Tangent Comics

Tangent Comics was a DC Comics imprint created in 1997-1998, developed from ideas created by Dan Jurgens. The line, formed from various one-shots, focused on creating all-new characters using established DC names, such as the Joker, Batman, and the Flash.

Tangent Comics is notable as the only Fifth week event published by DC Comics to be revisited for a second time.

Overview

As with Alan Moore and the Watchmen limited series, the Tangent Universe radically diverges from the real world due to the presence of superheroes. The interference of the original Atom causes the Cuban Missle Crisis to escalate into a limited nuclear exchange that results in the nuclear obliteration of Florida and Cuba. The aftermath of the destruction of Florida shapes the lives of several characters. The city of New Atlantis is created out of the remains of the city of Atlanta and is later the birth place of the Joker. A group of sea creatures are mutated by the radioactive fallout into humanoid form and become known as the Sea Devils. The other major event to have repercussions is the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which leads to the creation of the Manhunter. The Soviet Union still exists into the late nineties and is still a world superpower.

Series

1997 Titles

• Doom Patrol
  • A team from the future arrives in the present, warning of the impending destruction of the Earth. Team members include Doomsday, Star Sapphire, Firehawk and Rampage.

• Green Lantern
  • A woman with a lantern which, when placed upon a grave, can bring the dead back to life just long enough to complete unfinished business.

• Metal Men
  • The Metal Men are a covert military group, so named because they came back from every mission unscathed. The members are nicknamed "Hawkman", "Lobo", "Gravedigger", and “Black Lightning”.

• Nightwing
  • A group of agents from a mystical secret society that controls much of the world go renegade.

• Sea Devils
  • A society of mer-people are created by the nuclear exchange that destroyed Cuba and Florida in 1962.

• Secret Six
  • The Secret Six are a covert group of heroes who are formed when the Flash, Atom, the Joker, Spectre, Plastic Man and Manhunter join forces to combat Dr. Aquadus, a living ocean.

• The Atom
  • The grandson of the Tangent Earth's first superhero, an atomic veteran, takes on the mantle and learns a horrible truth about his family.

• The Flash
  • The first baby born in space grows up to become a teenage superhero with light-based powers. She can move at the speed of light and create holographic constructs.

• The Joker
  • A costumed anarchist in the city of New Atlantis uses pranks to highlight the failings and hypocrisy of those in power.

1998 Titles

• Powergirl
  • US agents attempt to kidnap China's genetically-engineered superhuman.

• Nightwing: Nightforce
  • The rogue Nightwing agents attempt to rescue the Doom Patrol from the Soviet Union, only to unleash the Ultra-Humanite.

• Superman
  • An ordinary man finds himself evolving into something millions of years beyond human.

• Tales of the Green Lantern
  • The Green Lantern tells three possible, and contradictory, stories of her origin.

• The Batman
  • A knight who once fought King Arthur is forced to atone for his sins, seeking justice through an empty suit of armor for all eternity.

• The Joker's Wild
  • The story focuses on three mischievous but essentially good superheroines (Madame Xanadu, Mary Marvel and Lori Lemaris) all masquerading as the Joker in the post-apocalyptic rebuilt city of New Atlantis.

• Trials of the Flash
  • The Flash teams up with her friends in the Secret Six to rescue one of their own from Nightwing.

• Wonder Woman
  • An alien warrior, meant to be the symbol of unity for her fractured world, is instead pursued to Earth. She battles her pursuers in Las Vegas, all the while wondering about her role in the cosmos.

• JLA
  • A covert group of operatives is formed to take out several superhumans, (the Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Superman). Eventually, the four targets come together and form their own Justice League.

Because the Tangent titles were not linked to DC Comics' shared universe, they were free to make sweeping changes. In the Tangent one-shots published in 1998, a huge electromagnetic pulse disables all technology worldwide, and an incredibly powerful being called the Ultra-Humanite begins taking over the world.

Interaction with the main DC Universe

The Kingdom (1998) revealed that the Tangent universe was part of Hypertime, a fluid system of alternate realities based on splitting and re-merging timelines. Regular DC characters became aware of the Tangent universe, but did not interact with it.

The Superboy title featured the Hyper-Tension storyline in which several Tangent superheroes appeared as part of the storyline.

Infinite Crisis (2006) identified the Tangent universe as Earth-97, part of the recreated Multiverse. As Earth-97 was being destroyed in the chaos, Green Lantern said that the heroes had to follow her lantern's light in order to survive. At the end of the story on New Earth, two children found the lantern belonging to the Tangent Universe's Green Lantern washed up on a beach.

The Tangent universe’s Green Lantern, Flash and Atom recently appeared in Ion #9 and #10 (2007), in which they displaced Ion and the two children who had found the lantern. Ion found himself in The Bleed, where he encountered Captain Atom. Upon returning to Earth, Ion defeated the Tangent heroes, apparently by sending them back to their native dimension.

'The "History of the Multiverse" backup stories in Countdown have revealed that the Tangent Universe now exists as one of the new fifty-two alternate universes. Unlike most of the fifty-two universes, the Monitor assigned to the Tangent Universe is female. DC's official list of the current known multiverse lists the Tangent universe as Earth-9.

An appearance by Tangent characters in Justice League of America #16 (December 2007) will lead into the 2008 limited series, Tangent: Superman's Reign. This series will tie into Final Crisis and revist the characters and their universe.

Trade paperbacks

DC Comics began reprinting the Tangent Comics one-shots in 2007 with a series of trade paperbacks.

• Tangent Comics Vol. 1 (August 2007), 208 pages collecting the Tangent Comics: The Atom, Metal Men, The Flash, Green Lantern and Sea Devils one-shots.
• Tangent Comics Vol. 2 (to be released January 2008), 192 pages collecting the Tangent Comics: Joker, Nightwing, Batman, Secret Six and Doom Patrol one-shots.
• Tangent Comics Vol. 3 (to be released June 2008), 208 pages collecting Tangent Comics: Superman, Wonder Woman, Joker's Wild, JLA, Tales of the Green Lantern, Power Girl, Nightwing: Nightforce, and Trials of the Flash.

External links

• Superman and Batman in Tangent comics
• The Flash in Tangent Comics