New History of the DC Universe

New History of the DC Universe (2025) #1-4

by Mark Waid, Jerry Ordway (Illustrator), Todd Nauck (Illustrator)

In celebration of 90 years of DC, super fan and writer Mark Waid turns back time to the very beginning of the DC Universe in a four-issue miniseries drawn by some of DC’s greatest artists and told by the newest chronicler of time, Barry Allen, the Flash! In our debut issue, Barry takes us from the very birth of the DC Universe to the rise of the Justice Society. The Golden Age of heroes begins here!

Barry Allen takes us through the storied history of the DC Universe, one chapter at a time in this brand new four issue mini series by legendary creators Mark Waid, Jerry Ordway, and Todd Nauck! Starting from the very earliest days of the Justice Society of America in the Golden Age of the DCU and racing through each major era thereafter, The New History of the DC Universe is a genre-defying, definitive look at the world’s most popular superheroes.

Collects The New History of the DC Universe #1-4

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Batman

216 pages, Hardcover

Published January 20, 2026

About the author

Mark Waid is an American comic book writer widely known for shaping modern superhero storytelling through influential runs on major characters at both DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Raised in Alabama, he developed an early fascination with comic books, particularly classic stories featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes, whose imaginative scope and sense of legacy would later inform his own writing. He first entered the comics industry during the mid 1980s as an editor and writer for the fan magazine Amazing Heroes, before publishing his first professional comic story in Action Comics. Soon afterward he joined DC Comics as an editor, contributing to numerous titles and helping shape projects across the company. After leaving editorial work to focus on writing, Waid gained widespread recognition with his long run on The Flash, where he expanded the mythology of the character and co-created the youthful speedster Impulse. His reputation grew further with the celebrated graphic novel Kingdom Come, created with artist Alex Ross, which imagined a future DC Universe shaped by generational conflict among superheroes. Over the years he has written many prominent series, including Captain America, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Superman: Birthright, bringing a balance of optimism, character depth, and respect for comic book history to each project. Waid has also collaborated with notable artists and writers on major ensemble titles such as Justice League and Avengers, while contributing ideas that helped clarify complex continuity within shared superhero universes. Beyond mainstream superhero work, he has supported creator owned projects and experimental publishing models, including the acclaimed series Irredeemable and Incorruptible, which explored moral ambiguity within the superhero genre. He later took on editorial leadership roles at Boom Studios, guiding creative direction while continuing to write extensively. In subsequent years he expanded his involvement in publishing and digital storytelling, helping launch online comics initiatives and advocating for new distribution methods for creators. His work has earned numerous industry awards, including Eisner and Harvey honors, reflecting both critical acclaim and enduring popularity among readers. Throughout his career Waid has remained a passionate student of comic book history, drawing on decades of storytelling tradition while continually encouraging innovation within the medium. His influence extends across generations of readers and creators, and his stories continue to shape the evolving language of superhero comics around the world today through enduring characters imaginative narratives and thoughtful reinventions of familiar myths within popular culture and modern graphic storytelling traditions.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.6 stars

[Justin Partridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Happy V Day to me. This was…interesting. Which might be damming it with faint praise.

I’ll for sure say it’s not nearly as sweaty as the recent Marvel one (at least to my memory anyway), but still it makes one truly insane choice in particular that probably keeps me from loving and vibing with it completely.

Starting with the good, I think it looks tremendous. And Waid’s framing it around Barry Allen and keeping it a more academic text like the original are certainly the better moves it makes throughout.

Further neat is the really unexpected character choices and retainings it makes. Like the choice to foreground so much Milestone, Vertigo, WildStorm, and war comics stuff really did delight me throughout. As was the continued insistence that “no, Crisis in Time actually did happen, deal with it, dorks” like I’m never going to completely hate that sort of stuff.

I think the choice to couch so much around the Endless and Johns contributions are…less good, but they are monoliths now and I’m okay with mostly just acknowledging it without having to like it particularly. Same with the straight up bonkers decision to just make the New 52 Justice League origin (they fight Darkseid and not Starro first) set in stone…it’s just…it’s frustrating. Especially when not even an issue later it actively goes out of its way to hand wave away most New 52 stuff sans Court of Owls it’s just…I don’t understand it. I probably never will until someone else decides to “fix it” later.

