Earth 3, Shattered Glass, "Mirror, Mirror" and the strange morality of mirror universes
Recently in Batman/Superman: World's Finest, we had a brief trip onto Earth-3, where moralities are reversed and heroes and villains swap places. And it's brought up a lot of thoughts I've been having about mirror universes and the worldbuilding you have to do for them.
I love a good mirror universe. To see heroes brought low on a bad day, or villains given a chance they might never have otherwise received is a great "what if?" scenario that I don't think we'll ever truly escape. And this was true back for the first occurences of this trope; in Justice League of America, Star Trek: The Original Series and Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie comics).
Absolutely iconic, even when they were first putting these ideas together, and didn't understand the narrative possibilities that would result from them. From then on, we've had introspective looks at the dark mirrors and the possibilities they could be, but for me, the one that always comes to mind is when Evil Sonic becomes Scourge, and he tries to pull the whole "one bad day" thing on Sonic, who then flips the script and pulls a "one good day" on Scourge.
But for all that it's fun to swap sides, redraw characters with more or less edginess and make them jerkier/nicer versions of themselves, there's a small flaw that comes built-in with mirror universes that I've never quite been able to get away from: how far does morality flip? And how dark does this become?
For example: Earth 3 is a well-known example of flipping the script. Ultraman, Owlman and Superwoman lead the Crime Syndicate, which are always opposed by Alexander Luthor and (sometimes) his Legion of Justice. (Occasionally, it's the Antimatter Universe, but I'll come back to that later.) Joker becomes Jokester and Cheetah becomes Savanna. All well and good. But then you get to some edge cases.
Where does Catwoman's counterpart fit into all of this? She was a villain for many years, but as of late she's become more and more heroic until she's just slipped past anti-hero to become a Byronic Hero. Does she get more villainous over time until eventually becoming a villain? Does Harley Quinn, or Poison Ivy? How many times will Jason Todd jump over the line in this altered universe? This is honestly easily dealt with; you could tell a pretty compelling story about falling to darkness, but it's not usually a story that's told in superhero comics; usually it goes the other way around.
And speaking of tales not usually told: who wins in the mirror universe? Grant Morrison's JLA: Earth 2 posited that morality and history were entirely flipped, up to and including the Theory of Narrative Causality that heroes will win and villains will not: the Antimatter Universe has a long arc, but it bends towards injustice. I do not like this kind of story: I think it's just watching the same sorts of people winning, but now they're jerks and we don't like them.
My biggest complaints about Crime Syndicate from 2021 actually tied into this: they were big jerks but still cast as the defenders, because of Starro's invasion of their world. So we're still watching them do the right thing, even if from enlightened self-interest. But I also think it failed to properly flip all the necessary character alignments, and just murdered all of the characters, which are another two problems I have with the genre. You could maybe make a meta argument about comic book death being flipped to anyone being able to die, but I'm going to gloss over that.
So the ideal mirror universe for me would be one in which erstwhile villains get to be heroic and stop villainous versions of erstwhile heroes. But then we get into a larger worldbuilding problem, and the crux of this essay: what is the environment like?
Flipping the entire morality of the heroes and villains is a little dodgy, but you can manage it with some good writing. Flipping the morality of the entire universe? Well, now you're going to get into problems. For instance: in JLA: Earth 2, the Antimatter Universe's history is the exact opposite of ours. In its first appearance in Justice League of America, England seceded from the United States, and Abraham Lincoln assassinated President John Wilkes Booth. The latter is weird, but you can manage it with some handwaving, but if the British Empire seceded from the United States, how many independence wars did it have to fight? Who were the good guys during the American Civil War? Were the Nazis the good guys of WWII? And who are the good guys in politics today?
Asking these kinds of questions makes them stop being about the mirror universe and about real-world politics. If you follow through to the end you create a world that stops making sense, more like the Bizarro universe Earth 29 than anything resembling what we really have, or could ever exist. Of all of the stories, most of them leave only trace acknowledgements of the misalignment of history: on Earth 3, they have the state of Arnold and the capital is Arnold, DC, and JFK was a man who wore a military uniform with a lot of medals before he died, implying a generalissimo attitude.
