Periods of DC Comics History

So I just wanted to make a quick educational blog about the periods of DC Comics history. If you already know some, a lot of this may be old info but I just wanted to make this assuming the reader knows basically nothing about DC history. If you want to make a division on characters feats based on time periods, this should help as it tells about the major time periods in DC Comics both from an in-universe major continuity change perspective and from a in-universe major events pespective. I hope this helps.

Golden Age: 1938?-1951?

So the Golden Age of Comics has a much blurrier start and end point than the other arcs. The Golden Age is notable in that its noticably less childish and goofy than its predecessor the Silver Age. Before the original Comics Code, characters tended to be rougher around the edge and less fixiated on being moral icons and the power range tended to be much more subdued as they focused more on criminals, scientists and dictators rather than metahuman enemies. 

Pre-War Golden Age: 1938?-1941

The Golden Age didn't really have in-universe events the way that even the Silver Age would. By FAR the biggest event up to the end of the Golden Age was out of universe the United State joining World War 2. This notably changed the events in the story, causing a change from criminals and mad scientists as enemies to war stories. The first period usually agreed to start with Superman's introduction in 1938 and probably goes to 1941, the US entering the war. Technically there are some comics treated as canon to DC Comics that date even earlier including the stories of Slam Bradley and Dr. Occult.

War Period Golden Age: 1941-1945

The period in which DC produced comics while the second world war was going on and the comics had a greater focus on war stories and international enemies. Many specifically Patriotic themed heroes and teams were formed. 

Post-War Period Golden Age: 1946-1951?

After the war, superhero comics began to slowly diminish. Heroes fought the red menace, or went back to fighting criminals, but it lacked the luster of fighting the nazis. Superhero comics were continually published making it unclear when the Golden Age actually "ended", with some arguing that it didn't end up until the VERY beginning of the Silver Age. Personally I put the end at the last appearence of the Golden Age Flash as star of his own book in 1951.

Interregnum/Atomic Age: 1951-1956

The Interregnum is the period between the Golden and Silver Age of comics when almost all comic series were canceled. The only characters to be continually published through the period, and indeed have been continually published since their first publishing were Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. This age is also called the Atomic Age due to the focus on atomic power and nuclear weapons in the storylines. This is when the power level of comics began to really ramp up. 

The Comics Code created in 1954 to stifle any "corrupting" element of comics on the youths also hurt superhero comics dramatically, although ironically may be responsible for their rise to prominence again as while Superheroes were able to adapt to the Comics Code, Horror and Crime Comics which were at the time the dominant force in the comics industry found it nigh impossible to adapt to the draconic rules. 

Silver Age of Comics: 1956-1971

Early Silver Age of Comics: 1956-1961

To adapt to the Comics Code strict terms, superheroes had to adapt to be uncontroversial, and adapted into a far more science-fiction feel. In 1956, the Flash was revamped with the more science-fiction Barry Allen. This was met with success and led to several others Heroes were revamped in the same sort of bright shiny idealistic scientific form. Completely kid-friendly and marketable, superhero comics began to return to prominence. In 1960 the heroes of this new age formed the Justice League of America, cementing this new universe as a cohesive "new" universe.

Middle Silver Age of Comics: 1961-1966

In 1961 Barry Allen crossed over with the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick, establishing themselves as two seperate universes, beginning a host of multiversal adventures for the DC Earth including an annual teamup tradition between the JLA and their Golden Age counterpart the JSA. At the same time as multiple universes were being discovered in-universe, multiple universes being discovered out of universe, with the revival of Timely Comics as Marvel Comics, DC's chief competitor which would spur each other competitively. 

By this points superheroes had grown to their definite height, even compared to the war period of the Golden Age. 

Late Silver Age of Comics: 1966-1971

It's a bit vague, but overtime superhero comics began to become a bit more deliberately campier leaning more into the stereotypes of superhero comics. The Adam West Batman show begins airing in 66 and the Batman comics are deliberately written to match the style. Mystical elements were also slowely allowed to leak back into comics late into the Middle Silver Age with Zatanna's introduction in 1964, and the Spectre being reintroduced in 1966. In 1969 the Satelite era of the JLA named for their Watchtower Satelite Base they established above the Earth and known for character drama began and in 1970 comics legend Jack Kirby left Marvel to write for DC. Both in their own way were signaling the arrival of the next age.

Bronze Age of Comics: 1971-1986

With the waning of the Comics Code, comics quickly began to delve in newly allowed subject matter. Dark/Mature material, sexuality, moral ambiguity, politics, and religion all became common in superhero comics.

Early Bronze Age: 1971-1976

Beginning in DC Comics with the "Snowbirds don't fly" arc, an arc where Green Arrow finds out that his sidekick has been secretly using drugs, and Green Arrow and Green Lantern begin to tackle major social issues, this age is characterized by a maturing of the themes in the stories. This was also the year Jack Kirby started writing the New Gods which would be a central pillar to DC Cosmology. 

In Marvel this was also the year that Green Goblin infamously caused the death of Spiderman's Girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

DC Explosion-Implosion: 1976-1980

During the mid 70s, Marvel had overtaken DC Comics in sales partialy due to producing signifigantly more comics. DC in an attempt to copy the formula produced signifignatly more comics, at signifigantly longer length, with higher prices. This decision was reversed later due to multiple factors, including blizzards two years straight, making comic production a less profitable venture overall leading to DC needing to cut down on production; events called the "DC Explosion" and the "DC Implosion" respectively.

While this may seem purely meta, on a practical level the canceled titles were not neccesarily the same as the ones started by the explosion, leading to a number of old titles coming to a sudden end and a number of new series beginning. Also as a fun note "Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man", the first inter-company crossover between DC and Marvel were released in 1976. 

Late Bronze Series: 1981-1986

In retrospect, a lot of the events of the late Bronze Age seem to be specifically pointing towards the upcoming Dark Age. Miniseries became more popular, with series being made for a specific number of issues rather than made to go on indefinitely. Some writers. particularly writing on alternate Earths. wrote dark heavily political or adult stories such as V for Vendetta, a story about anarchism and fascism or Miracleman a defacto deconstruction of Superman, or the Marvel series Squadron Supreme about Superhero forcibly trying to make the Utopia in a superpowered coup. At the tail end of this period came "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", a loving goodbye to the goofy idealistic Silver Age Superman from a world that left him behind.

Post-Crisis: 1986-2011

Crisis on Infinite Earths, likely the most influential event in comics occurs, an event that completely changes DC continuity, which features a cosmic battle against the Anti-Monitor where infinite worlds and lives are destroyed in the metafictional quest to simplify the convoluted and contradictory DC timeline.

Characters in the Post-Crisis period were initially vastly weaker than their Pre-Crisis counterparts, for the most part as part of the Crisis' purpose was to tone down the wacky power levels established in the Silver Age. Some characters would get stronger than they used too, some wouldn't, depending on the character.

1986-1994: The Dark Age of Comics

Superhero comics reach their darkest point. 1986 was the year the Crisis happened. It was the year Watchmen was released, a dark deconstruction of the superhero genre that continues to influence it to the present. 1986 was in-universe the year the Great Evil Beast first appeared and Swamp Thing tells it that its presence is a necessity.

This period was the period Superman perished in battle against the monster Doomsday, an event that made national news. This was when Batman got his back broken by Bane leading to him being temporarily replaced by Azrael, a far more violent and murderous personality, leading to mass erosion of Batman's reputation with the police, public, and superhero community. It was a period of darkness but a period of great artistry, the aforementioned Watchmen as well as the Sandman both being produced in this period. 

This period ended with Zero Hour. After Green Lantern Hal Jordan's home city is completely destroyed, he goes mad, and kills all the other lanterns and the guardians of the universe, taking their power rings and, frustrated with the senselessness of the world is prepared to sacrifice it all to remake the timeline into an idyllic one, only to be stopped by the superheroes who refuse to sacrifice this world, flawed as it may be. Perhaps something can be read into that being the final moment before the continuity change and what I believe to be the Dark Age's end.

