DC Comics has numerous parallel Earths, but none are as infamous as Earth-3, home to the evil Crime Syndicate. This dark mirror of the mainstream earth is a world where even the Justice League has been corrupted into evil, and every standard hero from DC has a villainous counterpart. Or at least, that’s what readers have been led to believe. Because Earth-3’s version of Wonder Woman proves that not every DC hero has a counterpart in the Crime Syndicate.
The Crime Syndicate dates back all the way to the Silver Age of Comics, where an evil version of the Justice League was first introduced 1964 in Justice League of America #29. The Syndicate was made up of dark versions of the classic Justice League roster—Superman was Ultraman, Batman was Owlman, Wonder Woman was Superwoman, etc. The concept of the Syndicate was then later revisited by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely in JLA: Earth 2. But what’s interesting is that Morrison and Quitely’s Superwoman wasn’t an evil version of Princess Diana: she was Lois Lane! For one reason or another, Diana of Themyscira never received an Earth-3 counterpart in modern continuity.
As part of DC’s current reimagining of the multiverse in Infinite Frontier, the Crime Syndicate has been revived once more. Crime Syndicate, written by Andy Schmitt and drawn by Bryan Hitch and Kieran McKeown is a six-issue mini-series that shows a new version of the Earth-3 supervillain team with an updated roster of characters. And like the previous Superwoman, this new Superwoman isn’t an evil version of Wonder Woman-this time she’s been identified as Earth-3’s version of Donna Troy.
Crime Syndicate #2 contains an easy-to miss scene where Superwoman refers to “Dear departed Diana,” meaning that Diana is apparently dead in this reality. That would confirm that there was an Earth-3 version of Diana at one point, but now she’s gone. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Earth-3 Diana was evil however. Because Earth-3 is the inverse of the normal DC universe, it is quite literally a law of reality that evil triumphs over good in this world. It’s entirely possible that, unlike the rest of the Crime Syndicate, Princess Diana was too morally good to be corrupted by Earth-3 and therefore had to be killed off in order for their universe to function as intended.
This theory is not without precedent either. Just look at Owlman. Rather than being an evil Bruce Wayne, Crime Syndicate #2 also establishes that Owlman is actually Bruce’s brother Thomas Wayne Jr., who in this universe became a brutal vigilante after his parents and Bruce were both murdered by a Gotham City crime boss. This detail wasn’t even invented by the new mini-series: JLA: Earth-2 also establishes that Owlman is Thomas Wayne jr. as well. And that was the same comic that revealed how evil always defeats good in Earth-3.
The implications of the original Wonder Woman being dead in the Crime Syndicate’s world are interesting to say the least. It could easily be yet another example of how Earth-3 is the inverted version of the regular Earth or it could be implying that Earth-3 no longer works how it was originally advertised in JLA: Earth-2. If Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman were too good to turn evil in Earth-3, then that would imply there are other characters who similarly cannot be corrupted into evil. And if this is true, then it could spell big trouble for the Crime Syndicate in the future.
