CBS Greenlights Supergirl Series, Sparking DC's Crisis On Infinite Networks

It's a good time to be a DC fan.

No, let me amend that. It's a great time to be a DC fan -- especially if you enjoy your comics characters brought to live action. Arrow is entering a third successful season, The Flash is preparing to launch in early October, Gotham is preparing to tell the story of a pre-Batman era James Gordon, and CBS has just announced that it's going into production of Supergirl.

The problem? Arrow and The Flash are on the CW, Gotham is on FOX, and Supergirl -- a one hour drama -- will be on CBS.

The latter is the most perplexing one. FOX has had their hands in the Batman pie for years now, ever since the animated series. But CBS taking Supergirl is unusual, because CBS owns the CW network. Adding to the oddness, Supergirl is slated to be co-written by Greg Berlanti (with Ali Adler, who wrote superhero fun for No Ordinary Family) through Berlanti Productions -- the production company for Arrow and The Flash. Does this mean there will be no crossovers for the Kara from Krypton? It's not completely out of the picture, I suppose. There's a precedent set when David E. Kelly brought Ally McBeal from FOX into contact with The Practice on ABC. But it's still a longshot. (It will be interesting enough to see if CBS will be allowed to cameo Kara's older, more famous cousin!)

I get the diversification aspect, and those pre-existing contracts can make it hard to get the gang all together in one universe. (Ask Marvel sometime about the chances of ever getting Spider-Man or X-Men into their Avengers world.). Heck, sometimes Warner Brothers even competes against itself, disallowing appearances by Bruce Wayne or Princess Diana in Smallville because of movie rights. But I still have to question the wisdom of this choice.

And it better not compete against any of the other shows' timeslots.