Quintessence

No, not that Quintessence, though I am ure Mark Waid is stealing from the same Classical sources we all do. Rather it is the name of "missing" fifth suit of the Tarot. Some claim that the Major Arcana is itself the fifth suit, explaining away the difference in numbers - 22 vs. 14 - in various ways. Others claim that the fifth suit - or even a sixth! - has gone missing through the ages, and contains the true secrets of the Tarot. Suggested suits are made to correspond to various schemes of the Elements, both Western and Eastern, as well as the "magical" numbers 5, 6, and 7. Not to be outdone, I offer not one, but three "optional" suits for the DC Tarot, all or none of which can be used to diversify the "standard" deck.

"Quintessence, Take One: The Unified Comic Theory"

In discussing the nature of matter, Plato names not only the well known four elements - Air, Earth, Fire, and Water - but also a fifth element, Quintessence or Spirit. This Spirit lacks the physical properties of the other four Elements, but acts to unify all of existence. In the DC Universe, we have a similar structure in the Pre-Crisis Multiverse, infinite planes of existence, all occupying the same space, but invisible and intangible to each other because each is "vibrating at a different dimensional frequency". The elements of each of these sister universes are often similar, but always different in some way. Here, the Element of Spirit stands for a truly Higher Plane, details and events that are absolutely removed from our daily existence, yet still impact our lives as certainly as if they were being written for us, just as Earth-Prime creates the comic book adventures that happen to the inhabitants of Earth-One. It's symbol is the Alphanumeric (Letters and Numbers), an abstract representation of Reality. (Note that, like it's representative Earths, this suit begins numbering with Earth-One, even though it is not the first in sequence. Earth-Prime, labeled the Ace, is actually a court card, closer to the Queen, Mother of All, though still dominating the King.)

The Minor Arcana correlates the four elements with four "eras" of DC publishing, but this leaves out one very important - perhaps even the most important - era of DC Comics, the Silver Age. As a fifth element, Quitessence gives us a fifth suit to play with. But it is not chosen merely to fill a spot. The Silver Age began the rebirth of the Superhero comic book, nearly lost in the face of the crime and horror titles of the 1950s. And the bright colors and patently impossible situations of the heroes define not only the Age, but most people's perception of what "comic books" are. For better or worse, the Silver Age is the Quintessence, the absolute, of comics. It's symbol, like that of the hero that began the Silver Age, the Flash, is the Lightning Bolt, representing Intellect.

If the four Elements represent the entirety of the physical world, then all that is left for the fifth is a non-element. In our modern scheme of thought, we can consider this to be Anti-Matter, and "element" that is the opposite of the physical Elements. This leads us immediately to Qward, the Anti-matter universe, it's ruller, the Anti-monitor, and one of the most pivotal moments in DC history, the Crisis on Infinite Earths. If the Silver Age was the rebirth of the Superhero, Crisis was the end of the Age, and the begining of what we know call "the Modern Age". It's symbol is the Void, non-existance, the fate of many of it's images. (Technically, neither Hawkman or Green Lantern died during Crisis, but their eventual fate is directly linked to events that occured then or soon after.)

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