1994-2005: The Reconstructive Era

After Zero Hour, while things were still dark for a while, they started getting brighter. A year after Zero Hour was the next big crossover, Underworld Unleashed which features the Lord of Hell Neron trying to make the world seem horrible and miserable and Shazam's pure soul full of hope anyway defeating him. A year after that was the Final Night event which featured a Sun-Eater threatening to consume the Sun only for Parallax Hal Jordan to return and sacrifice his life to stop it, dying a hero. Stories began to become more hopeful. However it was a conflicted era that went back and forth between idealism and cynicism. Identity Crisis came out in this era, retconning the goofy silver age villain Dr. Light into a psychopathic rapist, and making the JLA more morally ambigious. Batman created contingencies to take out all the other JLA members, lethally if need be. Wonder Woman was forced to kill longtime JLA ally Maxwell Lord, turned out to be a villain, to save Superman. These events led up to the end of the period with Infinity Crisis, where the tensions and suspicions between the trinity led to conflict and featured two Superman fighting in relation to the metafictional idealistic Silver Age Morality vs the Modern Pragmatic Morality and eventually teaming up to fight the rogue Pre-Crisis Kryptonian Superboy Prime...Infinity Crisis is a comic that was very clearly very self-aware of the metafiction surrounding the event, which would make sense given the era after.

The continuity had also changed, to a lesser extent compared to Crisis on Infinite Earths. During Zero Parallax has messed with the timeline, causing changes to resolve some of the left over plot holes and contradictions from Crisis on Infinite Earths such as Hawkman's backstory. 

2005-2011: The Meta Era/Heroic Era

NGL this is my favorite era. After Infinite Crisis, the Post-Crisis period started becoming really self-aware and self-referential. Trinity was a whole series about how Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were an archetypal trinity needed to maintain the DC Unity. In the same year, center of this period was Final Crisis, a major crisis event that references huge swaths of obscure DC lore and cosmology, and is a metafictional story about the nature of evil and the power of stories celebrating heroism rising over the dark age of comics. All the old Silver Age stuff were being re-integrated into comics with things like Barry returning during Final Crisis and Superboy being retconned back into history in 2010. Infinite Crisis also changed continuity some though not as much as COIE because Superboy punched....reality. 

This was an age where things became quite optimistic again for a while, the trinity made up after the events of Infinite Crisis and during the events of Trinity, and people began to trust superheroes more after they saved the multiverse in Final Crisis. 

Sadly apparently mine is a minority opinion, as sales were low which led to...

New 52/Post-Flashpoint: 2011-2015/2016

Sales weren't good so DC released an event called Flashpoint where Barry Allen goes back in time, disrupts the timeline, fixes it and this appears to have caused a whole bunch of changes. Initially this was meant to be a "soft reboot" meaning some things were still canon but not all. 

New 52: 2011-2015

DC Comics relaunched ALL their titles at issue 1, a first for the company. This would continue for exactly 52 issues, although some titles would be canceled and some titles would start during the period so some of the series at the end of the period were not on issue 52 exactly. The New 52 dramatically dropped the power level, made the characters much more inexperienced and younger to try and make them more relatable, made things signifigantly more sexual, and tried a whole bunch of different ideas all basically to attract new readers and appeal to fanservice.

It really didn't work. This is probably the maligned period in DC history. Now that it's over we can all say it had some good series, and it did but at the time people were calling for the heads of the people working at DC. And TBH, I can't really offer much of a defense. I liked a few things in it but like most people, I was not very fond of it. 

If you are gonna vs debate the New 52 it's really easy. It's divided up into "waves" less than a year long, 9 waves, meaning you can easily divide it like you would "arcs" of most series. This period ended with Convergence, an event focused around Brainiac, the Pre-Flashpoint Brainiac being revealed to have saved cities from across the retcons and there being a massive arena-styled game from cities from across DC's continuty led by Brainiac's subordinate Telos.

Post-Convergence/DC You: 2015-2016

Another period technically set during the Post-Flashpoint period, Convergence ended with the restoration of the multiverse and the undoing of the collapse of the multiverse during Crisis on Infinite Earths. This didn't affect the main DC Earth at the moment, it just meant that all the other Earths were still there. This started a brief period called "DC You." Due to the massive influx of frustrations at the New 52, DC You was DC basically trying to have its cake and eat it too with the position that now continuity wouldn't be an important policy, and that they would prioritize "stories over canon" with writers being able to write stories anywhere they wanted. The "New 52" branding was dropped but it still technically was set in the Post-Flashpoint continuity.

On a meta level, DC You only really got mixed critical reception and...not the sales they wanted leading to another reboot, or in this case you could call it...an UN-boot.

DC Rebirth: 2016-2020

Early Rebirth 2016-2018:

In 2016 it was revealed that all the Pre-Flashpoint events had indeed happened on the main DC Earth, but that an external force had removed 10 years of memories and events from everyone that were slowly coming back. This would later turn out to be Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, a metafictional reference to the darkening of the DCU being a result of Watchmen's influence.

DC relaunched all their titles again, resuming the numbering from Pre-Flashpoint and reinstating a lot of things from before the Flashpoint as what one could call a big "mea culpa" for all that had happened. The event got a massively positive reception and it set up what is basically the current continuity, with everything being canon. 

Post-Dark Knights: Metal: 2018-2020:

In 2018 Dark Knights: Metal was released involving the Barbatos, the god of the "dark" multiverse, flip side of the regular multiverse trying to invade the main multiverse attempting to use Batman as a conduit after Batman was sent back in time during the events of Final Crisis. In the defeating of Barbatos, the JLA reach and shatter the Source Wall. The Source Wall is an immense deal in DC, being the boundary to imagination and thought, containing the 5, at the time, known "dimensions" of DC. It was discovered by the JLA that in fact that there were other realities beyond the Source Wall and that by opening the Source Wall, they had opened up the potential for things from the higher Sixth Dimension beyond imagination to enter the multiverse.,

Dark Knights: Death Metal: 2020

The final major event up to the present. This is a direct sequel to Dark Knights: Metal and is about the conflict between Crisis Energy which seeks to change things and Anti-Crisis Energy which seeks to maintain things. From the Source emerges a race of super-celestials called The Hands living in the Sixth Dimension, each one creating a multiverse and when finished returning to the Source, but a rogue one called Perpetua which is revealed to be the hand in prior DC Crisis that created the multiverse made a multiverse running on Crisis and Anti-Crisis energy so it would never be finished and instead constantly be fighting so she would not disappear back into the Source. Wonder Woman uses anti-crisis energy to restore everyones memories of every crisis, very clearly making everything in DC history canon and as a giant metafictional statement that DC isn't gonna be using Crisises to try and retcon the past anymore. 

Infinite Frontier: 2021

Infinite Frontier is the newest big thing in DC. Wonder Woman was ascended to a goddess state at the ending of Death Metal and IF is basically the Spectre taking Goddess Wonder Woman around showing her the new status of reality after Death Metal and the Future State event, the time in between the two where it was showing possible futures. The big reveal of it, big spoilers

...

Darkseid has returned from his death in Final Crisis, stronger than ever, killed the Quintessence and is now preparing to destroy everything.

So that's the periods of DC Comics to my understanding and how I would divide the verse into "arcs" like most verses.

Wizards of the Square Tablet Feats

 

So not many people actually scale Magicka, but I wanted to quickly look into the tablet spin-off "Wizards of the Square Tablet" and give the relevant feats. Obviously spoilers though I can't imagine anyone really cares.

Sage Disa/The Fallen Maiden:

The primary antagonist of the game and the one with the most showings.

Sage Disa:

Disa is introduced as the wise sage of the forest. She calls for the player wizard and aids them in the resurrection of Vlad as part of her plan for Vlad to exorcise the spirit of the Fallen Maiden within the player wizard and gaining its power herself.

She is clearly a high tier wizard of some description, being considered the famous sage of the forest. She also thinks that luck has nothing to do with battle, and that a magical battle is all about skill. She knows the teleportation magicka which she demonstrates and the Thunderbolt Magicka which she teachs the player wizard. She likely knows more but this is what is demonstrated.

The Fallen Maiden:

A spirit from the underworld, the Fallen Maiden is eventually revealed to be Hela herself, the Norse Goddess of the underworld. When the Player Wizard went to Niflheim, the spirit entered into their body to escape into the material plane. After Vlad used an artifact to exorcise her, she entered into Disa. 

Hela is very clearly the Goddess of Norse Mythology describing herself as "the pestilent offspring of Loki and his giant mistress that not even the gods could slay." It's unclear from that statement if she is saying she is the offspring that the gods could not slay or if she is the offspring of Loki and the giantess, the giantness being the one the gods could not slay. I think it makes more sense to be the former. Hela was sent by Thor from Asgard to the Underworld, at which point her body was shattered...but her spirit persisted which would support "not even the gods could slay." Interesingly Tuotenar the mortal wizard WAS able to survive falling to Nifelheim the underworld, but Hela likely fell from Asgard which was much higher than Midgard where Tuotenar fell from. It's stated that with Hela leaving the underworld, it has become far more chaotic. The underworld, even just Hela the section is large enough to contain background stars although this could just be saying without Hela ruling them, the creatures are in chaos.

