DC Comics

This is a /co/ related article, which we allow because we find it interesting or we can't be bothered to delete it.

DC Comics, proper name Detective Comics, is the oldest of the two most popular comics companies of all time. If you haven't heard of them, you've been living under a real rock. They are iconic for their work in the Supers genre.

Universe

The DC Comics universe mostly defines itself by a "Supergods" motif; its characters tend to be extraordinarily powerful and it views their adventures in a largely "neo-mythical" light. Whilst it does have its share of street-level heroes, most of its heroes are battling interplanetary or cosmic threats, especially when they team up. In general, DC's universe is closer to the Silver Age in general feel, with an emphasis on aliens, monsters, hyperscience and colorful heroes battling the aforementioned.

Except for the Vertigo imprint, which is more of a grimdark branch of the universe and, perhaps coincidentally, focuses more on its magical and horror elements.

Brief IRL History

• 1930s: Dawn: In 1938 Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster publish Action Comics no. 1 introducing the world to Superman. It's a smash hit and soon other guys try their luck with the basic formula, such as Batman in '39.
• 1940s: The Golden Age: Superhero comics get a big boost due to the wartime propaganda. Nazis are punched, Japanese people get dehumanized and the message is spread to buy war bonds and save scrap iron. After the war they remain popular. Big names like Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the Flash show up. Occasionally they team up. Comics remain super popular post war, as do the characters. Consolidation of many titles under DC's Aegis.
• 1950s: Setback due to a moral panic in first half of the decade. Many of the old comic lines die away from regular publication. Resurgence begins in 1955 with the publication of The Flash followed by recovery.
• 1960s: Silver Age is full swing and things are entrenched. Ideas such as the Justice League emerges, along with a split universe to explain why Green Lantern and the Flash are different now than they were in those series. Marvel shows up, which leads to DC comics.
• 1970s: A fair bit of experimentation. By this point you have had two generations grow up with superhero comics as a regular part of their media diet, a subculture of people that would trade old issues and comic creators which had grow up reading comics. The 1978 Superman movie was the first big budget comic book movie to hit it off.
• 1980s: The first of the big Reboot/Retcon Storms, Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• 1990s: Got darker and edgier.
• 2000s: Started going downhill.
• 2010s: The second of the big Reboot/Retcon Storms, New 52. And then we got Rebirth and DC Universe, which were "softer" reboots.

Notable Heroes

Superman

Considered the original superhero (although he actually built on tropes that had appeared in early pulp novels), Superman is famous; the last survivor of the alien planet Krypton, whose parents managed to launch him to Earth in an escape shuttle before Krypton's core destabilized and the planet exploded. Raised by good-hearted farmers in the Kansas village of Smallville, he dedicates himself to fighting for truth, justice, and liberty for all.

He is perhaps most infamous as the most absurdly overpowered character in comics, with an arsenal of abilities that includes flight, superhuman strength, nigh invulnerability, ocular heat rays, superhuman hearing, superhuman speed, x-ray vision and a freezing breath weapon. Ironically, he actually started out as relatively small powered; in the original comics, Superman's powers stemmed from his species having evolved on a planet with significantly higher gravity than Earth - as a result, on Earth, Superman's strength was far greater than any human, and the durable biology needed to resist the pressure made most human-level threats insignificant. He couldn't even fly originally, but instead his superhuman strength let him run at incredible speeds and leap huge distances. The very first cartoons gave him the ability to fly for dramatic effect, and that as where it started. In particular, he lost the "heavyworlder" origin and instead his powers became something his alien biology could only do if he charged up on solar energies from a yellow sun, whilst a popular radio drama introduced his most iconic vulnerability in the form of Kryptonite, the radioactive remnants of his homeworld.

We have a seperate article about him, mainly because his fame is partly separate from the DCU.

