Editing Earth-Two (section)

===Introduction ("Flash of Two Worlds")===
[[File:Flash v1 123.jpg|thumb|upright|First appearance of Earth-Two in ''[[The Flash (comic book)|The Flash]]'' #123 (September 1961). Art by [[Carmine Infantino]] and [[Murphy Anderson]].]]
Characters from [[DC Comics]] were originally suggestive of each existing in their own world, as superheroes never encountered each other. This was soon changed with alliances being formed between certain protagonists. Several publications, including ''[[All Star Comics]]'' (publishing tales of the [[Justice Society of America]]), ''[[Leading Comics]]'' and other comic books introduced a "[[shared universe]]" among several characters during the 1940s. By the 1950s, as the popularity of superheroes was waning, comics shifted to horror, westerns and war. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman were among the few DC continued to publish.

Beginning in the late 1950s, the popularity of superheroes began to grow, and DC introduced more modern versions of its heroes. For example, [[Hawkman]] was an alien policeman instead of a reincarnated Egyptian prince. Older versions of DC characters were assigned to an "alternative reality" Earth that existed within its own fictional "universe" and could communicate with the Earth of the current, revised versions of those characters.

Alternative-reality Earths had been used in DC stories before, but were usually not referred to after that particular story. Most of these alternative Earths were usually so vastly different that no one would confuse that Earth and its history with the so-called real Earth. That would change when the existence of another reliable Earth was established in a story titled "[[Flash of Two Worlds]]"<ref>{{cite comic| writer=[[Gardner Fox|Fox, Gardner]]| penciller=[[Carmine Infantino|Infantino, Carmine]]| inker=[[Joe Giella|Giella, Joe]]| story=Flash of Two Worlds!| title=[[The Flash (comic book)|The Flash]]| issue=#123| date=September 1961}}</ref> in which [[Barry Allen]], the modern Flash later referred to as the Flash of [[Earth-One]] (the setting of the Silver Age stories) first travels to another Earth, accidentally vibrating at just the right speed to appear on Earth-Two, where he meets Jay Garrick, his Earth-Two counterpart. He claims Gardner Fox's dreams were tuned into Earth-Two, explaining their depiction as a fictional world in earlier Barry Allen stories.