Hela's divine aura also calls all monsters and unwelcome creatures to her, including monsters from other dimensions. Disa's overarching plan was to use Hela's spirit to draw every single monster chasing after her into the Underworld making the entire world safe and prosperous. It is consistently stated that the fallen maiden's presence controls EVERY monster and that the entire world would be transformed. Within a body again Hela's power was growing stronger, she was providing Disa with enough power that she claimed she could fight "forever", and she was transforming Disa's body into a new body suitable for her.

Disa Helsdottir:

After transforming Disa's form, the two become "Disa Helsdottir, Hela reborn". Vlad calls her "Hela incarnate" which is another way you could argue she scales to the size of Hela. She also physically crushes Ragnar, a demon that has been relatively equal to the player all game by slamming her hand down on her. Helsdottir mostly attacks with amped up wizard elements but also uses Blizzard Magicka, uses some kind of void attack, and creates an oil rain.

My best interpretation:

Name: Disa, Sage Disa, The Fallen Maiden, Hela, Disa Helsdottir

Origin: Magicka

Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Physical Capabilities, Magicka Elements (Fire, Ice/Freezing, Earth, Lightning, Water) Manipulation, Life/Death Manipulation, Barrier Creation (Shield Element), Teleportation, Higher Plane Sensing (Spiritual, can sense spiritual presences) | Spiritual Plane Being, passively calls all monsters to her position on at least a planetary inter-dimensional scale, can enter a physical body during which she grows in power and can grant power to the one she's inside of. Transmutation (Can slowly change the body of those she's in to being a body suited to her) | Abilities of both the prior, Void Attack, can summon a blizzard or an oil rain, Large Size (Type 0), Incarnation of Hela

Weaknesses: Nothing Notable | Can be banished from the body she's in | Nothing Notable

Destructive Capacity: At least Multi-City Block Level+ (Crushed Ragnar easily), possibly Multi-Stellar (Called Hela incarnate, her absense caused Hela to go into chaos, Hela being a realm with numerous stars)

Range: At least kilometers with blizzards, inter-dimensional with spiritual presence (Summoned monsters from other dimensions)

Speed: At least massively hypersonic reflexes (Much stronger than low tier wizards who can lightning-time)

Durability: Multi-City Block Level (can withstand numerous hits from the Player Wizard in first and third forms, and second form was hit by Thor whose much stronger than the Player Wizard and only died upon reaching Asgard)

Stamina: Possibly Infinite (Disa claims she can fight forever with Hela's power)

Standard Equipment: As Disa uses a sword and a wizard staff to cast spells

Intelligence: Relatively High, Disa is considered the wise sage of the forest and manipulated Vlad | Presumably High, is an immortal goddess | High

Key: Disa | The Fallen Maiden | Disa Helsdottir

Most of the other characters got very few new feats but I'll mention what is there.

The Other Gods/Norse Myths:

This game makes it very clear what was only implied in the other games which is that the Norse Myths are completely true in Magicka. Not only is Hela the main antagonist, but Hela, Thor, Asgard, the Einhenjar, Nagelfar, and Mjolnir all make appearences, and Odin, Loki, and Hlin are all referenced by name. Outside of Hela, Thor is the only one to really have notable feats.

Thor shows up during the Asgard part of the game. It's made very clear he's much stronger than the Player Wizard instantly one-shotting Disa which the players couldn't beat. Vlad's plan in that section is in fact just stalling for Thor to arrive. Thor says he and Hela are in a different league from the wizards. Thor doesn't show many abilities but he can call down lightning with can instantly banish anyone to the Underworld (although he didn't factor in that Disa wanted to go there.) He can also zap someone to the material plane from the Underworld which he says he will do for the Player Wizard after they stop Hela.

Vlad:

The game takes place sometime between the Novel and Magicka 1. Before the game starts Vlad was blown up by an "accident" and the start of the game involves Disa sending the Player Wizard to collect three parts of Vlad so he can be resurrected. You can see the evolution of the resurrection magic in-universe as in the novel you needed someone's body to resurrect them, in this game you just need 3 pieces of them, and in Magicka 1 you can do it even if they're completely gone. 

The three parts of Vlad remaining are his fangs, his "suave accent", and his "perfectly natural bat blood", all of which retained their sapience and can talk to you with individual identities and memories and can hop around beside you. As such it's clear that Vlad has universal animacy to the point that even his accent is alive. Other then that it's nothing new for Vlad; he has teleportation, batlike senses, and hologram projection magic (which he masters in this game), all of which he demonstrates in Magicka 1.

Undead:

Ghosts are a new enemy in the game but can be hurt by magic normally suggesting Magicka Wizards can hit astral entities fine even without life mana. In this game undead have immunity to cold and lightning, although I don't know if that would apply since they don't have said immunity in other games so it could just be gamplay mechanics.

The Dark Young:

The Dark Young are a monster in this game taken STRAIGHT from the Cthulhu Mythos. The Dark Young is modeled after the dark young of Shub-Niggurath and looks exactly like it. It is called a "dimensional beast" as well as an "otherworldly monster", yet is one of the things called by Hela's presence.

Udo the Useless:

Udo the Useless is a Wizard that Vlad uses as an example of a wizard who can't do anything. This isn't particularly important, I just wanted to put it as the bottom of a tier list.

General Wizards:

Wizards can casually travel to the outskirts of the Underworld for a study visit, to the point it's considered a graduation requirement for Castle Aldreheim to visit their. Because it's "only" the outskirts, this may not mean anything in particular, but the picture makes it look like this means they actually go into the Underworld. This may suggest they have dimensional travel able to go the non-material realm. This may cause some contradiction though with Vlad trapping the player wizards in the Underworld Nifelheim in Magicka 1 (perhaps some Underworlds are harder to get out off), or with the Wizards using Magicka to get around like teleport and town portal. 

How they Compare: The Dark Knights (DC Comics Dark Multiverse)

 

The multiverse is a manifestation of all the universes that should be...but seeping down beneath it are the universes that shouldn't be, the other side of the multiverse made of dark matter, the dark multiverse. The dragon of destruction ruling the dark multiverse is the horrible Barbatos. When Batman was sent back in time by Darkseid's Omega Beams during the Final Crisis, Barbatos caught notice of Batman and planned to use him as a portal to invade and consume the light multiverse.

To fufill this purpose Barbatos brought together a group of 7 Batmen from different universes of the Dark Multiverse, each corresponding to a member of the JLA. These would serve him as his invasion force, his Dark Knights. As the Dark Multiverse is formed of fears, each also represents a specific fear of Batman's.

All of them have an immunity to conventional attack as dark matter can't be interacted by the matter-energy with the Multiverse and required divine weapons for their regular universe counterparts to hit. However all the Dark Knights have a shared weakness. They come from the Dark Multiverse, the opposite frequency of Nth Metal. Nth Metal can badly damage them upon contact.

The Devastator comes from Earth -1. On Earth-1, Superman went mad from an unknown incident and slowly killed everyone else important to him and Bruce, leaving Batman the last one alive, taunting him as he destroyed Batman's Kryptonite Weapon about how Batman was supposed to be the one capable of stopping him and telling him that people's belief in him was why they were gone. In despair and desperation Batman injected himself with the Doomsday Virus, killing Superman and becoming the monterous Devastator. The Devastator represents Batman's fear of losing his hope, represented by Superman and his fear he might someday have to fight Superman.

In stats Devastator is strong enough to battle Rebirth Superman evenly, with Flash even noting the two are equal in speed. Devastator has many of the usual abilities of Doomsday, including regeneration capable of regrowing an army in seconds, rapid evolution capable of growing spikes to kill Superman mid-combat, and a virus that turns people up to an entire city range into Doomsday-infected. He likely can resurrect after his death like the original Doomsday. He can also breath kryptonite gas, and can change forms into a normal looking Bruce Wayne form capable of fooling Superman before returning to his true state.

Devastator's brain has also degenerated somewhat from the Doomsday Virus. While still capable of recreating the Monitor's Tuning Form, the multiversal technology of the Type 5 Monitors technology, hes more brute-ish and revels in destruction and death. 