Ironically, compared to Batman, he has the smallest "family" of superpowered knock-offs, mostly consisting of his cousin, Supergirl, and his super-powered dog, Krypto. There's also Power Girl, an alternate dimension's version of Supergirl mostly known for her huge rack who crossed over into the mainstream dimension and stayed there after her own was destroyed, and in the Silver Age Supergirl had two super-powered pets; Streaky the super-cat and Comet the super-horse... who was actually a centaur accidentally transformed into a horse and then given immortality and other super powers to make up for it by the witch who did it. He actually had a Bronze Age revamp which was even sillier. Most of these were excised from continuity after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, since it was decided Superman should be the Last Son of Krypton and not the penultimate one. Only Supergirl and Power Girl surviving, but both stuck with increasingly odd new origins (shit like "merged with some quasi-angel" and "daughter of a sorcerer whose son from the future then impregnated her with himself") before everyone just gave up and restored their original ones, though the restrictions lasted long enough that some alternate universes gave Supergirl non-Kryptonian origin (such as DCAU's making her a girl from the planet Argo, which was unable to support life due to collateral damage from Krypton's destruction, that survived due to suspended animation)s. During the Death of Superman arc, four copies popped up:Steel (vigilante who fought with powered armor and a giant hammer after being inspired by Superman and openly not Superman. Has a really, really bad movie starring Shaquille O'Neal.), Superboy (imperfect teenage or younger clone of Supes), the Cyborg Superman (who quickly went nuts), and the Eradicator (a lost Kryptonian superweapon that's largely forgotten about now).

For decades, DC's official policy was that Kryptonians aren't cross-fertile with humans and avoided introducing introducing a Superbaby despite Clark Kent being married to Lois Lane for several years. This would be changed when one of their regular continuity shattering events undid the retarded New 52 and brought back the old continuity. After this, the main Earth's Clark and Lois had a son, Jon, while they were off screen and he's now ~10+ish. Despite needing a retcon to exist, Jon was well loved due to good writing, especially his father-son relationship with his dad and friendship with Damian Wayne as the "Super Sons", and that he struggles to control his powers instead of being a Mary Sue. Naturally Brian Micheal Bendis set out to destroy all that when DC went full retard and hired him despite all his then recent material showing he had clearly gone crazy and was no longer capable of writing a decent comic.

Batman

Batman is most notable as the longest surviving and best known example of the original "costumed vigilante" type of superhero. In many ways, he is a direct continuation of the shadowy avengers and vigilantes that proliferated in pulp fiction; even his backstory as a wealthy man who, traumatized by the murder of his parents by a mugger when was a child, dedicated himself to training body and mind before outfitting himself with useful gadgets to declare war on crime, is straight out of old pulps.

Whilst mostly associated with dark, brooding and depressing almost noir-esque tales from the Bronze and Dark Ages, there is one element of Silver Age Batman which has survived and prospered: his rogue's gallery. Back in the Silver Age, Batman in particular was prone to facing off villains built from what TVTropes calls "Idiosyncrazy" - weird gimmicks and themes around which an entire criminal identity and motif were formed. Whilst the most overtly silly rogues from this time were quietly shuffled off into retirement, the fact is that a number of villains actually made this trope work. Hence the Bat's colorful cast of crazed criminal creeps, from the murderously mirthful mad clown the Joker to the plant-controlling ecoterrorist femme fatale Poison Ivy to the puzzle-spouting Riddler and beyond. Indeed, so many of them survive Bane is notable for being one of the few recognizable Batman rogues not from that era.

We have a separate article about him, mainly because he's actually fairly influential on /tg/ stuff.

Wonder Woman

Widely recognized as one of the very first superheroines, if not the first, Wonder Woman is a magical woman - a clay baby brought to life by the blessing of the Greek goddesses and then further imbued with their blessings as she aged - reared on the hidden paradise of Themyscira‎, home of the Amazons. After their isolation was broken by a male pilot crash landing on the island, she goes to "man's world" as an ambassador to spread a message of peace, love, tolerance and goodwill, but is more than willing to bash in the heads of villains to spread the good word.

