it's a little different. This spider is a little and you've got the anime girl who's controlling the spider. So, yeah, it's all slightly variations, but you always have the same reoccurring theme of the spider. Just like here you have the science experiment gone wrong. Of course, jay garrick has the classic. He drank hard water and became super fast, which I love.

Well, there's some fumes or something, too, that happened.

I know what hard water is, but it doesn't sound like it would make you fast.

Hard water is like what our shower, uh, has.

Who was bidded by a mongoose.

Yes. So I see why this issue is held up, and it's great.

Yeah, no, it's definitely a lot of fun, I think, especially if you want just a fun and just it's so colorful. We haven't really talked about Carmine Infantino's art, but everything is just a splash of color. And again, it reminds me so much of, even though it came several years later, of Batman 66, because everything is just eye poppingly bright in this.

Well, there are scenes, too, in the museum with the villains where they're controlling flash and flash and flash, and they look like they're dancing, and there's all broken music notes in the ceiling. So, like the art absolutely. You could see that it's the equivalent of the wham, bam, POW, total Batman 66.

The way they get out of it is a classic batman 66.

Totally ridiculous.

All these jewels. And the fiddler was like, put the small jewels back, keep the big jewels. And they put the small jewels in.

Their ears so that they can't be controlled anymore.

Which is like completely something you would see Adam West do. Um, I probably did do something very similar. So ridiculous. You were thinking, oh, they're going to be using their super speed. Their ears are going to be vibrating at a different frequency. Oh, no. They're literally stuffing their ears with jewels. Which has to be painful, too.

I know. So it's fun. Uh, while the wonder woman issue, I think, births the multiverse, I think this expands the multiverse to being a, uh, story device that really helps us step into another earth. And it's another earth with backstory so introducing Earth One here gives us a whole built in Golden Age backstory that we're going to get to in the next multiverse stories that follow in the in our next issue too.

Mhm so hand me that glass of hard water. Watch out for lightning bolts. It's pondering possibilities. Will the future you describe be averted? Diverted? Averted? There's infinite things that we could be talking about in this there were.

That is correct.

What are we talking about for our pondering possibilities?

Well, uh, we could have gone so many places. We could have gone to the two years later crisis on Earth One, crisis on Earth Two, Justice League story. We could have followed Flash's role in the multiverse. Gone to Crisis on Infinite Earth, gone to Flashpoint, gone to the upcoming movie gone to the CW shows Flash of, uh, two Earths that they do. So there's so many places to go. But I decided, one, let's keep it comics. And two, this episode is about the DC multiverse. And so what do we do with the DC multiverse? Well, the multiverse doesn't totally get codified as a grand unifying concept until Crisis not in Infinite Earth, but prior to that is, of course, just the use of the term. So this was really, really hard to find. But I tried to identify the first use of the word multiverse in DC Comics and this might be it. So let's check it out.

Okay, so this is all Star Squadron number 27 from DC Comics, November 1983. And it's called a specter is haunting the multiverse.

Yes. It's written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Richard Howell, who did the inks with Larry Houston, colored by Adrian Roy, lettered by David Cody Weiss and edited by Roy. So in addition to a title called A Specter Is Haunting the Multiverse, it is used in dialogue between Specter and Dr. Fate.

Yes. So there's a lot going on.

Yes, because this series is a whole retcon series Roy is doing where he's telling stories in the Golden Age that didn't actually happen and then even having lots of time travel and connections to current continuity of the 1980s. So it's very funky.

As I said to you when you started reading it, when, you know, in the very second line, it mentions the work mock and the Looft waffa, you know, you're in for quite a read. But to summarize this very wordy, lots going on issue. While the Atom is hospitalized with a mysterious illness and the rest of the JSA All Star Squadron are caught up in World War II duties dr. Fate travels into a ditkoesque universe beyond the laws of our cosmos to encounter the Specter who is now removed from the body of Jim Corrigan and is being controlled by the evil high priest of Britskall named Kulak a three eyed blue skinned villain from 1940. Fate and the Specter's occult battle wrangles Kulak Free who imprisons the Specter and travels to earth to take his revenge on the JSA.

Yeah. And there might be, I don't know, 50,000 words in this issue, I think. Typical Roy fair.

What, a third Doctor Fate inspector are not even in it?

No, it's taking place in the hospital with the baby and I don't even understand what is going on.

And they're worried about the, uh there's a lot going on. Wonder Woman is like, uh, the men have such camaraderie and I'm on the.

Outside, and she has a Scrying mirror which required a Roy editor's note. There are a lot of editors note in this issue to cite that she used describing mirror back in the 1940s. Uh, this whole project of all Star Squadron is interesting. It's hard to get through and it's hard to enjoy. But I think it's a really cool project that Roy is doing here. In fact, I think I mentioned on an episode, I have no idea which, but All Star Squadron ten issues before this is probably the first use of the printed word retcon ever, mhm. By Roy in the letters page. So it's cool that this might be the first use of multiverse because clearly what Roy is trying to do is take these high science, maybe sometimes used in Sci-Fi concepts and pull them into comics.

M it's cool. Project roy was such a huge fan of Astounding and the weird fiction writers of which Gardner Fox was associated. So he's kind of bringing in all these concepts and putting it into more of a popular medium there.

Yeah. So in terms of what this says about the multiverse, I have no idea. I mean, I guess having not read every Bronze Age DC comic ever, I'm not sure if this is the first book that sort of gets at this, uh, catalog of worlds, if you will. Like, there's some of those sequences where Fate is looking at all these different Earths and he's talking about a multitude of creatures that somewhere specter battled Kulak and some obliterated him. So it's getting at the concept. The concept maybe had been explored in this way in other DC 70s books. But again, this might be, I think, the first time it's called a multiverse.

