Spoilers DC TV Arrow/Flash Universe Crossover Discussion

[Tallguy]

Obviously Batman needs to have been fighting crime 50 years ago. Is West well enough for a guest role?

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Obviously Batman needs to have been fighting crime 50 years ago. Is West well enough for a guest role?

Since he's going to guest star in an up-coming episode of "Powerless", I guess so.

 

[Christopher]

A bit of followup on this post from 2 weeks ago:

Batman made some very infrequent use of guns in his first year, from 1939 to early 1940, but that was cracked down on before the character was even a year old. So despite the revisionist history advanced by some modern fans, it isn't accurate to say that 1940s Batman was characterized by gun use. That was an artifact of the character's rough beginnings when he was basically just a stock pulp crimefighter and hadn't yet developed his distinct identity. And even in that first year or so, although he killed a lot of villains through various means, intentional and otherwise, he only rarely used guns to do it, and usually against nonhuman foes like vampires. More often he did things like kicking a fight opponent off the edge of a roof, snapping a shooter's neck with a kick, swapping clothes with an unconscious guard so that the guard would get mistaken for him and shot dead, and in one rather ghastly example, pushing a giant statue down onto a whole bunch of caricatured Asian villains. (Or was that Superman? I forget.) But guns were never a regular part of his repertoire even at his pulpiest.

For most of the 1940s, Batman was a fairly upbeat, heroic crimefighter partnered with Robin, the Boy Wonder (The Sensational Character Find of 1940!), engaging in witty banter with his boy sidekick as they fought evil with their fists, brains, vehicles, and gadgets. This version of Batman and Robin started appearing on the Superman radio show in 1945, although without much in the way of gadgets.

I just got Volume 2 of the Batman: The Golden Age collection from the library, and in a story in Batman #4 from December 1940 (labeled as "Winter 1941"), there's a scene where Batman and Robin are fighting pirates and Batman says "Use only the flat of your sword, Robin! Remember, we never kill with weapons of any kind!" So the no-weapons rule was established as early as that, barely over a year and a half after Batman's debut.

However... In the immediately previous story, Batman had kicked the Joker into a deep pit, and a month earlier, he'd punched Hugo Strange off a cliff. So apparently killing without weapons was still okay, or at least an exception was made for ambiguous deaths of recurring villains who would no doubt turn up alive a few months later anyway.

 

[Snaploud]

I've been thinking about who should be in a Berlanti-verse Justice League. Here is my current roster:

Kara Danvers/Supergirl
Barry Allen/The Flash
Oliver Queen/Green Arrow
Mick Rory/Heat Wave
Leonard Snart/Captain Cold
Cisco Ramone/Vibe
Earth 2 Harrison Wells
Sara Lance/White Canary

Anybody disagree?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Yeah...I'd rather see the Atom, Firestorm, and Martian Manhunter in the Justice League that Heat Wave, Captain Cold, and Harrison Wells.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Yeah...I'd rather see the Atom, Firestorm, and Martian Manhunter in the Justice League that Heat Wave, Captain Cold, and Harrison Wells.

I would agree to that and add Vixen.

I would add Heatwave, Captain Cold and Katana for when Oliver starts the Outsiders

 

[The Old Mixer]

Oh, and I forgot the Hawks...if only they weren't such crappy actors....

 

[Kirk Prime]

It's very possible Batman can exist in the Arrowverse, though we don't know for sure if he's active. It could go either way. WayneTech is going to merge with Queen Industries in 2024. I would think yes, Batman is around and doing his thing in Gotham.

 

[DigificWriter]

Given that the "anti-hero" version of Snart is dead, it's kind of impossible for him to be part of an Arrowverse Justice League.

My picks for an Arrowverse JLA would be as follows:
- The Trinity -
Kara Zor-El/Kara Danvers/Supergirl
Oliver Queen/Green Arrow
Barry Allen/The Flash

- Members -
J'onn J'onzz/Martian Manhunter
Dinah Drake/Black Canary
Cisco Ramon/Vibe
Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost
Martin Stein/Jefferson Jax/Firestorm
Ray Palmer/The Atom
Nathaniel Haywood/Steel
Kendra Saunders/Hawkgirl
Mari Jiwe McCabe/Vixen
John Constantine

 

[Christopher]

Instead of just one Justice League, how about Justice League Earth-1 and Justice League Earth-38, each with its own roster of heroes but sharing information and resources and occasionally helping each other out with big crises? And maybe they could franchise it out across the multiverse.