Ironically, despite being considered one of "the big three" with Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman has long struggled to actually keep her titles afloat. This might have something to do with the fact that she is generally defined as "The Feminist Superheroine", and as such she has suffered a long string of silly, embarrassing or just plain stupid elements, alterations and revisions. This has less to do with her creator being a polygynous sexual deviant obsessed with bondage and femdom that also created the polygraph (the reason she was later given a lasso of truth), although that probably didn't help in hindsight, but the fact that too many authors try to use her to push their version of feminism, that her continued publication was originally not due to mass popularity (like Superman and Batman) but contractual complications on DC's part, and her personality is far too vague for such a major character causing it to vary wildly by writer.

The Flash

Jay Garrick is caught in a lab accident that turns him into the fastest man alive. One of the first "legacy heroes", with the Silver Age return of the name/powers using the new character Barry Allen instead of continuing the Jay Garrick of the Golden Age. The crossover the two versions would spawn the multiverse mess that's iconic to comics to this day. Usually a giant fucking nerd. Has gotten two TV series and is a regular Justice League member.

Green Lantern

Alan Scott was an engineer who survives a sabotage induced train wreck thanks to a ring that, unknown to him, was magic. He uses the ring to go after the guy responsible and becomes a superhero.

The revival in the 1959 reboot would change the man holding the title and, unlike Flash, the basic concept. Now Hal Jordan, a test pilot, receives the power ring from a dying alien and becomes a Lensman style space cop. Since then, the title character has changed a few times, and the series has become a playground for writers and artists looking to do trippy science fiction/science fantasy stuff with lots of weird aliens.

Both incarnations have had really lame weaknesses in comparison to their incredible power. Alan Scott was unable to affect things made of wood, while Hal Jordan and most of his successors can't impact anything that was yellow--although this was later changed to be possible to overcome, but only by accepting fear (Green, in Oan technology, being the color of Will, and Yellow being the color of Fear). Less weaksauce is the charge limitation: The ring needs recharging on a regular basis via a special Lantern (formerly, every local day; nowadays, it's like a cell phone battery--use more powerful programs, use that charge up faster).

Green Arrow

Batman rip-off but with a bow and arrow. Attempts to separate him from that, a shared series with Green Lantern (which existed for no other reason than the two characters with less than great sales having names starting with green) where the two butted heads over political issues and Robin Hood influence has gradually given him communist leanings. Got more popular after he a TV show that made him a slightly more willing-to-kill Batman, though it's often really easy to tell the writers wanted a Batman show but only had the Green Arrow license.

In many ways his sidekick Speedy is more notable than he is. The above mentioned shared series established him a drug addict (the writers wanted to avoid a character that existed only for the moral and show drugs weren't only a risk to "bad kids", plus nobody cared about him before that anyways so they could radically change his character with comparatively little pushback). Since then, he's undergone many wildly varied incarnations, many of the "dark and edgy" variety.

Aquaman

A Namor ripoff that has become better known than the original due to Marvel's refusal to include Namor in non-comics media... mostly because, unlike Aquaman, Namor is consistently characterized as an arrogant asshole. The lame Superfriends cartoon made an entire generation consider him a joke character since the restriction on violence, bad writing, and sharing many powers with the rest of the group led to his main uses being swimming and talking to fish, ignoring the superhuman strength and endurance that lets him operate at the crushing depths of the ocean. He has gradually lost this stigma due to writers going out of their way to show how awesome he really is in response. Has a movie.

Captain Marvel

Billy Batson was an orphaned twelve year old living with a miserly, abusive, uncle that kept him around to leach off his inheritance. One day he wandered onto a train that took him to a wizard that gave him the magic power to transform into the adult-bodied Captain Marvel by shouting "SHAZAM!", gaining the Wisdom of Solomon, Endurance of Atlas, power of Zeus, the Courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury in the process. If Captain Marvel is merely Billy in a buff magical alternate form or a separate person entirely has varied over the years, though modern incarnations go with the first. Billy is perhaps the earliest child superhero that wasn't under adult leadership.