But this was neat. And pretty novel of a take on a “modern” history of this nonsense. I don’t know how much I’ll be referencing it beyond the really awesome annotations stuff in the back but it’s cool that it exists now.

[Joseph Crook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t believe how silly the DC universe is. I had no idea.

[Arthur Marchetto · Rating 3 out of 5]

um resumo bem resumo do resumo de como ficou a cronologia oficial do Universo DC até os dias de hoje (um pouco antes dos eventos do DC K.O. e do nascimento do Universo Absolute, incluindo até os Elseworlds todos); não tem nada muito envolvente, é bem enciclopédico, mas é um grande trabalho de pesquisa, com varias referências, explicações e guia de consulta.

[Murphy C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent attempt on Mark Waid's part. Most of the artwork is good, though the first two issues were far superior to the second two.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like some parts but it was all over the place in what it wanted to accomplish. It's impossible to include everything but some choices are strange, Barry adds so little in telling the story that he should've been swapped for a more detached view like Harbinger in the original.

The effort to make it chronological stops being as effective halfway through, which I partially understand but there's a whole timeline at the back. That timeline, although dull to look at, might actually be more useful for new readers since it's basically an index explaining major things and providing reading sources. It includes characters not in the main book, so maybe a different format would have been better.

As someone more familiar with all this, apart from changes like putting Cyborg in the JLA mainly the 4th issue introduced new things I haven't been keeping up with, so personal enjoyment will vary. Nobody will like or agree with everything and this canon is still likely to be ignored.

Art changed from page to page in some cases so was hit or miss. I do love the connecting wraparound variants showing almost every character you could ask for and generally drawn very well.

It is just a lot of listing random things with nice pictures and some occasional cohesion. There's way too much at once for anyone who's not just filling in gaps and doesn't know most of it as own research is still required.

[Alex Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this attempt at treating DC’s lengthy and patchwork history as if it’s one story is a fun idea but after Doomsday shows up just becomes a parade of cataclysmic crossover events, most of which were failed attempts at straightening out DC’s lengthy and patchwork history. The Earth or reality can only be obliterated so many times before it starts to get monotonous. Some nice art

[Keegan Schueler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid read for any longtime DC fan and it covers a lot of different continuities giving a good recap of everything.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's passably entertaining as a summary of almost 100 years of jumbled continuity, but it eventually just becomes a list of names and teams as any narrative threads spiral out of control. nice illustrations of pretty much every character in the DCU though!

[Jacob Shaffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good at giving you the short burst summaries and if you wanna learn more you certainly can go right ahead. My oldest son is at the age where a Sourcebook is a pretty good thing, so we’ll see how this one plays out for him

I love Barry as a framing device it’s really smart and makes perfect sense

Also thrilled to see the Endless and Lucifer represented here, terrific

[Krzysztof Maja Bożejewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jako komiks broni się głównie warstwą graficzną, bo fabularnie to mało powalające: najpierw stało się to, a potem tamto. Natomiast ogromną wartość dodaną stanowi aneks, który jest próbą chronologizacji najważniejszych komiksowych wydarzeń z całej historii DC i pokazuje ogrom pracy, jaką włożono w skompilowanie tej miniserii.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

my main takeaway from this is that superhero comics are absolute nonsense (I wouldn't have it any other way)

