What the Heck is Earth 10?

The 23.5-Year Cycle

FACT: the DC continuity/ multiverse operates on a 23.5-year cycle (as discussed in Detective Comics #500 [1]).

• Earth 2 Heroes appear June, 1938 (corresponding with Action Comics #1)
• The Earth 1 heroes in November, 1961 very close to the Flash of Two Worlds)
• In June of 1985 the Earth 9 heroes arrived with a Crisis that produced a world with both 1938 & 1961 costumed heroes. This has been the DC universe we've been reading about for the last 27 years, and it was inherently unstable, rewriting itself since 1994.
• In November 2008, Earth 10 developed publicly known super humans, though it’s super-heroic legacy stretches to the tenth century. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman appear. Someone with a power ring making green energy shapes named Green Lantern appears, as does a super speedster named Flash, and so on.

The 17 Default Heroes

There are seventeen iconic repeating concepts that appear in every Earth in the multi-verse. Some of them are totally constant, some are highly variable.

• Aquaman: Water Adaptation + Swim Speed, Speak with/ Control Fish; Earth 1 & 9 have Aqualad
  • Earth 2: Son of a famous oceanographer who set up an air-filled residence in ruined Atlantis and raised his son via Atlantean principles to survive underwater
  • Earth 1: Son of an Atlantean princess and a lighthouse keeper, Arthur Curry eventually was made king of Atlantis when the old regent died.
  • Earth 9: Outcast-at-birth son of an Atlantean princess and an immortal sorcerer, Orin was raised as Arthur Curry by a lighthouse keeper but became king.

• Atom, The: High Strength and Small Size.
  • Earth 2: A man of diminutive stature trained to channel all of the power in the human body, Al Pratt is as strong as the largest most powerful weightlifter while having the speed and grace of a smaller man.
  • Earth 1: Having mastered the physics of dwarf star material Ray Palmer has complete control of his size and density, and is able to shrink down to subatomic sizes or channel his full density into a single point.
  • Earth 9: Both heroes appear, as the WWII & contemporary

• Batman, The: Master Detective, Stealthy Fighter, Bat-Gadgets, Bat-Vehicles; Robin as sidekick
  • Earth 2: Orphaned by the act of a random gunman Bruce Wayne dedicated himself to crimefighting, becoming an expert fighter, skilled detective and impressive scientist, with advanced technology via his fortune.
  • Earth 1: Orphaned by the act of a random gunman Bruce Wayne dedicated himself to crimefighting, becoming the world's greatest detective, a genius scientist and master of a thousand martial arts disciplines. He has invented tech preparing him for any situation.
  • Earth 9: Orphaned by the act of a random gunman Bruce Wayne dedicated himself to cleaning up Gotham and later the world. He is one of the world's best martial artists, a master of stealth, and a genius strategist & scientist able to out-plan any foe.

• Black Canary: Martial Artist, Sonic Attack
  • Earth 2: Dinah Drake is an accomplished karate fighter dating a police detective Larry Lance, who she helps on cases as the mysterious Black Canary
  • Earth 1: The widowed Earth 2 Black Canary, Dinah Lance traveled to Earth 1 to fight crime - and gained the power of a Canary Cry when she did so.
  • Earth 9: Dinah Lance is the daughter of the WWII Black Canary and was trained by the Justice Society to use a mutant canary cry and skills to fight crime.

• Flash, The: Super-Speed (includes mini-tornadoes, vibrating through objects and dimension travel), Chemistry/ Science Skills; Earth 1 & 9 have Kid Flash sidekick
  • Earth 2: Jay Garrick is a chemist exposed to hazardous gasses; he gains super-speed and becomes a hero
  • Earth 1: Barry Allen is a police scientist struck by electrified chemicals, he gains super-speed to become a hero
  • Earth 9: Wally West, the Kid Flash to Barry Allen with the same origin, takes on the mantle when Barry dies in the Crisis, using Jay Garrick as a mentor.