Billy would later have a lost sister, Mary, appear. Unlike her brother, saying SHAZAM! instead transforms Mary into Mary Marvel, whose only difference compared to Mary is her outfit (to the point Mary can bluff having transformed by simply wearing a costume). When transformed, she gains the Grace of Selena, Strength of Hippolyta, Skill of Ariadne, Speed of Zephyrus, Beauty of Aurora, and Wisdom of Minerva. Since Hippolyta was already taken in the DC universe as Wonder Woman's mom and the problems of giving a young girl supernatural beauty, the different empowering entities was dropped post-crisis. The girl transforming into a superpowered magic form makes her a very early example of a Mahou Shoujo. In the past having both Billy and Mary empowered at the same time split their powers.

Originally not a DC property at all and instead the property of Fawcett Comics. The similarity in abilities to Superman led to legal brawls, but eventually Fawcett saw Superheroes falling in popularity and decided to get out of the game by selling their properties to DC. After this he started crossing over with the DC universe and was incorporated into it proper after the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Captain Marvel's interaction with Superman is of note because while their powers and, in many ways, personality (childlike innocence vs. honest boyscout) are very similar, the slight differences make a really big impact (one of the biggest being Captain Marvel's powers are magic, traditionally one of Superman's weaknesses).

Has a movie. On the plus side it sticks really close to the comics instead of changing things for stupid reasons. On the negative side, it sticks really close to the "New 52" version of the comics. (Then again, the age-shifting and multiple sidekicks aspect of Captain Marvel was always the most interesting bits of the character, so getting to the latter in the first movie makes a lot of sense.)

Has the dubious dishonor of sparking a long-running feud with Marvel Comics over a similarly named series of characters that DC ultimately lost, forcing a rebranding of the guy as "Shazam".

John Constantine

The Wizard-as-Con-Man poster boy, and base model for any high-CHA Arcana character/NPC. John rarely actually does magic, and instead tricks his enemies into doing what he wants, such as promising his soul to the leaders of Hell's different factions, risking a new Blood War for the soul of one measly mortal if they don't cure him of his cancer. A big part of his characterization is that he doesn't really believe in magic, but the demons and ancient spirits he's dealing with do, so when he does need to do magic, he banks on his high CHA, plus Arcana and Deception checks to bullshit Indian demons into destroying themselves. So long as the caster doesn't break character and throws enough magic spell components together, the universe just lets it happen, much like a GM letting you cast spells so long as you've got "some gold" and "a component pouch."

He actually is magical, though, being the current incarnation ("Constant"ine, get it?) of the "Laughing Magician," all of whom are just as shitty as he is; it's also actually implied that he was never supposed to be the Constantine, and that was supposed to be his twin brother, who he killed in the womb and has been tampering with his life ever since, orchestrating events so that one day John will give up to despair and give his soul over to him. Another running theme through all of his incarnations is that he'll sacrifice his friends and use them as pawns to get ahead of whatever's trying to kill him. Of course, because this is Black Magic, his friends don't suffer clean deaths, but have their souls taken by demons to be made their playthings for all eternity.

Was for a long time kept in a sort of limbo: he was the posterboy of the Vertigo imprint ("mature" horror/fantasy with social commentary, that was initially DC adjacent, but then very rarely interacted or referenced what went on with the rest of DC) until DC folded everything with a reboot in 2011. Since then, he's been more or less a part of the DCU even though his solo-run comics aren't, because DC's done a lot more rebooting since then (including a reality reset by Dr. Fucking Manhattan, which made Constantine and Watchmen's creator Alan Moore very mad). Speaking of Alan Moore, he and quite a few writers of Hellblazer swear that they've met him in real-life, which is only mildly more weird than talking Ultramarine models.