[Eva B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked Mark Waid's History of the Marvel Universe, but this one was...underwhelming. This is gonna be a notes review, so buckle up.
1) The framing device of it being told by Barry is...fine, I guess. Yes, he's seen a lot of the multiverse, but it doesn't work as well as the Galactus talking to Franklin Richards framing from the Marvel one
2) Considering how infamously messy the DC timeline is, this does a pretty good job of tying everything together into something mostly cohesive
3) Crimson Avenger is only mentioned in regards to the Seven Soldiers of Victory. Dr. Occult is referred to as the first superhero, which is...fine? He does predate Crimson Avenger, but Crimson Avenger has, to my knowledge, been considered the first DC superhero in the in-universe lore
4) Brian Savage/Scalphunter is referred to as Ke-Woh-No-Tay as opposed to Scalphunter. Cool! Marvel also switched John Greycrow's codename from Scalphunter to Greycrow due to the racism. But then we get to the Justice League Detroit section and Cindy Reynolds is STILL being referred to as "Gypsy". Why change one racist codename and not the other? Neither Brian nor Cindy get much pagetime, but I KNOW people brought up Cindy's codename when she was in The Flash, and she's cool! I want to see more of her! Just give her a better code name! Mirage is up for grabs I think, or use her Amalgam name of Runaway, or Mystic, or idk Nomad or something? Literally anything else?
5) They forgot Matrix :( also no mention of Maxima, Crispus Allen, Bloodwynd, or the Global Guardians, or the Sovereign Seven, or the Minutemen/Crime-Busters, or the New Guardians. Also several ignored events like Cataclysm, Contagion, the death of Green Arrow, the Manhunter doppelgangers, the invasion, I could go on. And I KNOW that no comic can effectively cram in 90 years of history, but I really wanted to see some more of the lesser-known events, especially since we DO see some pretty obscure characters in here! Would've been neat to see some reference to the Absolute universe or some Elseworlds stuff too.
6) I really really wish that there had been a final chapter on the Legion of Super-Heroes. Barry HAS ties to them through the Tornado Twins and XS, so why can't he explain them a little? This is also why I don't love the framing of Barry being the narrator here, compared to the more omnipotent stuff from the Marvel one.

That being said, if you're looking for a crash course in DC history, this is a good place to start, and I love the different art styles throughout (love me some Mike Allred!)

[Eduardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A random find in the new book section, but I thought it might be fun to try. The idea is that it’s a chronology of everything in the DC Universe, written by Barry Allen, as he’s had enough timeline shenanigans to be able to sort through what happened and what didn’t. So this means giving a complete(ish) timeline of EVERYTHING–and that includes the Crisis reboots that DC is increasingly fond of.

Marv Wolfman, who worked on “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, writes in the introduction that trying to make an entire history of a massive comic book universe is asking for trouble, but they tried it out anyway. The result is not exactly a traditional comic; instead, it’s a series of images and page illustrations with boxes explaining what the image is referring to. Starting at the very creation of the DC universe, going through Perpetua, the Monitors, the Endless, Lucifer’s fall from Heaven, the Guardians of the Universe, Vandal Savage, Atlantis, King Arthur, and all right up into the modern day.

There was a LOT going on in World War II? Probably not surprising to anyone who knows the history of comic books.

This is a really good resource to anyone trying to understand the fictional history of the DCU. It doesn’t cover every little detail; it covers *enough* though that you’ll get the gist of it. You won’t know the name of every superhero, though you might know the name of every superhero team. There are a few things that I don’t know about for sure–the Batman/Superman crossover that reintroduces Supergirl is told as her revival, which isn’t quite true of the comic. For all I know, however, it is true with the present timeline, given how many times things have been rebooted.

I wasn’t sure how far it’d go, with all the reboots and all. This one goes up past the “Death Metal” crossover, talks about things like “Future State”, and hints at further things (like the setup of “Absolute DC” I think?). So yes, it’s pretty up-to-date!

It’s impressive, and the art styles keep changing to match or mirror the comics that the stories it’s talking about take place in. And that’s a pretty darn awesome thing to try out.

AND! As a special bonus, the book has an appendix, explaining the sourcing for all of the events chronicled here. It’s not exactly a thrill to read through that many annotations, but it’s cool that they’re able to cite all of the relevant things so that you know they’re not just making it up for this book. It’s a pretty good resource!

Check it out if you have an interest in the DC Universe!

[Norman Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collects The New History of the DC Universe #1-4.

This represents an incredible amount of research by Mark Waid (who, to begin with, is an acknowledged walking encyclopedia of comics). It puts the ninety-ish year history of DC into a new, albeit sometimes confusing, chronology that should appeal to continuity geeks. It reads more like an executive summary than a true dissertation, but that's probably the level most ordinary fans need. At the end of the day, continuity is nice but telling a good story is better and after almost a century of stories by a legion of creators it's impossible to reconcile everything. With that in mind, what does Waid decide is canon? For example, in this history Superman doesn't arrive on Earth until after World War II—does this clear revision of established events matter? I think most comic book readers are smart enough to realize that this kind of moving target is necessary to avoid a complete breakdown of creators' ability to tell good stories.

