DC Entertainment and The CW have announced that the four-part CW superhero crossover of Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will feature alien invaders The Dominators.
Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim stated “This year, for our mega ‘Arrowverse’ crossover, we’re taking inspiration from a DC crossover from the late 1980’s known as Invasion! We’re using cutting edge prosthetics and computer effects to achieve a feature film-quality look which is faithful to Invasion!”
The Dominators were initially introduced into DC Comics as villains in the 30th century of the Legion of Super-Heroes, they appeared in the 20th century in the company-wide crossover Invasion!, in which they were the primary world behind the Alien Alliance that attacked Earth. Their primary motivation for this was their concern at the genetic potential of humanity, as evidenced by the large number of super-powered beings on the Earth of the DC Universe, also known as the metagene. When the Invasion started to crumble, one Dominator created a ‘gene-bomb’ and detonated it in Earth’s atmosphere that would affect many heroes and villains that possess the metagene.
After the Invasion, a nameless Dominator played a significant role in the comic book one shot Blasters. This comic features heroes created by Dominator testing; they had wished to examine just how humans tended to gain superpowers. This testing involved running humans through a murderous obstacle course on the partly correct theory that the stress would active their ‘meta-genes’ and cause superpowers. The ‘Blasters’, which included former JLA mascot Snapper Carr, are the ones who did gain powers.
In events chronicled in Legion Annual v4 #2, Valor discovered plans for a second invasion of Earth, and thousands of humans held in genetic experimentation tanks. He led a lengthy campaign to liberate them, aided by some of the Dominators (the Diamond Caste) who opposed the policies of their ruling caste. After freeing them, Valor helped settle these modified humans on various worlds which eventually became many of the homeworlds of members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, such as Bismoll, Cargg, Braal, etc.
Several Dominators were left on Earth for years and appeared in various comics (usually briefly). One Dominator would come under the control of the Queen Bee, presently the ruler of Bialya (Justice League Europe #4). Though this alien does not survive for long, its technology would cause trouble for the Justice League and the Global Guardians. Others appeared in Captain Atom #52 (the Dominator became a farmer), in the Outsiders #44, in Iron Heights prison in Flash, a mutated Dominator with potent psionic abilities would battle members of the Green Lantern Corps, including Guy Gardner in Green Lantern Corps #7 – 9, and most recently in Superman #668.
Currently, the Dominator homeworld was under siege by the massive horde of Starro the Conqueror. The Dominators at first put up an admirable defense of their planet, however the tide soon turned against the Dominators when Starro himself entered the fray. In the end, the Dominator homeworld fell to Starro and its entire population were converted into Starro’s mindslaves, with the exception of a single Dominator Fleet Admiral who had enough individuality to realize the planet was doomed and fled, and is currently a member of Vril Dox’s R.E.B.E.L.S. seeking to defeat Starro.
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