Hitman

That's not his superhero name, it's his job. His real name is Tommy Monaghan and he was created by Garth Ennis of Preacher, The Boys, and Judge Dredd fame. Tommy is a hitman that specializes in taking out guys with super-powers, because he's the only one crazy enough to go after them. Tommy doesn't really consider himself as a "super," even though he was given the (temporary and painful) power of X-ray vision because of an obscure and unimportant JLA event that gave regular people powers as collateral damage, and instead relies on manliness, grit, and lots of bullets to take them out. He doesn't take contracts on "good guys," but also isn't afraid of killing someone in front of the Green Lantern, Batman, and Superman (separately on different occasions, and then once with all of them in the same building and then being fucking acknowledged by Superman for his moral courage in killing the bad guys in front of Batman.)

Ok, so he's cool, what makes him /tg/ related? A big part of it is that his comic is a big "fuck you" to the Superhero genre that's within the main continuity. He interacts with these superheroes by dragging them down to his level and getting them to see things from the perspective of the "normals" who end up as collateral damage, an angle rarely explored in official Superhero TTRPG settings; you're either fighting Good Vs. Evil, or fighting the Good Guys who are all secretly evil. The DCU's main heroes are all untouchable demigods that can't be permanently killed and always act justly, even when they don't because "reasons." Tommy, on the other hand, has no real powers, understands that killing is illegal and will result in more violence, but does it anyway because if he does it, he gets rid of people that deserve it, saves his friends, and ensures that when the time for revenge comes, it'll all fall on him Tommy wanted to deal with the fallout all on his own, but his entire crew decides they're not going to let him die alone so they go out in a blaze of glory, but incapacitate the kindest member of the crew right before he leaves so that someone will live to tell their story TL;DR it's the closest you can get to "The Boys" while still staying within a DC setting.

Also noteworthy on /co/ for minable memes, the most famous being Bueno Excellente, a friend of Tommy's who is a "vigilante" that can only say "BUENO" and whose fighting style is date rape. Seriously. Tommy and Bueno managed to drug the Green Lantern and filmed him getting married to Bueno, and doing other "things" married couples do as blackmail.

If the above disturbs or disgusts you, realize that (1) it was the 90's, the prime time for such stupidityedgy material, and (2) it was written by Garth Ellis, the Edgelord's Edgelord.

The Justice League

The biggest and most notable superhero team in the DC universe, made up of all its best and brightest. The precise backstory varies between iterations, but generally boils down to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and whichever other "big name" DC heroes the writers feel like promoting (there's usually a Flash and/or a Green Lantern onboard) hooking up to face some massive threat that proves too much for any single one of them to handle alone and then deciding "hey, teamwork rocks, and it's actually nice to hang out with other people who get this crazy costumed do-gooder shit; let's do this again!" and founding a team.

The Justice Society of America is an equivalent organization made up of Golden Age (aka, World War 2) superheroes and/or their proteges. Sometimes may exist in an entirely separate branch of the multiverse.

Teen Titans

A Justice League knock-off made up of younger superheroes and former sidekicks. The original version was made up of the five most famous sidekicks of the Silver Age; Robin (Dick Grayson), Kid Flash (Wally West, who later became The Flash), Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman's sidekick whom nobody remembers these days aside from being a continuity clusterfuck), Speedy (Green Arrow's Robin rip-off) and Aqualad (Aquaman's sidekick). This version didn't do very well. Then the New Teen Titans came out in the Bronze Age, and this is the team that everybody remembers; Robin returned to lead, and brought Wonder Girl and Kid Flash back, before fleshing it out with Beast Boy (green animal shapeshifter and former sidekick to the Doom Patrol), Cyborg (Afro-American teen turned into a cyborg by his father after an experiment hideously mutilated him), Raven (angsty half-demon Goth psychic), and Starfire (gorgeous alien flying brick).