On the gender-inverted world of Earth -11 Bryce Wayne was a retired vigilante when her love Sylvester Kyle was slain. In retaliation she launched a one-woman war against the metahuman populace. After gaining power over the surface world, she was opposed by Atlantis and in a pitched battle killed the Atlantean Queen, taking her trident. In retaliation and to protect this, Atlantis drowned all of Gotham City and began to drown the entire world. Bryce rapidly used cybernetics and biologically engineering to change herself into an aquatic entity. She then used the stolen trident and her technological brilliance to turn the Atlanteans against each other, mutating them into her underwater horror army the Dead Water. She represents Batman's fear of going too far in his distrust of others, especially superhumans, and his fear of Catwoman ever dying. 

The Drowned is strong enough via her biological enhancements to physically face off against Rebirth Aquaman and Mera at the same time. Her trident is also powerful enough to hurt Dawnbreaker when it was used against him. Her hydrokinesis is strong enough to instantly drown cities and flood the entire planet. She can shoot energy blasts with her trident and can convert an enemy with a touch into one of her army the "Dead Water", nightmarish underwater monsters capable of fighting Aquaman. She can also summon them to her side at any time. Her waters are also immune to conventional hydrokinesis as Mera could not control The Drowned's water.

On Earth-12, the war god Ares succeeded in getting a helmet which bolstered his power 100 times over. Batman and Wonder Woman together led a desperate final stand against the war god. The two managed to wrangle the Helmet from his head but Ares struck down Diana. In rage and defiance Bruce equipped the Helmet of Ares, gaining the mad bloodlust and divine power of the wargod and slew Ares. He felt a delirious rush of power, the thrill of battle, wondering why he had ever held his own code, when such a naked display of raw power had given him what he wanted. To his surprise Wonder Woman was not slain, only stunned by Ares. Diana pleaded with Bruce to remove the helm, knowing it was turning him into Ares' successor but Batman unwilling to feel powerless again battled Wonder Woman, eventually killing her, cementing himself as the new god of war. He represents his fear of what he would be like if he started killing, and his regret that his crusade against injustice, his war, will never end since his villains will always return. 

The Merciless is strong enough to battle Rebirth Goddess Wonder Woman, and slew the Greek gods of his own universe, although its unclear if these were just their emanations or their true forms from the Otherplace, dark counterpart to the Sphere of the Gods which would presumably be much more impressive. He wears the helm that boosted Ares' power a hundredfold. He presumably has the powers of war gods, and has personally shown the ability to control those who "worship war" meaning those in professional militaries as well incite bloodlust and the desire for combat with his presence. He was able to tank Projectile Valhalla, a missile that was supposedly able to kill any terrestrial metahuman because all weapons of war can't hurt him, only empower him. His helm also lets him "peer into the hearts of men."

The Merciless also has other enchanted equipment including the divine weapons of the Greek pantheon he took after slaying them. He also has a flaming sword and a golden drachma that can summon the angry souls of the damned Amazons that he slew which he can send to battle for him. He also possesses the Godkiller, a blade made to kill blades that can be summoned to the user and which can adjust its size freely. 

Hypothetically because Merciless's powers come from his helmet, disarming him of it might rid him of at least some parts of his powers, though this isn't a big weakness given even the gods couldn't do so. 

On Earth -32 when young Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down in front of him, he felt in himself....a sickening void....no emotions. Just the sheer will to kill. For his pure absence of fear and total will the Green Lantern Ring of the sector chose him, which he used to pursue criminals, overriding the Ring's own moral code by infecting it with the black void in his soul. The Guardians of the Universe try to remove his ring recognizing his quickly deteriorating mental state but Bruce simply murders them and taking on a new oath (With darkness black, I choke the light/No brightest day escapes my sight/I turn the dawn to midnight/Beware my power, Dawnbreaker's might!) he was reborn in the Central Power Battery as someone beyond fear, born of the void of loss and pure will, the Dawnbreaker. He represents Batman's fear of how dangerous he would be with superpowers, and if his discipline has crippled his emotional response to his parents death.

Dawnbreaker was strong enough to kill every single Green Lantern and the Guardians of the Universe of his universe and battled Rebirth Hal Jordan. He also survived the death of his universe, turned into a void its implied by the void in his heart. Dawnbreaker has the standard powers granted by a Green Lantern Ring but his lantern constructs are made from a strange anti-light that normal Lantern lights can't interact with. This is likely related to Dawnbreaker's signature ability Blackout. By directly manifesting the void within his heart, Dawnbreaker can absorb all light in at least city-wide area creating pitch darkness. This darkness is filled with his anti-light monster constructs within the darkness, strong enough to fight the Green Lantern corps. 

On Earth -44 Batman's rogue gallery inflitrated the Batcave. They assaulted and interrogated Alfred demanding to know where Batman was but loyal to the end Alfred refused to even acknowledge he knew what a "Batman" was, until his death. Wanting to keep Alfred with him, not wanting to lose his "father" again, Batman tried to recreate Alfred within an AI, an AI designed to protect and aid Bruce. but the AI went out of control killing all of Batman's rogue gallery to protect him. When Batman tried to stop him, the Alfred Protocol "realized" Batman couldn't be trusted to protect himself and engulfed him, fusing the two into the Murder Machine, a father who would never leave his son again, and a son who would never be left alone again. He represents Batman's fear of his own dependency on technology, his fear of the loss of his humanity to the Batman role, and his fear of losing Alfred.

The Murder Machine was strong enough to kill his own universe's justice league and temporarily held down Rebirth Hal Jordan with his metallic tendril. The Murder Machine can shift his body into blades to slash, energy cannons, or tendrils to grab and restrain. He has advanced scanners to tell him enemy power sources, shields to block attacks, and can create portals that can suck in even universal entities. The Alfred Protocol is obviously fanatically devoted to protecting Bruce and can essentially duplicate by creating numerous robot bodies it can operate at once. It also has powerful technopathy able to battle Cyborg's and quickly take control and recreate the JLA Watchtower. The Murder Machine is noticeably more defensive with forcefields, a fast acting mid-low regen, and turning off all emotions so that Bruce will never have to feel hurt again. 

The Murder Machine however is made of technology and sufficiently strong technopathy or other anti-tech based abilities do work on it. 

On Earth -52, after Batman was too slow to stop the deaths of each of his sidekicks, he confronts Barry Allen making the claim he could use the speedforce more optimally than Barry could. After a confrontation, Batman manages to subdue Barry, strapping him and the cosmic treadmill unto the Batmobile and driving into the speedforce. This actually fused the two, putting Batman's awareness primary but inside Barry's superfast body. Though easily able to stop mundane criminals by violently murdering them the moment they try to commit a crime, this Batman quickly realized that he was still not fast enough to stop everything and the destruction of his entire universe was coming, causing him to join Barbatos' forces. He represents Batman's fear of time taking his loved ones from him, of taking his ability to protect others from him. 

Physically Red Death is essentially identical to Barry in abilities and stats, just controlled by an evil Bruce Wayne although somewhere along he gained the ability to turn into a cloud of bats and reform. Beyond that he also has other advanced technology including the weapons of the Flash's rogue gallery that he took for his original confrontation with his universe's Barry. He also has in his Batcave a number of speedforce-powered Batmobiles able to keep up with Barry, and can build one with his super speed and supergenius intellect in a matter of moments.

However Barry's consciousness is still inside the Red Death, though sent into despair from years of unsuccessfully pleading with Bruce and watching his murderous actions. While he can't naturally take control of their shared body, positive energy can briefly give him control of his body again.

The Batman Who Laughs is the leader of the Dark Knights, gathering them in service to Barbatos. On Earth -22 when the Joker was dying he set off on his final crime spree. He managed to temporarily paralyze Batman so he would be forced to watch while the Joker attacked a hospital, shooting a large number of the parents dead before injecting the children who saw with a final irreverisble Joker Toxin in an attempt to create the hybrid of the Batman and the Joker. In his last dying action as Batman attacked him Joker breathed out same irreversible Joker venom unto Batman, slowing causing Batman to go crazy and become The Batman who laughs. He represents Batman's fear of becoming as bad as the Joker and the fear that he can not stop the Joker without killing him. 

