Creature Commandos’ Frankenstein and The Bride are 200 years old, but Vandal Savage, Ra’s al Ghul, and Wonder Woman’s mom are much older
James Gunn’s Superman avoids rehashing the Man of Steel’s origin story, instead opening with a simple round of on-screen exposition explaining that Kal-El arrived on Earth 30 years ago, and has been known as the most powerful superhero on the planet for the past three years. But the film’s intro also contains another detail that will shape the rebooted DC Universe in film and on TV: People in this setting have been aware of metahumans for 300 years.
Metahumans in DC Comics are normal humans with a special gene that can give them superpowers. Unlike Marvel’s mutants, who typically manifest their abilities during puberty, DC metahumans typically have to be exposed to some sort of extreme circumstance, like intense stress or dark matter. Gunn is using a broader definition of the term by making it apply to Superman, whose powers come from being a Kryptonian, and to pretty much anyone else with superpowers.
In Gunn’s DCU, metahumans are no longer a terrifying new phenomenon, and have become more like celebrities. But why set their debut 300 years ago? The most likely reason is he just liked the parallelism of everything in his pocket history of the world coming in threes, since the crawl also has Superman intervening in a war in Boravia three weeks ago, starting a relationship with Lois Lane three months ago, and losing his first fight three minutes ago.