The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong by the unique Alan Moore is the only example I know that outright laid out the subtext of reverse universes: in Tom Strong, Ingrid Weiss is a recurring antagonist and Nazi; in the mirror universe of Earth-B, her counterpart is Ilsa Weiss, and she's the last relic of the heroic Nazi legacy of her world. (In addition to the cool design with the green armband, this book also gives us numerous alternate names for the alternate characters we encounter, bypassing the problem of specificity entirely, proving Alan Moore is not entirely insane.)
But this is the privilege of the exalted; I doubt anyone could make such a story without it causing some major headaches for everyone involved. More to the point, it's glossed over and inspecific, and if you read too hard into this lighthearted adventure story it can paint a pretty bigoted picture, at least from our perspective.
The solution to this, I would think, is: institutions and civilians have their morality left alone. Oh, we can flip some things here and there; talk about the great traitor George Washington, or mourn the assassination of the great President Booth, it's supposed to be fun like that. But we can leave things as they are in the civilian department, and roughly transpose our morality over to the mirror universe. Republicans still push for lower taxes and more racism, Democrats will still fight for the right to say they're gonna do something, cops and robbers still engage in the same moral ambiguity they do on our world. This would mean that cops and criminals from the original story should have the same relative morality in the new universe, so no Boss Gordon or Detective Falcone for us, though Apokolips and New Genesis could potentially be flipped to Revelaxion and New Destruction or something similar, leaving room open for a good version of Darkseid and an evil version of the Highfather Izaya. Forever Evil tried to do something like this with its worldbuilding, but in that case, it changed the entire morality system from good and evil to only valuing strength: it could have been interesting, but then everyone was a jerk and we didn't get any of that cool stuff from a morality flip.
And then, the bane of all good mirror universe episodes: the character traits that are not transposed. I'm going to define this the most, because in a moment I'll put my money where my mouth is, but I think mirror universe writers often fail to fully grasp what a good version of a villain or an evil version of a hero would actually be like. A part of this can be chalked up to the worldbuilding decisions for Earth 3: they often swap in and out various characters to fill different roles. Most notably, Superwoman is not Diana of Themyscira, but Lois Lane of the Amazons. Wonder Woman's counterpart in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is not this Superwoman, but Olympiad, a minion of the Syndicate, and their version of the Flash is Australian. And apparently in that same movie, Ultraman is not a Kryptonian at all, but I wasn't able to confirm that. So these are not good mirrors for our main heroes.
A surprisingly strong entry for the mirror universe brings us to our next point: the Sky Tyrant, from Hawkman (2018). That comic managed to do something interesting regarding Carter's reincarnation: that is, he would keep reincarnating until such a time as he had saved as many lives as he had destroyed in his first life as Ktar Deathbringer, but the version of him from Earth 3 had realized that, if he kept killing people, he would live forever. This is a fascinating portrayal of the character, and it feels emotionally realistic that he could become that fatalistic about the whole thing if things went wrong. And that phrase if things went wrong is what I want to focus on.
I think the best version of a mirror universe is the... Mirror Universe from Star Trek. Introduced in "Mirror, Mirror" of the original series, it is home to the Terran Empire, and there is where things get interesting. For it is a counterpart to the utopian Federation, and it starts as a branching-off point from our own universe that the main characters can never quite escape from. Discovery had its own take on physical differences (a sensitivity to light, for one) but for the most part, it works best as a societal antithesis that Star Trek as a whole is trying to escape from. It's not wholly reversed: the Klingons are still warriors, the Vulcans still logical, and the Cardassians still conniving. But with the Terran Empire being as brutal, fascistic and xenophobic as it is, they end up becoming the good guys by default. And the humans that are normally heroic end up being changed by their environment in ways that are distasteful to their prime counterparts, but not so far removed that we couldn't see ourselves ending up like that.
So, without this out of the way: how would I create a mirror universe? Let's start with DC, since it has a longer history with it; I'll go over some of the Justice League members and what I would do for their character arcs, since they're already established in various forms, and their alternate names will be useful in telling them apart. I'm going to ignore most canon versions thereof, so this version of Clark Kent will match Crime Syndicate more than JLA: Earth 2, but it's a statement of utility for my versions rather than an indictment of quality.
