We are now four months into the absolute behemoth that is DC Comics’s Rebirth initiative. Sales on the Rebirth books have been enormous, with 26 of the top 30 books for August being DC titles. From that perspective, it’s been an unmitigated success. What’s more, the stories have actually been pretty good so far. I’ve at least sampled every new Rebirth title, and by and large I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read, with a few books strewn in that I absolutely loved. There’ve only been a handful of books that I haven’t gotten at least some degree of enjoyment out of, and those were books I’ve never read before in any capacity anyway, so I chalk my lack of interest in those up to them just really not being for me.
I wrote before about my increased level of excitement over DC books as a result of Rebirth, and while the initial rush of adrenaline may have more or less passed, my expanded pull list still reflects that heightened interest. Even with that, though, there’s something that’s been nagging at me since I read the initial DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot.
As a kid I was obsessed – obsessed – with understanding what the Crisis on Infinite Earths was like for the characters post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, because surely it had to be different now that the multiverse had never existed and I needed to know that story, did Supergirl die, what about all of the characters from other Earths who had never existed, when was DC going to put out a new miniseries to explain that. Then, after the Legion of Super-Heroes reboot post-Zero Hour, I had to know how they explained the presence of Supergirl, the shape-changing matrix version from the pocket universe that once was home of the Legion’s post-Crisis Superboy, now that Superboy had never been a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes and that pocket universe had never existed. There was a hole in the story that had to be filled, to the point that I wrote my own retcon of the story that introduced this Supergirl, incorporating elements from future storylines so that it all fit the continuity – “Well of course Supergirl would be drawn to Lex Luthor II when she returns to Earth – Lex created her in a lab as a weapon against Superman!” – in what was absolutely my first of many instances of creating ‘head-canon’.
I was thirteen.
All of that is to say that it will likely come as a surprise to no one that I, someone who writes about comic books on a semi-regular basis for an internet website, am something of a pedant. And there’s something that I haven’t been able to ignore about Rebirth and how DC has positioned it. I have – and I am so sorry for this – continuity questions. I know. I know. But, please, just let me get it out of my system, and then I can go back to remembering that continuity doesn’t matter as long as the stories are good.
Okay? Okay. Let’s start with this:
The teaser shown here was posted on Twitter prior to the release of the DCU Rebirth one-shot, and seemed to be a refutation of the rumors at the time that Rebirth was yet another reboot of DC’s timeline (not to be confused with the actual relaunch of DC’s titles, which did come to pass as expected). As readers learned in the DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot, though, the teaser actually meant that, in perhaps the greatest instance of trying to have one’s cake and eat it too, The New 52 was not a reboot, and that the characters we’ve been reading for the past five years are all the same pre-Flashpoint versions we knew and loved, but with ten years having simply been ‘removed’ from the original DCU timeline by an outside force. Everything you love counts again! Sort of! Blame Dr. Manhattan!
I have so many questions.
Nearly every character was rewritten from the ground up by The New 52. Batman and Green Lantern went into it relatively unscathed, but Superman, Wonder Woman, the Teen Titans, even the Justice League itself all got new origin stories in The New 52 DCU. And while there’s some work going on or having gone on to bring the original Teen Titans and Wonder Woman more in line with their pre-Flashpoint history, there were still major changes that took place to other characters. The Titans were definitely the hardest hit by The New 52, with the most notable example being Cyborg.
Vic Stone had everything about his history changed by The New 52. Pre-Flashpoint, Vic was a Teen Titan; post-, he was a Justice Leaguer and never a Titan. Before, his Cyborg body was created by his father after a freak lab accident; now, he’s got Apokoliptian tech after his body was remade by a Mother Box. But if The New 52 was the just ‘The Original DCU minus ten years’, where does that leave Vic? Or Starfire, Gar Logan, Terra, or any number of other Titans characters whose histories were wiped out or rewritten?
Or Bart Allen? Impulse/Kid Flash was also completely revamped in The New 52 into a fugitive from the future, with only a passing resemblance to the original version. His name wasn’t even really Bart Allen! And the original version was nowhere to be found. How does he fit in now? Was Bart Allen ever born?
As far as the original Wally West is concerned, at least as of the DCU: Rebirth one-shot, everything from pre-Flashpoint happened. It’s all on display in his memories – the original Teen Titans, the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry’s return, and the whole Flash family including Bart, Max Mercury, and Jesse Quick. Wally remembers everything exactly the way that it was.
Or, at least, he did.
Later in that same issue, when Barry remembers Wally and gets his memories back, Barry remembers it differently. His memory of the Titans is not the same as Wally’s was earlier in the issue. Wally also mentions that he’s having trouble remembering things now. And in issues of Titans that have included flashbacks for the newly-returned Wally, he seems to have begun to remember things differently as well. Is being in the New 52 universe altering Wally’s memories? And why would it do that if the New 52 was just the original universe with ten years taken out?
There’s also the big question of Wally and Linda’s kids. The focus of the initial storyline in Titans has been the restoration of Wally and Linda’s relationship, but so far there’s been no mention of the children they had pre-Flashpoint. Iris and Jai may have only been around for a few years before The New 52 reboot, but they were still an important part of Wally and Linda’s lives. They were featured in the Wally-centric Speed Force miniseries during Convergence, and Iris was even included in one of Wally’s memories in DCU: Rebirth. It’s not as if DC is ignoring that they existed. Has Wally forgotten them?
Listen, I know this shouldn’t bother me. I’m usually an extremely laidback person about continuity. Hypertime was the best thing ever created because it threw continuity completely out the window in favor of storytelling, which is where our focus should really be. But I feel like DC opened the door to this line of questioning with that teaser and that ‘ten years removed’ bit. I don’t have any answers for how it all fits together, but I’m hopeful that it will all make sense in the end. Until then, the investigation is sure to be ongoing, overseen by one of DC’s finest.
I’d buy that book twice a month.