The Batman Who Laughs truly is a combination of the Batman and the Joker. He was able to outfight Rebirth Batman and required both Rebirth Batman and Joker working together to beat. He is the smartest of the Dark Knights, he who hears and executes Barbatos' master plan. He has a wide variety of gadgets and tricks. He can use a much stronger version of the Joker Venom that infected him and particularly tips his batarangs with them to corrupt people on a single slight touch. His visor lets him see into across multiverses from the Dark Multiverse into the Light Multiverse and back which he can use with an inter-universal gun to snipe people from literally a multiverse away. He has an eighth metal gun capable of KO-ing Wonder Woman and has a guide to the multiverse with instructions on how to destroy it. He has also learned dark magic, such as dark magic playing cards that grant the users dark desires and dark magic which he used to kill his universe's version of the Spectre and bind the main universe's Phantom Stranger.

The Batman Who Laughs got way stronger later on but that version has a different title (The Darkest Knight) and isn't part of the team anymore so this is focusing on him just as was during his time as the Batman Who Laughs

Name: The Dark Knights, Nightmare Batman, Dark Council

Origin: DC Comics

Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Physical Capabilities, Immunity to damage from normal matter and energy (made of dark matter), War God Powers (The Merciless), Green Lantern Powers (Dawnbreaker), Speedforce Powers (The Red Death), Summoning (Underwater Monsters, Robot Bodies of Murder Machine, Amazonian Wraiths, Anti-Light Constructs), Shapeshifting (Red Death can turn into a cloud of bats, Devastator can disguise himself as normal Bruce Wayne, Murder Machine can shift his form to bring out various pieces of equipment), Infection/Corruption (Devastator, Batman Who Laughs), Planetary-Scale Hydrokinesis (Drowned), City+ Scale Darkness Manipulation (Dawnbreaker), Technopathy (Murder Machine), Energy Projection (Drowned), Mid-Low Regen (Murder Machine), Rapid Evolution and Resurrection (Devastator), Kryptonite Breath (Devastator), Poison (Batman Who Laughs), Multiversal Sight (Batman Who Laughs), Scanners (Murder Machine), Multiversal Dark Magic/Sealing (Batman Who Laughs), Reality-Warping (Batman Who Laugh's playing cards), Immunity to Emotional-Biological Manipulation (Murder Machine)

Weaknesses: Nth Metal and Energy X are the opposite frequency and badly damage them.

Destructive Capacity: Most of the Dark Knights reach Universal. Batman Who Laughs can potentially end the multiverse with prep 

Range: Infinite (Batman Who Laughs can snipe people from another multiverse)

Speed: Up to Infinite Speed. Conceptually Infinite for the Red Death

Durability: Most of the Dark Knights reach Universal.

Stamina: Massively Superhuman (most at least relative to Rebirth Batman), up to Infinite

Standard Equipment: Various pieces of technology (Batman Who Laughs, Murder Machine), Divine Weapons (The Merciless), Aquawoman's Trident (Drowned), 

Intelligence: Type 5. All relative to Rebirth Batman with even Devastator's whose mind is somewhat degenerated from the Doomsday Virus able to recreate Monitor technology

So how would the Dark Knights do if Barbatos sent them to invade different multiverses

In the Marvel Multiverse, the Dark Knights would be on par power-wise with most of the greatest of Earth's defenses who have their own suite of universal+ feats. Their speed may be a problem, though some of the characters possess time travel and acausality such as the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, and Dr. Doom and so should be able to keep from being blitzed, although the Red Death's speed may still prove somewhat problematic. Dr. Doom's armor might be at threaten from Murder Machine's hacking but given its resisted hacking from Reed Richards and Tony Stark, I think it's unlikely.

Most forms of direct attack from Earth 616's defenders probably wouldn't do that well relying on matter and energy. Divine weapons work so its likely Mjolnir would be able to affect them if Thor can hit them with it. This combined with the raw power and hax strong enough that several members of the Dark Knights were able to fight the JLA single-handedly for a time means it would definitely require the strongest forces of the universe to intervene to stop them. Batman Who Laughs dark magic could even threaten the cosmics. 

There are several forces on Earth 616 that can stop them together however. While Murder Machine was able to fight Cyborg's planetary technopathy, Ultron was able to overwhelm a galactic sized empire with his technopathy, suggesting he could use his technopathy to mess with Murder Machine and Batman Who Laugh's tech. Ghost Rider has a raw power advantage against them and his Archangel Nature means his weapons would definitely quality as weapons that could hurt the Dark Knights. He also has a spiritual purification that can extend over countries which could potentially purify Batman who Laughs of the Joker Toxin, restore those infected by the Doomsday Virus including Devastator, restore those transmuted by Drowned's infection and restore Barry to controlling Red Death's body. Also of note is that the Merciless's Greek Divine Weapons wouldn't work as GR can't be hurt by other divine sources. There's also a large number of power psychics in the verse that may try to restore Barry to control or telekinetically rip the Merciless' helmet off. As such I think that alliance might be able to stop the Dark Knights, though they would definitely still be a danger. 

In the Saint Seiya Multiverse, the Dark Knights would be roughly on the level of the Divine Saints who can battle the Gods who divine cosmo can travel the infinite multiverse in finite time, and whose power exceeds that of the Gold Saint Aries Mu's attack which destroyed and recreated a universe. If anything they might be slightly weaker in raw power, though at that level of speed.

The Dark Knights can definitely be hurt by most of the Saints, their fists being turned into divine weapons in the name of Athena being a recurring theme. While a lot of the Dark Knights abilities can be resisted by enough cosmo, Saints actually have a somewhat consistent weakness to biological abilities and horrifically enough Joker Toxin might be able to infect them, turning them psychopathic, though their mental weakness may prevent that and cause it to just work like a normal poison instead. The spacetime powers of Dawnbreaker's Green Lantern Ring, or its energy manipulation might also be a tricky. The Dark Knights also have the advantage of absolutely immense intelligences, each being smarter than anyone in the verse save maybe Chronos and as such the 7 of the Dark Council could something akin to a group of malevolent puppetmasters leading the multiverse to darkness. 

If this was to happen their biggest threat by far would probably be the Goddess Athena, a goddess representing wisdom and civilization, whose presence serves to keep such tragedies from occuring in the worlds. This is especially because Athena is a conceptual entity and the Dark Knights ability to affect conceptuals is somewhat limited and the fact that there are different Athena in different universes. The Dark Knights could wait for Athena to reincarnate as she does, but this doesn't seem to happen at the same time in every world, meaning that at best they can manipulate different universes at different times. I think most likely they would cause darkness across universe after universe until one Athena and her defenders finally catch them, and then battle them. They may win or lose, but it could go either way and sooner or later an Athena will win. The biggest problem would likely be Merciless who can control soldiers, and absorbs the attacks of weapons. It would likely take a saint whose heart is gentle like Shun to be able to stop him.

In the Cthulhu Mythos, the Dark Knights would be in power akin to the Elder Gods of Earth, greater than most of the Great Old Ones but infinitely weaker than the Outer Gods. Against their own tier they would be quite strong, as they are relatively versatile and intelligent and have plenty of ways to attack incorporeal entities. 

It's notable that with their extreme intelligence, that the Dark Knights would likely quickly learn of the Outer Gods, and would do what they can to if they can gain such power and if not to keep from being destroyed by them. In the Extended Canon it was known that one human, the Buddha, attained a state like an Outer God losing his humanity in the process. Not valueing their humanity particularly, the Dark Knights may try to replicate this.

Also the Drowned has a kinda decent fight against Cthulhu for dominion over the Ocean.

In the World of Darkness, another Dark Multiverse, the Dark Knights would rank nearly at the top of the possibly playable characters. They would be roughly on the same power range as Fifth Tier Mages who are able to warp entire timelines, but below full Archmages or the other god tiers. They are nowhere near as versatile, but they have some pretty alright haxes such as multiversal energy manipulation, war empowerment, spacetime manipulation, and multiversal dark magic. Considering that Mages are near the top of the Player characters in WoD that is quite impressive.  

The bigger threat of the Dark Knights in WoD is not neccesarily how strong they would be immediatly but how fast they could rapidly grow in contrast to a verse like the Cthulhu Mythos. in WoD much like DC reality is shaped by the beliefs, aware and unaware, of people. The Dark Knights are naturally smart enough to rival or surpass the magical intellect of the Mages, and already have some magical knowledge particulary the Batman who Laughs. They could very quickly become 7 extremely powerful dark mages with the added powers and abilities they already had. If not for the fact that mages and demons in the verse have insane information-gathering ability and could plausibly stop them before they get too strong, that would actually make them a threat to Archmages. 

Finally in the Billy and Mandy-verse, the Dark Knights would fit interestingly.