The last son of a dying world, Kal-Il was sent away by his father Jor-Il, a scientist of Krypton, in a rocket for a desperate attempt to save his son. Being found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, he would be raised in Smallville as their own. And that's where the problems started.
Evil Supermen are a dime-a-dozen, and badly-written evil Supermen plague edgy superhero comics. But most comics don't actually delve into what an evil Superman would be like, and instead make them a brute and a short-tempered, hair-trigger laser-cutter.
I think Alpha One from The Mighty comes closer than most to being accurate: he's charming, friendly and affable, but his ultimate goal is sinister, and it's all an act. My inspiration for Ultraman would be Superman from Injustice II.
I specifically call out Injustice II because in the first Injustice and Injustice years One through Five had Superman devolve into the brutish, angry archetype everyone finds so tedious. In the second game, the main threat is Brainiac, and everyone has to work together to stop him, which means that Superman gets to be an ally to Batman where they once were enemies. And the worst part? He is no less charming than he's ever been.
Superman is supposed to represent the greatest possible American, in a sense embodying the values we rarely live out ourselves. I think Ultraman, then, would be the great indictment against what small towns in America actually are, and this change would come through Smallville itself.
Smallville should be a shithole. Instead of the idyllic town where Clark gets to grow up, he grows up in the shambles of big corporations taking away people's farms, homes and lives. Desperation makes people act in uncomfortable and unsavory ways, and day-by-day people grew more desperate for a savior. Until Clark Kent, nice, kind, Clark, finally broke, and destroyed the machine of capital, thanks to the assistance of a shiny green rock he found. (I do want to keep the weakness to sunlight and empowerment by Kryptonite, if only because that makes it easier to contain him).
Ultraman should be nice, polite and never swear, but he should also be scary: the fascist you can talk to, the Nazi with a smile, the American belief in one strong man to set things right, standing tall and carrying a big stick. He should earnestly and honestly believe he's a hero, and that he's the only one who can possibly save our world from itself. Far more than any brute, I find this kind of power the most frightening, the kind that will ask for your obedience and won't let you say no. And he'll have fans.
Lex Luthor→Alexander Luthor
This one is trickier, because if you do things wrong you just recreate Tony Stark. Oh, a genius inventor who sells all kinds of things learns to appreciate heroism, but has a great number of flaws? Uh, RDJ plays Doctor Doom now, ya dingus!
So what do we want to say about him, instead? Well, if Ultraman is the ultimate failure of the American experiment, perhaps Alexander Luthor could be the limit of the American success story: perhaps he starts off running his business as morally as can be, but the appearance of Ultraman and the fawning normal people show to him will make him reconsider what is possible within the bounds of the law.
Lex Luthor on his best day is a humanist, and his hatred of Superman arises, in part, from his dislike of shortcuts to greatness, as seen in Lex Luthor: Man of Steel. The other part of it is sheer envy and hatred, of course, but I think we should carry that over into Earth 3.
So this version of Luthor is still a humanist, and he sees Ultraman as a hurdle to greatness that he has to fight outside of his business acumen. Perhaps he still builds a suit to take him on, a suit powered by the sun (maybe a connection to renewable tech? It would have to be more of a visual design element) to defeat Ultraman. I think LuthorCorp would have to be heavily invested in future tech and renewable resources, but the embrace of Ultraman's philosohy causes Alexander to rethink the slow and legal method of pushing people to greatness, and takes further steps that are a little more direct.
Lex Luthor often acts as a manipulator, using both money and legal acumen to prevent Superman from punishing him outright; on Earth 3, I think he would be better-suited as a resources guy, someone who connects people and supplies gear, rather than an outright fighter. I think Alexander should still have flaws similar to Lex: blinded by rage and hatred, spending so much time obsessing over how to defeat his enemy. The fact he focuses on Ultraman should be seen as a positive, but it should still be shown as unhealthy and unhelpful.
(Minor note: I think Mercy Graves should still be his assistant, but I think she should still be morally dubious; I think it'd be a funny dynamic to have heroic Alexander Luthor and pragmatic assassin Mercy Graves by his side. Also they should kiss.)
