Ending the world roughly every other Tuesday.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 World-ending or universe-threatening events happen so frequently in the DC universe, you
00:05 could probably set your bloody watch by them. With such a wealth of catastrophes to look
00:09 through though, a question naturally emerges. That being, which of these crisis-his-his-he's
00:15 actually feels like the most threatening? Let's take a look at them as I'm Jules,
00:19 this is WhatCulture.com, and these are the 10 biggest catastrophes in DC Comics.
00:25 10. Deceased
00:27 One of the more simplistic world-threatening events of the DC universe, Deceased is very
00:32 much the storyline you'd expect it would be from the title, what with the world threat
00:35 coming in the form of zombies. At first it all seems totally manageable, right up until
00:41 that is Batman succumbs to the monster virus and then everything suddenly seems totally
00:45 terrifying. Through a mixture of masterful writing, gruesomely great art, and an aggressive
00:50 zombie virus, the threat of the undead outbreak seems so much more potent in this than it
00:55 ever has before, helped in no small part by the fact that it heavily features Superman
01:00 and Batman's children, who you naturally worry about immensely when they have to face
01:04 against super-powered zombies. Even with all of this in mind, however, Deceased is not
01:09 the biggest threat that the universe has faced by a significant margin. As for now, the undead
01:14 horde seems safely confined to Earth, and Earth alone.
01:17 9. Identity Crisis
01:19 Now what's the one thing worse than superheroes dying tragic deaths? Well, that is superheroes
01:25 becoming less than super, as is the case in Identity Crisis, where we learn that our favourite
01:30 moral bastions have been secretly hypnotising specific supervillains in order to try and
01:35 control them, totally stamping out their free will in order to make them less of a problem.
01:41 In terms of catastrophes, this one is very different from the majority of the other events,
01:45 but it's still incredibly potent. While the other threats merely killed or maimed
01:50 superheroes, this one damaged the idea of what it means to be a hero, as while all the
01:55 costume wonders who did these experiments were doing them for what they felt were moral
01:59 reasons, it's made very clear that their decisions were out of line and played with
02:03 the freedoms of the villains involved. It's no world-ending calamity, but it is a serious
02:09 blow to the sanctity of the always moral figures of the Justice League, and DC superheroes
02:14 at large.
02:15 8. The Trinity War
02:17 It's a crying shame that the Trinity War event is as overlooked as it is, because in
02:22 terms of badass fights, an engaging plot and exciting plot twist, it really comes through
02:27 time and time again. The majority of the series covers the Justice League, the Justice League
02:32 of America, and the anti-hero filled Justice League Dark, fighting against the secret society
02:37 of supervillains, which you'd naturally assume is what the 'World Trinity' in
02:41 the event title refers to, but the whole thing actually revolves around the emergence of
02:45 the inhabitants of Earth-3, who are the twisted versions of the Justice League themselves.
02:51 The arrival of these villains results in all sorts of life-threatening scenarios, as they
02:55 are by all means as smart and as powerful as their Earth-1 equivalents. While this doesn't
03:00 equal the same universe-ending threat as many other events do, it did introduce a series
03:05 of genuinely dangerous entities into the main DC world, who would continue to wreak considerable
03:10 havoc in their collective time in comics.
03:13 7. 52
03:15 While the new 52 is well-known, somewhat inescapably because it rebooted the entire
03:19 DC line of comics, the actual 52 event is incredibly overlooked. Aside from having one
03:24 of the weirdest names for a comic, 52 is unique in that it covers the year that Batman, Superman
03:30 and Wonder Woman all disappeared after Infinite Crisis, and how the world managed to deal
03:35 with their loss. It's an unusual scenario, but one that works really well, as when the
03:39 inevitable cosmic threat does appear, this time in the form of a multiverse-ending Mr.
03:43 Mind, we're aware we'll be facing it without a good portion of the people who generally
03:48 are crucial in saving the day. This takes what could otherwise feel like a pretty conventional
03:53 world-ending event, and makes it feel as though it had genuine potential to go wrong, as the
03:58 fate of the known universe rests in the hands of Rip Hunter, Booster Gold, Supernova and
04:03 Skeet.
04:04 6. Zero Hour - Crisis in Time
04:07 For anyone who gets a kick out of Hal Jordan under the villainous Parallax alias, Zero
04:12 Hour is a literal godsend, as the main threats within the events are him and another ex-hero
04:18 in the form of Hawk, who now goes by the villain moniker of Extent.
04:22 Both characters' plans involve messing with the DC timeline, in a series of events purposely
04:26 contrived to fix existing problems that DC had with their universe at the time, such
04:31 as characters not aging despite the timeline progressing, or some characters having their
04:35 backstories retconned to fit more suitably into the overall franchise.
04:39 It all sounds quite tame, but in order to pull it all off, more or less every hero or
04:44 superhero group in existence had to be seriously threatened, with us seeing countless heroes
04:49 maimed or killed before the series-wide reboot came in and ended the event, suitably created
04:55 by another Big Bang.
04:56 5. Dark Knights Metal - The Dark Knights
04:59 Proving that we are still very much in the age of major catastrophic events, Dark Knights
05:03 Metal was apparently planned by writer Scott Snyder since he began writing for the Batman
05:07 series back in 2011, meaning that he had some considerable time to come up with this truly
05:11 insane event.
05:13 And insane it is, as the series repeatedly reaches points where it feels possible that
05:18 some or even all of your favourite heroes might actually die.