• Green Arrow: Master Archer, Gimmick Arrows of any concept, Arrow-Vehicles. Speedy is his sidekick
  • Earth 2: Oliver Queen is an expert on Native American culture he uses his archery skills, trick arrows and fortune to fight crime.
  • Earth 1: Oliver Queen is a millionaire industrialist lost at sea teaches himself archery and returns to fight for social justice, eventually losing his fortune.
  • Earth 9: As Earth 1, though he gives up trick arrows eventually and becomes an urban hunter. Queen eventually dies and is replaced by his son, Connor

• Green Lantern: Ring makes solid energy constructs in addition to other 'wished for' powers i.e. anything
  • Earth 2: Alan Scott finds a Magic Ring which his lantern directs him to use for justice
  • Earth 1: Hal Jordan's works as a galactic police officer for the Guardians of Oa
  • Earth 9: 2 is WWII era, 1 is contemporary era.

• Guardian, The: Master Shield-fighter, Urban Adventurer, Group of skilled teen henchmen
  • Earth 1 and Earth 2: Jim Harper is a police officer, Master Shield-fighter, Urban Adventurer, Group of skilled teen henchmen
  • Earth 9: 2 is WWII era, 1 is clone of 2 in contemporary era and teens are now all adult super-scientists.

• Hawkman: Anti-Gravity Wings, Archaic Weapon Skills, Speak with Birds, vast areas of knowledge. Hawkgirl is his sidekick
  • Earth 2: Carter Hall is a reincarnation of an Egyptian Pharaoh with ancient tech and skills.
  • Earth 1: Katar Hol is an alien police officer with alien science rather than past knowledge
  • Earth 9: 2 is WWII era, 1 is contemporary, two linked via alien tech and reincarnation.

• Red Tornado: No Common powers
  • Earth 2: Ma Hunkle is a large woman with strong combat skills who dresses as a man to fight crime
  • Earth 1: an Earth 2 android built to destroy the JSA, he traveled to Earth 1 to use his wind powers as a member of the JLA
  • Earth 9: 1 is WWII era, 1 is contemporary

• Superman: Super Strength Invulnerability, Super Speed, Flight, Super Senses, Heat Vision + Super Breath, High Charisma. His cousin is Power/ Super Girl but they don't work together
  • Earth 1: Rocketed to Earth, Kansas-raised Clark Kent is a defender of Truth, Justice and the American Way!
  • Earth 2: The last son of Krypton, Kal-El lives among humans, trying to guide them and protect their world with his alien powers.
  • Earth 9: An alien orphan with fantastic powers, Clark Kent struggles to bring the American way of truth and justice to the world.

• Vigilante: Master at Western/Cowboy skills.
  • Earth 2, Earth 1: Greg Sanders was the son of a Wyoming Sherriff turned NC Radio "Prairie Troubadour" who took up the heroic mantle to avenge his dad.
  • Earth 9: Earth 2 he was active in WWII, and later District Attorney Adrian Chase took on the name but not the motif but eventually quit to become a judge.

• Wonder Woman: Super Strength, Combat skills, Invulnerable Bracelets, Magic Lasso, Flight/Invisible Jet
  • Earth 2: Princess Diana, Hippolyta’s daughter carved from clay, wins the right to return Steve Trevor to "Man's World" and to fight crime and the Nazis.
  • Earth 1: As Earth 1, but receiving the blessing of each deity in her crib, Diana has godlike power. She spends some years powerless, but never stops fighting.
  • Earth 9: As others, but with Diana as an emissary and ambassador from Themyscira to Patriarch's World, charged with the mission of bringing peace to the outside world. (and no invisible jet - she can fly)

• Zatarra/ Zatanna: Potent Elemental Magic + Weaker General-Purpose Sorcery, Must Speak Spells Backwards
  • Earth 2: Zatarra is a Homo Magus who speaks his spells backwards and hides his power in plain sight as a stage magician even as he fights evil.
  • Earth 1: Zatanna is the daughter of the Earth 2 Zatarra who came to Earth 1 looking for her lost father - she has the same magic, cover career and foes as he did.
  • Earth 9: Zaratta was WWII era, Zatanna is contemporary; Zatarra died in the Crisis that formed Earth 9.