I'm going to just copy+paste his origin, with some tweaks, from Crime Syndicate (2021) #2: Thomas Wayne Jr. was a man who had everything ripped away from him in one night: his parents and younger brother Bruce murdered in cold blood. So he spent a lifetime training to take revenge on crime... only to learn that his parents were already far more invested, and they were killed as gang retaliation. Upon learning his quest for justice was flawed from the get-go, he murders Joe Chill and sets out to be better than his parents were.
The bulk of this portrayal copies a lot from the fatalistic Owlman of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, who wants to make the only choice that'll really matter in a multiverse where everything and anything is possible. But we can also expand on that.
Thomas Wayne Jr. should be a dark reflection of Batman's controlling tendencies. Where Bruce Wayne seeks out as many charities and good causes as he can find and puts money towards them to do more good work, Thomas Wayne Jr. seeks out the levers of power to bring them under his umbrella. And of course he'll have contingency plans for the Syndicate, but in this case you'll never be certain if they'll be used for such a dire circumstance, or merely a betrayal to gain more power. And he'll use fear to get what he wants where money doesn't work, seeking to control the very thing that killed his parents. And unlike Bruce Wayne, he won't care about anyone he has to hurt to get what he wants.
Commissioner Jim Gordon→Commissioner Jon Gordon
Just a short diversion into the civilian territory, it's the Comish! Like in the prime universe he'll be an ally of a certain caped individual, but in this case I think it should be a manipulation by a more powerful person into thinking Jon Gordon can use Owlman to help clean up crime. Sure, he's helping someone gain more power over the previous crime families, but that's a small price to pay for safe nights in Gotham, right?
Jon Gordon should have just as much moral backbone as Jim, but in this case it'll be rendered brittle by his alliance with Owlman. Folks will look at Jim and see a desperate, ambitious police officer, not a commissioner with a code. Potentially you could even use him to deconstruct the idea of the police as a force for good by showing him working with disreputable people to gain more territory in the city, but the focus should be on how Owlman manipulates people not directly under his control.
The man known as the Jokester was once an ordinary man, with ordinary goals, until he was forced into the Red Hood and, in one bad night with Owlman, was horrifically scarred and mutilated beyond recognition. But such a thing gave him something else besides purple hair and ruby-red lips: it freed him of all inhibitions, including fear.
I am aware of Cirque du Triopmhe as one of the more popular Earth 3 fanfics out there, and it'll be inevitable that some notes I have will overlap, but fortunately the ideas the author posits are excellent. Jokester is a man who mocks the powerful, and as Owlman gets stronger Jokester is the one who calls him out and stops his schemes. He also will represent the freedom of anarchy, and take up the slack of helping people where systems fail: moving food and medicine, giving people shelter, helping someone with a job, you name it. And like the original, his backstory should never be revealed; even the implication that he's something supernatural should be merely an implication, or a lie he makes himself. For what is a good joke if you tell it the same way every time?
Formed from clay on the island of Themyscira, Diane was made for one purpose: to serve as a bridge between their world and the world of men. But as soon as Stephen Trevor brought her into that world, her disgust of men grew, and her willingness to use domination grew with it.
Grant Morrison gets some flak for Wonder Woman: Earth One part 3, but I think they were honest in continuing the philosophy William Marston made Wonder Woman with, even if in practice it comes across very strange. In the case of Superwoman I think that dissonance should be turned up: Superwoman follows the Amazons' way in her own mind, but her outright disgust over what the world of man is like tips her into the militant version of it. Very much Aresia from Justice League: "Fury", though I think a little more practical than she was.
If we are to make Superwoman a symbol of anything, I think it should be the failure of radical feminism. Being raised as separate from the world gave her an elevated view of the Amazons, but also of men, viewing them as a kind of noble savage. It's only when she has to deal with the realities of men (and God knows that's hard enough!) that she falls into a supremacist mindset.
I have heard some folks say that an evil version of Wonder Woman should be more like Kratos or Heracles, and while I think this is a fine take on its own, I have two problems with it.
