Earth Prime

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Earth Prime (or Earth-Prime) is a term sometimes used in works of speculative fiction involving parallel universes or a multiverse, and refers either to the universe containing "our" Earth, or to a parallel world with a bare minimum of divergence points from Earth as we know it.

[edit] DC Comics

In the original DC Multiverse, Earth Prime first diverged from our world in Flash #179 when the Flash (Barry Allen) was stranded there and DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz helped him construct a cosmic treadmill to return to Earth One. Earth Prime's Elliot S! Maggin and Cary Bates, traveled to Earth One and Two, respectively, and with other stories, Ultraa was introduced in Justice League of America #153, Superboy-Prime's superpowers manifested themselves due to the passage of Halley's Comet. Soon afterwords, DC's Earth-Prime was destroyed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Post-Crisis, Ultraa was retconned into being from Almerac as a possible suitor of Maxima.

In 2004, DC revisited the Earth-Prime concept in the miniseries Superman: Secret Identity.

In issue #6 of the Infinite Crisis mini-series, a now villainous Superboy-Prime convinced Alexander Luthor that Earth-Prime was the ideal world and urged him to draw his inspiration for making a new Earth from Earth Prime. As a result, Luthor began searching through the myriad Earths for Earth-Prime and ended up turning toward the reader and reaching out toward them, breaking through the fourth wall to get at Earth-Prime.

[edit] Sliders

Main article: Earth Prime (Sliders)

Earth Prime, as used in the television show Sliders, is the name of the alternate Earth where the four original sliders (Quinn Mallory, Wade Welles, Rembrandt Brown, and Maximillian Arturo) started their journey. This Earth was very similar to our Earth until 1997 or 1998, when the Kromaggs slid onto Earth Prime and took humanity hostage.

[edit] The Dark Tower

Much of the action in the last few books of Stephen King's Dark Tower series takes place in "the keystone world", essentially the Earth Prime concept under a different name, complete with appearances by King himself as a character.