05:22 With the plot revolving around corrupted Dark Universe versions of Batman who have already
05:26 killed off their respective Justice League, the genuine threat posed against the world
05:29 seems all the more potent, and all the more realistic when we see our heroes having to
05:33 flee these powerful monsters for much of the series.
05:36 It also means that we get to see an old, frail Bruce Wayne who has been tortured for countless
05:41 years finally begin to successfully fight back against these forces.
05:45 It fills you with genuine joy, as it couldn't begin in a more unlikely place.
05:49 Given that it's heavily unlikely that DC will ever genuinely kill off Batman or Superman
05:53 for an extended period, Dark Knights does a fantastic job of taking characters who have
05:58 plot armour and making you feel genuine concern for them.
06:01 4.
06:02 Blackest Knight
06:03 There's something about the Blackest Knight in its entirety that just feels immense.
06:08 Featuring epic colossal space wars, storylines spanning the entire galaxy, and dead characters
06:14 reincarnated as Black Lanterns just to mess with our heroes, there is very little of Blackest
06:18 Knight that doesn't possess the kind of gravity felt during the finale of your favourite
06:22 TV show.
06:23 As while Blackest Knight wasn't DC's finale, it still had all of the weight and poignance
06:28 of one.
06:29 With the collective hero forces facing the literal embodiment of death itself, a particularly
06:33 interesting dynamic is also set up as the heroes work out exactly how to deal with an
06:38 enemy that can never properly die, all the while trying to avoid being murdered by his
06:42 steadily growing Black Lantern forces.
06:45 The event poses a huge threat to literally every person in the known DC universe, and
06:49 that's exactly why it's so good, as you see characters from every corner and moral
06:54 alignment join forces to desperately fight for their survival.
06:57 3.
06:58 Final Crisis
06:59 Although decidedly not the final crisis that the DC universe would face, Final Crisis is
07:04 the end of the main DC crisis events, being predated by Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero
07:09 Hour Time of Crisis, and Infinite Crisis.
07:13 With the event marking the beginning of Darkseid gaining the Anti-Life Equation, which, as
07:17 the name suggests, is a very bad thing, it sees our heroes race against the villain as
07:21 he slowly tries to take over both their world and the universe.
07:25 While the event has somewhat less catastrophic moments, like discovering that Barry Allen
07:29 was still alive, having managed to literally outrun death, it still involved unimaginable
07:33 levels of destruction, and saw what technically was the brief end of the DC universe entirely,
07:39 before it was then fixed by the convenient plot device that is the Miracle Machine.
07:43 Had this not worked, however, we would have been left with a universe where Batman, Martian
07:46 Manhunter and New God Orion were all dead, and those alive enslaved to serve a life of
07:52 suffering under Darkseid.
07:54 2.
07:55 Flashpoint
07:56 As far as elaborate timeline manoeuvring goes, there are few events that can match that of
08:00 Flashpoint.
08:01 With the premise essentially being that the Flash is toying around in the past as endangered
08:05 the main DC universe, the series covers the threat of both the new universe that Barry
08:09 Allen has unknowingly created, and also the threat of his home universe being permanently
08:14 destroyed due to his actions.
08:16 Given that the new universe Barry makes has an extra 35,000 people die because of Superman's
08:21 ship crashing in a slightly different place, it seems safe to say that this marks a pretty
08:25 considerable catastrophe, even without the added knowledge that, yet again, the world
08:30 almost ended.
08:31 Even the solution to this crisis ends in a cataclysmic way, as in order to save the millions
08:36 that died in the alternate universe, the Flash has to leave it in the middle of what appears
08:40 to be a world-ending event.
08:41 While the return of that universe's Thomas Wayne in the Batman series may suggest that
08:45 ultimately it did not end for that world, for now it appears as though everyone who
08:49 existed in that timeline was destroyed at the end of Flashpoint, which gives the event
08:54 a pretty hefty death toll.
08:56 1.
08:57 Crisis on Infinite Earths
08:59 With perhaps the best and most dramatic of any DC event in history, Crisis on Infinite
09:04 Earths is what it says on the tin, covering a catastrophe that hits the entire multiverse
09:08 and ends up ending entire universes before it's done.
09:12 With heroes from both Earth 1 and Earth 2 coming together to try and stop the collapse
09:16 of existence as they know it, the stakes have never seemed as high.
09:20 As we're not just witnessing the potential ending of the main DC universe, but also every
09:24 single alternative one imaginable, which is a disaster on an almost inconceivable scale.
09:30 The event was big enough that to this day it is still referred to as the Great Disaster,
09:34 which is a pretty hefty statement given that the superheroes seem to combat a world-ending
09:38 threat every other afternoon.
09:40 And there we go my friends, those were the 10 biggest catastrophes in DC Comics, I hope
09:43 that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments
09:47 section below.
09:48 As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJwitha0 or you can
09:51 swing by Live and Let's Dice where I do all of my streaming outside of work as well as
09:55 my Warhammer back reports so if you're into that sort of stuff I'd love to see you over
09:58 there.
09:59 But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
10:01 I hope that you're treating yourself well with love and respect my friends because you
10:04 deserve all of the best things in life and do not let anything or anyone else tell you
10:08 otherwise alright?
10:09 You are a massive ledge and I want you to go out there and absolutely smash it today.
10:14 As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that and I'll speak to you soon.