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Created by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson in 1934, National Allied Publications started its existence with the publication of New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1, an anthology series that contained a variety of genres. A year later, the Major would team up with distributor Harry Donenfeld to help publish Detective Comics #1 under Detective Comics, Inc. and that moment was the birth of DC Comics.
In the nearly 90-year history of DC Comics, the company has created some of the most recognizable fictional characters of all time and changed the face of pop culture countless times over. Across thousands of comics, DC has made its mark on history, but some of those marks run deeper than anyone could have ever suspected they would.
10 Action Comics #1 Introduced A New Kind Of Hero
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had been working with Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson almost from the start. They created Dr. Occult, a character who first appeared in More Fun Comics #6, and then introduced Slam Bradley in Detective Comics #1. But all the while, the two men from Ohio were working on something special, a character like none before.
After a long series of rejections, Siegel and Shuster finally formed this character into something Wheeler-Nicholson liked, and so it was that Superman appeared in Action Comics #1, birthing the superhero genre and forever changing the world.
9 Detective Comics #27 Introduced The Dark Knight
Superman was an instant hit with readers, and DC Comics wanted more. The company turned to artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger to come up with the next big hero. The duo spent a weekend in Kane’s small apartment working on an idea that started off going in one direction before Finger figured out what was needed to really stand out.
Instead of doing a copy of Superman like so many others were trying out at the time, Kane and Finger turned in a dark hero closer in style to the pulp heroes that Superman was replacing. Still, this character had something special in Detective Comics #27 the world was introduced to Batman.
8 All Star Comics #3 Created The Superhero Team
By 1940, superheroes were all the rage and All-American Publications, which would merge with National Periodical Publications to officially form DC Comics before the end of the decade, had a number of now-classic heroes including Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman.
In All Star Comics #3, Gardner Fox, Everett E. Hibbard, and Sheldon Mayer decided to take All-American’s biggest characters and bring them together, creating the Justice Society of America and the very concept of the superhero team. At first, the JSA would just meet to talk about their separate adventures, but soon enough the heroes were working together to solve problems too big for any one of them.
7 All Star Comics #8 Introduced The World To Wonder Woman
In April of 1941, June Tarpé Mills introduced the world to the first superheroine in the form of the Sunday newspaper strip The Black Fury, later renamed Miss Fury. Later that same year, All-American Publications would bring the first comic book superheroine to readers in All Star Comics #8.
Created by William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter, along with Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne, Wonder Woman made her debut in a backup story titled “Introducing Wonder Woman”. While she did not appear on the cover of the book, the Themysciran princess would go on to become a bigger attraction than any of the male heroes she shared the issue with.
6 Showcase #4 Started The New Age Of Heroes
Not long after World War II, the sales of superhero comics dropped. by 1946, almost every superhero comic was canceled, with just a handful surviving, including the Superman and Batman titles as well as Wonder Woman.
But a decade later, DC Comics decided to see if there was any juice left in the superhero genre and so it was that Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino introduced a new version of Flash in Showcase #4. This new take on the All American character wore a sleek red suit and had science-based adventures. Sure enough, readers went crazy for it and the second age of the superhero was born.
5 Flash #123 Introduced The Multiverse
When Kanigher and Infantino introduced the world to Barry Allen, they showed him reading an old Jay Garrick Flash comic to explain why he chose the name Flash. What the duo didn’t know was that five years later writer Gardner Fox would come up with a way to bring Jay Garrick and Barry Allen together in one story.
Introducing the concept of the multiverse in Flash #123, “The Flash of Two Worlds,” Gardner Fox, with art by Infantino, revealed that the stories of Jay Garrick and the other Golden Age heroes happened on what would become known as Earth-Two, while the current heroes were all living on Earth-One. From this moment was born not just the multiverse, but the annual JLA/JSA crossovers that became known as “Crisis”.
4 Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 Destroyed The Multiverse
The annual “Crisis” crossovers started with Justice League of America #21, “Crisis on Earth-One!”. For twenty-two years, Justice League of America would have an annual “Crisis” event that introduced more Earths in the multiverse along with a mix of new and classic heroes and villains.
When DC decided to erase its comic book timeline and start fresh to make the books more accessible to new readers, the decision was made to follow the naming convention of the JLA events and call it Crisis on Infinite Earths, a 12-issue series by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. The 1985 maxiseries would reinvent not only DC Comics but the very concept of the event comic.
3 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1 Started A New Path
By 1986, DC Comics had already started playing with darker comics, most notably Alan Moore’s work on Swamp Thing, but it wasn’t until Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that the company went all in. Not only did DC let one of their best-known heroes be used for a rather grim tale, but they let Miller run wild with DC’s entire stable of heroes.
The Dark Knight Returns started what would become known as the “Dark Age” of comics, a time when “grim and gritty” became the go-to format for many creators and titles, but to this day, Miller’s work still stands out as one of the best Batman tales ever told.
2 Watchmen #1 Cemented The Dark Age
While DC was willing to let Miller go far with The Dark Knight Returns, they weren’t ready to have extreme violence, language, or sexual situations in a Batman story. But those rules weren’t in place for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons when they created Watchmen.
Originally planned as a story using the Charlton Comics characters that DC now owned, Watchmen ended up being changed into brand new characters, but the story still managed to be unlike anything before or since. Named as one of the hundred greatest novels by Time Magazine, Watchmen brought a sense of maturity to comics that no one ever thought possible.
1 Superman #75 Made The World Grieve
There are certain things humanity sees as absolutes. There was a time when one of those things would have been “Superman can’t die,” but that all changed in 1993 when Superman battled the monster known as Doomsday.
In Superman #75 the impossible happened when the Man of Steel gave his life to save the world. Superman’s death reverberated across the globe, making it to newspapers and being discussed on the nightly news. People lined up for blocks to buy the issue, and black armbands with Superman’s logo were worn by many a fan. The world mourned the death of a hero who never actually existed but had still changed the world.
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