The Animated Megaverse: Setting Information

[Lightbend]

Perfectly possible for the Earth-V Wily and Heihachi to be so, to.  Although, maybe not for sake of repition.

[Ares]

Perfectly possible for the Earth-V Wily and Heihachi to be so, to.  Although, maybe not for sake of repition.

I could also see the Earth-V Wily and Heihachi to be alternate versions of the same character.

[Lightbend]

One quick dimensional shift and Rock's in for a nasty surprise.

[Ares]

One quick dimensional shift and Rock's in for a nasty surprise.

Indeed.

In other news, Karate Kid and Nemesis Kid will both be appearing in this weekend's episode of the Legion of Superheroes. I am very happy. That is all.

[Ares]

Just curious if anyone thinks we should include the Gen13 characters in Earth-A. On the one hand, the movie was never officially released, but on the other hand, it did get made and would add another Image twist to the series.

[Ares]

You know, just to do it, I'm thinking of working in the Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future setting somewhere in here, just because they had those animated VHS tapes that came out with the toys.

[Ares]

And Spectacular Spider-Man gets added to Earth-U.

[Ares]

After a few viewings, it occurs to me that someone needs to write an Earth-V courtroom story with Phoenix Wright as the hero team's defense lawyer. And have Sinistar as the Earth-V equivalent of Unicron.

[Ares]

Okay, time to breath some new life into this old. Kreu and I have been talking and we've got some renewed interest in messing with the setting, and one thing being discussed is Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and where it fits.

My initial idea was to have Brave and the Bold be on Earth-C with all the other classic/campy versions of the series, but kreu has made a strong argument for it being in Earth-A, which I'm thinking of going with so long as we sort of cherry-pick the series.

The basic idea is that a lot of what happens in Brave and the Bold does happen, the characters are as portrayed, we get Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Mogo, Bronze Tiger, Adam Strange, Black Manta, Blue Beetle, Plastic Man and all of these other characters for Earth-A, as well as the Earth-3 Crime Syndicate-type Earth and what not. However, the idea is that most of the series takes place between Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League, so all of the first time meetings occurred during that period. A lot of Batman's tech and the looks of some characters would just be considered an artistic license and that the look and tech of the characters is more in line with the Timm-verse characters. Robin wears his Earth-2 outfit until he settles on the Nightwing identity and Tim Drake then takes up the Robin outfit.

Some of the series takes place in the modern era however. All shows with the new Blue Beetle happen in the present day, letting Ted Kord have had some time to be a hero and even become buddies with Booster Gold before having died. Jamie is still pretty much a rookie and probably going to join the Titans eventually.

The new Atom would be considered to be Ray's protege, who goes into the field when Ray can't but otherwise Ray is still the primary Atom.

Then there's Aquaman. Right now we're thinking that the 'grim' Aquaman we've seen in the JLU is actually Namor (which explains why he never joined the Justice League), and that the real Aquaman is the Brian Blessed-esque ham we see talking to fish and treating everything like an epic adventure. This keeps it from being basically two jerk-ass underwater rulers.

Anything that obviously contradicts JLU continuity is going to be ignored. Batman cannot astral project himself, but the rest of the episode is fine, so we'll just chalk that up as Deadman helping Batman perform that trick.

Batman also did not defeat Sinestro for the first time and reveal him to be a villain. What might happen is, depending on the upcoming Green Lantern movie, make that Hals origin for Earth-A, keep Kyle Rayner as someone John sent be trained on Oa, and have Hal and John rotate as Green Lanterns on Earth.

Speaking of DC movies, I'm thinking of putting the Wonder Woman movie Diana in Earth-U to be part of the Ultimates/The Batman-style Ultimate universe.

More to come later.

[Speed of Zound]

has anyone used this setting for a fanfic yet?

[Ares]

has anyone used this setting for a fanfic yet?

There's been a couple of starts, but nothing finished. As it's kind of my baby, I hope to do some stuff with it eventually.

