Question about the DCU

[shooshoomanjoe]

I understand that DCU Pre-Crisis, DCU Post-Crisis and New 52 are separate realities. Is this also the same for DCU post Zero Hour and Rebirth or are these two part of the Post-Crisis DCU?

[Ascended]

I understand that DCU Pre-Crisis, DCU Post-Crisis and New 52 are separate realities. Is this also the same for DCU post Zero Hour and Rebirth or are these two part of the Post-Crisis DCU?

Zero Hour was a continuation of the post-Crisis DCU, with a few minor adjustments to the continuity. Same reality, just with a few details changed. Post-Crisis is pretty much everything from 1985 to 2011. That was a single reality and continuity, though that continuity was adjusted along the way (as comics like to do).

Rebirth is.....sort of.....the same thing and sort of not. It's technically a continuation of the New52 version of DC. It's technically the same reality. But instead of making relatively minor tweaks to continuity like Zero Hour did, Rebirth dumped big chunks (but not all) of post-Crisis history into the New52. Some of that post-Crisis history happened differently now. Some of the New52 didn't happen at all, or happened differently. It makes no sense.

And DC is trying to work that into the story. DC made a mess of their continuity during the New52, and in Rebirth they have claimed that these discrepancies are the result of Dr. Manhattan (from Watchmen), manipulating history and "stealing" a decade of time. Now it seems, that manipulation is slowly coming apart, causing this weird slow reintegration of post-Crisis history.

We still dont know why Manhattan did this, or even what "this" really is.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The DCU has always been one place, but it’s had many different eras with different histories, but they are all the same people who have had their lives mucked with repeatedly by time shenanigans.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The details of their lives keep changing, but they are all still the same people getting rebooted and revised over and over again.