For the low to mid tiers the verse has several feats from country to star level, the level of power of Drowned and Red Death, and for Devastator, Merciless, Dawnbreaker, and Murder Machine they are roughly on par with the universe level entities like the Gods and Grim's Scythe which can threaten the universe. Even the Infinite Power gained from Infinite Size would be equal to Batman Who Laugh's dark magic. In terms of speed the infinite speed gods can grant from infinite size would be equal to most speedsters of the Dark Knights, meaning the group would roughly be seen as speedsters, though not uncounterable.

The Gods in general would be signifigantly difficult for the Dark Knights to defeat as they are conceptual entities. The Dark Knights ability to affect conceptuals are limited to particular interpretations of Dawnbreaker and Merciless (Green Lantern rings can affect the emotional-electromagnetic spectrum entities and Merciless killed the Greek Gods) as well as Batman Who Laughs' dark magic. However given their sheer intelligence its likely they could manipulate some of the gods, given their tendency to just blatantly act on their concept like Eris acting chaotically. While the verse has hax that can definitely affect them like mind manipulation on a planetary scale and meta attacks the Dark Knights would collectively be a massive threat due to combination with complete seriousness + extreme intelligence and speed +very signifigant power/hax.

However the verse has a possibly extremely potent counter. Thje Dark Multiverse is made of fears, with each of the Dark Knights being a fear of Batman's. There's an object in the Billy and Mandy universe called Horror's Hand which is the living embodiment of fear, and could potentially control or disperse the Dark Knights dark matter. Also if Grim can react quickly enough he could trap him them in the Underworld Fairy Tale Book. Due to their horrific warped nature, it's unlikely the Dark Knights would be able to complete a classic fairy tale for a long time. 

Reflecting on Reflections

 So last year I made a blog series called 2020 Reflections going over all my favorite series reflecting my tastes on fiction. Exactly 1 year series later, I wanted to give some points I had thought in regards to it. 

1: Don't do it

If you were considering doing this type of project yourself, I'd suggest reconsidering. I made the blogs in advance of when they were needed, and I STILL felt a signifigant time pressure doing them, though that may just be my personality. Beyond that despite the fact that I consider myself pretty good at explaining what I like about things, I found myself really struggling to not just repeat myself. Why do I like this series? It has themes I like, it has characters I relate, etc. Maybe I'm just not very multidimensional in my tastes (something I think is true regardless), but I routinely found myself at a loss of what to actually say about my tastes.

2: I was worried about my favorite series popularity for NOTHING

So before I made this blog series I thought my tastes were unpopular. There's a certain type of personality, the stereotypical hipster, that enjoys things specifically because they're not popular. That's like the opposite of me, if I have an irrational bias in the other peoples opinions axis it's definitely that I want people to agree with me/want to fit in far more than I want to be contrarian. So I go over my favorite series one by one and they universally fit into 3 categories:

1: A massive, either national or globally, succesful franchise that is well loved by lots of people. I think of something like Sailor Moon or DC Comics here. Both of those that have people that don't like them, and highbrow types that don't "respect" them, but which are obviously widely succesful. 

2: A relatively obscure series that doesn't have a lot of attention but everyone who has seen it likes it. I think of something like Magicka or Shamanic Princess. Both of those don't have that huge fanbases but hardly anyone ever dislikes them.

3: Rarely something I like will be controversial. A lot of people don't like it, but it will also have a lot of people who do like it and its hardly seen as bizarre or weird to like. I think of something like Yuki Yuna is a Hero which has a lot of people who don't like it, but also a ton of people who do.

None of my favorite series were downright unpopular, the only downright unpopular thing I really loved was the DCEU, or rather the early DCEU, and even that I would say has gotten more popular and now is moreso "Controversial" rather than "Unpopular"

I think my one unpopular like combined with the fact that I often don't love the biggest series that everyone loves made me feel unpopular. But when I think of those series, I don't usually hate them or anything, I usually just feel kinda lukewarm about them. I also found that when I was saying my favorite moment from my favorite series...they were often just the most popular and common part from it. Favorite part from Metroid was climax of Super Metroid. Favorite Part of Madoka was the climax. Favorite Part of DC Comics was All-Star Superman Superman saving the jumper. Wow....so unpopular.

My tastes are a lot vanilla then I was thinking, and ngl that's a reassuring thought. 

That said I do have some particular types:

I find looking at someone's favorites really interesting in particular because I think you can get a generalized sense of what someone likes, and maybe even a sense of what they ARE like (although I'd wanna be cautious with that.)

For me I definitely have a clear type of thing that appeals to me. In fact I think my tastes are relatively clear, it's not that multidimensional. While not everything I like falls in these categories, there's overall 4 genres I usually like I would define as

1: Magical Girl Fiction: A story with a female protagonist who gains magic-like abilities whose magic is somehow associated with her femininity.

2: Superhero Fiction: A story featuring an idealized or archetypal person with superhuman abilities who generally dons an identity and uses their powers to better society

3: Occult Fiction: A type of fantasy with a dark/gothic tone and usually focuses either on real world purported occult phemonema or have a special emphasis on the realms of the afterlife and its inhabitants (angels, demons, ghosts etc.)

4: Mythological Fantasty: A type of fantasy set in a world where a certain real world Myth Tradition is true and tries to recreate the worldview associated with it. 

My favorite series is Sailor Moon and ngl that's just the intersection of all four of those.

There's also a very clear set of themes that I particularly like although listing them all here would be tedious since it's a much longer list of between like 10-20. I might make that a different blog if wanted.

4: I have a set of artistic priorities that are inversely proportional to "immediacy"

I say this not prescriptively, that I think it should be this or that, just descriptively what I feel. When consuming the art, some things are consumed immediatly, and some things take longer to understand. The more immediate the aspect the less it usually connects to me. To rank-order them and illustrate my point

The most immediate part of consuming media is the aesthetic sense, the visual and the auditory, the visual perhaps slightly quicker than even the auditory. These obviously do have an effect on me, but it is almost entirely subcouncious. It is the aspect I think about least, and which have the least effect on me over time. I don't usually care much for how information is presented to me, and that's how I view art. I don't think of it as escapism, I view it as the presentation of a thought or idea or feeling in a more intuitive more emotionally gripping form. There are some aesthetics I like more than others, but it is the least component. This is also why I don't really care much about fight scenes most of the time. Usually the fight scene is meant to cause a rush of adrenaline, to create stunning visuals, to have an aesthetic beauty like a graceful dance. But that doesn't usually align with my artistic priority. I have said, meant self-deprecatingly, that I "read" every work like a book. I think in words and everything I see and hear is converted to words where the excess detail is removed. On one hand this means I'm very good at remembering things like dialogue but it means I may miss something obvious in the immediate.

Less immediate than the aesthetics are the characters. I don't become invested in characters the way most people seem too. The fact that they are fictional, and usually drawings on paper or digital images, is something that never fades from the front of my mind. Even when I love a character, I love them in what they represent, love their effect on the story, love the themes they carry. I don't love them like a close friend the way some people describe. There's a certain sort that will insist that the character is everything, that plot is nigh-meaningless in quality. These are the same sorts who will tell you that should definitely watch their slice of life series because it has such great characters and such great writing and thus you will like it. I know for my own part that is not true. I know this because the Sailor Moon Manga is my favorite series with my favorite cast and I've seen it adapted into anime, with filler eps that are mostly slice of life focusing on the Senshi's mundane lives...and I thought it was boring. Even my favorite cast in the world was not interesting to me in their mundane lives. The mundane world can be made interesting for a time, but it requires exceptional skill and I definitely wouldn't be interested in a series of nothing but. Characters are still less immediate than aesthetic, and are more interesting I would say as abstractions, representations of ideas.

Plot is less immediate than characters and least immediate are themes. This is where my interest truly lies. I am interested in a story for what meaning can be learned from it. The story, the events, these are instances meant to convey deeper pattern, deeper concepts. I am interested beyond characters in what characters do, and further still what this signfies. Stories have a power in them...there are great ideas and emotions beyond councious comprehension, or perhaps even if they can be comprehended that are cold to the heart, that are the theory-speech of academics rather than the ripples in one's soul. With each layer of immediacy the story, if well-done, manifests the deep and profound into plot, into character, into the most immediate of presentation. Each layer of immediacy I recognize the importance off in this noble endeavor translating and communicating from the ethereal realm of human awareness into articulation, but I think if you think of art this way as I do, then it would be most natural to cast for as deep into the ocean of a series that you can.