Heroes Reborn over at Marvel already did it with Power Princess. Already an alternate-company equivalent to Wonder Woman, she was used here as a corrupted version, and she's a god-killing blood knight, the last of her kind because she wiped out the others.
Wonder Woman is inherently tied to feminism. I think a Wonder Woman who behaves like a classical Greek hero is something that could be very interesting on its own, but it's not what Wonder Woman is about. It follows, then, that her core values of gender equality should be corrupted into something a little more sinister. But that doesn't mean you can't deconstruct ancient Greece, either.
Like how Ultraman corrupts American ideals into something darker, Superwoman should display a lot of regressive ideas about gender couched in a feminist perspective. Potentially, you could also throw some ideals of that heinous bitch JK Rowling on the pile and have her being transphobic. It's probably not a perfect fit as the ancient Greeks were queer in a lot of ways we're not, for good and for ill. Potentially you could combine the idea of the Superwoman of ancient Greek morality and copy in some ideas of what the Greeks believed about sexuality; Athens and Sparta were massive outliers for this, but since Superwoman already has a history of being very sexually domineering, you could wrap that up in it. But I'm not that well-versed on the ins and outs of ancient Greek sexuality, so I hesitate to go into great detail; suffice to say that she should like a lot of man's world, but it will be with a condescending, White Savior™️ tone.
Cheetah→Savanah and 3!Circe
This'll be a short section. Cheetah on our world has been the dark side of feminism, which is to say she represents the way women can lash out when given power, but that means that the heroic Savanah is just a woman given power who uses it to liberate other women. You could get some juicy drama from her desire to eat human flesh, and she can compare to Superwoman by trying to wrestle the goddess into the mud with the rest of us.
Circe is a little trickier. I don't want to change myths any for Earth 3, so that means Circe is still an isolated woman who turns men into pigs for her own amusement. If we are to make her heroic, my best guess would be she would represent the need for self-segregation: to have gender equality means we need gender-specific spaces, and she would represent the skepticism we should have towards men and those in power. I think she should be jaded but heroic, doing the right thing despite being annoyed about it; to be honest, kind of like John Constantine. Just maybe more gay?
The Flash→Johnny Quick, Reverse-Flash→Reverse-Quick and the Rogues→The Rangers
As a young man, Jonathan Chambers saw his father locked up for a crime he didn't commit. And unlike our Barry Allen, Johnny had a penchant for getting into trouble, and when lightning struck him, he was ready to be a menace. But a mysterious figure has been watching him all his life, someone who's obsessed with his legacy and future...
Johnny Quick should be an asshole. The Flash has always been kind of a troll for his enemies, and this should carry through to Johnny Quick as someone who mocks and pokes at his enemies until they get annoyed with him. But I also think he should retain Barry's science hero tendencies converted to evil, using his skills with tech and machines to wreak havoc where he can't with his powers.
There's surprisingly little of a Reverse-Quick for DC Comics; since Reverse-Flash is already an evil version of the Flash, on Earth 3 he becomes a mirror of a mirror of a mirror. But like the Reddit post I shared there I think having him be an obsessed fanboy works just as well, but in this case he's dedicated to being the one to bring Johnny Quick down so that he can make a name for himself.
The Rangers would borrow a lot from Commander Cold, a potential future character from main continuity who is part of a heroic group modeled on the Rogues. But instead of being cops I think they'd need to be independent on Earth 3's Central City, and their bargain with Johnny Quick about not killing or involving innocents is something Quick does to entertain himself, and despite the fact the two are mutually opposed I think the respect should remain.
This is the one I think about the most, because I strongly dislike the direction Power Ring took in later continuities. I don't like the idea of a singular ring going around and causing problems; but I do think the idea of an anti-Green Lantern Corps (not to be confused with the Anti-Green Lantern Corps) where they can represent the worst that policing has to offer. And emblematic of them is:
Harold Jordan! A man who was raised with no fear, who saw his father die before his very eyes, and acted as if he had never been afraid ever. But when a dying alien falls to Earth and summons someone of strong will, Harold Jordan will find himself possessor of - or rather, possessed by - a ring of Volthoom. And it is hungry for a man of great will.