And where the specter is, I called it like this disco esque universe because.

It is very much it's very Doctor Strange.

Very Doctor strange. In fact, you have to like, remind I had to remind myself, wait, this is Dr. Fate not dr. Strange here. Because where the specter is standing in this thing, it really reminds me of what is it called? Gito. The end of all nexus of all universes, where we see Kang in both kind of the Loki series and in a lot of the comics, where it's got like this just stone thing and you could replace the specter with like a mortise and it would be pretty much the exact same.

Yeah, and replace Dr. Fate with Dr. Strange.

Exactly.

They were clearly inspired by each other repeatedly.

There's a lot going on. But it is kind of this interesting, uh, idea to also bring back some of these old villains and old storylines from the past. And it's kind of interesting. What if this villain, I guess, was kind of also almost in this cobus in this nether world, too, from like the 1940s on. And well, I guess it's not I guess it's not the 80s here. It is still the 40s.

That's where it gets no, it's the 80s. Well, they refer to the 80s because they had just met Infinity Inc. So clearly we're just reading this right after a time travel story where they met the heroes of the 80s. So they talked about the 80s, which is weird because they're yeah, no, I know, I know. But that's what's weird is he's tying forty S to the eighty S here. And just before we wrap on this convoluted, though fun as an artifact issue, the quote inside so, as you said, the title is a specter is haunting the multiverse. But the quote inside is Dr. Fate saying, I thought him disintegrated for all time, his essence scattered to the myriad corners of the multiverse, but he lives. And then he goes on to talk about the multitude of cultures and talk about the fathomless sea of worlds. So again, they're talking about this place where there's all these different worlds intersecting.

Since that it's dr. Fate. I was thinking, reading this, it was like, oh, this is kind of the perfect character to introduce this term into DC. Since this is a character who himself, his powers are coming from multiple different times through this m NABU is inheriting him. And in fact, a lot of these JSA characters, even when you think of Hawkman, is actually reincarnated all these different ways. And the specter is the spirit who just comes into other people. And even Johnny Thunders, who's got this genie, like all the so much of their powers are actually coming from these creatures or entities that live out of time. So it kind of makes sense that it's the JSA and not the JLA that's really introducing us to the multiverse there.

Yeah. And it makes sense that it's Roy as a writer, mhm, both in terms of his own interest, as you were describing, but also his evolution from being a fan to being a writer editor, going between the two companies, always someone really interested in continuity.

He's going literally between the multiverses of the big two. And as we just said here, he's bringing stuff in probably from Marvel that aesthetic and some of maybe even the plot details of a Doctor Strange and stuff like M that and putting it into DC. And I think Richard Howell's art is also just great throughout. I mean, it is a really fun read that complements, especially since it's very wordy, the fact that the images are so cool and the fact there's like this one image of Dr. Fate kind of almost becoming like playing cards through all or mirrors and everything like that. It's just like, oh, this is really cool. And it balances the wordiness very well.

Yes, you can skim this issue and still get a lot out of it. What I needed to do. So I think it was fun to see the evolution, early evolution of the multiverse as a concept in DC. And I think we're going to see that. We've already seen it in mass media, on the CW shows. We watched all the major events that did crossovers, and in just a few days we are going to see it on the big screen. And I'll be very curious to see how the DCU incorporates the multiverse, how multiversal they will be moving forward. I'm intrigued by that question and I think our next episode is going to incorporate a bit of what we learn in the Flash and, uh, have a fun multiverse that we're going to visit too.

We talked a bit about this on our hundred th episode, but you're already also seeing the backlash. I just saw literally AV club posted on Friday an article, the multiverse is doomed and even Spiderman and the Flash can't save it. Why? Their over reliance on the multiverse trope where death has no meaning and every hero or villain can be resurrected, is awful, basically.

Yeah, all these think pieces are silly.

So I'm curious though, how that reaction to people like going, oh, yes, I love that you're bringing in my favorite characters, but at the same time, are the stakes lower there? I'm sure this has been something discussed in Comic Dumb for decades now, since Crisis on Infinite Earth, but now that it's becoming even more mainstream through the movies and these two huge movies that have just come out within weeks of each other, how that will resonate with, uh, the larger public.

Yeah, well, I imagine one place I'd like to see both companies, MCU and DCU, both companies movies and TV shows go is to where the place where I think comics really are and have been for a long time with ebbs and flows, which is the multiverse exists. And that gives you the chance to any story you like, any version of a character you connect to is real. It exists, but every story, and in fact, the majority of stories don't have to do with the multiverse.

Mhm.

So that's the place I'd like to see us go. Like, if someone really wants Henry Cavill's Superman movies to exist in a universe, they do, that's fine. They exist over in some universe. But, uh, we don't need to wonder if is Henry Cavill going to show up in the next DCU movie? Like, who cares? It doesn't matter. Just let those be. They exist in some pocket universe. You can love them. And we're in a different part of the universe. Now. So I'm hoping that's where we go. I suspect it is where we're going, and it's certainly where comics have been ever since the creation of this concept in 1953 in Wonder Woman.

Don't you forget it, Flashband.

So that is a wrap to your Watchers no bundle. Giveaway this episode.

But stay tuned every week, the whole time.

Stay tuned every week this summer for your chance. Thank you for listening. I have been Guido of Earth 101.

And I have been Rob of Earth 101. Soon to be 102.

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In the meantime, in the words of Uatu, keep pondering the possibilities.