5: Some other interesting statistics

Just some things I looked at with my favorite series:

Of the 32 series:

-20 are Japanese (Cutie Honey, Saint Seiya, Metroid, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shamanic Princess, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, xxxHolic, Pretty Cure, Okami, Axis Powers Hetalia, Bayonetta, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, and Yuki Yuna is a Hero)

-10 are American (DC Comics, The Powerpuff Girls, Freedom Force, Xiaolin Chronicles, Danny Phantom, God of War, The Stanley Parable, Wander over Yonder, Over the Garden Wall, Undertale)

-1 is Italian (Commedia)

-1 is Swedish (Magicka)

Given the degree to which I like Commedia and Magicka it's very likely I would like more works from places beyond Japan and America but I don't know anyone from those parts who could suggest a work from there I would like.

Of the 32 series:

-16 have female protagonists (Cutey Honey, Metroid, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shamanic Princess, The Powerpuff Girls, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, Pretty Cure, Okami, Bayonetta, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, Yuki Yuna is a Hero)

-14 have male protagonists (Commedia, DC Comics, Saint Seiya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Freedom Force (I think Man-Bot is the protagonist of FF, if you think Alchemiss is, you can move this to female), Xiaolin Showdown, Danny Phantom, God of War, Axis Powers Hetalia, The Stanley Parable, Wander over Yonder, Over the Garden Wall)

-2 have gender ambigious protagonists (Magicka, Undertale)

As the protagonists for most series is probably less than half (I would estimate 1/3), this seems notably high. I think this comes from three factors; my general love for magical girls (11 of the 16 Female Protags are Magical Girls), my slightly greater ability to relate to female protagonists, and imo the greater range of emotional expressions women are allowed. Female characters are allowed to range from stoic to emotional and sexless to sexual while male protagonists are generally not particularly sex-ed so as to not distress the straight male audience and are generally most stoic as stoicism for men is viewed as more normal.

Of the 32 Series:

-17 are Anime/Manga (Cutie Honey, Saint Seiya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Shamanic Princess, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, xxxHolic, Pretty Cure, Axis Powers Hetalia, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, and Yuki Yuna is a Hero)

-8 are Video Games (Metroid, Freedom Force, God of War, Okami, Bayonetta, Magicka, The Stanley Parable, Undertale)

-5 are Western Cartoons (The Powerpuff Girls, Xiaolin Showdown, Danny Phantom, Wander over Yonder, Over the Garden Wall)

-2 are Assorted Literary (Commedia, DC Comics)

Finally just a bunch of connections in a meta context I noticed of the 32, not thematic connections but like meta stuff connecting them. I notice that this kind of meta stuff causes "clusters" that if people tend to like one they also tend to like the other, an idea I find really fascinating that you can sorta tell a person by their clusters they're in...here's the clusters I'm in:

-Obviously the 11 Magical Girl Series on this list all form some kind of cluster of their own, with many of the series internally connecting. This broadly breaks down into the 5 "traditional" magical girl series; Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Pretty Cure, and the 4 "dark" magical girl series; Shamanic Princess, Princess Tutu, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Yuki Yuna is a Hero with the Cutey Honey and Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt being a bit harder to classify. Many of these share fandoms as part of the larger "Magical Girl Fandom"

-Cutey Honey was an influence on Sailor Moon who then recurvisely was an influence on Cutie Honey causing the creation of a more Sailor Moon-like Cutie Honey called Cutie Honey Flash. Ryota Yamaguchi who was a writer for both Sailor Moon Stars and Cutie Honey Flash also worked on DokiDoki Pretty Cure and Saint Seiya: Sainta Sho.

-Sailor Moon was an influence on Tokyo Mew Mew, Pretty Cure and Puella Magi Madoka Magicka. Junichi Sato who worked on the Sailor Moon anime co-created Princess Tutu and directed Hugtto Pretty Cure.

-Puella Magi Madoka Magicka was an influence on Yuki Yuna is a Hero

-Princess Tutu and Puella Magi Madoka Magicka have connected fanbases with the former possibly being a predecssor of the latter.

-Magic Knight Rayearth and Cardcaptor Sakura both obviously have a connection as they were both made by CLAMP along with the series xxxHolic

-Commedia was a direct inspiration for Over the Garden Wall and can broadly said to be the one responsible for the trope of telling the epic about the common person, the universal human experience rather then the transcedent demigod. This is relevant in sometimes DC, Cutie Honey, Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh!, The Powerpuff Girls, Tokyo Mew Mew, Princess Tutu, Ouran High School Host Club, xxxHolic, Pretty Cure, Danny Phantom, Axis Powers Hetalia, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka, The Stanley Parable, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Over the Garden Wall and Undertale

-DC Comics created the modern superhero idea and as such is directly inspiration for The Powerpuff Girls, Freedom Force, and Danny Phantom although for the latter two Marvel acts more as an intermediate step. It's also likely an inspiration for Sentai, which influenced Cutie Honey (through Warrior of Love Rainbowman), Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Tokyo Mew Mew, Pretty Cure, Puella Magi Madoka Magicka and Yuki Yuna is a Hero.

-As 90s Occult Shonen, the fandoms of Yu Yu Hakusho and Yu-Gi-Oh! overlap

-Due to their cosmic imagery, coming out around the same time, and similar plot structures there is an overlap in the fandoms of Saint Seiya and Sailor Moon

-Due to the marriage of their creators, there is an overlap in fans between Yu Yu Hakusho and Sailor Moon. Sukehiro Tomita also worked on both of their animes. 

-Hideki Kamiya created both Okami and Bayonetta

-Craig McCracken created both The Powerpuff Girls and Wander over Yonder

-Emiri Kato played Kyubey in Puella Magi Madoka Magicka and Hyper Blossom in PPGZ as well as assorited roles in Tsubasa and XXXholic animes. 

-Nami Miyahara who played Rolling Bubbles in PPGZ also played Akari Tsukumo in Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal

-DC Comics's Wonder Woman inspired some elements of Sailor Moon, in particular Sailor Moon's tiara throw was inspired by the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman

-Both being 2010s metafictional games The Stanley Parable and Undertale fandoms intersect

-Undertale makes reference to Tokyo Mew Mew

-Ouran High School Host Club and xxxHolic have a bit of a fandom overlap, due I think to both being series about main characters that have to be in service to elegant teasing people they don't understand in exchange for paying their side of a deal

-God of War and Bayonetta have some fandom overlap due to being in the same genre of game

-Wander Over Yonder and Undertale have a signifigant fandom overlap due to both have a similar theme of befriending people instead of using violence and a few shared worldbuilding elements

-Cutey Honey and Bayonetta have some fandom overlap due to being sex-positive depictions of femininity with a heroine that is both sexual and has agency

-Tara Strong voice acted as Bubbles in the Powerpuff Girls and Omi in Xiaolin Showdown, and has had various more minor roles in Danny Phantom, Wander over Yonder and several DC productions (including the relatively major role of Raven from Teen Titans)

-Metroid and Cutie Honey have some fandom overlap for being relatively early science-fiction works to have a female protagonist

-Takuya Igarashi worked on the animes of both Sailor Moon and Ouran High School Host Club as well as an episode of Futari wa Pretty Cure. Yoji Enokido also worked on both Sailor Moon and Ouran High School Host Club.

-Shiori Teshirogi wrote both Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas as well as a DC Comics Manga.

Ranking every Magicka Chapter

 Magicka 1 is my favorite game, and I just wanted to make a fun quick blog ranking its 12 chapters, from worst to best. 

12: Chapter 11

Chapter 11 is really the only chapter in the game I don't like. The chapter is hard, but it's hard as the opposite way of the Grimnir fight, where it's the type of hard that just makes it impossible for casual players to get through. Magicka 2 would overcorrect this by a lot, making it so a team of 4 players are almost impossible to TKO if they care even the slightest bit, but this chapter isn't hard in the fun way, it's hard in the insta-kill way. There's monsters that insta-kill you very quickly like Yeti and Beholder, as well as just annoying enemies like the teleporting dwarves, mixed with lava mechanics that are just annoying. You have to get past these long sections of lava that can be instantly turned to fire causing you to drown if a salamander breath hit. All this would be fine for a short difficult section, but this is the entire level and it's one of the longest levels in the game. The other problem is the tricks to get around them are things that serious players would do that just make the challenge trivial, there's no happy difficulty, it's just insta-death or casual win. Fafnir's also not a very good boss. It's also difficult in the "this will absolutely wipe casual players but if you're actually trying it's not very hard." type difficulty. You just put on fire shield and move around and you're basically invulnerable even if it takes awhile. The humor in this is fine, but nothing special for Magicka, and there's not much lore added or anything. The Gram quest is cool but the fact that it requires you to keep a sword in the section where you have to get past a long section of lava that you can lose your sword to anytime is perhaps the most sadistic thing I've seen in any of this series. You get invisibility and summon elemental, two really cool magicka, this level but it's almost the end of the game so you barely get any time to use them.