I found much of this history quite fascinating. I was familiar with much of the early continuity, but had large knowledge gaps from comics published in the 1990s to early 2000s that I enjoyed getting filled in. And, although I've been keeping up with recent continuity pretty well, there have been a steady stream of "crisis" events in the past decade that have been hard to keep up with. This book puts those events into context. The book omits much, if any, mention of "future" continuity such as Kamandi and the Legion of Super-Heroes (some of this is included in the back-matter text—text that provides footnoting references to titles and issue numbers that support Waid's thematic summary).

The artwork by a small army of illustrators is great. I didn't mind the inconsistencies in looks because these are all some of the best comics artists working today. Of particular note are the variant cover mosaics of literally over a thousand characters by Scott Koblish and Hi-Fi.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um, wow. Loved the art and the content, surely, but honestly?

I'll always love the Wolfman/Perez History that was the Crisis On Infinite Earths followup more.

That previous work was a history and a love letter to DC's preceding 50 years.

This one, while solid and great in its recapping and resorting the DC continuity / history, also underscored the flaws that have permeated DC since 1986: they've made continuity too fluid as they've had one reboot between 1938 to 1985 (okay, two if you consider the Silver Age a reboot from the originals) but there have been between 4 and 7 discrete reboots of reality/continuity in the past 40 years. That sort of instability and "whoops, no, THIS is what reality is!" makes for clumsy reading.

As a result, I'm still not 100% sure what's the official status of numerous characters or continuities...and that's ABSOLUTELY AVOIDING the Legion of Superheroes (my fave DC series) and all the mess that series has had to endure since 1985...I believe it's endured all the continuity reboots of the greater DC multiverse plus a few extras all its own...

In short, for a New History, it's good but not great; it could have used a bit more of a timeline to solidify where the changes and fixes are as they did post Zero Hour.

PS: A point--Having read Venditti's Hawkman series a few years ago, that book's attempts to explain away the Hawks' convoluted continuity (thanks to Tim Truman's Hawkworld for a great story but a confusion that continues today) were solid and workable, but they're barely addressed in this history at all.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved Marv Wolfman's original History of the Unvierse. This one tries to model the same style, and has twice the issue count, which is appropriate half a lifetime later. But it just feels dull in comparison. Is it me? Is it increasingly muddled history? Or is it the book? I dunno. But so much of it just feels like an infinitely long list of character names.

I found it very telling how Waid (Barry) says, "Well after the Crisis, and especially after Flashpoint, nothing made sense, and everything was constantly changing." Well, yeah. And I also find it slightly reassuring that the claim is now things have stabilized. But of course editors have been unable to keep themselves from messing things up since the mid '80s.

As a whole, it's nice to have a touchstone for what the history is supposed to be and who's included in it. But it's also telling how much they elided, particularly in Nu52 era. Like it appears there was no longer a separate nu52 Superman? I'd have to guess most of the other nu52 rebooting is gone now too. But I'm not sure that's going to work out. And it looks like they kept the nu52 JL with Cyborg around, but tried to dovetail it into the traditional New Teen Titans run.

Wait, the Wildcats are omniversal travelers now? Does that make any sense in any of their appearances? And the Milestone heroes just had their entire city vanished? ... And so it begins.

[Cale · Rating 3 out of 5]

It gets a start for the sheer determination it must have taken to try to encapsulate all of the DC Universe into four issues. But I don't think it really pulls it off. And I think one decision is central to that failure - the choice to make it written in-Universe. We're shown Flash typing the story up, which is kind of cute, but means that the perspective is his, which should color some of his commentary, but doesn't. And dealing with eras where he was dead doesn't make sense either.
Look, this was an impossible task, and it does do some good work, especially in the cosmology of the story, weaving some very disparate threads into one semi-coherent whole. But there's just too much given short shrift or elided entirely, and it doesn't serve the DC Universe as a useful jumping on tool, because it assumes the reader has familiarity with a lot of the storylines, while not being deep enough to really appeal to the hardcore fans. It was always going to be a narrow tightrope to walk, and while it has its moments, I don't think it succeeds.

