Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-53

Earth-53 has made a few brief appearances in the recent DC Comics lore in comics like The Green Lantern #11 and Dark Crisis: The Dark Army #1 where we have met a universe that seems much like our own but slightly different with all of mankind being apes. When this universe first showed up it was referred to as “Earth-53” but is most often referred to as “The 53rd Earth”. More recent mentions of the universe have taken to calling it Earth-52, although I think Earth-52 is much better represented as a continuation of the New 52 as I mentioned last week in my Supergirl in the Multiverse post (found here). As I was reading the DC Finest Science Fiction collection for unrelated research I came across a story initially published in Strange Adventures #45 titled “The Gorilla World” that had humans Albert and Cora Dawson transported to an adjacent world where the inhabitants were all gorillas. It is stated here that Gorillas evolved to be the dominate species as opposed to Humans who remained savages and eventually went extinct. I don’t think this story is followed up on ever and I don’t believe it served as inspiration for the later Earth-53, but it was a cool coincidence that I wanted to mention.

Earth-53 is home to the Primate Legion which is only shown to include Ape versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Atom, and Aquaman, but the idea of instead of humans we have apes can easily be applied to any resident of the DC Universe. Super-Ape is named as Titano the Super-Ape, obviously a reference to the Superman foe (who is currently mini sized and showing up in the current Supergirl comic). Continuing on with this theme, I’m going to call this universe’s Supergirl Tee-Nah the Super-Ape after Tee-Nah the new gorilla staff member at the Daily Planet that first appeared in Superman Unlimited #2. With this universe being fairly unmapped, it’s hard to say exactly how the super-heroes differ from their Earth-0 counterparts but until it is more defined I will just assume Tee-Nah is from a very ape-like Krypton and shares the same origin as Supergirl but if she was instead an ape.

As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Tee-Nah the Super-Ape is diving down towards the viewer. Tee-Nah is a blonde ape wearing a Supergirl costume. There are a few buildings shown behind her and a building that looks like a version of Lex-Corp has a shattered window that it seems the Super-Ape is jumping out of. The top right corner features a motif of Super-Ape’s symbol with a 53 on top of it.