11: Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is the chapter you go back in time. It's also the only level with zero fights in it. As such there's no real reason to re-play it. You can use it to get the achivement for getting through a level without casting basic spells really easily, and it's the chapter you get Teleport, my favorite Magicka, but there's basically no gameplay this level. It's like waiting in an elevator between two levels.

10: Chapter 8

This is another really long level, a lot of it taking place in darkness unless you light it up, over precarious cliffs. While this risks running over a similar trouble as the lava in 11, in practice it's not really an issue since there's barely any knockback, and you can pretty easily light up the darkness, or just teleport through it. This level also has the bridge battle, a battle on a small bridge with goblin army forces approaching from both sides which is a fun challenge predicated on a lack of space to manuever, with spacing being a wizard's best friend. I have kind of a personal vendetta against this level however for its boss. The Goblin Aristocrats are pretty easy to beat, maybe a slight challenge for casual players, but overall one of the easiest bosses in the game, as they can only use basic elements and cast nullify. But in challenge rooms Goblin Aristocrats "nullify" I've found to be one of the most annoying enemies to fight, since they can act as devilishly difficult support for stronger enemies by nullifying your magic.

9: Chapter 1

The first chapter of the game is quite funny with memorable parts like the sword in the stone, the woman with the exclamation mark chasing her and everything in Castle Aldreheim, and gives a pretty good tutorial for the game, which is basically skippable, followed by two easy fights against goblins and spiders, and a boss fight against a troll, a stronger common enemy in the game. Ygg the forest troll is a good tutorial boss, being slow moving and easily avoidable, and with an elemental weakness, but lots of regenerating hp teaching the new player to avoid close fights, and practice using proper elements on corresponding enemies. While a good introduction, not much reason to go back to it as it more serves to ramp the player up to the greater challenges of the game.

8: Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is a pretty good chapter to ramp up from Chapter 1. It suffers a little bit from lack of monster variety since while goblins and trolls are different in tactics, both are weak to fire. Goblins do come in impressive variety, and the game really hits its stride with its humor with things like Goblin Hood or the Goblin Aristocrat making a somber chant only for it to be revealing to be gibberish, as well as fun secrets hidden on the map. I'm not a big fan of the boss of the level Jormungandr as hitting his head is kind of an annoying mechanic. There are tricks to get around it with wetting his head and then using lightning to chain to it, but the fact you can only hit his head is unintuitive when most of the game is delightfully intuitive, and you'd think you can damage him normally. Jormundanr is also the least squishy thing in the game, having too much HP but doing barely any damage making the fight feel really grindy. Most of the level is pretty fun, though the game is still kinda going easy, without much real challenge. Any serious player will blaze through Chapter 2 basically without thinking.

7: Chapter 4

Chapter 4 sees you mostly traveling through the city of Havindr. Similar to Chapter 2, I like most of the chapter more than the boss fight. The Machine part is obviously a joke, but the Warlock is kind of annoyingly-anti squishy and while not really hard, he takes a while to fight. That said the Warlock is a lot more of a threat then Jormungandr and so the fight is a lot tenser and more of a challenge. The enemies are more varied and signifignatly stronger in 4 compared to 2 with varieties of orcs and disciples (dark mages), the secrets are as exciting with fun things like just burning the dynamite to get through the door instead of having to wait for the long fuse to go off. 

6: Chapter 9

The Swamp Level. This chapter has the annoying swamp water mechanic which periodically makes it tricky to use lightning for rez or similar effects, but the enemies are great this level. Zombies and the undead really change your thinking having to use life as primary damage dealer, especially when mixed in with alive enemies that heal from life like treants. This level is full of difficult but fair fun enemies like treants and undead knights that are high damage dealers but slow, and so emphasis is put on mobility, something that again would be easier with lightning for haste and teleport. There's the fun jokes of healing the villagers and you also get the Vlad fight, one of the best fights in the game. Not only is it fun from a story perspective (including one of the most shocking twists in video game history. I won't spoil what he actually is but turns out Vlad isn't human!) but Vlad is a fun boss, running around shooting out powerful elemental blasts and trying to life drain.

5: Chapter 3

Chapter 3 involves fighting beastmen, and druids, enemies you don't see most points of the game and are a fun diversion with differnet tactics. Beastmen are more mobile and elemental, and Druids have their nature magic, as opposed to the usual slow heavy hitters the wizards have to face. The airship sequence is tricky for casuals, but a very fair challenge for its place in the story, and a fun dynamic, even if the developers wished it turns out well. Jotunn isn't as good a boss fight as Vlad, but I do like that there's a secondary objective in this fight where you can beat and optimally beat him before any house explodes. If you do you get the M60! Also while they're not as flashy or as practical, this level in general just seems to have the coolest weapons in the game just everywhere. 

4: Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is a struggle up a mountain at the edge of the world with a lot of pit mechanics pre-teleportation that aren't really the fun, frustrating if they work, but usually just being a mildly annoyance to avoid. The daemons are also not that fun enemies since it's a bunch of waiting around for them to materialize although at least they've different elements and attacks. By itself it would be lower...but this chapter also has the first Grimnir fight. The Grimnir fight is by a good margin the best fight in the game. Grimnir is the most developed character in the game followed by Vlad, he has a really cool introduction, is built up since the prologue, and this fight really justifies it. First Grimnir traps you in a mental duel where you have to fight a procession of enemies past and future while a giant ethereal Grimnir watches, showing you a display of his power. Than after you beat that, the fight proper begins. The difficulty of the Grimnir fight is JUST right. Grimnir is a difficult but winnable fight for a single casual player, and a group of serious players. Grimnir wiped the Magicka developers several times, yet he's not a frustrating unwinnable fight for even a casual team. This comes from the fact that he is perhaps the squishiest boss in the game, not much HP, but really strong spells with large area of effect, and can cast numerous at once. Even a casual team can win with teamwork and focus if one nullifies and the others attack or they use overlapping elemental shields and dry themselves out but on the other hand when do wizards ever colloborate ;) Grimnir really feels to fight exactly what he is, the greatest wizard in the world bound up but still just flexing his magical power on you. 

3: Chapter 5

If I just wanted to relax and play some casual Magicka...I'd probably do some of the easier arenas, but if I was going to do one of the campaign levels it'd be level 5. Level 5 is the battlefield level, where you go through a large army of orcs, disciples, and trolls. It's a long level, with lots of enemies, which is difficult to casuals, but to serious players are not really a trouble. They put up enough of a fight that the mind is stimulated, but just little threat that it's a fun relaxing playthrough just tearing through them. This chapter really shows the degree of difference skill at Magicka makes. For casual players the threat of this level and what makes it diffiult is the sheer number of enemies, but when you get good at the game, weak enemies no matter the number don't post any threat so you can feel like a god at the game just by easily destroying the enemy army single-handedly. The 300 references are also funny and Khan is a pretty fair boss fight, his insta-kill bombs kinda annoying but nothing that bad.

2: Chapter 10

Chapter 10 sees the wizards traveling through Niflheim, realm of the dead combining the best aspects of Chapters 3 and Chapters 9. You're fighting elements and shades, undead enemies with elemental attacks, so fighting combines matching opposite elements and using life in a new strategic way. This level also has the Death fight, one of the best in the game. Death is a real tricky enemy, summoning shades, creating illusory copies and insta-killing with his scythe. This level tries for atmosphere in a way most of Magicka doesn't, and it honestly works really well. While still ultimately comical, the shady atmosphere of Death makes for a really cool boss fight and level.

1: Chapter 12

Chapter 12, the final chapter, is a boss rush. Vlad and Grimnir are the first two enemies and not only are they two of the top 3 fights in the game with Death, but the two are a study in contrasts, humorous given they are old friends. Vlad is bombastic and theatrical, running around and attacking with massive elemental blasts. Meanwhile Grimnir is underplayed, precise, and focused while chained up. The two both make for amazing fights leading into Assatur fight. Assatur isn't as good a fight as Grimnir, but he's still pretty good and it just completes the trifecta of chapter 12.