Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #5
Issue #5 of Who's Who arrives in the thick of DC's transformative 1985, running simultaneously with Crisis on Infinite Earths and thus serving as a last comprehensive snapshot of DC's pre-Crisis multiverse — every character profiled here, from Barry Allen's Flash to the Crime Syndicate of Earth-Three, is documented in the continuity that the Crisis would soon sweep away. The issue captures the breadth of DC's decades-spanning mythology in a single volume: Golden Age characters like the Crimson Avenger and the original Atom share pages with then-recent additions like Cyborg, who had only debuted in 1980 as part of the New Teen Titans. For readers and historians, it functions as a time capsule of DC at its most cosmologically complex — multiple earths, multiple versions of the same heroes and villains, and a universe on the verge of its biggest restructuring ever. As part of the wider 26-issue series, it also contributed to a format innovation for DC: a comic-book encyclopedia where each character received a full-page entry drawn by a specific artist, giving the guide an artistic as well as archival identity.
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Who's Who was created by Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Robert Greenberger as a direct response to Marvel's Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which had launched earlier in the decade; the DC version distinguished itself by featuring action-pose character illustrations drawn by individual artists rather than static portraits. Editor Michael Eury devised the loose-leaf format for the series, and research was contributed by E. Nelson Bridwell and others, lending the entries genuine historical grounding. Issue #5 was written primarily by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman and deployed an enormous roster of artistic contributors — from Marshall Rogers on the three Clayfaces to George Pérez and Romeo Tanghal on Cyborg, to Jack Kirby and Greg Theakston on Crazy Quilt — reflecting the company-wide, all-hands nature of the project. The entire 26-issue run was later collected in the Who's Who Omnibus Vol. 1 (April 2021).
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: July 1985; cover art by Paris Cullins and Dick Giordano; the issue covers alphabetical entries from Chronos through Cyclotron.
- Written primarily by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, with research by E. Nelson Bridwell and others — the same core team behind the entire 26-issue series.
- The Cyborg entry was illustrated by George Pérez and Romeo Tanghal; Pérez is among Cyborg's original co-creators (the character debuted in DC Comics Presents #26, 1980, as part of the New Teen Titans).
- All three then-existing Clayface incarnations — Basil Karlo (Clayface I), Matt Hagen (Clayface II), and Preston Payne (Clayface III) — are catalogued together in a single entry, drawn by Marshall Rogers, making this the first consolidated reference entry for the Clayface lineage.
- The Crime Syndicate entry (covering Earth-Three counterparts Ultraman, Owlman, Power Ring, Superwoman, and Johnny Quick) appears here, documenting the pre-Crisis villainous analogs just months before Crisis on Infinite Earths would effectively erase Earth-Three in its first issue.
- Because this issue shipped while Crisis on Infinite Earths was already in progress (but before its continuity-resetting conclusion), all character bios reflect pre-Crisis continuity — multiple Earths, the original Flash Barry Allen, and the full Legion of Super-Heroes roster are treated as living, active continuity.
- The issue features an exceptionally wide array of pencilers, including Marshall Rogers, George Pérez, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Steve Lightle, Jerry Ordway, Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Dave Gibbons, Keith Giffen, Trevor Von Eeden, Chuck Patton, Ed Hannigan, Richard Howell, Tom Mandrake, Brent Anderson, and Don Heck, among others.
- The entire Who's Who Vol. 1 series, including this issue, was reprinted in the Who's Who Omnibus Vol. 1 (DC Comics, April 2021, ISBN 978-1779505996), a 1,320-page hardcover collection.