You ever wonder why, out of all the planets in the DC Universe, Earth specifically has so many superheroes with incredible powers? I’d like to posit a theory today that it’s a matter of survivorship bias. After all, the universe is an extremely dangerous place. Without that incredibly dense population of world-saving heroes, it simply wouldn’t exist anymore, probably many times over. Take, for example…pretty much every other significant planet in DC cosmology. More often than not, they’ve been blown up, wiped out, or otherwise devastated by some cosmic entity or circumstance.

Skeptical? Here’s a rundown of some of the most famous planets in DC history and their untimely demises.
 

Krypton

Really, the genesis of the DC Universe as we know it today began with a planet’s destruction. Page 1, panel 1 of Action Comics #1 shows us the explosion of Superman’s homeworld, as the as-yet-unnamed baby Kal-El rockets across the stars to a new home as Krypton’s only survivor. What exactly destroyed Krypton is still a matter of debate, from ecological collapse, to resource exploitation, to the specific actions of some malefactor. We launched a special investigation into the issue back in 2021. But maybe if the world had a few more heroes, things would have turned out differently.
 

Xanshi

Then again, it’s sometimes the presence of a hero which specifically brings about a planet’s demise. Or rather, perhaps one hero too few. The most notorious planetary destruction in DC history that didn’t occur in flashback, the world of Xanshi represents one of our greatest hero’s greatest failures.

The death of Jason Todd wasn’t the only 1988 tragedy crafted by Jim Starlin for DC Comics. In Cosmic Odyssey, it was a cocksure, relatively still inexperienced John Stewart who in a misguided display of ego insisted on confronting terrorists who had placed a bomb in the planet’s core without Martian Manhunter’s help. What Stewart should have realized was that, as a pre-Geoff Johns Green Lantern story, his inability to affect anything yellow was going to come into play at the worst possible time. Such was the color of the bomb itself, leaving Stewart with no way to protect the planet from its demise and, ever after, standing as a costly lesson in Stewart’s own development. Today, years later, he stands as the most responsible of Earth’s Green Lanterns.
 

Any Lantern Home World

Contrary to our talk of heroism, if you’re looking for the least safe place to be in the universe, it’s probably anywhere that the powers that be have chosen to park a Central Power Battery. Going back to the demise of the Green Lantern Corps in Emerald Twilight at the hands of Parallax, any world that holds that amount of concentrated power, in contrast to the non-centralized superpowers of Earth, is going to make for a prime target by malevolent forces.

Move the Green Lanterns to Mogo? Maybe Mogo gets blown up in the Sinestro Corps War. Start your own Corps in defiance of the Green Lanterns? Say goodbye to your home world of Korugar in The Wrath of the First Lantern. And really, best of luck if you’re a Blue Lantern. Without the power of the Green to work in tandem with them, every world the Blue Lanterns have attempted to make their home has been razed by forces beyond their control—the Reach in the early New 52, the ancient lightbearer-hunting Relic just a few years later and the United Planets only recently. Sometimes it can seem like the thing the universe abhors most is hope.
 

Thanagar

Thanagar’s had its troubles in the past, most notably in the Rann-Thanagar War and a near extinction event in Dark Nights: Metal. But only recently, in Green Lantern Corps #2, was Hawkman’s homeworld really cracked open. And we mean that literally. After a disempowered group of former Red Lanterns attempt to tap into the energy at its core, the planet Thanagar hatched like a cosmic egg, birthing the Thanagarian and ancient Egyptian bird god Horus back into the world. When we last checked, Horus was leading the surviving, scattered Thanagarians on a pilgrimage to a new homeworld. Just goes to show that no unexploded planet in the DC cosmos stays that way forever.
 

Tamaran

We’d like to single out Tamaran, homeworld of Starfire of the Teen Titans, for the rather dubious honor of being destroyed three times in the span of six years.

Starfire co-creator Marv Wolfman originally wrapped up his sixteen-year run on the Titans with a story that saw the world’s greatest enemies, the Psions, implode the planet’s core in 1995’s The New Titans #128. The surviving Tamaraneans would settle a new world, which they dubbed New Tamaran. Less than a year later, New Tamaran was consumed by a Sun Eater in the overture of The Final Night as a light snack before making its way to our own sun. This left the few Tamaraneans who were off-world at the time of both disasters to settle a third planet. Which, as led by Starfire’s brother Ryand’r, they did, finding a new home on the Gordanian world of Karna. That worked out a little better until 2001’s Our Worlds at War where, once again, to establish the stakes at hand, the conquering villain Imperiex Prime destroyed their home.

Which brings us to the nature of the problem here. To credibly establish a villain or destructive force as a viable threat, we have to see for ourselves that it’s capable of actually doing the thing it threatens. These worlds are imperiled and eradicated to raise the stakes for Earth itself. The truth is that Earth is the safest planet in the universe because it’s the one we’re from. But to keep the threats that come here on a weekly basis from seeming completely ineffectual, we’re always going to see those cosmic evils wash over other worlds first before they get to us.

Which is all to say, if you’re an alien seeking safety, why not come to Earth? We definitely have our problems, but it’s safe to say having our planet turn out to be an egg for a mythical god is probably not going to be one of them.

Well, unless we’re dealing with a Crisis event or Grant Morrison’s doing the writing. Then all bets are off.
 

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.