DC's Forgotten Earth Uses The Marvel Universe's Best Idea

screenrant.com:

In order to create one of their most ambitious alternate Earths, it seems that DC took a page out of the book of their main competition, Marvel. The short-lived imprint known as Tangent Comics showcased an alternate DC Universe stripped of everything but its names to create a brand-new, yet eerily familiar world. The Tangent realm was so vastly different from its sibling world that it actually wound up resembling the Marvel Universe more than DC.

Envisioned by Dan Jurgens, the Tangent Comics line was created in 1997. Composed of a number of one-shot stories, the imprint created an entirely new world of heroes, sharing nothing but the names of characters from the main DC Universe. Though the line only ran until 1998, the world was revisited in a sequel, Tangent: Superman’s Reign, as well as the weekly Convergence miniseries. Earth Tangent was also officially designated as Earth-9 in DC’s restructured multiverse and several of its characters, such as Green Lantern, have subsequently reappeared.

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Interestingly enough, because the world was only “tangentially related” to the DC Universe, it was allowed to explore concepts the main universe wasn't able to. According to Dan Jurgens, Earth Tangent was meant to show “an Earth greatly influenced by the presence of super-powered beings”. Jurgens’ line emphasized “Earth Tangent’s economic, geographic, and political landscapes are defined by the superhero community”. While the world presented to readers was barely recognizable as the DC Universe, the idea of a world that had so much of its society influenced by superhumans made it seem that Earth Tangent was borrowing a key aspect that the Marvel Universe had used for