The CW is about to have an Invasion.
CBR has word that DC Comics aliens The Dominators will be the central villains of the upcoming DC superhero crossover event on The CW. The crossover will take place across all four CW shows set in the Arrowverse -- Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow. Arrow's 100th episode is expected to be part of the crossover.
"This year, for our mega ‘Arrowverse’ crossover," said Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim, "we’re taking inspiration from a DC crossover from the late 1980s known as Invasion!, which featured an alien race called the Dominators, who’d previously vexed the Legion of Super-Heroes. We’re using cutting-edge prosthetics and computer effects to achieve a feature film-quality look which is faithful to Invasion! artist Todd McFarlane’s interpretation of the characters."
Created in 1967 by Jim Shooter and Jim Mooney, the Dominators first appeared in Adventure Comics (vol.1) #361 as a 30th century confederation of worlds that sued for peace after two decades of war with the United Planets. With anti-Dominion feelings strong on Earth, the President called upon the Legion of Super-Heroes to ensure their ambassadors' safe arrival. The heroes were sent to the neutral planet, Politor, where they met the Dominators, a race characterized by blue skin, baldness, and round white discs on their foreheads which signify rank. Under orders from the President, the Legion oversaw the transport of the Dominators' ambassadors through the 10th dimension, a sub-universe in which a billion-mile trip is reduced to only five hundred miles.
A costumed group of villains called the Unkillables entered the 10th dimension, intending to strike and weaken the caravan at periodic intervals before finally destroying it. Their leader was revealed as the Dominators' deposed ruler, who sought to use the Unkillables for revenge. The Unkillables, found to be descendants of infamous assassins in Earth history, were turned into killers by one of his machines. As the Legion returned to Earth, the Dominators revealed that they are actually three-dimensional images, and that the real aliens have already reached Earth.
The Dominators were active in the 20th century as well, during the events of Invasion!, where they formed an Alliance of several alien races to invade Earth and eliminate the threat posed by their unpredictable metahumans. In secret, however, the Dominators wished to harness and breed their own army of metahumans, but this goal was kept secret from the rest of the Alliance, and from their own junior cadres. After purging the galaxy of numerous potential threats to their plan, such as securing Darkseid's non-interference by assuring him that they would not destroy the planet and thwart his quest for the Anti-Life Equation, assassinating many former members of the disbanded Green Lantern Corps, and attacking the Omega Men, the Alliance launched a massive attack on Earth, overrunning Australia and establishing there a base from which to conquer the rest of the planet. The Alliance made an offer to spare the human race provided that the world's governments surrender their metahumans, but the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly rejected this offer.
Superman led a counterattack against the main Alliance base, which was temporarily disrupted by the Daxamites, who temporarily defeated him, but fell prey to Earth's atmospheric differences from their own world. After Superman helped save them, the Daxamites decided to withdraw from the Alliance and help defend Earth. To that end, a small fleet of primarily troop transports arrived and demanded that invasion alliance to withdraw from Earth. The Dominators decided to ignore them, unaware of the effect of a yellow sun environment on Daxamites, until the fleet deployed several thousand soldiers into space as a near invincible attack force. This, combined with key defeats in various theaters, and a full-scale and uncontrollable riot aboard the Alliance Gulag, led to a quick collapse for the Alliance and individual surrenders by each former member.
Afterwards, a young Dominator, aspiring to prominence among his people, managed to isolate the human gene that made a person able to survive otherwise lethal episodes and develop superhuman powers. On his own initiative, he developed and deployed the Gene Bomb, a device that bathed the Earth in a weird energy and affected every metahuman exposed in malignant ways, causing them to lose control of their powers and eventually fall into a coma and die. Since the point of the invasion was to harness these beings, not eradicate them, the Dominator was imprisoned by his own government. Prior to his execution, a group of heroes unaffected by the gene bomb, led by the Martian Manhunter, managed to steal data from his mind crucial to reversing the effects of the gene bomb and restore most metahumans back to health. Ironically, the detonation of the Gene Bomb was actually responsible for the creation of several metahumans.
This will be the Dominators' first appearance in live-action, but they've appeared in a couple of animated projects, the Legion of Super-Heroes animated series and the direct-to-home video Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.
The four-way crossover is expected to air on The CW sometime in December.
