You've seen how this works last week. Just going through each Earth on Grant Morrison's Multiversity map and seeing what we can glean from the picture, while also looking back at what these Earths used to be (often under Morrison's pen). Let's get right to it:
Earth-21 has an odd, but soft treatment, kind of like the "Colored pencil" filter in PhotoShop. It also sits on the "light" side of the map, but not too far from the edge. Post-52, this was tagged as the New Frontier Earth, a world stuck in the Silver Age period (if not its tropes). That may well mean Earth-8 is Bronze or later (see previous speculation), since NF could serve as a Silver Age Earth just as Earth-2 used to for the Golden Age era.
Post-52, this was the Kingdom Come Earth. If it still is, I'm surprised to find it on the light side, even if the older heroes won their war against the 90s-style anti-heroes. (Do Earths jump around the map based on positive and negative ethical events?) And then, according to the JSA comics, the world was ravaged. That's what those big pock marks in Africa and the Middle East are all about, right?
Earth-23 looks pretty normal there, far enough from the center to be quite "light". According to the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series (specifically, episode 1 of that series), this is that world's placement. That's light alright! HOWEVER, the comics tell a different story. According to Morrison himself, this is the home of "President Superman" (AKA near-Obama as Superman) as depicted in Action Comics #9 et al. Apparently, this is also where Prez ran the country from the White House, and the world includes a black Wonder Woman physically based on Beyoncé.
This batch of Earths features 4 of the 7 "unknown worlds", and in this case, they all look pretty much alike. Did we USED to know what was there? Barely. There's no information on them post-52, and the pre-52 "unlimited" model isn't much more detailed. Infinite Crisis mentions an Earth-25G, but no details beyond the name. Absolute Crisis gives the Earth-27 designation to the strange Earth seen in Peter Milligan's short Animal Man run, the ones whose natives include the Green Cigarette, the Front Page and the Notional Man. I liked that story arc and I'd love to see those characters again. I guess these four Earths are just more room for the Multiverse to grow now.
The cartoon face on Earth-26 gives it away: This is the funny animal world of Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew, tapped to appear in Multiversity, originally known as Earth-C. Why 26? 26th letter of the alphabet is Z for Zoo. Cute. (3 for C was taken, of course.)
Strange one! Bizarro World, obviously, and it's its own dimension/Earth as per All-Star Superman and its cameo in Infinite Crisis #6. I guess it's official, though I'm not sure it's justified by Bizarro lore.
Obviously, it's the Earth from Red Son, where baby Kal-El landed in the Ukraine and was raised as a Soviet citizen, leading to a different world order. While it sounds like it should end in a dystopia and be on the dark side of the map, I suppose good triumphed in the end, and communist or not, Superman stayed on the right path.
22 to go, let's keep going!
22 to go, let's keep going!
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