The Earth 10 Versions

Earth 10 Aquaman

Artur Curi, third son of his royal majesty Alexander III, is a prince of the Atlantean Empire, from the capital city of Atlantis to the near provinces of Posidinous and Tritonis to the distant colonial territories of Mu and Lemuria. Being the third in line for the throne he is spared much of the princely and military training of his eldest brother Jon, or the advisory and logistical training of his middle brother Janus (who will doubtless be grand vizier some day and has a lovely twisty goatee; what, why are you suspicious?) and therefore acts as an ambassador at large for the empire and the royal family. On more than one occasion this has led Artur to the surface world, where he became a founding member of the Justice Alliance

Earth 10 Captain Shazam

Wilhelmina Sivana is the escapee from the brutally abusive household of Thaddeus Bodog Sivana. After weeks of making a scant living as a guitar busker in the subways of Fawcett City she saw someone drop a fake coin into her guitar case. Checking it, she saw it was ancient coinage (one of the first pieces of coinage minted in Ephesus, Lydia in 650 BC) and she chased after the donor, following him into a bizarre section of the already art deco subways under Fawcett. Passing by the statues of the ancient enemies of man she encountered the Wizard, Shazam, who granted her the wisdom of Solomon, the vision of Heimdallr, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury when she said his name. This also gave her the body of Atlas, making her a nearly 2 meter, 125kg superman. After a couple of adventures as Captain Shazam (she learned not to say her full name in combat pretty quickly, going by ‘the Captain’ most days) Billie was taken in by a pair of café entertainers and street performers, Clarence Charles (C.C.) and Parker Batson. She has to keep hiding as Billie from her father, who is trying to gain dominion over, well, everything.

Earth 10 Firestorm

Johnny Lu is a high school student with aspirations of joining the US Olympic Taekwondo team. Master Bai is a Taoist Alchemist who was preparing to ascend to another plane. When Johnny stumbled across Kobra goons preparing to interfere with Bai's ascendance the conflict scrambled everything. Bai is still in the material realm, but either he or Lu can fuse their bodies together into the being known as Firestorm, a human Taoist philosopher's stone who can fly, become a living spirt, transmute matter and manipulate physical and spiritual energy. Bai doesn't know why this happened, but as taken the task of forging Johnny's rambunctious spirit via good acts as his ultimate challenge.

Earth 10 Flash

Tracy Broom is a chemist and physicist working on next generation spaceflight in the private market. Tracy was exposed to exotic chemicals and gained superhuman speed.

Earth 10 Green Arrow

Auto-didactic Oliver Queen, born to no family or fortune, possesses one of the greatest minds on earth - an inventive and technological genius he uses Queen Biotech (the emblem of this is a green arrow pointing to a renewable energy future) to disrupt the existing energy paradigm and spearhead the renewable energy revolution. In his youth Oliver found that archery quieted his ever racing mind and dedicated himself to its study in his spare time. When criminals threatened some of his staff he combined his archery skills and technical expertise to rescue them, causing the press to dub him personally with the name of his company.

Earth 10 Green Lantern

George Washington found the magic lantern and ring in a Virginia cavern and used it secretly to aid the war effort despite being constantly concerned about how such vast power could be corrupted and misused. (What does every child know about George Washington - that he could not tell a lie and he never panicked or even flinched in battle - he was Honest and Fearless.) Eventually under the lantern’s instruction he returned it, gratefully, to the secluded cave where it lay for centuries. In 2009 international charity worker, tireless human rights advocate and avid spelunker Michele Toussaint, stumbled onto that cave, and into her destiny as the new agent of the Green Lantern. Toussaint, inspired by the appearance of Superman, designed a costume and took to the skies as a super-hero.

