With over a decade of TV shows, comics, and other media appearances, DC's Arrowverse - the shared universe of superhero shows that aired on the CW network - is arguably the definitive interpretation of many DC heroes for a generation of fans. An early selling point of Arrowverse comics was that they "counted." In the earliest days of the franchise, Arrow Season 2.5 and The Flash: Season Zero were supposedly canon.

Of course, that was about a decade ago. In the time since those comics were first introduced, there have been several additional seasons of those shows, plus a number of spinoffs. The Arrowverse developed in unpredictable ways, and for new fans, it's reasonable to wonder if any of these comics are actually required reading or not.

Ultimately, "required" is probably too strong for any of them - after all, they're comic book tie-ins to shows that had millions of viewers - but it's still worth asking whether the events of the comics are still supposed to "count" in-universe.

The Comics of the Arrowverse Span Many Years

Which Books Are We Looking At, Anyway?

During the course of its run, the Arrowverse spawned a number of related media. From TV and internet shorts, to animated movies, to a number of comic books, the world that started with Arrow expanded out to be one of the biggest superhero universes ever put on screen. The comics include Arrow, The Flash: Season Zero, Arrow Season 2.5, The Adventures of Supergirl, Arrow: The Dark Archer, and the "event" series Crisis on Infinite Earths: Paragons Rising and Earth-Prime. The events included characters from nearly every Arrowverse show.

All of these comics were written with the idea that they would be part of the shows' continuities...

All of these comics were written with the idea that they would be part of the shows' continuities, but not all of them have stood the test of time. That's largely because, after the comic was already out, a TV show would decide to use characters or concepts from the comics and interpret them differently. That is a common way of approaching tie-in media, and its level of "canon" boils down to "it counts...until it doesn't." As Star Wars fans have learned the hard way over the years, things can count right up until the main storytelling medium - whether it's TV, movies, or something else entirely - overwrites them.

How Does Superman & Lois Fit into Arrowverse Continuity?

One Arrowverse Show Had a Twist That Threw Everyone for a Loop

In Superman & Lois's second season, fans learned that they had been watching an alternate universe's version of the characters the whole time. This wasn't the Superman and Lois who had been part of the "Elseworlds" and "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossovers of Arrowverse canon, but counterparts from a different Earth, giving the show no continuity to worry about and no casting choices that they would have to carry over from Supergirl and the other Arrowverse shows. But Superman and Lois appeared in the Paragons Rising and Earth-Prime series, leaving continuity muddled. Superman & Lois writer Adam Mallinger explains for ScreenRant:

With regard to the comics, everyone involved saw them as part of the canon, to the point that certain stories were vetoed so they wouldn't get in the way of later episodes. DC's vision was that each show would have a standalone issue that led to EVERYONE teaming up in a crossover for the final one.

When the representative writers of each show gathered in a large Zoom [meeting], it was the STARGIRL reps who chimed in and pointed out "Courtney doesn't even know about the multiverse yet, and if she's gonna meet the other shows, we want to save that for an actual episode."

And then the [SUPERMAN & LOIS] team agreed, pointing out that while no one else knew this yet, our Superman and Lois were on a different Earth and hadn't met any of the other characters. Their first encounter shouldn't happen in a comic book either.

Further, while Kate Kane HAD met The Flash and Legends, Ryan Wilder hadn't, so her introduction to anyone else probably belonged on TV too.

If the idea was that nothing in these issues counted, we would have just forged ahead and done a crossover accepting that any future televised crossover would overwrite it. The comics reach a fraction of the TV audience... there's never a world where reading a comic would be allowed as precedent for a story.

Of course, s--t happens. We wanted a "white whale" for Lois to be investigating in the flashbacks. Anticipating the use of Lex Luthor in later seasons, my co-writers and I decided Bruno Mannheim would instead be her target, and he was drawn in the style of his comic counterpart... who looks NOTHING like Chad L. Coleman. No one would argue the show shouldn't have cast him on that basis.

If you enjoy the stories, it doesn't matter if they "count." Plenty of great episodes of TV - like many fantastic episodes of STAR TREK - seem to live in a vacuum from the rest of their series.

Mallinger explains how the Earth-Prime crossover evolved from its original pitch into its final form, providing useful background information to what is the last Arrowverse comic ever published. As Mallinger notes, one reality facing anybody who works on tie-in media is that it can be written out of continuity at any point, as those working on the "main" stories - in this case, the TV shows - will always trump it if there's a conflict.

The Early Arrowverse Comics Are the Closest to True Canon

What About the Very First Arrowverse Comics?

Early Arrowverse comics were originally the closest to canon, at least according to DC and the producers, but were also released so early in the life of the shared universe that they were likely to be overwritten as time went on. And that did happen to some extent. The first Arrow comic tends to stand alone and not cross into the show too much, but it was made when Oliver was just a hooded vigilante who killed evil rich guys. There are relatively few DC characters in the comic and, since it was written by producers Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg, it plays well with the first season.

The Flash: Season Zero similarly has solid characterization and references events from the show, but it isn't long before things start to get a little iffy in of canon. In fact, out of the twenty-four published chapters, only two appear to still "count." The reasons, mostly, have to do with concepts and characters that were introduced in the comic that were later reinvented for TV. Examples include stories involving Melting Pot and King Shark that are completely different from comics to TV, and changes to the backstory of Heat Wave and Captain Cold.

Arrow Is a Special Case in of Its Connected Comics

Most of the Arrow Comics Seem to Hold Up

The Arrow comics are a fascinating case study, as they seem largely immune to the kind of issues that the Flash comics and others have. Of course, part of that is likely the involvement of Guggenheim, who showran Arrow, co-created DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and served as the showrunner for the Arrowverse events like Crisis on Earth-X and Crisis on Infinite Earths. While the first Arrow series had only a few throwaway references that were later invalidated, Arrow Season 2.5 only has one story that's been retconned because it killed off Bronze Tiger, who later returned in a major role on Arrow.

Interested in current comics starring Oliver Queen? The latest Green Arrow story begins in a story from Green Arrow #17 by Chris Condon, Montos, Adriano Lucas, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, available now from DC Comics.

The other Arrow comics centered on Malcolm Merlyn, the Dark Archer, and since those are prequel books that center on a side character, it's even easier to tell a story that doesn't conflict with anything else. After all, as the first season's Big Bad, it's likely that the producers had already thought out all of Merlyn's backstory ahead of time, allowing them to use concepts that were already "quietly" canon rather than coming up with a new story entirely from scratch and building on DC myth.

The Later Arrowverse Comics Travel Beyond Earth-Prime and into the Arrow Multiverse

Supergirl and the Events

Like the Arrow comics, The Adventures of Supergirl was written by someone who was closely associated with the TV show. Sterling Gates wrote it and was one of the most public voices of the Supergirl creative team throughout the show's run. As one might expect, he threads the needle pretty well, with only a few minor continuity hiccups, and it's likely that the story remains in continuity by virtue of focusing more on existing characters rather than introducing new stuff that might be overwritten later.

The event comics are similar. With heavy involvement from Crisis on Infinite Earths showrunner Guggenheim, the Paragons Rising one-shot feels pretty much at home in the (ittedly complex) world of that crossover. The Earth-Prime crossover is a bit more complex. It was pitched as "the final Arrowverse crossover" but half of the books didn't play a big role in the "crossover" part. Still, it was created so late in the life of the crossover that there's not really anything in there that contradicts what came later - effectively locking it in Arrowverse canon, even if by accident.

The mentioned Arrowverse comics are available now from DC Comics.