The DC Universe | 15 Question Entertainment Multiple Choice Quiz

Answer: The Flash

Barry Allen, (sniff) was killed off in 1985 in the world-changing DC "Crisis On Infinite Earths" series that attempted to clean house of all the confusing alternate universes and dimensions that had hampered the DC legend since the early 60s. Some of this was ill-advised, as in the death of Barry Allen's Flash and Supergirl, Superman's cousin. Wally West, the former "Kid" Flash of the 60s, 70s and 80s, has replaced him, but it just isn't the same. In fact, the whole face of DC comics has changed, _way_ to much, to the point where little of it makes sense anymore.

In the early 60s, "The Flash" was drawn by one of the true legends of comic book artistry, Carmine Infantino, whose compostion and grace of style set both The Flash and Adam Strange apart from your run-of-the-mill DC superhero. Infantino was so well liked, he won "Shazam" and "Alley" comics industry awards and eventually became publisher of all of DC comics, during the period where it was probably at its most creative, well-produced level!

He was written, most of the time during the period between 1959-66, known as "The Silver Age", by John Broome, whose imagination was boundless. One of the Flash's neatest tricks was vibrating through solid matter, a holdover power from his predecessor, Jay Garrick, who was The Flash in the 40s.

Answer: The Martian Manhunter

The Martian Manhunter was a member of the Justice League of America, despite the fact that he had never had his own title at DC! He was, in fact, a short-lived, and eventually discontinued, backup character in Detective Comics in the late 50s and early 60s. He was super strong and could fly, and was essentially a caped cop.

Answer: Rann and Ranagar

Rann was the home of his girlfriend Alanna and her father Sardath. Ranagar was the city they lived in. It was here that he helped his girlfriend's scientist father defeat threats to the well-being of his adopted planet. Carmine Infantino drew this character's adventures like Michaelangelo Bonerati painting the Sistine Chapel.

As with his Flash stories, the adventures were incredible flights of imagination and graceful illustration.

Answer: An enormous, yellow, arrow-shaped key.

The Fortress of Solitude was where Superman went to think out things that he couldn't handle in one fell swoop or to just get away from the crisis-ridden world. In it, he kept an interstellar zoo, mementos of his exploits all over creation, and a miniature city (Kandor) that was actually the last surviving metropolis, (pardon the pun,) of his original home planet, Krypton.

It had been shrunken by the villainous super-computer robot, Brainiac.

Answer: Mr. Mxyzptlk

Mr. Mxyzptlk was from the fifth dimension, and was actually a fan of Superman's, but he couldn't get enough of making things rough for the poor, overworked hero...

Superman could only get rid of him by tricking him into saying his name backwards, like saying it forward wasn't difficult enough!

Answer: Hippolyta

One of the odd things about Paradise Island, the island of Amazons that Wonder Woman came from, was that if a man set foot on the island, all of its female inhabitants would die, immediately. What I'd like to know is, how did they reproduce?

Answer: Green Lantern's light

Green Lantern was perhaps the oddest hero concept in all of comicdom. Here was a man who used a green ring to will objects out of thin air, and he recharged this diurnal Aladdin's lamp by pressing it up against a lantern-shaped battery while reciting the above oath. Do you get the feeling that he was conceived after a night spent at Sardi's downing a few too many brewskies, maybe?

Answer: True

'Captain Marvel', in fact, was published by Fawcett Publications in the 40s and 50s, and was such a success against 'Superman', (he actually outsold him for a good while!) that DC decided to take their caped rival to court. They won on the basis of plagiarism, (both caped, both invulnerable, both able to fly,) and DC was awarded the rights to the character, which they revived in the 70s as "Shazam", since Marvel Comics owned the rights to the name "Marvel". Don't you just love litigation?

Anyway, what probably initially drove DC to attack Fawcett was the fact that Captain Marvel's junior sidekick, named Captain Marvel Jr., oddly enough, had a costume that had the exact same color scheme that Superman's did. Junior also had a telltale forelock that his alter ego didn't have, a la you-know-who! Fawcett's own legal advisors were probably tearing their hair out about that. It's a shame, really, because Capt Marvel Junior's books were occasionally drawn beautfiully by Emmanuel "Mac" Raboy!

Captain Marvel and Superman also had recalcitrant, recurring main baddies that were evil scientific "geniuses", and bald!

Answer: Speedy

Speedy was Roy Harper, a young guy who was pretty much Robin to Green Arrow's Batman. The two sets of heroes were remarkably similar, right down to an "Arrowcar", "Arrow Cave", Green Arrow's alter ego, Oliver Queen being a rich playboy, and having an arrow, (batarang,) for all occasions, no matter how improbable!

Speedy also had the distinction of being the only superhero, sidekick or otherwise, to have been addicted to an illegal substance, as he was in an artfully rendered two issue series of the "Green Lantern/Green Arrow" magazine of the early 70s, a book that prided itself on being iconoclastic. This book was written by Denny O'Neill and drawn by the most imitated comic book artist known to man, Neal Adams. It was a true pop art masterpiece, for about ten issues, and then it was canceled.

Answer: She hated the Teen Titans!

Not only did she truly despise the Teen Titans, but she was actually working for one of their worst enemies, Slade, The Terminator! She also smoked cigarettes and was Slade's underage lover! Horrific, isn't it?

Her appearance in the pages of a DC comic was a bit of a shock.

Answer: Pulsed through telephone wires.

The Atom was revived as a character very different from his "golden age" self in 1963. In his later incarnation, he could literally shrink to the size of an atom, and routinely hopped the pulses of energy in a telephone wire to get from point "A" to point "B" as fast as possible.

Answer: His "Cosmic Treadmill".

Apparently, the "Cosmic Treadmill" was used to build up enough energy, through the Flash's furious running, to transport himself into a future time. If I'm not mistaken, he rarely, if ever, traveled into the past.

Answer: Abracadabra.

Abra-Abracadabra, (who wanted to reach out and grab ya,) was a reprobate from the 64th century who used that century's divinely advanced technology to committ crimes in Flash's timeframe. He was walking proof of the Arthur C. Clarke adage that "any technology, sufficiently advanced, will have the appearance of magic". But the Flash was usually clever enough to defeat him, even after being turned into a marionette, as in one story.(!)

"The Reverse Flash" was also known as "Professor Zoom".

Answer: The Demon's Head

Ra's Al Ghul was many, many years old...we're talking centuries, kept alive and relatively young by periodic skinny-dipping in a pit of goo that imparted a measure of immortality to him and his daughter, Talia, who has a thing for Batman. Ra's, in fact, has been after Batman to join him for decades!

Answer: Snapper Carr

The name "Snapper Carr" was an obvious allusion to the TV character Gerald Lloyd "Kooky" Kookson from "77 Sunset Strip", a popular show at the time "The Justice League" was created. Fortunately, he didn't last too far beyond the mid-sixties.