[Jadyn❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really impressive undertaking, and useful for keeping all the big events of the DC Universe in order the further out we get from them. There were a couple times where I thought “oh, that’s how we’re choosing to describe that going forward?”, mostly involving events from the 2000s through now, because that’s what I’m most familiar with. I guess these things are not for me to decide, and I understand that in order to fit so much history into such a comparatively short book, they can’t get into the context behind every statement. I think the thing I struggle with the most is that we’re still going with the version of events that set Cyborg’s origins as a Justice League character instead of a Titan first and foremost… not my favorite.

[Max Martin-Udry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Issue one: really cool art, and a nice frame around it so that its sort of a narrative. But a lot of this stuff is confusing, most glaringly Superman debuted in 1938 but in the DC universe he doesnt arrive on earth until after WWII… around the 20th century the history seems to get really garbled and I dont really get whats going on. But this is a fascinating series purely for the unbelievable amount of research and editing that has to be done. If DC continuity holds together as told in a 4 issue summarizing arc, that remains to be seen

[Colin Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly my kind of thing, basically an animated encyclopedia of DC history. The art is gorgeous, especially the contributions from the Allreds and Hayden Sherman. The whole package is well put together. The detailed timeline with citations to key issues is something I’ll be referring to quite a bit, and I very much appreciate the inclusion of most - if not all? - of the excellent variant covers from the single-issue releases. There are some really fun riffs on the different eras of DC’s publication design.

[Ángel Javier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Valiente pero un tanto árido intento de Waid por poner orden en el Universo DC, tarea titánica y condenada necesariamente al fracaso, pero que tiene que llevarse a cabo cada cierto tiempo por alguien que sepa mucho, pero mucho, mucho, de la inextricable continuidad de este cosmos de ficción.

A los lápices, una serie irregular de artistas, algunos mejores, otros peores, todos cumplidores. Las notas finales (bueno, ocupan como una tercera parte del cómic, en realidad) son todavía más aburridas que el tebeo en sí, pero igualmente imprescindibles. En fin, ni bien ni mal, solo... necesario.

[Nolan Buro · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent history that has 2 drawbacks, only one of which is it's own fault.

1: I wish the art was consistent. One artist per issue, if not one for the whole series. All the art is good, it just doesn't feel as substantial as the original history comic or the masterwork that is History of the Marvel Universe. Javier Rodriguez is God.

2. It should be illegal to remind me Doomsday Clock is a thing.

[Caleb Stallings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Waid is a walking encyclopedia, and his compilation and summation of all this material is astonishing. But harmonizing this much disjunction makes it all feel kind of trite.

We must reject the contemporary obsession with comics canon and continuity if we want to enjoy this medium. Taking it so literalistically and seriously undermines its mythic and aesthetic joy.

[Will Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads almost like a "Remember this?" which I didn't mind. Art was good. But there are a couplet hings that would come about where I would say, wait IS that what we are sticking with or did you change it again? For instance, instead of the JLA vs Starro for their first adventure, they go with Darkseid, even though a little later they talk about the New52 and say, just kidding.

[David Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more of an informative reference book than a ‘story’ but if that’s what you’re looking for then you should be happy with it — it’s a nice introduction to DC lore, with lots of research behind it clearly.

Generally speaking, the art layouts could have been better, but there are a few good ones to enjoy

[Mike Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Waid updated the history of the DC Universe and this is a pretty thorough read. I've been reading comics for years but this collected edition touched on characters I've never heard of. I also like that they bought in various artists to illustrate this book like Michael Allard, Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgins & Todd Nauck. Enjoyed this read very much.

[Cameron DeHart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun overview of the heroes and villains over DC history, including several minor character I didn't know about. The 4th volume was a bit confusion, perhaps because I'm not up-to-date on recent runs. But still a enjoyable 4-piece.

[Luke · Rating 1 out of 5]

An exceptionally dry history lesson in the world of DC. I sincerely don't get the appeal of these kinds of books; people who already know the lore don't need to have it regurgitated to them, and new folks will be overwhelmed and unimpressed by the sheer volume of names thrown in their faces.

[Nitish Dang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gotta give credit to Waid for trying to murk through and connect all the history of DC. Is it confusing/messy in this book and sometimes doesn't make sense - yes! but the fact that you can see Waid puts his passion into this story is good enough. Also the art is great.