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Ending the world roughly every other Tuesday.
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00:00Now, world-ending or universe-threatening events happen so frequently in the DC universe,
00:05you could probably set your bloody watch by them. With such a wealth of catastrophes to look through,
00:10though, a question naturally emerges. That being, which of these crisis-his-his-ees
00:15actually feels like the most threatening? Well, let's take a look at them as I'm Jules,
00:19this is WhatCulture.com, and these are the 10 biggest catastrophes in DC Comics.
00:2410. Deceased One of the more simplistic world-threatening events
00:29of the DC universe, Deceased is very much the storyline you'd expect it would be from the
00:34title, what with the world threat coming in the form of zombies. At first, it all seems totally
00:39manageable, right up until, that is, Batman succumbs to the monster virus, and then everything suddenly
00:44seems totally terrifying. Through a mixture of masterful writing, gruesomely great art,
00:49and an aggressive zombie virus, the threat of the undead outbreak seems so much more potent
00:54in this than it ever has before, helped in no small part by the fact that it heavily features
00:59Superman and Batman's children, who you naturally worry about immensely when they have to face
01:04against super-powered zombies. Even with all of this in mind, however,
01:08Deceased is not the biggest threat that the universe has faced by a significant margin.
01:12As for now, the undead hordes seem safely confined to Earth, and Earth alone.
01:179. Identity Crisis
01:19Now what's the one thing worse than superheroes dying tragic deaths? Well, that is superheroes
01:25becoming less than super, as is the case in Identity Crisis, where we learn that our favourite
01:30moral bastions have been secretly hypnotising specific supervillains in order to try and control
01:36them, totally stamping out their free will in order to make them less of a problem. Now in terms
01:41of catastrophes, this one is very different from the majority of the other events, but it's still
01:46incredibly potent. While the other threats merely killed or maimed heroes, this one damaged the idea
01:52of what it means to be a hero. As while all the costume wonders who did these experiments were doing
01:57them for what they felt were moral reasons, it's made very clear that their decisions were out of
02:02line and played with the freedoms of the villains involved. It's no world-ending calamity, but it is
02:08a serious blow to the sanctity of the always-moral figures of the Justice League and DC superheroes at
02:14large. 8. The Trinity War
02:16It is a crying shame that the Trinity War event is as overlooked as it is, because in terms of badass
02:23fights and engaging plot and exciting plot twists, it really comes through time and time again.
02:29The majority of the series covers the Justice League, the Justice League of America, and the
02:33anti-hero-filled Justice League Dark, fighting against the secret society of supervillains, which
02:38you'd naturally assume is what the world trinity in the event title refers to. But the whole thing
02:43actually revolves around the emergence of the inhabitants of Earth-3, who are the twisted
02:48versions of the Justice League themselves. The arrival of these villains results in all
02:52sorts of life-threatening scenarios, as they are by all means as smart and as powerful as their
02:58Earth-1 equivalents. While this doesn't equal the same universe-ending threat as many other events do,
03:03it did introduce a series of genuinely dangerous entities into the main DC world, who would continue
03:09to wreak considerable havoc in their collective time in comics.
03:137. 52
03:14While the new 52 is well-known, somewhat inescapably, because it rebooted the entire DC line of comics,
03:21the actual 52 event is incredibly overlooked. Aside from having one of the weirdest names for a comic,
03:2652 is unique in that it covers the year that Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman all disappeared
03:31after Infinite Crisis, and how the world managed to deal with their loss. It's an unusual scenario,
03:37but one that works really well, as when the inevitable cosmic threat does appear,
03:41this time in the form of a multiverse-ending Mr. Mind, we're aware we'll be facing it without a
03:46good portion of the people who generally are crucial in saving the day. This takes what could
03:51otherwise feel like a pretty conventional world-ending event, and makes it feel as though
03:55it had genuine potential to go wrong. As the fate of the known universe rests in the hand of Rip
04:01Hunter, Booster Gold, Supernova, and Skeets.
04:046. Zero Hour Crisis in Time
04:07For anyone who gets a kick out of Hal Jordan under the villainous Parallax alias, Zero Hour is a
04:13literal godsend, as the main threats within the events are him and another ex-hero in the form of
04:18Hawk, who now goes by the villain moniker of Extent. Both characters' plans involve messing with the DC
04:24timeline, in a series of events purposely contrived to fix existing problems that DC had with their
04:30universe at the time, such as characters not aging despite the timeline progressing,
04:34or some characters having their backstories retconned to fit more suitably into the overall
04:38franchise. It all sounds quite tame, but in order to pull it all off, more or less every hero or
04:44superhero group in existence had to be seriously threatened, with us seeing countless heroes maimed
04:49or killed before the series-wide reboot came in and ended the event, suitably created by another big bang.
