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, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book

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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[Sam Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars

Not only have we still not changed Cindy Reynolds codename from a slur in the year of our lord 2026 (2025 when it was written), we have a white washed Connor Hawke (why does he look like an Italian with a tan?), characters straight up forgotten (how do we forget JERICHO he’s literally Slade Wilson’s son?! he’s literally been adapted into live action ffs), and other things not even important enough to be brought up in the narrative of the story that probably should have been (Iris and Barry having kids! I mean Barry is literally telling this story 😭, almost no mention of the Authority at all?).

Like obviously you’re not gonna be able to include everything but this stuff bothers me and this is my review

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Jaq Greenspon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the four individual issues and they’re rather well researched but not a story. Also, the art is inconsistent at best.

[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)

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Waid takes on the thankless task of trying to force DC Comics continuity to make sense and does about as good of a job as you could hope for.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not even Mark Waid can make the past ten years of "DC CRISIS ALERTS!" matter to me, or make sense. At this point, stop caring about canon and just use *s when needed.

[Julian Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to read a book like that and to not feel repetitive. Serves as a DC blueprint and would be pretty nice for a first time reader.

[Jadcy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Waid es una enciclopedia de DC con patas, y lo amo por eso

[Bill Sleeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typical DC bombast! Everything is a CRISIS! So glad I read this from the local library as I’d be kicking myself if I had paid for it! My recommendation….don’t bother!

[Benjamin Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A resources that should be on every dc fans shelf. A little more skimmy than I was hoping for but I would imagine those appendices with all the sources make up for excited to go through those when I get this in hard copy. I just heard that they are making a new history of the dc universe:Dakota incident to go more in depth on those retcons I assume. I really hope this is a start of a trend if this is just a series of miniseries from here on out that go more into depth on the rougher events or more confusing contradictions that would be sooooo cool. Only works if the writers use it and I hope they do!