Earth 10 Hawks

When I put this on Facebook the irreplaceable Lisa Padol pitched a perfect hawks: Etienne and Isabo from Ladyhawke, still cursed, ageless, eternally together, forever apart. Armed with daVinci’s wings apparatus they have fought human corruption, devil worshippers and general evil since the 10th century. During the day Etienne is Hawkman, armed with his wings, thousand years of medieval weapon training and a brilliant hawk companion. During the night Isabo flies the shadows, having had ten centuries to hone skills Mouse the thief taught her, followed by a brutally strong wolf body-guard

Earth 10 Question

Charles Victor Sazas has spent 20 years as a blogger travelling the world in search of Fortean events, magical places, conspiracy theories and general weirdness. Along the way he has mastered Chinese Zen Awareness, Indian Kalaripayattu, European Ritual, Haitian Voodoo, Thulian Viril-tech, ley line maps and a dozen other things. Returning to Hub City he befriended Aristotle Rodor and started using Tot’s invention of Psueododerm and its gas to explore deeper criminal conspiracies – from criminal gangs to government corruption to Kobra cult – that are threatening civilization. At best an affiliate, he fulfills the Phantom Stranger niche by showing up with bizarre problems.

Earth 10 Superman

Rocketed from Krypton to Kansas and raised by kindly farmers, Clark Kent grew up in a changing world: his mother ran a shop in Smallville (the stress of that didn’t lead to divorce as it did for Pete Ross’ and Lana Lang’s families, but it gave Clark time to visit the 30th century); the family farms his father loved were fading out, and when he graduated with a journalism degree the economy that had no new desks.

Clark traveled the world covering stories as a freelancer, using his powers when he could keep it secret. Eventually in early 2001 when the economy crashed again he left Earth for a year, visiting the remains of Krypton and finding enough remnants of their space colonies to master their arts, languages, history and sciences. He returned to a changed world – the Twin Towers had fallen while he was away – and Clark Kent was able to reappear as a freelance war and political correspondent.

These first days had him relying heavily on his friendship with young photojournalist Jimmy Olsen, whose keen eye was always limited by his slacker attitude. Still he gave Clark crash space and support as Kent went from an occasional byline to the best-known name in the business in seven years (Jimmy went from being a photographer in his mid-20’s with a new futon to a photographer in his early 30’s with a ratty futon). In late 2008 a crashing airplane over Metropolis forced Clark to use his powers publicly and spurred the creation of Superman. This sparked the first wave of true super-heroes.

Earth 10 Vigilante

Adam MacTaggart is a Union soldier reanimated by his mad scientist uncle using Victor Frankenstein’s notebooks in 1863 who came back from the dead all but immortal. Since then he's served as a US Marshal using his well-honed sharp-shooting, brawling, roping and above all detective skills (backed by 150 years of electrical engineering and medical training building on his mad scientist uncle's work) to insure equal justice for all under the law.

Earth 10 Vixen

Mari Jiwe Mccabe is the inheritor of the Tantu Totem, a powerful magical artifact created by the trickster god Anansi. For centuries, her family has stood as protectors of Earth’s biosphere, but as the challenges have grown the amulet’s magic has weakened. No longer able to perform earth shaking magics, the holder of the Totem is still powerful, able to take the powers of any animal native to earth’s biosphere. Vixen can sense upcoming crises to the world, but she consistently has to team up with local heroes to avert these threats, making her one of the world’s best known, if mid power, heroines. Her style doesn’t lend itself to being a permanent team player, but she has worked with the Justice Alliance on several occasions.

Earth 10 Wonder Woman

Sculpted from clay and brought to life with the blessings of the Greek goddesses, Diana of Themyscira was blessed with beauty (Aphrodite), strength (Demeter), a hunter’s senses (Artemis), wisdom & puissance (Athena), internal fire (Hestia) and command (Hera), the latter two channeled through her magic lasso, a gift from those divinities. Diana won the right to enter Man’s World in 2009 to deal with incursions of legendary monsters that first appeared on the battlefields of the middle east. Since then she created the cover identity of Diana Prince at the Inter-Agency Defense Command, a small joint Defense/State department venture.

Earth 10 Zatava

Daughter of Zatanna and a third generation wizard hiding as a stage magician. She has vast elemental powers backed by solid sorcery and some ritual magic, but her first love is still the traditional stage magician skills: she is an excellent actress, pick-pocket, person-reader, mimic and mistress of mortal legerdemain. Her family has been having magical adventures in secret since at least 1927. Her powers are close to her mother’s and grandfather’s, but unlike them she can animate water as living beings.