I'm currently debating on where Superman/Batman Public Enemies and the Green Lantern movie fit. Part of me kind of wants to make the Green Lantern movie the origin for the Earth U Green Lantern, but another part makes me think it works great as Hal's origin for Earth-A, given Batman Brave and the Bold gives us an Earth A Hal Jordan and a solid origin.

I have decided that the latest Wonder Woman film is going in Earth U with the rest of the Ultimates style stuff, and will be a member of that Earth's Justice League.

Public Enemies I think could fit into Earth A with a little work. The idea would be that Lex managed to get out of any jail time by arguing that it was Brainiac that drove him nuts during the season finale of JLU Season 1, and thus he wasn't responsible for his actions. No longer a member of Cadmus, he decides to go ahead and run for president, and drafts several superheroes into military service with some arm twisting, while others like Starfire would join at Robin's request to keep an eye on Luthor.

Power Girl would be Galetea from the Cadmus group, with her mind erased after her last fight with Supergirl. She basically gets a clean slate after the fight, and both Superman and Hamilton decide to patch things up between them and help 'raise' her together, resulting in a much more balanced Power Girl which could also account for her relative naivete in the film.

Hawkman would be the Carter Hall we see in the JLU, but the JLU plotline would happen during Lex's campaign, so that he's a known member of the superhero community by this point and has Thanagarian Weaponry. If the Brave and the Bold Hawkman is preferable, I might end up using him and this Hawkman rather than the JLU version.

[Ares]

Something I came across while viewing the TMNT series 'Back to the Sewer' has me thinking how Hal Jordan is going to be handled in Earth-A. As of now, I'm thinking of making the Green Lantern movie the origin for the Earth-U Hal Jordan and having the 'Green Mantle' that appeared in the TMNT series officially be retconned as the Earth-A Hal Jordan. Besides being an obvious homage to Hal, it would allow Hal to have existed as a Green Lantern-ish character, but who could retire eventually and perhaps pass the mantle on to someone else. In Earth-A continuity, Barry Allen is still alive and running a police lab, so I'm thinking perhaps he and Hal started the Silver Age of heroics, with Barry also having a close but not quite homage identity, allowing both of them to have been heroes and then retired peacefully, letting them perhaps mentor younger heroes down the line.

The JLU series just did a lot to set up John as the the primary GL of the Earth, and it'd be nice to have a Hal Jordan on Earth A without either him or John being upstaged by the other.

[Ares]

Little update on the setting given some of the recent animated adventures.

Justice League: Crisis of Two Earths is going to officially be what happened between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. It explains where Diana got her invisible jet for JLU and serves as a nice example of some of the alternate Earths out there. The only thing that would be kind of off would be Hal Jordan's appearance in the setting, but given they never refer to him as Hal, it could simply be tweaked so that it's Kyle Rayner taking John's place while John recovers from the beating he received at the end of Star Crossed.

I'm also more convinced to include Batman: Brave and the Bold as adventures happening on Earth A, tho seen through a slightly more kid friendly lens. Earth A gets all the heroes that appear in the show and the adventures are mostly the same, but Batman doesn't have quite the tech his BatB counterpart has. His cape can't turn into a jet pack and achieve escape velocity with it, but I wouldn't mind him having things like Nth metal brass knuckles, a glider cape, and hell, I'd even be okay with him reverse-engineering the Batmobile with Cybertronian tech that would allow it to turn into that Bat-Mecha. But essentially, Brave and the Bold just allows too many DC heroes to not be fit into Earth A, just with the understanding that the adventures aren't quite as light hearted as in that show.