For all that I don't like Power Ring as a singular, unique individual, I do appreciate that the ring outright feeds on willpower, making its user weak and rely on it. Granted, it sought out people who were afraid and made them think they had no control at all, but I think the idea of feeding on the color that you use is more interesting. Plus there would be a consistent horror to using the rings that only exists in the peripheral Lanterns in main continuity.
It would also paint the Guardians of the Universe in a very dark light. I imagine that they were fine with the Manhunters to begin with, but found it tedious to keep giving orders, and created the Volthoom rings to create agents that could act freely but are forced to follow commands when necessary. From there, you could easily fold over to Thaal Sinestro (maybe just known as Thaal?) who was also a victim of the ring but escaped. And this would lead to the new Lantern Corps, although I would rename them to avoid the use of color+"Lantern" that wouldn't exist here
Power Gauntlet: draws rage from the user. Victims to their own rage are given clarity, but other Gauntlets can keep fighting with the same clarity when their comrades have fallen. Their leader, Virtuous (no Atrocitus here!) was a victim of the Guardians, but chose to use his anger to campaign hard against them, and has remained a thorn in their side.
Power Belt: Larfleeze is the only known agent, and his orange belt drains greed. A man who wants for nothing, it is hard to motivate him to act against the Guardians, but if you give him a reason he will campaign with all his might.
Power Band: Thaal Sinestro was a Power Ring for many years until he found the Emotional Spectrum and freed himself using the yellow light of fear. The band drains fear from the individual, meaning they are fearless in a fight, and it's also one of the greater weaknesses of the Power Rings. Thaal has usually been the face of the corps, but his daughter Soranik has often stepped in to take his place.
Power Helm: Devil Walker was a pious man, up until the day he found the helm of blue light. Since then, he has felt no hope, no faith, values nothing except to show others the despair he experiences. The power of the blue light drains hope from even Power Rings, and when you have no will and no hope, you become extremely willing cogs in the machine. But the Helms do not care for most affairs, and it takes a great deal for them to rouse themselves to actively cause greater despair.
Power Stave: Abin Sur, before he died, was keenly interested in experiments with compassion, and how to remove it. Of this came the staves of the indigo light, which he handed off to people of great compassion to corrupt saints into killers. And their leader, Indigo-Prime, is keen on adding more perfect, fallen trophies to the collection.
The Indigo Tribe is tricky. In mainstream comics they seek out those without compassion and force it on them, something between brainwashing and rehabilitation. But this also works markedly similar to the Orange Lantern, which forces greed upon any who wield its light, so for all that it's less special, I think the fact it grants more control rather than less provides some interesting possibilities on the stories that could be told with it.
Star Ruby: long ago, the Zamarons branched off from the Oans, AKA the Guardians of the Universe, and sought out their own method of control and peacekeeping. But what they found in the darkness was love: love drove people to madness, to commit acts they wouldn't otherwise do, drive them to madness. So the Star Ruby rings were created, and sent out to those feeling inordinate love to drive it away. For many, this brings with it a temporary clarity and understanding of their own romantic relationships; for Karol Ferris, former lover of Harold Jordan AKA Power Ring, it was a hurdle to reunite with her most beloved idiot, one which she has in recent years overcome.
The modern Star Sapphire ring has been greatly altered from its original intention. Originally, it was a power that drove users mad with love, and made them lash out in emotional ways. But in today's comics, Carol Ferris can use the ring just as easily as Hal Jordan can use a Green Lantern ring, seeming to imply that control of the ring is possible. It has some abilities which set it apart from the GL rings, but most of the abilities are shared.
To have a ring that feeds on love feels bad to start with, but I think if you consider the Zamarons consider love to be the highest state of being, the good versions of them would try to purge unhealthy love from people. Potentially, the rings could be selective in their hosts, only going to those who would otherwise lash out in manic love rather than wholesome, trusting relationships.
I was planning to do a few others (like Sea King for Aquaman or some more of Owlman's allies) but this post has taken me a long time already to write. At this point, I'm continuing on from sheer investment, so I'll cut it off here and come back to it later if there's enough demand. But all that is to say: mirror universes have a lot to offer, and knowing the hurdles and the character traits you want to deconstruct can make the mirror universe hit all the harder.
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