The Justice League is the most important team in the DC Multiverse. The group brought together the greatest heroes of the Silver Age, following in the footsteps of the Justice Society in the Golden Age. They faced off against the greatest threats in comics, fighting battles with the fate of everything at stake. There was a time when any given issue of Justice League of America was basically the equivalent of a modern event comic. They faced the biggest villains and teamed up with other groups from across the multiverse, changing the way superhero comics operated. In many ways, the League’s stories would lead directly to the modern event comic, their adventures at the biggest scale possible.
The League’s adventures have had a massive effect on the DC Multiverse. Over the years, numerous events starring the team and their allies have brought huge change to the multiverse. Their biggest events shook the very firmament of reality, sometimes leading the superhero community in new directions. These five Justice League events shook the DC Multiverse and led to massive change, and number two has been mostly forgotten by modern readers.
Dark Knights: Metal introduced readers to the Batman Who Laughs and set the stage for the war against Perpetua in Justice League (Vol. 4). The Justice League did everything could to stop her before she could take power, but found themselves wanting. This led to Dark Knights: Death Metal, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. The story opened with Perpetua and the Batman Who Laughs in control of most of the multiverse, using the armies of the Dark Multiverse as their cats’ paws. Superman was captured, Batman was fighting a lonely war, and Wonder Woman was ostensibly working for Perpetua, acting as the warden of the captured heroes and villains. However, she had a plan to win and eventually was able to convince the remaining heroes to make a final push. Perpetua was killed by the Batman Who Laughs, using the power of Doctor Bathattan (yes, it’s exactly what it sounded like), with Wonder Woman gaining the power to fight him one on one. She was able to defeat him, using the godlike power she had to rebuild the multiverse. In the aftermath of the event, the New 52 universe officially ended and a new infinite multiverse was created. It also created a blank Earth, one that would eventually become the Absolute Earth.
Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths is underappreciated, a story that is not only better than it gets credit for but is also hugely important to DC’s current success. Spinning out of Infinite Frontier, Justice League Incarnate, and Justice League (Vol. 4), the story revolved around Pariah, one of Crisis on Infinite Earths‘ heroes, trying to rebuild the old multiverse with the power of the Great Darkness, with Deathstroke joining him for his own reasons. A new Justice League rises as the villains push things toward a “crisis”, allowing them access to the multiversal structure. In the end, the heroes are able to defeat both Pariah and Deathstroke, with Nightwing using the power of the Great Darkness, which Deathstroke had taken, to stabilize the infinite multiverse created at the end of Death Metal. The Justice League called it quits after this story, leading to the Titans taking over as the most important team in the world, and the old multiverse was finally restored.
Identity Crisis is one of DC’s darkest comics, a murder mystery that showed the history of the Justice League in a whole new life. It all began with the murder of Elongated Man’s wife Sue Dibney, leading to a manhunt across the planet. A select group of Leaguers – Elongated Man, Green Arrow, Hawkman, the Atom, Zatanna, Black Canary – decide to go after Doctor Light. Light had once sneaked onto the Justice League Satellite and sexually assaulted Sue while the team was on a mission. The five Leaguers, along with Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, are able to take him down but reveal that they mindwiped him, something they had done numerous times when villains found their secret identities. As if that bombshell wasn’t enough, it was revealed that Batman had been with them, left before the mindwipe, and came back as they were doing it, forcing them to mindwipe him as well. Jack Drake and Captain Boomerang would also be killed before the killer was revealed to the Atom’s ex-wife Jean Loring. This story introduced the Justice League mindwipes to DC history, which led to the team losing trust in one another and breaking up, which would play a role in the number one entry on this list.
Legends is a book that no one really talks about anymore, but it helped set the stage for the DC Universe of the ’80s and ’90s. The book by Len Wein, John Ostrander, and John Byrne was the first major event after Crisis on Infinite Earths. The six-issue story saw Darkseid sending the monster Brimstone to the Earth to attack the planet Earth. This story is basically the first major event of the newly singular DC Universe, with numerous heroes meeting for the first time. It was the origin of the Justice League International and the Suicide Squad, creating two of the most important ’80s team books. It was also the first time that Wonder Woman teamed up with the other heroes. It’s an event comic full of firsts – first Justice League, first Suicide Squad, first Wonder Woman with the Trinity – many of which have been rendered non-canon by the various reboots in DC history. Post-Crisis DC was fresh and new and this story gave that impression. It doesn’t really have the cultural cache of newer events, but it still was a major moment that shook the DC Universe.
Infinite Crisis rocked the DC Universe and is generally considered the best DC event of the ’00s (personally, I think it’s better than every Marvel event of that decade as well). The company built this story up over the course of the first five years of the 2000s, leading to the biggest DC event since Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Justice League has disbanded, the Trinity is at each other’s throats, and the villains hold all the cards. Into this environment, the greatest heroes of the first Crisis – Earth-Two Superman and Lois Lane, Alexander Luthor of Earth-Three, and Superboy-Prime – return. They’ve watched the universe get darker and want to help fix things, but Luthor and Prime aren’t what they seem, leading to the biggest battle of them all. By the time the smoke clears, Superboy and Earth-Two Superman are dead, there’s a new Blue Beetle, Bart Allen is the Flash, Superman is powerless, and the seeds are planted for the return of the multiverse. This story was a turning point in DC history, changing the company for the rest of the 21st century.
What’s your favorite Justice League event? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
