Mental Floss

Is It a Prescription Drug or a DC Comics Planet?

See if you can guess which is a brand-name medication and which is part of DC’s vast universe.
Bymentalfloss .com|
Mark Dadswell/Getty Images (costume), Justin Dodd/Mental Floss (quiz overlay)

Few art forms can rival comics for the sheer imagination on display, with countless societies, universes, and planets meticulously detailed through decades of storytelling.

While many superheroes are active on Earth, several—particularly in the DC Comics canon—are part of a populated galaxy. Some of these fantastical planets sound remarkably like what pharmaceutical companies name their branded medication. See if you can tell which of these are from DC and which hail from Big Pharma in the quiz below.

Comic book planets get their names from creators looking to stoke the imaginations of their readers—the more exotic, the better. Drug companies have a different approach. They need the name to be distinctive, and it also needs to communicate a positive association.

Take Lyrica, a drug for nerve and muscle pain. It’s likely to call to mind lyrics or music, which have pleasant and soothing connotations. Or IBRANCE, used in breast cancer patients, which may prompt users to think of words like embrace or vibrancy. The DC planet Euphorix would make a good drug name; Hope’s End, not so much.

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