DC Comics
DC is the older of the two American superhero publishers and the one that invented the form. Superman arrived in 1938 and Batman a year later, and between them they fixed the conventions — the costume, the chest emblem, the secret identity, the city as a character — that the entire genre still runs on.
About DC Comics
DC is the older of the two American superhero publishers and the one that invented the form. Superman arrived in 1938 and Batman a year later, and between them they fixed the conventions — the costume, the chest emblem, the secret identity, the city as a character — that the entire genre still runs on. The house style has historically leaned mythological: DC's leads are closer to gods and archetypes than to people with problems, which is precisely the gap Marvel later exploited. The company's most consequential single innovation may be the multiverse, introduced through the Flash in 1961, which gave comics a way to keep contradictory versions of a character in print simultaneously and is now standard across mainstream film and television.
DC took its initials from Detective Comics, the title that introduced Batman and which has run continuously since 1937.
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Key eras
| Era | Years | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Golden Age | 1938–1956 | Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Flash all debut. |
| Silver Age | 1956–1970 | Began with the Flash's relaunch in Showcase #4; introduced the multiverse. |
| Bronze and Modern | 1970– | Social realism, then the darker reinventions of the late 1980s. |