This season of the DC TV universe on The CW promises to be the biggest we’ve seen, based on the sheer number of heroes that now populate it. Arrow, The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow and the most recent addition, Supergirl, will have their own giant crossover where all the heroes will join forces to take on a threat no single hero can defeat. The soup de jour of villains this time around are The Dominators, an alien race that has plagued the DC heroes in the comics from the present to far into the future of the 30th century. While little is known about the details of the crossover itself, here’s a bit of knowledge to lay on you about the extraterrestrial overlords that are plaguing our band of super stalwarts.

Invasion!

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Image via DC Comics

Originally appearing in Adventure Comics #361, from creator Jim Shooter (who was shockingly only a teenager when he created the yellow fiends), as antagonists for Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes in the far flung future, the Dominators hit the scene as a race of extraterrestrials hellbent on (what else?) dominating! While they first functioned as a nefarious alien race that lived in the 30th century, they were used in the epic, though often overlooked, DC Comics’ crossover event dubbed “Invasion!”. The Dominators themselves are a cold, calculating race that look like they’re torn straight from the movie, Mars Attacks!, only yellow, brandishing razor sharp fangs, and sporting giant red circles on their foreheads. Fun fact, their race’s social standing is actually impacted by how big the red circle on their foreheads is which is quite the weird way to choose who gets to be the “1 percent”.

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Image via DC Comics

The "Invasion!" storyline focused on the Dominators forming a coalition of aliens, appropriately called “The Alien Alliance”, to experiment on what they felt were their biggest threat to galactic domination: Earth’s superheroes, or metahumans as they’re called. What followed was an amazingly epic storyline which saw the Alliance invading Earth, destroying a good portion of it, and proposing surrender to humanity by turning over their heroes to save their own skin. Luckily the United Nations refuses this offer and the Justice League launches a counter-offensive against the invading horde. The crossover got so epic in scope that it even came to a point where the Spectre, who is essentially the “right hand of God” in the DC Universe, begged the higher magical beings of the Earth to help out with fighting back the alien scourge, but to no avail.

When the Dominators had enough of the resistance, which was being told in over 30 DC comics at the time, they created a “gene bomb” after suffering from heavy and steady loses thanks to the DC heroes. The bomb mutated certain heroes’ powers, causing them to spin out of control, knocking them into a coma, and eventually killing the ones it affected. Ultimately, aside from taking out a number of lesser-known heroes, the gene bomb actually had the reverse effect and created a new generation of superheroes called “The Blasters”, who never really managed to catch on. The biggest aspect of this storyline was essentially giving an origin as to where so many heroes got their powers through the “metagene”, which is like Marvel’s X-Men in that certain folks were simply born with their powers.

The Legion of Superheroes

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Image via DC Comics

The Legion of Superheroes is one of the DC Universe’s longest running teams, unique in that it takes place squarely in the 30th century. While a young Clark Kent joined their ranks by being plucked out of a time for a while, the Legion mostly stayed in their own timeline and found themselves at odds with the Dominators, who were still plenty active following their defeat from "Invasion!" In the future, the universe is essentially run by the system of “United Planets” which the Dominators looked to bring down at every opportunity they could. Rather than trying to flat out crush the race of the Dominion, The Legion found themselves constantly attempting to make peace with them and another unique slant was given to the team, one of super-powered ambassadors, attempting to broker a deal while also under attack by a group of humans who had lost family members to the alien race.

Over time, the Dominators managed to actually weave their way into the fabric of Earth society and begin ruling the planet in a very “They Live” situation, pulling the strings of politics behind the scenes. The Legion had to essentially act as Rowdy Roddy Piper, creating a resistance to take down the Dominion that eventually somewhat accomplished its goals. When I say “somewhat”, I mean that the Dominators were defeated but not before they managed to destroy Earth and place a bunch of nuclear warheads on the moon. The alien race has always had something of a close tie to the Legion of Superheroes though in the recent “New 52” reboot of the comic universe, they’ve taken something more of a backseat in the overall continuity.

Total Domination

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Image via The WB

One of the most overlooked, and often forgotten, animated series was when the WB released their new animated take on their futuristic property called Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes. While only managing to get two seasons, it did cover a large amount of material and even gave us two distinct versions of Superboy along the way, the kind-hearted version and a gruffer, edgier interpretation of the “Boy of Steel”. The series covered quite a bit of DC future lore but managed to find another avenue for the Dominators to appear. During the second season of the series, a large threat named Imperiex, who is somewhat like Marvel’s Galactus in that he’s an alien force of nature, threatens to destroy the Earth. The Dominators acted as his flunkies, helping him to create various weapons of mass destruction along the way.

In the upcoming CW shows’ crossover, show producers have stated that the joining of the heroes in these episodes to combat the Dominion will take pages from the "Invasion!" storyline. They’ve also hinted at the fact that the Dominators themselves will be heavily created using a combination of “prosthetics and computer graphics” so that they appear similar to how they had during their most famous appearances. Certainly, if you were going to ask for a threat that was big enough to warrant all of these titans of comics to band together, you couldn’t have done much better than the Dominators.

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Image via DC Comics