The New Teen Titans, aside from being much darker and edgier than the original team (with a high death rate to match), also inspired the two Teen Titans cartoons of the 2000s (save that both dropped Kid Flash and Wonder Girl as main characters). Over time interest for the New Teen Titans started to peter out thanks to a mix of meddling executives and long-time writer Marv Wolfman feeling the fatigue working on a book where he was forced to use characters he didn't like (and being on the same comic for almost 16 years straight is a LONG time), and the book was cancelled in the mid-90s. Several relaunches were attempted including one with most of the old team, but they either were trash fires or just didn't sell well, and the creation of Young Justice poached most of the more interesting characters. Then the cartoon came out and the then-ongoing Titans and Young Justice were axed in favor of a comic based on the show. After that run ended the Titans comic became extremely edgy and kept violently killing off its characters. From there the comic devolved into a series of false starts on runs that didn't last long either through quality, nobody cared about them because they were not the "main" cast or DC decided on yet another reboot. The Titans are languishing to this very day, being only a shadow of what they were in the 80s even with most of the bronze age cast being there.

And Beast Boy still isn't allowed to grow up past being a teen.

Static

Nerd Virgil Hawkins is pressured to go to an upcoming gang meet and shoot one of his tormentors. He rejects the temptation but the meet soon turns into a war and police deploy an experimental marker they believe will mark gang members to be tracked down later. This winds up giving a lot of people superpowers, Virgil included, or killing them instead. As a comic nerd granted electricity powers in a city that now has a bunch of superpowered criminals, he naturally becomes a superhero. Much like fellow teen hero Spider-Man, he enjoys mocking his enemies to throw them off guard.

One of the many, many black males with electric powers. Originally part of the Milestone imprint and its separate canon, Static proved to be by far to be the most interesting and popular character from the line. While it's not that big an accomplishment (note the distant second, Icon, managing to be an interesting person dragged down by horrifically bland powers), he managed get an animated series (originally in its own canon but later clumsily merged into the DCAU despite previously mentioning DC heroes as fictional characters) which propelled him to mainstream popularity.

Animal Man

Not as notable but still pretty well known, he's the avatar of the red who can take the powers of all animals, his comics are known for being very weird, meta and breaking alot of conventional superhero tropes.

His original comic run was very meta, with alot of 4th wall breaking and shocking moments, on the 26th issue he even met the author (It sounds very self masturbatory but it's actually really good.)

Had a new run for the New 52 that while not as good as the original, it still had a lot of charm and was very well written.

Notable Villains

Lex Luthor

Superman's archenemy. Started out as a mad scientist, then turned into a corrupt businessman with slimy politician undertones in the 80s. Currently tends to be depicted as a combination of both; he's a legit supergenius in his own right, but unlike other mad scientists, he was business-savvy enough to parlay his inventions into a mostly legal fortune and now he uses his wealth to employ other mad scientists or criminal underlings rather than doing the dirty stuff himself. Whilst he likes to delude himself that his vendetta against Superman is a case of normal humans standing up to oppressive alien gods, the comics make it very clear that he's actually just jealous of Superman being more powerful and/or popular than he is, and/or he resents that Superman's actual power makes him somebody that Luthor can't bully into submission.

The Joker

Batman's archenemy. A crazed criminal who looks like a clown and who commits crimes in accordance with his own insane view of mirth and whimsy. Has actually gone through a number of distinctive phases over the years, from comedy-themed gimmick gangster to a psychotically artistic mass murderer to (most recently) a mentally-ill victim and villain of society. You don't want to know how he got his scars.

Ra's Al Ghul

Batman's other archenemy, from the other direction. Mainly notable for running a League of Assassins, being effectively immortal, and having a daughter who is one of the most common love interests for Batman, Talia Al Ghul.

Darkseid

The ultimate big bad of the DC universe, the literal god-like embodiment of tyranny and suffering. Wants to find an "Anti-Life Equation" that will disprove the concept of free will and thusly enslave the entire universe to his will, allowing him to force them to suffer just because he's a dick that way.

