DC’s 15 Year Timeline

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Thanks to my obsessive compulsive continuity fanboy brain, I’ve been trying to figure out how the 15 year timeline the DCU is currently operating from works. Obviously, this is a fool’s errand because there’s no way all this stuff is ever going to fit together nicely in a way that satisfies everyone, but this is the closest I’ve managed to come up with.

Jonathan Kent is the clearly the biggest sticking point, but since his entire history is a mishmash of alternate realities, retcons, and time jumps, I’m just going to assume Mr.Mxy, Brianiac or Superboy-Prime got explosive diarrhea one day and ignore it

What do my fellow continuity cops think?

[Adset]

I'm most certainly NOT a continuity cop -- if I disagree with something I'm usually comfortable with outright ignoring it -- but this is more or less how I see the DCU when I think of overarching history. Well done, sir.

[Buried Alien]

The graphic could use a hint of SHAZAM!, but otherwise, excellent.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[deadman322]

did the ntt line up actaully happen in this timeline or not? the recent titans run made it seem like it was just the originals.

[Timothy Hunter]

Even with the sliding time scale, I can't really see the events of the 90s occurring a mere five years ago. This is controversial, but I would prefer a 35 year time scale for the modern history of the DC Universe. Beginning basically around 1986 or so, the end of CoIE.

[king81992]

did the ntt line up actaully happen in this timeline or not? the recent titans run made it seem like it was just the originals.

I don't think it did.

[j9ac9k]

It's hilarious to think this all supposedly happened after 2000. Great timeline though!

[astro@work]

The Superman Rebirth story lined up Jon into the timeline by pushing back a lot of Clark's famous moments to before 10 years ago (Death, wedding).

The other piece that doesn't fit any more (at this point...) is the New Teen Titans adventures. Specific reasons would be Cyborg being a member of the JLA (not Titans), and Titans Hunt establishing the Fab 5 (+Lillith, Mal, Hawk, Dove, Gnaark) had their adventures then were mindwiped into forgetting them until just recently. THAT would mean that the NTT history could NOT have happened because none of them even remembered there being a TT during that window.

The rest of your layout holds up pretty well against the mind-numbing number of reboots since COIE.

[Lee]

The Superman Rebirth story lined up Jon into the timeline by pushing back a lot of Clark's famous moments to before 10 years ago (Death, wedding).

That's the part that really makes a mess of things. If the Death of Superman was over 10 years ago, then has Kyle Rayner been a Green Lantern for over 10 years? What about Kon-El Superboy? Or are their origins now detached from the Death of Superman storyline?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Even with the sliding time scale, I can't really see the events of the 90s occurring a mere five years ago. This is controversial, but I would prefer a 35 year time scale for the modern history of the DC Universe. Beginning basically around 1986 or so, the end of CoIE.

As an alternate Earth, that's already in play. Morrison's Multiversity introduced one there with almost the exact set-up you've described.



However, for the primary Earth in which Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman are always meant to be in their physical primes, the 15 year timeline fits the bill by allowing all the various generations enough time to grow a few years older, but not too much

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The graphic could use a hint of SHAZAM!, but otherwise, excellent.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

As I mentioned in your other thread, I happen to think Shazam exists simultaneously in the 1940s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s as a repeated magical spell echoing through time.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

did the ntt line up actaully happen in this timeline or not? the recent titans run made it seem like it was just the originals.

In the New 52, previous Titans teams were mentioned, then retconned away. Following Rebirth, prior Titans teams have since begun coming back into history, including the New Teen Titans. They haven't been explicit about it yet, because it would cause too many questions about Cyborg's history, but the evidence is there. Jonathan Kent had a poster of the New Teen Titans up on his wall, and Vic & Kory are now calling each other old friends. That's good enough for me.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

That's the part that really makes a mess of things. If the Death of Superman was over 10 years ago, then has Kyle Rayner been a Green Lantern for over 10 years? What about Kon-El Superboy? Or are their origins now detached from the Death of Superman storyline?

Yeah, there's simply no way to make Jonathan Kent make sense within the 15 year timeline without causing problems for everyone else. My current theory is that Jon was born immediately prior to Loeb's Y2K storyline that saw all of Metropolis thrown into a time warp that temporarily upgraded Metropolis into a City of Tomorrow by Brainiac 13. I'd argue that this was the moment where Jon experienced his first jump in time, along with the rest of the kids in the B13 Metropolis, who grew several years older during the timey-wimey craziness of that period. When the B13 virus was finally undone much later, the future tech around Metropolis was erased, but the kids remained much older than had been prior.

Metropolis ----- 2003 --- sfo dcu03.jpg

I think that's the best way to preserve the 15 timeline without causing too many problems for the rest of the DCU. Given that Jon was originally born in one of Brainiac's bottled cities, and his publishing history has included multiple time jumps and retcons, it kinda suits him.

[Gero4568]

did the ntt line up actaully happen in this timeline or not? the recent titans run made it seem like it was just the originals.

If the DC Wiki and Wikipedia are to be believed, it was confirmed in Flash Annual (2016) #1. Additionally, Vic and Kory calling each other friends in Justice League Odyssey seems like decent evidence.

[Lee]

If the DC Wiki and Wikipedia are to be believed, it was confirmed in Flash Annual (2016) #1.

The flashback scene with the New Teen Titans and Magenta was just Wally's memories (he's in the red/yellow Flash costume too). On the same page he says "a lot of my old memories have been hit or miss". He talks to Magenta, which causes her to get her pre-Flashpoint memories back. She says "But in this life, that was all gone, erased. I was happy. I was just Frances Kane, Magenta didn't exist."

So that flashback with the New Teen Titans and Magenta was a depiction of the pre-Flashpoint timeline, not the current timeline.