Hypertime

[comicstar100]

How does everyone feel about the concept of Hypertime? Do you feel like it is a useful tool for the DC Universe overall mythos/timelines or is it simply too confusing to be used properly?

[Doctor Bifrost]

How does everyone feel about the concept of Hypertime? Do you feel like it is a useful tool for the DC Universe overall mythos/timelines or is it simply too confusing to be used properly?

For me, the problem with it is not that it's too confusing. (Although, since they can't even come up with narratively meaningful rules for ordinary time travel, it is.) It's that it's a built-in, in-continuity deus ex machina justification for any and all retcons and continuity errors (which will not longer be considered errors). "Oh, you see, two HyperTime streams merged - they can just do that sometimes - and we wound up with these various features from the two streams." No further explanation necessary.

I'd rather see fewer retcons and more attention to continuity, and so I'd rather it not be so easy and casual for the writers to merge timelines. But that's just me.

[Stanlos]

How does everyone feel about the concept of Hypertime? Do you feel like it is a useful tool for the DC Universe overall mythos/timelines or is it simply too confusing to be used properly?

Yaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy! I am so glad to see someone wondering about this too. It confuses me that DC keeps doing Crises and picking at the Crisis on Infinite Earth wound when the HYPERTIME concept pretty much took care of all of that. All they need to do is have strong vision and strong editorial to propel and enforce.

[t hedge coke]

The thing with Hypertime, is that it's not something you implement or don't; it's a description of a naturally-occurring and unavoidable situation. Discontinuities and conflations will occur in fiction and in an audience's memory of fiction.

You can "ban" the use of the term, but the situation remains, you've just elected to not directly address it.

[Doctor Bifrost]

...a naturally-occurring and unavoidable situation...

Yup. And you know what else is naturally-occurring and unavoidable?

Inelegant exposition. Sometimes characters will spout out a lot of information that isn't 100% appropriate to the characters, the people they're talking to, and the situation that they find themselves in. But comics are a fixed length, and sometimes you just need to let readers know a bunch of stuff, and putting it in a character's mouth is a way to do that. Some writers are better at disguising the inelegance than others.

Now, there's two ways to acknowledge this:

(1) "Yes, sometimes characters will deliver an exposition dump. In some cases it's hard to get around. We hope you won't think too harshly of our writers when you trip over one of these. But we do know that conveying needed information in a more naturalistic, less awkward manner is part of the craft of writing, so we try to get better at it (and other aspects of craft) all the time."

(2) "You know what? In the DCU there is a virus, called the logorrlexia virus, that causes victims to randomly, spontaneously launch into elaborate explanations that would otherwise be inappropriate to the circumstances. (By a complete meta-coincidence, symptoms - sometimes called "monologue disorder" - tend to break out just when the writer has to deliver some exposition.) It's more common than herpes simplex, and has an intergalactic spread! So you're going to see a lot of seemingly awkward exposition in our comics, but don't stop to notice it or think about whether the writer could handle it better - because there's an in-story explanation for it!"

My personal opinion is that, in the writing of serial fiction (especially when it concerns science fiction/fantasy settings), an attention to continuity is part of the craft. It's impossible to do perfectly, because there are always trade-offs. (The same with dialogue - exposition is a trade-off.) But you can always strive to do it better. And attentive, long-term readers (who can be worth a lot of $$$) will notice when it's not being done well, and will think about whether it could be done better.

And HyperTime says, to me, "Why bother??!?"

But that's just me. If you put a lesser value on continuity (consistency, world-building, whatever you want to call it), than it won't matter to you. Everyone's entitled to their opinion on this one.

[phantom1592]

Hypertime to me is just overanalyzing things. Hypertime is the same thing as Infinite Earths. No more, no less. 99% of the time it's completely ignored... but then there's that 1% where they want to have Kingdom Come cross over with Flashpoint. Anytime you have the 'Any story that we've told has happened somewhere...' concept, it's just infinite earths all over again.

And I'm fine with that. For the life of me I can't figure out why they would bother to bring back multiple earths and then cap it off at 52 of them?? The correct answer for any character should always be 'We have no idea HOW many there are... how WOULD we??'

