Best Alternate Universe Justice League Team-Ups, Ranked

DC Comics has made the Justice League of America the centerpiece of their team-up comics. The team combines all of DC’s flagship, A-list heroes in one place, from Gotham’s Dark Knight to Metropolis’ Man of Tomorrow. First uniting in 1960’s The Brave and the Bold #28, the JLA have become one of the greatest fixtures of superhero comics, and their success inspired the creation of countless counterparts.

The Justice League’s alternate teams range from multiversal copies, villainous inversions of the classic heroes, and even other company’s teams who crossed into the DC multiverse. From time to time, the JLA have been fortunate enough to meet and team up with these counterparts, who have been responsible for some of the team’s best adventures.

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10 Justice League Infinity

Created to be a comic book sequel of the much-beloved Justice League animated series, Justice League Infinity explored the DCAU’s multiverse. From Wonder Woman traveling to a world where she loved Darkseid to an encounter with Earth-X’s Overman, the League experienced something of a multiversal odyssey.

Justice League Infinity’s best team-up came when they met the Justice Alliance of Earth-D, a version of the League that borrowed from elements of the team seen in other multiversal stories. This also came amidst the backdrop of the team’s alliance with the Freedom Fighters.

9 Black Hammer/Justice League

Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer was created to be an homage to the Justice League of America, the Avengers and classic comic book science fiction series like Mystery In Space. All of this has come together to form one of indie comics’ greatest teams and, in 2021, they officially met with their DC inspirations.

The story saw both teams divided, with the Trinity and Cyborg trapped on Black Hammer farm while most of Lemire’s team were placed into the events of Prime Earth by a scheming Mr Mxylzptlk. The series did a great job of combining the tones of the two series, delivering newcomers to Black Hammer an entry in the dark and strange spin on classic superhero comics.

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8 Multiversity / Justice League Incarnate

Grant Morrison’s Multiversity introduced to DC the idea of a Justice League team composed of heroes pulled from across the multiverse. The likes of Captain Carrot, Dino-Cop, Calvin Ellis Superman and Flashpoint Batman all came together to form the team responsible for safeguarding the multiverse.

The Justice League Incarnate were the first team to encounter the resurgent Great Darkness in Joshua Williamson and Daniel Sampere’s Dark Crisis On Infinite Earths. The team has joined up with numerous alternate versions of the League, as well as bringing some of Prime Earth’s heroes onboard.

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Nights Metal saga pulled from a range of multiversal heroes and villains, such as the Nightmare Batmen and Justice League Incarnate. The various stories effectively blended the DC multiverse into one epic, sprawling saga, with the heroes fighting to save existence itself.

The Metal stories left little in the DCU untouched, with stories like Scott Snyder’s Justice League “Justice/Doom War” exploring both Hypertime and the multiverse. When all was said and done, a battle between many of the greatest heroes of the DCU and the Nightmare Batmen decided the fate of existence.

6 Convergence

DC Comics’ Convergence event is looked back on as something of a mixed bag for the company. The event itself was an enormous, line-wide event that restored classic versions of the DC heroes from pre-Flashpoint, alongside other timelines and alternate worlds in the multiverse. The story followed Brainiac’s merging of the various worlds in a bid to fix the consequences of Crisis On Infinite Earths.

Convergence wasn’t a simple crossover, but rather an epic merger of characters from various universes, including Kingdom Come, Earth-2 and the Wildstorm characters. The series included the likes of Val Zod Superman, the Futures End timeline, and an alternate take on the Justice Society of America.

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5 Justice League Of America #27-30

One of the best things to come from Dwayne McDuffie’s beloved Justice League of America run was the meeting of the JLA and Milestone heroes, such as Icon, Rocket and Hardware. These heroes come from Earth-93, an Earth counterpart populated with African-American superheroes, many of whom are direct inspirations of Prime Earth heroes.

The meeting of the two teams began rather contentiously, with their conflicting agendas leading directly into a brawl as Superman and Icon talked things over. However, when the Shadow Thief presented a threat, the two bands of heroes allied to fight evil shadow variants of themselves.

4 Crisis On Earth-Two

Gardner Fox brought a lot to the comic book industry, and his contributions can be seen to this day through A-list heroes, the multiverse, and the Justice League itself. In Justice League of America #21-22, the team encountered the long-lost Justice Society of America, their Golden Age predecessors.

Although the Justice Society has since rejoined Prime Earth, they actually spent the entirety of their history from around 1956 to 1985 on Earth-2, the home of DC’s Golden Age. The two teams joined forces to fight villains from their worlds, namely Chronos, Felix Faust, Wizard, Fiddler, Doctor Alchemy and Icicle. The issue is significant as being the JLA’s first multiversal team-up in history.

3 Justice League: Darkseid War

During the New 52, the Justice League had several run-ins with their super villain inversions from Earth-3, the Crime Syndicate. Made up of dark versions of the JLA, the team consists of a mafioso Superman (Ultraman), a nihilistic Batman (Owlman) and an evil Lois Lane Amazon variant, Superwoman.

“The Darkseid War” saw the two opposing teams form an uneasy, temporary truce in a desperate bid to stand against two of comics’ greatest multiversal threats, Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor. The team battled a newly-powered up Metron, with Owlman later stealing his Mobius Chair in a bid to gain knowledge of the universe.

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2 Crisis On Earth-X

Following the excitement featured in the original JLA/JSA crossover in the main Justice League of America series, DC upped the ante with an additional team, the Freedom Fighters of Earth-X. It was in this story that the JLA journeyed to an alternate world in which Hitler and the Nazis were triumphant in World War II.

The three teams united the multiverse’s most courageous heroes, from the Nazi-fighting heroes of Uncle Sam to the Golden Age versions of Green Lantern and Flash. The three-way team-up saw DC’s champions of justice take the fight directly to the Nazis, although they were tricked into battling each other along the way.

1 JLA / Avengers

Perhaps the singe most anticipated intercompany crossover ever created, JLA/Avengers combined Marvel and DC’s flagship superhero teams into one cosmic adventure. The story followed the arrival of Krona, the rogue Guardian of the Universe, to the Marvel Universe, where he threatened the Grandmaster with the destruction of his universe.

JLA/Avengers followed the two teams dispatched to one another’s world, where they were effectively sent on an epic scavenger hunt, with the stakes being the fate of the Marvel Universe. While the two main teams were in direct competition with one another, some of the heroes did form an alliance, which helped them save the universe from certain doom.