the DCU's essential

 

There are many events in the world of comics that claim to be the end of the silver age. On DC there were two events that would change and make the trasition from the glory days of the post war heroes, to the somber shadows of the Bronze age.

Agent Diana prince

After many years struggling to be a selling character, Wonder woman, was finally re-vamped for a new generation.

One afternoon, after he is seen getting into a fight with some random guy Steve Trevor says to wonder woman that the guy does not deserve to live. Yet a day later the guy from the fight is dead and Steve is the main suspect.

In court, of course, Wondy says the truth about what Steve Trevor said about the deceased and bam! and Steve is of course found guilty of murder and sent to prison.

Wonder Woman manages to clear Steve’s name and in the process working undercover as a hippie girl, get’s a makeover!

But the changes didn’t stop there, after Trevor was found innocent, Diana realizes she is a bit tired of him, and dumps him. However, there is a new a villain in town, Dr Cyber, the man who framed Steve.

Steve Trevor undertakes a mission to infiltrate the organization of Doctor Cyber. To do so, he is labeled a traitor by his own government. Wonder Woman wants to help Steve, but in the most unfortunate moment her mother informs her that the Amazons and Paradise Island must leave Earth’s dimension to renew their magical powers.

Wonder Woman elects to stay behind, but she must give up her powers and costume.

Wonder Woman returns to America as the powerless Diana Prince. Without the support of her Amazon heritage, Diana must seek a new career. She rents a storefront and soon meets I-Ching, a blind Asian master of martial arts. Ching trains Diana in hand-to-hand combat to take on Doctor Cyber.

Eventually, Diana finally finds Steve Trevor who has been critically injured. While Steve is hospitalized, she and Ching stop a plot by Cyber’s gang, But when Diana arrives to the hospital to check on Steve Trevor. She is intercepted along the way and nearly killed in a taxi cab. Ching assists Diana in escaping, then they assault a castle hide-out used by Doctor Cyber. They however upon arriving they that Steve Trevor has been abducted from the hospital and then killed by Dr. Cyber.

With Wonder woman depowered and Steve trevor, even the editors of Teen Titans had to wonder who this Wonder Girl that was running around with full powers within their books. So Wonder Girl finally got a name, "Donna Troy," as well as an origin and costume all her own.

Her origin was revealed finally to be non-Amazon, Donna was an orphan, rescued by Wonder Woman from an apartment building fire, Unable to find any parents or family, Wonder Woman had brought the child to Paradise Island.

There, Baroness Van-Gunther who had been held under arrest and later rehabilitated to the side of good used the Purple Ray (the same devise used to heal Steve Trevor after his crash) to give Donna The same amazing Powers Amazon’s had.

 

JLA 71, 73 and 74

Firs, before gte go down to the crisis, with wonder woman depowered, the justice league had to admit the loss of one of its most powerfull memebers, Then no sooner did Wonder Woman leave the JLA, then they lost another founding member, just two issues later!

Essential reading JLA #71

This story served as the basis for J’onn’s characterization for the rest of his life. Before, the Manhunter was something of a good-natured dilettante crimefighter with a happy home waiting for him whenever he overcame a few obstacles and reservations on his part. From here on, he was the tragic survivor of mostly dead race, with all his native loved ones wiped out in one fell swoop, who could never go home again.

With the Martian Manhunter gone to search for more survivors from mars, the JL start the bronze age greatly depowered.

http://www.2shared.com/file/12662260/ac013e1c/13_-_Justice_League_of_America.html
http://www.2shared.com/file/12662305/8bf30722/14_-_Justice_League_of_America.html

It took a long time till we saw what happened to Superman of Earth-Two and this undeclared crisis  marks not only another significant death, but the first moving of characters between earths. Both Red Tornado and Black Canary are now Inhabitants of earth one.

 

Green Lantern and Green Arrow

On green Lantern there were a lot of major events. Hal Finds out there is an alien machine guarded by the oans, who can show its user an lternate relaity. Hal, decides to use it to see what happened if he had been unable become green lnater,

The machine reveals, that after Abin Sur died, his power ring sought and found two potential successors: Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan. Jordan was nearer to the crash, so he was chosen over Gardner and Gardner was relegated to backup status should anything happen to Jordan.

