Did you know that Grant Morrison mapped out the DC Multiverse? His vision works for me. I am not blindly devoted to the guy, but I see merit in the way he is handling the transition to the 5th World.
Jack Kirby went to DC in the late ‘60s-early ‘70s and worked on his magnum opus, “the Fourth World”. It was composed of a number of miniseries, and it is essential reading for the background of the DC Universe. (Just google this phrase: Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.)
The brunt of the issues deal with Gods from different worlds interacting with the mainstays of DC comics, mostly Superman and Jimmy Olsen. The New Gods, Darkseid, Apokolips, and the Forever People all came into play at this time.
Skip forward a couple years, and nobody really knew what to do with the New Gods after Kirby left. They kept the villains - like Darkseid -around, because they were great. But Kirby’s visions for them did not get picked up and worked properly (IMHO, anyways) until Grant Morrison began working on JLA back in 1997. Doom Patrol and Animal Man introduced readers to multiverse/meta characters like Flex Mentallo, or paintings that attack cities, but JLA was Morrison directly using the New Gods in the main continuity of the DCU.
Later on, for example, the weekly '52’ series established that “Command Bunker D” was located in the ruins of Bludhaven (the Borough of Gotham where Nightwing lives and operates). Bludhaven was destroyed in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis, so Checkmate set up a command center there to monitor the radiation fall-out. Much later, in the far future of DC Continuity, “Command D” is where “Kamandi” got his name.
Morrison has steadily built on his vision of DC’s Multiverse, and having been reading it since JLA # 1, I am generally looking forward to seeing where he goes next. He seems to want to build a unified history of the DCU that does not remove any of the craziness. He has a particular love for the Silver Age Superman, and the larger DCU of that time in general, which “All-Star” made pretty clear.