[stephens2177]

Infinite possibilities, infinite different worlds it happened on.

The problem with the super sons crossover is tim has travelwd from 1 to another and trying to change HIS timeline,when hypertime isnt time travel,it's visiting a alternate earth that could have,but didn't happen here.

It's like alternate Eartha,but without the locked in set earth in the multiverse,hypertime says it could have happened,and it did on another earth.

Future Tim,if he was successful,would have changed the main DCUs future,but not his own,because the possibilities split into 2 different Earth's.

They should have these rules
A) anything could and did happen,just on another earth that split from ours
B) they don't reconnect,they are seperate and that's that
C) it's hard as hell to move from one reality to another


If you want to change YOUR future than you need to move back through YOUR time,not travel to a alternate hypertime earth and expect results on yours

[Dataweaver]

I'm glad Hypertime is being acknowledged again. That said, I don't want it used to its full potential: although it's possible to use it as an explanation for spontaneous retcons and discontinuities, I'd rather ignore that aspect of it and instead focus on the “uncountable worlds” aspect — that is, use it to enable stories that not even the Orrery of Worlds is big enough to handle. A bit like the “Dark Multiverse” concept from Metal, but without the “worlds that shouldn't exist” stigma.

[stephens2177]

Hypertime gave us Black Zero

[Captain Britain of Earth 20]

I'm hoping 4 a Hypertime Justice Society team coming from Doomsday clock

[Doctor Bifrost]

I'm hoping 4 a Hypertime Justice Society team coming from Doomsday clock

What's a Hypertime Justice Society?

I'm hoping for a self-contained Earth-2 with its own history of a Justice Society and Infinity, Inc.

[Dataweaver]

With the recent reveal in Metal that worlds in the Orrery are occasionally replaced by worlds from Hypertime (though I don't think they used that phrasing), I could see the New52 Earth 2 get replaced by an Earth 2 more closely resembling the original Earth 2.

That said, I still think the more likely means of restoring the JSA will be through the seeds planted in DCU Rebirth, and that the JSA will hail from Primary Earth's past rather than from Earth 2.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Perhaps they can find a way to split the difference by having the JSA form on Earth-0, but Johnny Thunder's wish accidentally transported them all to Earth-2, where they were when Barry Allen first traveled to their Earth and met Jay Garrick. From this point on, they were migrating back and forth between Earths for regular team-ups until the original Crisis destroyed their Earth and they disappeared into Limbo. After their return from Limbo, the JSA lived on Earth-0 for a time, but will now reside on Earth-2 following Doomsday Clock.

This would be a nice way of giving the JSA space to breathe, but also allowing them to retain all the wonderful connections they established Post-Crisis.

[Sacred Knight]

With the recent reveal in Metal that worlds in the Orrery are occasionally replaced by worlds from Hypertime (though I don't think they used that phrasing), I could see the New52 Earth 2 get replaced by an Earth 2 more closely resembling the original Earth 2.

That said, I still think the more likely means of restoring the JSA will be through the seeds planted in DCU Rebirth, and that the JSA will hail from Primary Earth's past rather than from Earth 2.

I'd like them to use that same logic to create a New Earth-1 similar to the New 52.

[Buried Alien]

Perhaps they can find a way to split the difference by having the JSA form on Earth-0, but Johnny Thunder's wish accidentally transported them all to Earth-2, where they were when Barry Allen first traveled to their Earth and met Jay Garrick. From this point on, they were migrating back and forth between Earths for regular team-ups until the original Crisis destroyed their Earth and they disappeared into Limbo. After their return from Limbo, the JSA lived on Earth-0 for a time, but will now reside on Earth-2 following Doomsday Clock.

This would be a nice way of giving the JSA space to breathe, but also allowing them to retain all the wonderful connections they established Post-Crisis.

That's an inspired idea, Bored. On a related note, I noticed that your updated DC timeline does not account for the assorted JLA/JSA team-ups over the years. Where do those stories go?

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)