With the inclusion of the JSA (who I'm probably just going to consider part of the Justice League for the time being, given we've seen several members in the cartoon), I'm going to keep the BatB Hawkman as "the" Hawkman of Earth A. The idea will be that his Hawkgirl died back in the 50's, and he's convinced the new Hawkgirl is his reincarnated lover. Shyera doesn't know how to feel about it, as she does feel a connection to him but isn't sure about the whole "destined true love" bit. The Shadow Thief isn't Carter Hall's evil side given form, and he did not poison John Stewart and Hawkgirl's past selves.

When the new Avenger cartoon comes out, I'm probably going to set it up as a prequel for that Avengers toon we got in the 90's. The classic Avengers stories happen, then the team undergoes a sort of Iron Age with the power armor, then they move back to a more classic approach.

[Ares]

Another minor update, I've been watching a lot of the 2003 TMNT series (concentrated kick ass that it was), and while digging through a box with some old video game manuals, I came across something that gave me an idea for how to treat the Turtles regarding their Ninja Tribunal training.

Basically, I hate the idea of those uber-ninja skills just going away entirely, so I've decided that after the events of Season 5, the Turtles were so busy adjusting to the new events in their lives (being thrust into the future or having to find Splinter's data in cyberspace) that they didn't have time to really focus on exploring what they'd learned from the Tribunal and how much of it they retained after the focusing amulets they had shattered. Once things calmed down tho, Leonardo took the time to meditate and discovered that the abilities they had learned were still within them, and with effort he and his brothers could re-master those skills, albeit at a slower rate. However, with only a little work they were able to develop their own variant techniques specialized to each of them.

The basis for those techniques (and the inspiration for this idea) comes from the old TMNT Tournament Fighter for the SNES, which was basically Ninja Turtles by way of Street Fighter. Each of the Turtles had their own body of techniques that isn't too hard to link to their Tribunal training. The one thing I'd change is the super moves certain Turtles had, as they fit the style of other Turtles better in this case. For those familiar with the game, Leo would get Don's Dragon Wave Super (given that Leo was the first to manifest a dragon form), Raph get's Leo's Punch Wave Super (given Raph's focus on physical strength and propensity to punch things) and Don gets Raph's Multi-Shot Energy Wave Technique (given Don's more likely to channel chi energy in that fashion). Mikey, who had a technique that let him blitz his opponents at high speeds, works fine as is, given his speed focus for the Tribunal Training.

[Ares]

Well, with the announcement of the Young Justice toon, I once again turn myself back to this project and think "You know, I really need to do something with it before no one remembers half the shows that make it up."

The big question with the Young Justice series is whether to place it in Earth-A, the primary setting, or Earth-U, the Ultimates style universe with shows like Ultimate Avengers, Spectacular Spider-Man, X-Men Evolution and The Batman. The idea that the Justice League will be a fairly new phenomena and the idea that it's the Dick Grayson Robin kind of make me want to put the series in Earth-U, but at the same time, the Young Justice squad has such a classic DCU feel to it that I kind of want to put it in Earth-A.

Earth-U would work as this would basically be The Batman's Dick Grayson with a little more experience fighting on his own superteam. It would add some more heroes to the setting, including some young DC heroes to fight alongside the younger Marvel heroes. It would probably be the setting with the least amount of alterations to the show being needed.

Earth-A would require a little more finagling, but might ultimately be worth it. Up until now I've had the Robin of the Teen Titans be Tim Drake so as to keep the Teen Titans as the big teen team in the DCU. If Young Justice comes along and takes that role tho, it would free up the Titans to be aged to their early 20's incarnations, and that Robin would revert to the classic Dick Grayson who grew up into Nightwing, Kid Flash being Wally West, etc. It would, however, require that the Young Justice Robin be Tim rather than Dick, and the Kid Flash be Bart rather than Wally. Something I really wouldn't have a problem with, truth be told. The Justice League of the show would get retconned into the JLU, with the 16 members that appear regularly simply being the contingent that interacts with the Young Justice squad the most.

I'm going to have to see how the series ultimately plays out, but on the whole I think it would fit either of these two settings well, and the quality of the show will determine which universe it gets sent to.