Ten years ago today, DC Comics released 52 #52, the final issue in a year-long, weekly experiment that put a half-dozen B- and C-list heroes at the forefront while shunting Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to the back burner.
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The issue’s big twist — which by the time of its publication many fans had already guessed — was that DC’s once-infinite multiverse had returned, in a limited capacity; rather than having billions of alternate Earths, most of which were something simple like “world where Tom’s hair doesn’t stick up in that annoying way all the time” or “world where the the toilet flushes in the opposite direction,” the multiverse was back with only 52 worlds, most of which were already spoken for based on the contents of previously-existing comics and popular “Elseworlds” stories.
The multiverse had been a major part of DC’s history for years, before it was destroyed in Crisis on Infinite Earths in the ’80s. Twenty years later came Infinite Crisis, in which some characters who had survived the Crisis attempted to recreate the multiverse because they weren’t happy with the direction the “one, true” remaining Earth was taking.
There was a brief return of the multiverse in Infinite Crisis, but then everything was re-merged, leaving one world again with a slightly-tweaked continuity (this is similar to what DC had done in 1994 with Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time).
In 52, they introduced the idea that time was “broken,” with Rip Hunter and Booster Gold trying to investigate what was damaging the fabric of reality and making changes taht shouldn’t have happened.The eventual culprit was Mister Mind, a Shazam! villain who had managed to take control fo Booster’s floating droid-slash-best pal, Skeets. Ultimately, in the course of defeating the time travel-driven foe, the pair discovered that the multiverse was back…and it hasn’t been gone since.
While the multiverse was originally done away with because editors saw it as a storytelling crutch that confused casual readers, the reinvigorated multiverse has been used infrequently, and almost always in massive event stories like Forever Evil and The Multiversity. The popularity of the concept on The Flash has seemingly started to bring it more to the fore in recent years, following the success of Flashpoint and the subsequent reboot of the DC Universe.
The multiverse was also a driving story point in Convergence, a story that reintroduced the pre-reboot version of Superman, who (with a few tweaks along the way) is currently starring in Superman and Action Comics every month.
52 also lent the number — 52 — to “The New 52,” DC’s 2011 reboot. While 52 is generally regarded as one of the best big “event” stories DC has published in its long history, The New 52 wasn’t all that well-regarded, and while we’re talking about the tenth anniversary of 5/2/07 (yes, they made sure that 52 #52 hit the stands on 5/2 without having an issue ship late), it’s hard to imagine that people will have the same warm feelings in four years when the reboot hits the decade mark.
52 was designed in part to showcase some of DC’s less-famous characters and given them an opportunity to shine, and in that respect it succeeded…but has had limited long-term impact. Booster Gold ran for 50 issues before being rebooted along with the rest of the DCU, but characters like the Marvel Family, Elongated Man, Steel, and The Question didn’t really get much more play after 52 than they did before.
The creation of the Kate Kane Batwoman is arguably the biggest ramification of the series — a major LGBT character who was interesting and appealing enough to not only survive the last decade, but who currently appears in Detective Comics as well as in her own, self-titled ongoing title.
Happy birthday, 52! Sound off on Twitter @comicbook if you’ve got a favorite part of the story or if you think we missed a major part of the comic’s impact.
