Injustice Highlights The Problem With DC’s Multiverse Numbering

Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for the Injustice animated movie.

The Injustice animated movie highlights an interesting problem regarding DC Comics’ multiverse, namely, how do they determine the numbers assigned to each individual Earth? While other franchises have explored this issue with their own multiverses, sometimes to comedic effect, it begs the question of what happens in those realities where there isn’t an all-seeing Watcher or a Monitor to make these decisions and impose them on mortals. Logically, multiverse travelers would be inclined to consider their Earth the prime Earth and move outward, numbering as they go, leading to arguments and confusion over which Earth is the true Earth-1.

The world of the Injustice: Gods Among Us video games is perhaps the most popular of DC Comics’ Elseworlds realities to emerge in the past decade. Set in a world where Superman went mad with power and established a fascist world government five years after The Joker caused him to have “one bad day,” the game’s story found Batman traveling to another dimension and asking the Justice League of another Earth for help in saving his world. The film adaptation of Injustice made several changes from the story of the game, with one of the larger ones being that it was the super genius hero Mister Terrific who journeyed to another Earth instead of Batman, and he recruited only an alternate Superman rather than an entire alternate Justice League.

When Mister Terrific revealed the variant Superman to his allies, he introduced him as the Earth-9 Superman and welcomed him to Earth-1. With a smile, the variant Superman politely informed Mister Terrific that Superman’s Earth was Earth-1. This led Plastic Man to ask what number Earth the world of Injustice was. “Twenty-two,” Superman replied, leaving the normally outspoken Plastic Man at an uncharacteristic loss for words. While this scene added humor to the climax of the film’s action and set up the battle between two Supermen, it also raised an interesting point about how arbitrary the numbering of Earths is in the DC Comics multiverse and raised the question of who decides what Earth is labeled what.

Strangely enough, The Flash addressed this question in the Arrowverse, which has its own unique multiverse numbering system for classifying every alternate reality set in a movie and television series inspired by the DC Comics mythos. When Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon first began exploring the many worlds of the Arrowverse in The Flash season 2, they referred to their Earth as Earth-1 and the first alternate reality they traveled to as Earth-2. By a happy coincidence, these turned out to be the same designations used by an entire society of dimensional travelers, as Earth-1 just happened to be at the center of the Arrowverse. However, it never was explained just who started labeling the alternate Earths in the first place.

The Council of Wells, made up of the smartest variant versions of Harrison Wells, seems a likely answer for the Arrowverse. In the current reality of DC Comics, these decisions were likely made by Justice Incarnate, a team of heroes from different Earths who join together to face threats to the entire Multiverse. In the case of the world of Injustice, however, the question is never likely to be answered.

About The Author

Matt Morrison
(1836 Articles Published)

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Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word
“blogging” was coined. He got his start writing for the
legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing,
before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on
to write for over a dozen websites, including 411
Mania, Comics
Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information
Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book
history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American
Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions
and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels
for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his
work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of
Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No
Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site
aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog –
My Geeky Geeky Ways –
which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series
making up The Arrowverse as well as his
comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is
devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You
can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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