Ok, I have only seen a handful of episodes, but these words just caught my eye in the Trivia on here and I wondered if someone could give me some idea of the premise of those terms?
In the comics, there are many parallel universes which comprise what is called a multiverse. Each universe is given the designation Earth with a number, such as Earth 1, 2, 3, etc. The episode "Brave New Metropolis" is about a parallel universe where Lois was killed and Superman joined forces with Lex Luthor and took a more totalitarian stance in order to make the city safer. That universe could be thought of as Earth 2 while the universe where 99% of the episodes take place is Earth 1.
The concept originated in the Flash story, "Flash of Two Worlds." It had already been established that Barry Allen was partially inspired by comic books, featuring Jay Garrick as the Flash. In the story, Barry uses his speed, but finds himself in a city that is not Central City. He eventually discovers he is in Keystone City and finds the retired Jay Garrick. The comic books that Barry read were actually Jay's life. Somehow, the creators had been attuned to psychic waves from this parallel world (it's a bit much, but it was the Silver Age). They team up to defeat a villain, then would meet up again. They determined that they lived on paralell Earth's, with Barry Allen's world dubbed Earth 1 and Jay's Earth 2, even though his was the older crowd. In later comics, it is hinted that the heroes of Earth 2 just humor their Earth 1 counterparts on this point. The concept was furthered in the Justice League comics, where there was an annual crossover with the Justice Society of Earth 2. They would introduce other heroes and parallel Earths in these stories including: Earth A (with criminal counterparts, in a rather lame story), Earth 3 (with better criminal counterparts, the Crime Syndicate), Earth x (home of the Quality Comics heroes, the Freedom Fighters), Earth S (home of the Fawcett Comics heroes, with Captain Marvel and the Marvel family) and Earth Prime, which is supposed to be our world (though they created a hero for it and later a Superboy from it. In Crisis on Infinite Earths, an Earth 4 was revealed, home of the Charlton Action Heroes (recently purchased by DC). The mini-series climaxes with the destruction of most of the univeres and the merger of the remainder, leaving just one Earth. However, later writers wanted to bring back parallel worlds and did so.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
This all sounds pretty complex, if not downright confusing - I'm almost sorry I asked! :p But hey, at least this helps me grasp that whole Injustice concept a bit better, or where it came from, so thanks for the input :)
Well, that was the point of Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC had been doing the parallel Earth thing for about 20 years, but they had lost a lot of ground to Marvel. One of the reasons cited for Marvel's success was their presentation of the Marvel Universe as including all of their heroes, mixing them frequently. DC picked up on this in the 70s, though more in certain books than others. A lot of the younger editors thought the parallel earth concept was too confusing for fans and hurt sales when they used it. It also required a detailed explanation. I personally thought it was fairly easy to grasp, if they kept the explanation simple and to the point. You knew the Justice League were the regular guys and the parallel world was where the guest stars lived. That usually covered it. Problems arose when writers wanted to mix characters from those other worlds and didn't want to take time to explain how they crossed the barriers. So, for DC Comics' 50th anniversary, they launched a 12 issue maxi-series, designed to create one universe at the end. Each parallel world was destroyed or ended up combined with Earth 1 by the climax. That would have been fine, had DC started everything from square one afterwards; but, they didn't. Instead, some books were restarted and others weren't. They tried to retroactively fix continuity problems, which usually made things worse.
A good writer, like Alan Moore or Gardner Fox, knew how to make the parallel world idea fun. You got alternate versions of your favorite character, so you got to see them in a new light.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
I think the multiverse concept was more confusing to the writers who got rid of it than to the readers who actually bought the comics.
Absolutely... it was due to laziness, plain & simple. No one wanted to be bothered to do the back story research. It's odd since, today, with many fans putting up websites of various characters along with their various incarnations, the work is done for many of the writers. There's a plethora of info at their fingertips for FREE. But many won't agree to come onto a title, especially if they're a hotshot writer, unless they're granted the privilege of starting with a #1 to guarantee a bigger boost of sales. Legacy numbering goes out the window as does typically well-established history. There needs to be a lot LESS ego in comics!