04:565. Dark Knight's Metal
04:58Proving that we are still very much in the age of major catastrophic events,
05:02Dark Knight's Metal was apparently planned by writer Scott Snyder since he began writing for
05:06the Batman series back in 2011, meaning that he had some considerable time to come up with this
05:11truly insane event. And insane it is, as the series repeatedly reaches points where it feels
05:17possible that some or even all of your favourite heroes might actually die. With the plot revolving
05:22around corrupted Dark Universe versions of Batman who have already killed off their respective
05:27Justice League, the genuine threat posed against the world seems all the more potent,
05:31and all the more realistic when we see our heroes having to flee these powerful monsters for much
05:35of the series. It also means that we get to see an old, frail Bruce Wayne who has been tortured for
05:40countless years finally begin to successfully fight back against these forces. It fills you with
05:45genuine joy, as it couldn't begin in a more unlikely place. Given that it's heavily unlikely that DC will ever
05:51genuinely kill off Batman or Superman for an extended period, Dark Knight's does a fantastic
05:56job of taking characters who have plot armour and making you feel genuine concern for them.
06:014. Blackest Knight
06:03There's something about the Blackest Knight in its entirety that just feels immense. Featuring epic,
06:10space wars, storylines spanning the entire galaxy, and dead characters reincarnated as Black
06:15Lanterns just to mess with our heroes, there is very little of Blackest Knight that doesn't possess the
06:19kind of gravity felt during the finale of your favourite TV show. As while Blackest Knight wasn't
06:25DC's finale, it still had all of the weight and poignance of one. With the collective hero forces
06:30facing the literal embodiment of death itself, a particularly interesting dynamic is also set up,
06:35as the heroes work out exactly how to deal with an enemy that can never properly die, all the while
06:40trying to avoid being murdered by his steadily growing Black Lantern forces. The event poses a huge
06:46threat to literally every person in the known DC universe, and that's exactly why it's so good,
06:51as you see characters from every corner and moral alignment join forces to desperately fight for
06:56their survival.
06:573. Final Crisis
06:59Although decidedly not the final crisis that the DC universe would face, Final Crisis is the end of
07:05the main DC crisis events, being predated by Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour Time of Crisis,
07:11and Infinite Crisis. With the event marking the beginning of Darkseid gaining the anti-life equation,
07:16which, as the name suggests, is a very bad thing, it sees our heroes race against the villain as he
07:21slowly tries to take over both their world and the universe. While the event has somewhat less
07:26catastrophic moments, like discovering that Barry Allen was still alive, having managed to literally
07:31outrun death, it still involved unimaginable levels of destruction, and saw what technically was
07:36the brief end of the DC universe entirely, before it was then fixed by the convenient plot device
07:41that is the Miracle Machine. Had this not worked, however, we would have been left with a universe
07:45where Batman, Martian Manhunter, and new god Orion were all dead, and those alive enslaved to serve a
07:51life of suffering under Darkseid.
07:542. Flashpoint
07:55As far as elaborate timeline manoeuvring goes, there are few events that can match that of Flashpoint,
08:01with the premise essentially being that the Flash is toying around in the past as endangered the main DC
08:06universe. The series covers the threat of both the new universe that Barry Allen has unknowingly
08:10created, and also the threat of his home universe being permanently destroyed due to his actions.
08:16Given that the new universe Barry makes has an extra 35,000 people die because of Superman's ship
08:21crashing in a slightly different place, it seems safe to say that this marks a pretty considerable
08:26catastrophe, even without the added knowledge that, yet again, the world almost ended. Even the
08:31solution to this crisis ends in a cataclysmic way, as in order to save the millions that died in the
08:36alternate universe, the Flash has to leave it in the middle of what appears to be a world-ending
08:41event. While the return of that universe's Thomas Wayne in the Batman series may suggest that
08:45ultimately it did not end for that world, for now it appears as though everyone who existed in that
08:50timeline was destroyed at the end of Flashpoint, which gives the event a pretty hefty death toll.
08:551. Crisis on Infinite Earths
08:58With perhaps the best and most dramatic of any DC event in history, Crisis on Infinite Earths is what
09:04it says on the tin, covering a catastrophe that hits the entire multiverse and ends up ending entire
09:10universes before it's done. With heroes from both Earth-1 and Earth-2 coming together to try and stop
09:15the collapse of existence as they know it, the stakes have never seemed as high. As we're not just
09:20witnessing the potential ending of the main DC universe, but also every single alternative one
09:25imaginable, which is a disaster on an almost inconceivable scale. The event was big enough
09:31that to this day it is still referred to as the Great Disaster, which is a pretty hefty statement
09:35given that the superheroes seem to combat a world-ending threat every other afternoon.
09:39And there we go, my friends. Those were the 10 biggest catastrophes in DC Comics. I hope that
09:44you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section below.
09:47As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJayWithAZero,
09:51or you can swing by LiveAndLet'sDice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
09:54as well as my Warhammer Battle Report, so if you're into that sort of stuff, I'd love to see you over
09:58there. But before I go, I just want to say one thing. I hope that you treat yourself well with
10:02love and respect, my friends, because you deserve all of the best things in life, and do not let
10:06anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright? You are a massive ledge, and I want you to go out
10:11there and absolutely smash it today. As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome.
10:16Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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