Gardner is different from hal in many ways, specially since he is a P.E. techer… he later becomes aware of his status of backup and helps out Hal Jordan a number of times.

 

 

 

 

While most stories of the silver age were taking place in the same earth, and heroes know each other, the events related in their regular solo adventures are pretty much separate at first.

(As you come to be a usual reader of the DCU you are going to start missing this much simpler times. )

One of the first examples of incidents of separate titles having some impact in each other is the story Olivia Reynolds. She appeared first on Green lantern 71 as a rough toy company representative that was very harsh to Hal during a pitch (She is funnily in charge of making Toys about the superheroes of the justice league). Her second appearance would be in The flash, as a friend of Iris where again she would meet Hal, during dinner with Iris and Barry. Hal on this occasion would get along much better with Olivia, they will even set up a date soon by the end of the comic.

Now What’s so Special about Olivia?  Olivia (without realizing) sustains a entire CIVILIZATION of another planet with her mind; The Lenglyns of Lengyl!!!. She does this by using a special power called the U-Mind… The flash and green lantern would later have to save her from several abduction attempts in order to help the Langlyns from being forever wiped out. 

GL #75

The discovery of the the power of her U-Mind to control the Ergono power would eventually lead to the Lenglyns of Lengyl trying to kidnap Olivia to prevent the Weaponers from Kidnapping her ever again. However The weaponers succeed in taking her  and she becomes mad with power, proclaiming herself Queen of Qward.

Eventually Hal saves her and wipes her memory (again). But says the following:

"The first time I was blasted by Ergono I was hammered by an awareness of my own mortality. It shook me. It nearly finished me. I rallied back on pure emotion — but after the incident was over I never felt quite the same. Just a few days later I had that confrontation in Star City with Green Arrow. I stopped a young ghetto dweller from attacking a slumlord — and Arrow ridiculed me, accused me of playing super-cop to feed my ego. Normally, I’d've told him to let me do my job. But instead — it shook me to the core of my being. For years after that my will was shaky. I lacerated myself with doubt and indecision. Dear Lord. Were all those years of confusion caused by that one blast of Ergono?"

 

 

 

Doom Patrol

Doom patrol was born when DC decided to convert one of his Mystery/Adventure titles to a Superhero title and to that effect create a group of heroes that would match both genres.

An aging wheelchair bound mad scientist known as the Chief (Niles Caulder), gathers together three super-powered outcasts: Robotman, Elasti-Girl and Negative Man. As the heroes greet one another, they learn of the personal circumstances that brought them all together. They are all unwillingly super powered human beings, each acquired theyr power after an accident and the power destroyed their lives.

Rita Farr was a Hollywood actress and Olympic level swimmer. During filming of one of her movies, Rita was exposed to strange vapors that granted he the ability to alter her size at will. Her career in ruins, due to her mutation, she became Elasti-Girl.

Larry Trainor was once a civilian test pilot – until the day he flew an experimental suborbital aircraft into a stratospheric belt of radiation. Now he exists as a living mummy, forced to wear special bandages to contain the radiation that has disfigured his body. As a side effect of the incident, Larry can now summon a dark energy being from his body, which he calls the Negative Man.

Robotman was once Cliff Steele, an international sportsman and daredevil whose body was burned to a cinder after a deadly racecar crash. The Chief’s scientific genius transferred Steele’s brain into a new robot body.

The Chief motivated the original Doom Patrol, bitter from being isolated from the world, to use their powers for the greater good.

Throughout their career, the team would face a variety of bizarre villains, a rogues gallery matched the strange, weird tone of the series. Villains included the immortality-seeking General Immortus, the shape-shifting Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, and the Brotherhood of Evil led by the Brain, an actual brain kept alive by technology.

Eventually Rita married Steve Dayton, and they adopted Beast Boy (Garfield Logan) as their son.

When the popularity of the book decreased and got canceled, The writers ended the series in a dramatic manner: he killed off the entire Doom Patrol; sacrificed their lives to save a small fishing village. This marked the first time in comic book history that a canceled book ended by having most of its cast of main characters die.

Its funny how, being a superhero, heroes themselves took so long to deal with death in an intimate way. of course batman and superman had been throwing and killing people since the beginning, and blasting enemies and Nazi subs for ages… But death as a personal experience was what made the bronze something entirely different.