Cartoons, Shows and Movies

Much like their rivals at Marvel Comics, DC has always been willing to try porting its characters from comic book to film, live action serial, or cartoon. In fact, they are much more willing than Marvel in many ways, with an enormous library of live action serials and cartoons starting as early as the 1950s (Adventures of Superman in 1952) and 1960s (their first cartoons, and the legendarily campy Adam West-led Batman serial, began in 1966).

Most of these works have been kind of forgotten, although in their heyday serials like the 1960s Batman or the early 2000s Smallville (a drama series based on Clark Kent's teenage years) were really big. The most well-known of DC's vast library of early cartoons is, sadly, "Superfriends", a legendarily stupid cartoon based on the Justice League, but toned way down.

DC Animated Universe

When it came to cartoons, DC hit the ground running; from 1966 to 1992, there were very few years in which there wasn't at least one DC cartoon on the airwaves! But they didn't make much of a hit, especially due to the tendency to focus on being "kid friendly" by being very dumbed down and aimed at really young kids.

Then came 1992's "Batman: The Animated Series", and that all changed. It was the first in a new cartoon universe, which expanded in 1996 with "Superman: The Animated Series", and was followed up with Batman Beyond and Justice League (as well as "The Zeta Project", a forgotten spin-off to Batman Beyond). Aided by a number of explicit tie-in animated films, which were widely regarded as better than their live action counterparts of the time, this was the DC Animated Universe.

What made it different? In a nutshell, more mature storytelling: the DCAU treated its audience as having the ability to handle things that were darker and heavier than the campy Silver Age fun of the 1960s, and wrote accordingly. Batman TAS featured lots of pathos, with dramatic, often tragic storylines and even adding a layer of sympathy to its villains. Before Batman TAS, Mr. Freeze was just a goofy villain of the week; a mad scientist who used a freeze ray to rob banks. Batman TAS reinvented him as a mutated cryogenic scientist who could never interact with the human world again due to needing super-low temperatures to survive and whose only motivation was to cure his wife's fatal illness so she could be removed from her cryogenic slumber. Even the lighter and softer Superman TAS often had dark themes to it, and once Justice League came out as the official sequel to both Batman TAS and Superman TAS, with Batman Beyond as a sequel to both Batman TAS and Justice League, whoa did things get grim and gritty!

The reason these five cartoons (seven, if you count "The New Batman Adventures" - the later seasons of Batman TAS with a new artstyle, and "Justice League Unlimited", the later seasons of Justice League, as being different cartoons) came to be known as the DCAU was simple: connectivity. Whereas Marvel's cartoons of the 90s would occasionally have characters from different franchises show up for interactions with the hero of their series (Spiderman TAS had appearances by the X-Men, Iron Man and Ben Grim from the Fantastic Four, for example), the DCAU went out of its way to establish that their worlds would be connected. Plots and characters from one series would be directly referenced in a later series, with Justice League and Batman Beyond in particular frequently invoking storythreads left dangling by their precursor series.

After the DCAU ended in 2004, DC went on to create new cartoons, dropping the shared universe concept entirely. However, these cartoons of the mid 2000s did take some lessons from the DCAU, even the lighter and softer ones like "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" (which was essentially a cartoon equivalent to the Silver Age Batman of the 1960s serial), Teen Titans or "The Batman".

Arrowverse

DC did quite a few TV serials from the 1950s onwards, although with the exception of the ten-year-long Smallville series, these shows tended to be fairly short-lived "flash in the pan" affairs, lasting from 1-6 years on average. Then came 2012's "Arrow".

The idea was simple: take a B-lister character, Green Arrow, and then exploit that character's lack of an established fanbase compared to the likes of Batman or Superman to do something more experimental. The result was to lean back on Arrow's "Left-Wing Archer Batman" characterization and throw in a dash of the Punisher; "Arrow" revolved around Oliver Queen taking up the costumed identity of the Green Arrow to become a vigilante avenger, tracking down and killing criminals connected to a conspiracy that had killed his father and almost killed him. He slowly built up a vigilante team, softened his methods, and basically exploded in popularity, going from a media nobody to a media darling.

