Among the many hints, details and Easter eggs of the various Justice League movie trailers, we're curious about something which may be lurking literally in the background. Specifically, today we're talking about the reddish skies which color many of the trailers' fight scenes.

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The phrase "red skies" goes back to DC's foundational line-wide crossover, 1985's Crisis On Infinite Earths. Then as now, it can be used to signal a very specific sort of cosmic event. However, from all we know about Justice League, the odds aren't great that a Crisis is on the horizon (at least not yet). Today we'll explore the development of DC's red skies, to see whether they're more of a red alert or just a red herring.

Red Menace

The Flash in Crisis
The Flash, red skies and antimatter; from Crisis On Infinite Earths #3

When DC's writers and editors were planning Crisis On Infinite Earths in the early 1980s, they came up with various ways to tie it into their ongoing series. First was the Monitor, a mysterious figure who spent over two years prior to April 1985's COIE issue #1 popping up everywhere from New Teen Titans to G.I. Combat. Whether readers saw him, his assistant Lyla or just their golden satellite headquarters, their collective presence foreshadowed bigger things to come.

Once Crisis itself was ready to launch, writer Marv Wolfman suggested various other in-story connections. His memo dated November 5, 1984 (reproduced in the "Compendium" volume of Crisis On Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition) even included a "How To Tie-In With The Crisis" section:

[...] It can be as small a connection as having some manner of natural catastrophe occurring in your book.... Your hero/es solve the problem on the way to their regular story. The first physical reaction on Earth to events in the Crisis is natural disasters and their aftereffects. Even mentioning about unexplained disasters occurring is a tie-in of sorts.

Wolfman closed the memo thusly:

One last note: Because of the structure of The Crisis, I am going to ask that the skies in our books be colored red ... starting with the August books on sale. I haven't asked yet, but this letter is formal notification. If you don't [otherwise cross over], you can have your characters note the reddish hue. Here's hoping for company-wide cooperation.

A few days later, his memo of November 9, 1984 (also reprinted in the "Compendium") described how the red skies, and attendant "red rain," should manifest themselves in comics on-sale in July, August and September 1985. As envisioned by Wolfman and depicted in various degrees in the books themselves, the red skies were just one symptom of the Earth's impending doom. The aforementioned natural disasters, unusual weather and other environmental calamities were supposed to heighten an already-suspenseful mood. In practice, though, the red skies seemed so ubiquitous, and appeared in stories with almost no other Crisis component, that they became synonymous with the bare minimum an ongoing series would have to do to participate in a crossover. This applied not just to Crisis, but to later DC and Marvel events as well.

Crisis in Gotham
Red skies color Gotham City in Detective Comics #558

Perhaps not surprisingly, the crossover which arguably had the least to do with Crisis happened with Wolfman's own New Teen Titans. Complementary scenes in Crisis #9 and NTT #14 showed Nightwing, Jericho and Starfire returning to her home planet for an arranged marriage. Technically it qualified as a crossover; but ironically, it took place after the red skies had disappeared. Moreover, the Losers one-shot (written by Bob Kanigher and pencilled by Judith Hunt and Sam Glanzman) only tied into Crisis inasmuch as it was about a group of obscure DC war-comics characters who died therein. The special itself described how they died in the revised timeline.

Conversely, the "Compendium" lists 50 total issues (representing 15 ongoing series and including the Losers one-shot) which either tied into Crisis On Infinite Earths or were branded as such. Of those, 10 didn't have the distinctive Crisis-crossover cover banner but took place during the miniseries' events. These included Green Lantern #195, which expanded on Guy Gardner's reactivation as a GL (continuing from Crisis #9); Legion of Super-Heroes #16, wherein Brainiac 5 mourned Supergirl's death; and Detective Comics #558, which led into Crisis #2's Batman/Joker scene.

Nevertheless, readers began referring to "red-sky crossovers" whenever an ongoing series only nodded to the event du jour. These sorts of tie-ins merely reminded readers that a big event was happening, without expanding on how it affected the particular ongoing series. In this respect, the red skies were merely window dressing.

