Return to the glory days of superhero crossovers with the '80s inspired The Wrong Earth - Purple

The Wrong Earth: Purple variant cover (Image credit: Jerry Ordway (AHOY Comics))

It's that time of here - big summer superhero event announcement season. We have your Judgement Day at Marvel, your Flashpoint Beyond at DC… but for fans of the original superhero comics crossover events, they lack a certain nostalgic quality ... you know, from the '80s. Well, now someone is filling that void with The Wrong Earth: Purple.

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 main cover (Image credit: Jamal Igle (AHOY Comics))

"The Wrong Earth: Purple is Fred's and my love letter to the '80s," Moore tells Newsarama. "That decade wasn't just big hair, shoulder pads, and George Michael music - it was a dark time of angel dust, Wall Street greed, and bloodthirsty vigilantes. It also saw the birth of modern comics and the modern superhero movie, which made it the perfect setting for our very own, rubber-suited Dragon-Fly. So close your eyes, let that sax solo wash over you, and repeat after me: You belong to the city. You belong to the night…"

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 variant cover (Image credit: Jerry Ordway (AHOY Comics))

If you're humming along to those lyrics, that's Glenn Fry's 'You Belong to the City'; recorded back in the '80s specifically for the seminal Miami Vice TV series.

The Wrong Earth: Purple #1 will introduce an '80s-themed alt-universe called Earth-Kappa, which publisher AHOY Comics calls "a dark but glossy world of big hair, shoulder pads, Wall Street traders, rubber super-suits, and funk music."

Speaking of rubber super-suits, check out this The Wrong Earth: Purple variant cover by Jerry Ordway, an homage to his own cover to the Batman 1989 Movie Adaptation.

The Wrong Earth: Purple is part of a larger series of one-shots coming this spring featuring unique spins on The Wrong Earth series. There's the Archie-inspired The Wrong Earth: Trapped on Teen Planet, a beefy The Wrong Earth: Meat, a sidekick switcheroo in The Wrong Earth: Confidence Men, and the heady money-centric The Wrong Earth: Fame & Fortune.

"Words will be written, words will be deleted, and nothing will ever be the same," says The Wrong Earth co-creator (and AHOY Comics editor-in-chief) Tom Peyer in the event's announcement. "This is Crisis on Infinite Earths, minus the line-wide consequences that made it interesting. This is Secret Wars without toys. This is the kind of epic, superheroic storytelling that publishers and CFOs love, where the tail of wealth-enhancing variant covers wags the dog of art."

Nostalgia plus some sardonic satire, that's what this The Wrong Earth is about.

The Wrong Earth: Purple goes on sale May 18.

Both Marvel and DC have had their fair share of memorable superhero events.

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)