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WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Infinite Frontier #4, on sale now
Since the beginning of Infinite Frontier, two major recurring themes have been playing out: first, everyone in the multiverse is aware of the multiverse’s existence. Second, the multiverse is making everyone afraid of invaders to the point of taking preventative measures. This led to the formation of two teams: Justice Incarnate and The Totality, both of which task themselves with monitoring changes to the multiverse.
There’s another team that’s also taking preventative action: the Department of Extranormal Operations (DEO), an organization that historically investigated metahuman and alien threats. Throughout Infinite Frontier, the DEO has been identifying and capturing multiverse refugees and heroes who are supposed to be deceased and removing them from Earth-0. A significant portion of these heroes are members of the Justice Society, which doesn’t make sense considering they’ve been natives of Earth-0 ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths merged the original multiverse into a single Earth.
Apart from Power Girl, who retained her status as an Earth-2 refugee, as well as Jade, Damage and Wildcat (Yolanda Montez) who were previously deceased, there’s no reason the Justice Society should be a target of the DEO. The only way Director Bones could have his eyes on the legendary team is if they’ve had their Earth-2 origins restored, which has been hinted at since Infinite Frontier #0. If true, then merging Earth-2 history with Earth-0 history could result in significant paradoxes the DEO would find threatening on multiple levels.
The DC Universe Started With The Justice Society
In almost every DC timeline, the DC Universe always starts with the formation of the Justice Society of America in 1941. Historically, however, they are not the first heroes to emerge, which is one of the major paradoxes that would be of concern to the DEO: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have histories dating back to 1938, 1939 and 1941 respectively.
While Wonder Woman is acknowledged as a World War II heroine in the current timeline (with her longevity explained as being part of her Amazonian upbringing), there are still aspects of her Golden Age history that are not compatible with her modern history. One of those is her original marriage to Steve Trevor that resulted in a daughter named Hippolyta “Lyta” Trevor, the heroine known as Fury who is also a founding member of Infinity Inc. Lyta is also the mother of Daniel Hall, who is the current lord of the Dreaming.
More paradoxical yet is Batman and Superman’s Golden Age histories. Between the two, Superman’s is perhaps the least changed as he originally started out working for the Daily Star before the company became the Daily Planet in the current timeline. In both his Golden Age and modern histories, he still married Lois Lane. The major paradox in his timeline, however, is the existence of Power Girl (Kara Zor-L), who is a doppelgänger of his canonical cousin, Supergirl (Kara Zor-El). In contrast with Supergirl who is older than Superman and is originally from Argo City, Power Girl is the same age as Superman and is originally from the city of Kandor. To add to the paradox, Power Girl has a noticeably different personality from Supergirl and is a prolific member of the Justice Society.
Batman’s history is the most paradoxical as his Golden Age history played out very differently from his modern history. He still had Alfred as a butler, but his last name was Beagle instead of Pennyworth. Dick Grayson was still Batman’s first Robin, but this version of Dick never became Nightwing. Instead, he continued operating as Robin well into his adulthood and was also a member of the Justice Society. Batman also never had any other Robins in the Golden Age, but did marry Catwoman in 1955 and fathered a daughter with her named Helena Wayne, who is the original Huntress. Helena is also a prolific member of the Justice Society, which is also acknowledged in the current DC timeline.
The Trinity having ties to the Justice Society through their offspring and other family members is only the beginning of the DEO’s concerns, however.
The DC Multiverse Started With Barry Allen
To complicate matters for the DEO is the mysterious soft reboot that resulted in most of the Justice Society heroes being replaced by newer, more modern counterparts. Barry Allen replaced Jay Garrick as the Flash, Hal Jordan replaced Alan Scott as the Green Lantern, and Katar Hol replaced Carter Hall as Hawkman. Many other heroes like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Green Arrow had their core mythologies reworked to what they are now. By 1961, a whole new group of heroes emerged to form the Justice League of America.
All of these changes resulted in a new DC continuity that defined the Silver Age and endured as the main DC canon in the decades that followed. Despite this, however, the Justice Society heroes weren’t gone for good as Barry Allen soon discovered in The Flash #123 story “The Flash of Two Worlds.” In that story, Barry tried to impress Iris West with his speed capabilities and accidentally ended up in a parallel world where he met the original Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. In Barry’s world, Jay was a comic book character he read about as a child and the inspiration for his superhero name.
Now that Barry knew his childhood hero existed somewhere outside of his own dimension, this forever changed the fate of the multiverse. Barry’s world was then designated Earth-1 while Jay’s world was called Earth-2.
The Justice League And Justice Society Begin Crossing Dimensions
The first crisis to involve Earths 1 and 2 happened in Justice League of America #21-22 where three villains from Earth-1 (Chronos, Dr. Alchemy and Felix Faust) met with three villains from Earth-2 (Icicle, Fiddler and the Wizard) in the borderland between their respective worlds. Both trios of villains plotted and executed robberies on their respective Earths to then hide on each other’s Earths where they were unknown. The Justice League was unable to defeat the six villains on their own and were only able to stop them with help from the Justice Society of Earth-2. This then started an annual tradition of Justice League and Justice Society crossovers to combat multiverse threats.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, the Justice League and Justice Society combated crises on multiple Earths. Some of the Earths they’ve visited included the Crime Syndicate’s Earth-3, the Marvel Family’s Earth-S, and the Freedom Fighters’ Earth-X . Perhaps the most dangerous multiverse crisis they responded to involved the Justice Society villain, Per Degaton, who destroyed Earth-Prime to procure advanced weapons, recruited the Crime Syndicate from Earth-3, and changed Earth-2’s past so that he could rule the world as a global dictator. It took the combined efforts of the Justice League, Justice Society and All-Star Squadron to reverse Per Degaton’s damages on both Earths and defeat the Crime Syndicate.
With all the multiverse crises the Justice League and Justice Society responded to over the course of two decades (many of which involved their own respective villains), this most likely left the multiverse vulnerable to the Anti-Monitor’s attack during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The end result was a merging of the multiverse to a single Earth, now called Earth-0. Since then, Earth-0 has never known stability as it experienced several other crises that resulted in more and more changes to the DC timeline, including Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, Dark Nights Metal and Death Metal, the latter of which rebooted the entire multiverse into a single omniverse.
An Infinite Frontier Of Multiverse Threats
With all that Earth-0 has gone through since the original Crisis, it’s not hard to understand the motivation of Director Bones and the DEO. In many ways, both the Justice League and Justice Society are responsible for the original multiverse crises that led to the major one that affected the timelines.
Unfortunately for the Justice Society, Earth-2 never served as the base template for Earth-0 and the members of DC’s first team are probably emanating strong multiverse energy. This leads to Infinite Frontier #4 by Joshua Williamson, Paul Pelletier, Jesús Merino and Xermánico.
One of the major reveals that came out of Infinite Frontier #4 is that the DEO, Justice Incarnate, and The Totality are not the only multiverse groups trying to safeguard the new omniverse from cosmic threats. It turns out that one of the Justice Incarnate members, Machinehead, had been assembling a team of his own: Injustice Incarnate.
With everyone on Earth-0 now remembering their past histories (including, seemingly, the original pre-Crisis multiverse crossovers), this knowledge seems to be inspiring new multiverse invasions. One of these invasions resulted in the destruction of Machinehead’s world of Earth-8. As a result, his reasoning for assembling the Injustice Incarnate is not so much to destroy the Multiverse, but rather to keep it separate. Unfortunately, this also gives the Justice Society an entirely new threat to concern themselves with.
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