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Crimson Carnage

Of course, in the context of Crisis itself, red skies and weird weather were the least of the Multiverse's worries. The first phase of Crisis (issues #1-4) involved waves of antimatter sweeping across all planes of existence, wiping out anything in their implacable paths. Issue #1 opened with an antimatter wave destroying the Crime Syndicate's home of Earth-Three, and by the start of issue #3 antimatter reached had reached Earth-One. The next phase of Crisis (issues #5-10) saw the five remaining Earths pulled by the Monitor's machine into a netherworld where they were safe from the antimatter waves, but welded together in an unhealthy symbiosis. Although two trips into the distant past (in issue #10) resulted in the creation of a single DC Universe, the heroes then had to fight off one last Anti-Monitor assault in issues #11-12. When this third phase began in issue #11, the red skies returned.

Nightwing under red skies
Nightwing and OMACs under red skies, from Infinite Crisis #1

Since issues #11 and #12 showed the Earth pulled into the Anti-Matter Universe, and since the early issues featured the antimatter wave, perhaps the red skies were intended as a side effect of all that antimatter. However, the 20-years-later sequel Infinite Crisis kicked off with red skies across DC-Earth and no antimatter in sight. Therefore, it looked like the trope was moving away from specific meteorological consequences and into the realm of the merely creepy. Unless you're talking about sunrise or sunset, red skies are inherently unsettling, so in a sense it was inevitable that DC decouple them from any specific cosmic threat.

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Besides, starting in 1992 the Batman animated series had been using red skies as part of its regular color palette. When combined with the black silhouette of Gotham City's skyline, it presented a stark backdrop to contrast with the show's array of colorful characters. The red skies didn't last throughout the various DC Animated Universe series, but since this period didn't have many Crisis-style comics crossovers to remind fans otherwise, the significance of red skies generally was diminished.

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Studies In Scarlet

Before we get to what this might mean for the Justice League movie, we must note one more red-sky mention. In the first episode of The CW's The Flash, viewers saw a 2024 headline not only proclaiming the Flash's disappearance in a "crisis," but observing that the "red skies" had also vanished. While this was clearly an Easter egg alluding to Barry Allen's death in Crisis #8, it alerted viewers that the series aspired to be faithful to the comics' Crisis. Put simply, the Flash producers knew that red skies equaled Crisis, and wanted to let viewers know that they knew.

Red Skies Vanish
The Flash's possible fate, from the series' pilot episode

This specificity might also help fans know what to prepare for. Flash's red-sky reference was part of a larger Crisis allusion, but so far the Justice League trailers haven't made that connection. While this could be part of Warner Brothers' spoiler management, we're less inclined to think Justice League is setting up its own Crisis.

For one thing, the Arrowverse now has enough parallel Earths that it would be surprising if it didn't do a version of Crisis On Infinite Earths. (See also this month's "Crisis On Earth-X" crossover.) For another, we know that Justice League's villains come from Apokolips, which (thanks to external factors) didn't have much to do with Crisis On Infinite Earths. Instead, it seems more likely that Justice League's color palette is intended to follow similar choices in Man of Steel (where Krypton's red sun colored its sky accordingly) and the "Knightmare" sequence in Batman v. Superman. Granted, they could all be building towards a Crisis of some sort, but we don't think it's imminent.

Perhaps it boils down to correlation versus causation. Although red skies were an integral part of Crisis On Infinite Earths, once that seminal story had ended, so did their special significance. As the years went by, red skies became less and less associated with Crisis specifically. Red-sky callbacks in Infinite Crisis and Flash were simply part of larger COIE homages, and didn't do much for the trope otherwise. Now the red-sky crossover stands largely on its own, as the big-event equivalent of a participation trophy.

Even so, those red skies do give Justice League's trailers that extra bit of creeping dread. Here's hoping that their presence in the film doesn't inspire any eye-rolling from jaded comics fans: "Not this again!?"

Do you think Justice League's red skies herald a Crisis? Let us know in the comments!