That opened the floodgates for other series set in the same universe. In 2014, "The Flash" would debut, being established as living in the same world as Oliver Queen and his Arrow team - the two superheroes would even team up in some crossover episodes. Then things began to expand. 2015's "Supergirl" focused on the titular female Kryptonian, bringing the Martian Manhunter in as her ally, and then established her as native to one of the alternate dimensions in this new DC multiverse when she crossed paths with the Flash. 2016 would bring in "The Legion of Tomorrow", a team of time-traveling second-string characters from Oliver Queen's dimension. 2018's "Black Lightning" and 2019's "Batwoman" would finish the direct members of the Arrowverse.

At the same time as the Arrowverse was taking shape, however, DC was also airing a number of other TV serials that were, at least originally, not connected to the Arrowverse. These included Gotham (a take on the Batman story focusing on Gotham during Bruce Wayne's childhood and with future-Police Commissioner Gordon as the protagonist), Krypton (a two-season story about Superman's parents), and others. Several of these shows - Titans, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, and Stargirl - would later be established as being "Arrowverse Adjacent", taking place in the Arrowverse multiverse but not in the dimensions of either Arrow or Supergirl. Several of the more well-received historical DC tv shows would also be retconned into being part of the Arrow multiverse as well, including the legendary Smallville.

Whilst on the surface the Arrowverse was inspired by Marvel's idea to do tie-in serials to the MCU based on B-tier and lower characters, in fact, DC actually beat them to the punch; the earliest MCU tie-in serial, "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D", didn't debut until 2013, and the others releasing between 2015 to 2017.

DC Extended Universe

DC has been doing movies for a long time. Their first film was 1951's "Superman and the Mole Men", a glorified pilot for the 1952 TV show. But for most of their history, their films tended to follow a formula of being Superman or Batman films that built up a universe of sequels and then ultimately crashed as they got progressively crappier, only to be rebooted. There are a number of non-Supes/Bats films in their "old school" library, but they tend to be forgotten as they often aren't very good.

Then came 2013, and with the Marvel Cinematic Universe in full swing, DC tried to catch up by launching their own equivalent film-based universe. The general consensus, however, is that... they failed. Oh, they established a universe alright, but nobody really cares, because the films tend to be largely seen as... bad, due to a combination of just inherently bad plots, bad acting, and the obvious attempt to forcibly create a counterpart to the MCU, rather than letting things emerge more organically. There are exceptions - generally considered as Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam - but for many DC fans, the DCEU is considered something of an embarrassment. With the exception of Hack Snyder fanboys. It doesn't help that certain actors in the franchise have seen the fickle winds of public opinion turn against them.

It should be added that the name "DC Extended Universe" originated as a joke: The studio refused to label the universe they were creating, so one Entertainment Weekly writer joking named it that, and the name rapidly spread from there. By the time Justice League had come out, WB had settled on "the Justice League Universe", but the DCEU name had stuck, to the point that that's what HBOMax (Warner Brother's streaming platform) calls the franchise.

/tg/ Relevance

There have been a number of roleplaying games tied into the DC universe released for players.

One of them was a reskin of 3rd Edition Mutants and Masterminds with no mechanical changes, just the examples changed to use DC characters.

A better-regarded example was DC Heroes, one of a handful of games to use the Mayfair Exponential Gaming System. Essentially, each point of stat is an exponential increase over the one before it, which helps explain, say, how Batman could last for more than a microsecond in a physical contest with Superman. Thanks to the nature of 90's game design, there are way too many granular powers (each random element has got an associated blast as well as energy blast), and if you don't know what you're doing the combat is an incoherent mass of charts. That said, if you do know what you're doing (or if there's someone around to provide training wheels on the experience), it's a great time and does a better job of keeping to the feeling of a comic book than many games of its ilk.