DC's Electric Warriors Series Confirms a Major Change in DCU Continuity

DC Comics dropped a ton of news at Comic Con International in San Diego, including one particular piece that may have slipped below your radar, despite it having the potential to be a massive shift in the DC Universe as we know it. It may not have been the biggest announcement, but the news that Steve Orlando and Travel Foreman are working on a six-issue miniseries called Electric Warriors may be one of the most important moments in DC's still-forming Rebirth continuity.

If you missed the announcement, Electric Warriors is a series that puts all-new superpowered beings together in a post-apocalyptic future. It's not just any end-of-the-world scenario, either; the book takes place in the world of the Great Disaster, as established by the great Jack Kirby in his work with Kamandi. This time, though, the concept has an important connection to both the present and the future of the DC Universe, a connection that could very well change continuity forever.

Welcome to the End of the World

Introduced in 1972, hot on the heels of Planet of the Apes, Kirby's Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth told the tale of the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world filled with humanoid animals. Earth-AD, as it was referred to, came into being after a cataclysmic event known as the Great Disaster destroyed a world very much like our own. While the Great Disaster has always been a recurring element within the greater DC canon, it has typically been depicted as an alternate future.

In Kirby's work on OMAC, the event was said to take place in a parallel dimension, with the titular hero attempting to avert the Great Disaster in his timeline, and years later, in Countdown to Final Crisis, this future is definitively established to take place on an alternate Earth within the DC Multiverse. Electric Warriors changes all that by using the Great Disaster as a means to bridge the gap between the heroes we know and their legacy in the far future. If you needed anymore proof of this, just look at the first page of Scott Snyder and Jim Cheung's Justice League #1.

The issue opens with a cast of characters across time and space witnessing the arrival of the Totality. At the time, the scene seemed to establish this as such a momentous occasion that it could be viewed across DC's entire timeline. However, it also sneakily established that the worlds of Kamandi and the Justice Legion of DC One Million all take place on the same timeline of a definitive DC Universe.

Electric Warriors seems to be reaffirming this change, while also going one step further as a prelude to a long-lost DC property: the Legion of Super-Heroes. It would seem that no matter what the heroes of the present do, they world is destined for ruin before emerging into the great universe.

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The Future is Clear, Now

The basic premise of the series is that humanity has overcome the Great Disaster and is now ready to join a galactic community that is on the verge of war. Instead of using entire armies to fight each other, these worlds send representatives called Electric Warriors to battle for them. If the idea of a future with superheroes representing entire worlds is a familiar concept, you'll be happy to learn that this is not lost on DC editorial.

Orlando reaffirmed the book's place in DC continuity in the publisher's official release, stating that "If the Legion of Superheroes is the universe's Age of Enlightenment, the setting of Electric Warriors is more akin to the Dark Ages.” This would confirm that DC continuity goes from the modern day of Batman and Superman to the Great Disaster 5,000 years in the future before eventually leading to the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century and then the Justice Legion 85,000 years later.

If DC is trying to establish a definitive timeline over several different books, it seems editorial has learned some lessons about how to go about it since the New 52 reboot. Instead of rewriting continuity to fit a perceived need, DC is instead allowing these stories to fit into place organically in order to tell one overarching tale of the DC Universe. In some ways, this could be even more daunting of a task than past attempts.

Return of the Legion

Batman '66 Meets the Legion of Super-Heroes

The Legion has not been seen for quite some time, but this seems to be the first step in reintroducing them to the world. Many different incarnations of the team have existed over the years, one existing in the definitive future of the DCU, another existing in a pocket universe, and still one more living on an alternate world. It seems that before DC can bring the Legion back into publication, some heavy groundwork will need to be done in order to better establish the franchise for a bright future.

The biggest obstacle the Legion has always faced is existing in the future of the stories happening in the present day. As much as this allows the team to reference familiar heroes, it can also be difficult to establish a cohesive universe when the idea of the future is changing all the time. Putting an obstacle like the Great Disaster in the middle of these two eras can serve as a buffer to give the Legion of the future and the Justice League of the present some separation.

That would mean that while the Legion knows of these heroes of legend, they don't have every single event in their database to reference and help prevent. This would effectively allow DC to play with the future while not being bound to the past in order to tell one pre-established story. Electric Warriors may be about cool alien beings fighting in space, but it's also laying the groundwork for a better DC Universe, so it's not something that should be ignored.