Return to the glory days of superhero crossovers with the 80s inspired The Wrong Earth – Purple

It’s that time of here – big summer superhero event announcement season. We have your Judgement Day at Marvel (opens in new tab), your Flashpoint Beyond (opens in new tab) at DC… but for fans of the original superhero comics crossover events, they lack a certain nostalgic quality … you know, from the ’80s. Well, now someone is filling that void with The Wrong Earth: Purple.

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 main cover

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 main cover (Image credit: Jamal Igle (AHOY Comics))

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Spinning out of the meta multiversal creator-owned series The Wrong Earth (opens in new tab) by Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle, the May one-shot The Wrong Earth: Purple by Stuart Moore and Fred Harper takes the franchise’s Batman-esque hero Dragon-Fly and drenches him in ’80s nostalgia.

“The Wrong Earth: Purple is Fred’s and my love letter to the ’80s,” Moore tells Newsarama. “That decade wasn’t just big hair, shoulder pads, and George Michael music – it was a dark time of angel dust, Wall Street greed, and bloodthirsty vigilantes. It also saw the birth of modern comics and the modern superhero movie, which made it the perfect setting for our very own, rubber-suited Dragon-Fly. So close your eyes, let that sax solo wash over you, and repeat after me: You belong to the city. You belong to the night…”

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 variant cover

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 variant cover (Image credit: Jerry Ordway (AHOY Comics))

If you’re humming along to those lyrics, that’s Glenn Fry’s ‘You Belong to the City (opens in new tab)‘; recorded back in the ’80s specifically for the seminal Miami Vice (opens in new tab) TV series.

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 will introduce an ’80s-themed alt-universe called Earth-Kappa, which publisher AHOY Comics calls “a dark but glossy world of big hair, shoulder pads, Wall Street traders, rubber super-suits, and funk music.”

Speaking of rubber super-suits, check out this The Wrong Earth: Purple variant cover by Jerry Ordway, an homage to his own cover to the Batman 1989 Movie Adaptation (opens in new tab).

The Wrong Earth: Purple variant cover

The Wrong Earth: Purple variant cover (Image credit: Gene Ha (AHOY Comics))

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The Wrong Earth: Purple is part of a larger series of one-shots coming this spring featuring unique spins on The Wrong Earth series. There’s the Archie-inspired The Wrong Earth: Trapped on Teen Planet, a beefy The Wrong Earth: Meat, a sidekick switcheroo in The Wrong Earth: Confidence Men, and the heady money-centric The Wrong Earth: Fame & Fortune.

“Words will be written, words will be deleted, and nothing will ever be the same,” says The Wrong Earth co-creator (and AHOY Comics editor-in-chief) Tom Peyer in the event’s announcement. “This is Crisis on Infinite Earths (opens in new tab), minus the line-wide consequences that made it interesting. This is Secret Wars (opens in new tab) without toys. This is the kind of epic, superheroic storytelling that publishers and CFOs love, where the tail of wealth-enhancing variant covers wags the dog of art.” 

Nostalgia plus some sardonic satire, that’s what this The Wrong Earth is about

The Wrong Earth: Purple goes on sale May 18.

Both Marvel and DC have had their fair share of memorable superhero events. 

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