Tangent Comics

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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 to be revisited for a second round.

Contents

[edit] Overall Scenario

As with Alan Moore and the Watchmen saga, the Tangent Universe radically diverges from our own due to the appearance of metahumans/superheroes, such as the original Atom, whose interference causes the escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis on his world into a limited nuclear exchange that results in the nuclear obliteration of Florida but is mercifully restricted in its impact. It plays a pivotal role in the life of the Joker, and her home city, New Atlantis, the former city of Atlanta on the Georgia shoreline, formed by the aforementioned obliteration of Florida. The Sea Devils are marine mutants who have undergone accelerated change and gained sentience in inundated Florida and Georgia, now undersea. The Soviet Union has survived, and is still a superpower in the late nineties, and the Metal Men intervened in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Furthermore, as in our own world, the Peoples Republic of China is an ascendant superpower and has its own entry in the metahuman 'arms race,' Powergirl (as well as an unsuccessful prototype, Supergirl).

[edit] Series

[edit] 1997 Titles

  • Doom Patrol
    • A team from the future arrives in the present, warning of the impending destruction of the Earth.
  • 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 were nicknamed “Hawkman,” “Lobo,” “Gravedigger,” and “Black Lightning.”
  • Nightwing
    • A mystical secret society controlling much of the world. This book focuses on a group of rogue agents.
  • Sea Devils
    • A society of mer-people created by the nuclear exchange that destroyed Cuba and Florida in 1962.
  • Secret Six
    • The Secret Six are a covert group of heroes who formed when the Flash, Atom, Joker, Spectre, Plastic Man and Manhunter joined forces to combat Dr. Aquadus, a living ocean.
  • The Atom
    • The grandson of the Tangent Earth's first super-hero, 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 be 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 who uses pranks to highlight the failings and hypocrisy of those in power.

[edit] 1998 Titles

  • Powergirl
    • US agents attempt to kidnap China's genetically-engineered superhuman in a sequel to Metal Men.
  • Nightwing: Nightforce
    • The rogue Nightwing team attempts 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.
  • 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
    • The Justice League of America in the Tangent Universe was started as a covert group of operatives who were formed to take out several superhumans, including the Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Superman. Eventually, the targets came together and formed their own Justice League.

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

[edit] 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.

Superboy featured a Hyper-Tension storyline which featured Tangent superheroes 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.

Tangent'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.

[edit] External links

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