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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. Number 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. Now the
02:29majority of the series covers the Justice League, the Justice League of America, and the anti-hero-filled
02:34Justice League Dark, fighting against the secret society of supervillains, which you'd naturally assume is what the
02:40world trinity in the event title refers to, but the whole thing actually revolves around the emergence
02:45of the inhabitants of Earth-3, who are the twisted versions of the Justice League themselves. The
02:51arrival of these villains results in all sorts of life-threatening scenarios, as they are by all
02:56means as smart and as powerful as their Earth-1 equivalents. While this doesn't equal the same universe-ending
03:01threat as many other events do, it did introduce a series of genuinely dangerous entities into the main DC
03:07world, who would continue to wreak considerable havoc in their collective time in comics.
03:13Number 7. 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
03:32after 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, this time
03:42in the form of a multiverse-ending Mr. Mind, we're aware we'll be facing it without a good portion of
03:47the people who generally are crucial in saving the day. This takes what could otherwise feel like a
03:52pretty conventional world-ending event, and makes it feel as though it had genuine potential to go
03:57wrong. As the fate of the known universe rests in the hand of Rip Hunter, Booster Gold, Supernova,
04:03and Skeet.
04:04Number 6. 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
04:18Hawke, 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, or some
04:34characters having their backstories retconned to fit more suitably into the overall franchise.
04:39It all sounds quite tame, but in order to pull it all off, more or less every hero or superhero group
04:45in existence had to be seriously threatened, with us seeing countless heroes maimed or killed before
04:50the series-wide reboot came in and ended the event, suitably created by another big bang.
04:56Number 5. Dark Knight's Metal
04:58Proving that we are still very much in the age of major catastrophic events, Dark Knight's Metal was
05:03apparently planned by writer Scott Snyder since he began writing for the Batman series back in 2011,
05:08meaning that he had some considerable time to come up with this truly insane event.
05:13And insane it is, as the series repeatedly reaches points where it feels possible that some,
05:18or even all of your favourite heroes might actually die. With the plot revolving around
05:23corrupted Dark Universe versions of Batman who have already killed off their respective Justice
05:27League, the genuine threat posed against the world seems all the more potent, and all the more
05:32realistic when we see our heroes having to flee these powerful monsters for much of the series.
05:36It also means that we get to see an old, frail Bruce Wayne who has been tortured for countless
05:40years finally begin to successfully fight back against these forces. It fills you with genuine joy,
05:46as 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 Knights does a fantastic
05:56job of taking characters who have plot armour and making you feel genuine concern for them.
06:01Number 4. Blackest Knight
06:03There's something about the Blackest Knight in its entirety that just feels immense. Featuring epic,
06:09colossal space 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
06:19the kind of gravity felt during the finale of your favourite TV show. As while Blackest Knight
06:24wasn't DC's finale, it still had all of the weight and poignance of one. With the collective hero
06:30forces facing the literal embodiment of death itself, a particularly interesting dynamic is also
06:35set up, as the heroes work out exactly how to deal with an enemy that can never properly die,
06:40all the while trying to avoid being murdered by his steadily growing Black Lantern forces.
06:45The event poses a huge threat to literally every person in the known DC universe,
06:49and that's exactly why it's so good, as you see characters from every corner and moral alignment
06:54join forces to desperately fight for their survival.
06:57Number 3. Final Crisis
06:59Although decidedly not the final crisis that the DC universe would face, Final Crisis is the end of the
07:05main 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
07:30literally outrun death, it still involved unimaginable levels of destruction, and saw
07:35what technically was the brief end of the DC universe entirely, before it was then fixed by
07:40the convenient plot device that is the Miracle Machine. Had this not worked, however, we would
07:44have been left with a universe where Batman, Martian Manhunter, and new god Orion were all dead,
07:49and those alive enslaved to serve a life of suffering under Darkseid.
07:54Number 2. Flashpoint
07:55As far as elaborate timeline manoeuvring goes, there are few events that can match that of
08:00Flashpoint. With the premise essentially being that the flashes toying around in the past has
08:04endangered the main DC universe, the series covers the threat of both the new universe that Barry
08:09Allen has unknowingly created, and also the threat of his home universe being permanently destroyed
08:14due to his actions. Given that the new universe Barry makes has an extra 35,000 people die because
08:20of Superman's ship crashing in a slightly different place, it seems safe to say that this marks a pretty
08:25considerable catastrophe, even without the added knowledge that, yet again, the world almost
08:30ended. Even the solution to this crisis ends in a cataclysmic way, as in order to save the
08:35millions that died in the alternate universe, the Flash has to leave it in the middle of what
08:39appears to be a world-ending event. While the return of that universe's Thomas Wayne in the
08:44Batman series may suggest that ultimately it did not end for that world, for now it appears as
08:48though everyone who existed in that timeline was destroyed at the end of Flashpoint, which gives the
08:53event a pretty hefty death toll.
08:561. Crisis on Infinite Earths
08:58With perhaps the best and most dramatic of any DC event in history, Crisis on Infinite
09:03Earths is what it says on the tin, covering a catastrophe that hits the entire multiverse
09:08and ends up ending entire universes before it's done. With heroes from both Earth-1 and Earth-2
09:14coming together to try and stop the collapse of existence as they know it, the stakes have never
09:18seemed as high. As we're not just witnessing the potential ending of the main DC universe,
09:23but also every single alternative one imaginable, which is a disaster on an almost inconceivable
09:29scale. The event was big enough that to this day it is still referred to as the Great Disaster,
09:34which is a pretty hefty statement given that the superheroes seem to combat a world-ending threat
09:38every 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
09:47below. As always, I've been Jules, so 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 reports, 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,
10:02with love and respect, my friends, because you deserve all of the best things in life,
10:06and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright? You are a massive ledge,
10:10and I want you to go out there and absolutely smash it today. As always, I have been Jules,
10:15you have been awesome. Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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