So JL-1 would include:
Flash
Green Arrow
White Canary (arguably these three are the Earth-1 "trinity")
Vibe
(Killer) Frost
Atom
Firestorm
Vixen
Hawkgirl

...and maybe others -- I don't see Constantine as the league-joining type, but he'd probably be on call as an advisor. Of course, Overwatch would manage the whole operation.

And JL-38 would include the Supers, Batman, Martian Manhunter, Guardian, and whatever other heroes might exist on that world. I'd put Zatanna on that Earth, since she's often associated with Batman. Maybe Black Lightning will be there too. Since it's a universe where aliens have a lot of influence on Earth, a Green Lantern would probably fit in there.

Of course, the Earth-1 JL would use the Hangar of Justice from "Invasion!" as its HQ, refitted into a proper Hall. Since Earth-38 doesn't have a STAR Labs (IIRC), their JL would probably use a Watchtower base instead, either in Metropolis or in orbit.

 

[DigificWriter]

I'd thought about doing two Justice Leagues across the Multiverse, but opted to go with a single combo League in order to get a wider breadth of power/skill sets and avoid redundancies.

 

[Christopher]

I'd thought about doing two Justice Leagues across the Multiverse, but opted to go with a single combo League in order to get a wider breadth of power/skill sets and avoid redundancies.

I just think that, given that there is a multiverse and it's unlikely to go anywhere, it makes sense to do the JL as a franchise rather than a single group. Sort of like Starfleet -- different ships with different crews, all answering to the same organization.

You do have a point that the Earth-38 team I proposed would have a higher overall power level, but Flash has top-tier powers (speed rivaling a Kryptonian, phasing like a Martian, lightning-throwing, rapid healing, etc.) and Firestorm and Atom can both be real heavy hitters when they need to be (assuming Atom got the bugs worked out of the embiggening process). And Vibe has some pretty amazing powers whose limits he hasn't yet discovered. I think they could hold their own.

 

[Sean_McCormick]

Given that the "anti-hero" version of Snart is dead, it's kind of impossible for him to be part of an Arrowverse Justice League.

Well, Mick Rory has access to a reality-altering artefact at the moment

 

[Morpheus 02]

Instead of just one Justice League, how about Justice League Earth-1 and Justice League Earth-38, each with its own roster of heroes but sharing information and resources and occasionally helping each other out with big crises? And maybe they could franchise it out across the multiverse.

I completely object, because someone on these threads keeps insisting that interdimensional travel is no big deal, so having 1 Justice League should be no big deal either .

The thing about the multiverses, at least in the comics, is that the Justice Groups were on different earths...so Justice League on Earth One, Justice Society on Earth 2. WIth Earth 1 and Earth 38 essentially splitting the comics' Earth 1, and then installing jUstice Society on Earth 1, I am not sure how to fix that mess.


Or maybe they can call the team All Star Squadron?

 

[The Old Mixer]

I completely object, because someone on these threads keeps insisting that interdimensional travel is no big deal, so having 1 Justice League .

Beat me to it!

It would be cool having a single supergroup that spanned universes...like Superboy traveling 1000+ years in the future to hang out with the Legion.

 

[Christopher]

It would be cool having a single supergroup that spanned universes...like Superboy traveling 1000+ years in the future to hang out with the Legion.

We already kinda have that on The Flash, what with Jesse Quick and Jay Garrick periodically dropping by. I suspect the season finale is going to involve a multidimensional league of speedsters teaming up against Savitar.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But a formal group, who gather around a table periodically and all that good stuff.

Bonus points for having their insignia on the back of their chairs, and giving Ray a really tiny chair that hovers.

 

[Christopher]

But a formal group, who gather around a table periodically and all that good stuff.

Bonus points for having their insignia on the back of their chairs, and giving Ray a really tiny chair that hovers.

All the more reason you'd need two different teams on the parallel Earths so they could have periodic crossovers.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Every group meeting would be a periodic crossover.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I've been thinking about who should be in a Berlanti-verse Justice League. Here is my current roster:

Kara Danvers/Supergirl
Barry Allen/The Flash
Oliver Queen/Green Arrow
Mick Rory/Heat Wave
Leonard Snart/Captain Cold
Cisco Ramone/Vibe
Earth 2 Harrison Wells
Sara Lance/White Canary

Anybody disagree?

With the exception of The Elongated Man, they've already introduced all of Justice League Detroit!