5. The 52 Writers Are DC Villains
DC ComicsThe inside jokes on our list so far have varied in their levels of subtlety. Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang bring us lower than ever before with their back-up stories in Tales of the Unexpected #1-8, which sees Doctor Thirteen in conflict with the Architects of the DC Universe. Both figuratively and literally. Architecture and Morality is an in-universe equivalent of a DC editorial meeting, as an ancient force called the Architects determine which fictional characters should remain a part of the universe and which simply don't belong. We follow the story of forgotten DC characters like caveman Anthro, Golden Age throwback Genius Jones and the swashbuckling Captain Fear, who sail a ghost ship across the high seas away from a huge four-headed monster who tries to crush their boat between its gigantic hands, bellowing that it was "nothing personal" but they "never loved" the characters. If that wasn't obvious enough then in the next story they reappear, this time as four separate beings who look like regular guys wearing masks of DC heroes and evangelise about the need to reinvent the universe constantly so it can remain current and survive. So clearly this is all referring in a very self-conscious way to the people who work behind the scenes at the publishers, but who exactly? And why? Well, this was around the time of Infinite Crisis and 52, two huge continuity-fixing crossover events that slimmed down the history and characters of the bloated DC Universe and aimed to make it all a lot easier to deal with. At the expense of characters who were all but erased from existence, principally caused by those books' writers. Those writers? Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka. The foursome whose heads appeared on the hydra-like Architect we first see, and then are drawn as they actually look in real life, albeit with their faces concealed behind some of the company's flagship characters, and ones they all worked on: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and The Flash. So this is a story all about how the DC Universe has been rewritten, starring the people who actually rewrote it in real life. Our brains hurt. What level of Inception is this?