DC's "new" timeline revealed at NYCC

[Mr.B]

Scott Snyder about his next project with Capullo:

So with this, like with the thing we're talking about post that it's more of a giant party, a love letter to the DCU. “Let's make everything that we've been doing over the last number of years make sense,” kind of stuff. I don't feel the same pressure about being judged on it because it’s taking all these threads that we've been building and playing with and some from other books, from everywhere, and say “everything you've read matters.” Everything from like the last Crisis on Infinite Earths to now matters.

https://www.newsarama.com/47327-scot...hts-metal.html

Yeah I understand now.

[Mr.B]

Hmm

https://www.denofgeek.com/us/books/2...eline-revealed

[Maxi]

Hmm

https://www.denofgeek.com/us/books/2...eline-revealed

“We know that what’s important about comics is that immersive sense of what the world is, what’s going on, and how it all works together,” Didio said. “When we see things happening in film and television where they’re building universes, and if we’re not doing it in comics, the place that inspired them, then we seem like we’re failing. So we’re starting to figure out how the DC line works a little bit better now.”

So, DiDio is starting to realize now what fans knew since decades ago?

when you guys get all upset or concerned about reboots and restarts, those things occur because the stories stop making sense and the continuity basically slows down our storytelling and nothing’s being done at the same style or pace.”

This doesn't make any sense. Continuity stopped making sense precisely because of the mess that was The New 52 and then what Rebirth brought back from previous continuity. The DCU was fine before Flashpoint, there wasn't any need for a reboot.

[Steven Caldwell]

Thank God they make trade paper backs of stories from the 30's to the 90's. These are my decades of stories when we did not have to worry about complicated matters such as this. I am a simple man.

[Grayson - The Dark Heir]

Not sure why that should mean it makes sense. Dick and Damian became Batman and Robin following Batman's "death" in Final Crisis, so if they keep that it makes little sense to not have it happen until after Flashpoint when Bruce was already back as Batman.

If they want these events to matter again it would make sense to put them in the order that is supported by the books and only change the things you WANT to change into something completely new. It makes it easier for both old and new fans.

The entirety of the New 52 happens in G4Y2, so the year before is when you’d ideally have the Batman Reborn era. Which leads to a weird looking timeline I guess, since FC generally has to happen before Blackest Night and Flashpoint. So I get your point now, it is odd that there is a gap between when FC should happen and Gen 4.

G4Y1 seems to be where stories like the Obsidian Age and Dick and Donna’s JLA team would fit with some minor changes. I can’t say for certain why, but clearly they want Dick and Donna’s tenures as Batman and Wonder Woman represented in Gen 4, could be important for something coming up or maybe it’s because they wanted to fill in a gap in G4Y1, it’d look empty if nothing was going on in that year for two of the Trinity groups.

The larger gap between FC and Dick taking over might just be because they wanted to leave more room for Nightwing stories post-RIP, Battle for the Cowl, etc. It’s definitely an odd decision. I still think Dick taking over in Gen 4 is intentional because it’s meant to be relevant for Gen 4, which is why it’s placement makes sense on its own. The awkwardness of FC, Flashpoint, etc., that’s all harder to understand lol.

[Restingvoice]

Exile, when he left due to having a mental breakdown after killing Zod.

There it is. The one who return to Earth is Superman. No wonder it took him an extra year to produce Jon after marriage, unlike The Waynes and Talia, whose kids born the next year after their marriage.

Oh is that why he adopted Chris?

Is that what's the year of? Year of Exile?

[Zaresh]

There it is. The one who return to Earth is Superman. No wonder it took him an extra year to produce Jon after marriage, unlike The Waynes and Talia, whose kids born the next year after their marriage.

Oh is that why he adopted Chris?

Is that what's the year of? Year of Exile?

It could be.
I can't read the first word for the first item, but BC have read it as YEAR. And the third word could be EXILE easily.

I think the second item doesn't have an & in the middle, now: it looks like it says ##### Kent return earth. But on the other hand, if it's just an individual, I don't see the -s in return.

I don't know. To be honest, it's a very tough cell to get right. I still don't see Chris anywhere, and in the end, he depends a lot on what they're going to do with Zod. And I don't see them giving Jon a retcon adopted brother he doesn't know about but clearly have not one but two stories with some modest importance (and his own cape identity). They crsated a new Lor-Zod for Rebirth, and I suspect they're going to go with that.

Damn, that Nightwing suit was so cool. I'll forever cry for that loss. And for that kid: he was a good, fun kid. And a badass.

[dornwolf]

I sure am glad the Simpsons never had to reboot because they were worried that the characters were old.

Because as bad as the Simpsons has gotten they at least trust their audience to roll with it and they make adjustments subtly like adding in cell phones and then switching them to Iphones. The Simpsons only starts buckling at the seams when you start trying to pin down specific timelines like Homer and Marge meeting and dating for the first time. The last time they tried making an adjustment to that bit of history people really didn't like it.

[Zaresh]

Because as bad as the Simpsons has gotten they at least trust their audience to roll with it and they make adjustments subtly like adding in cell phones and then switching them to Iphones. The Simpsons only starts buckling at the seams when you start trying to pin down specific timelines like Homer and Marge meeting and dating for the first time. The last time they tried making an adjustment to that bit of history people really didn't like it.

I think that it works for the simpsons because their chadacters aren't expected to grow and reflect the passing, not of time, but life events. Even if how they write those characters change. It also helps a lot, I think, that they rarely or never follow a serialized story (they do, but so, so hardly ever).

[lawman]

Coming to the conversation late, here!... But hey, I didn't stumble across this story until it was four days old. (Working on a dissertation definitely takes time away from casual pursuits!...) I used to be quite the DC continuity maven back in the day, though (meaning before 2011 and the New 52 debacle), so this sort of thing is like catnip to me!...

So I've read the whole thread at this point, and all the (impressive!) transcription efforts. (One I don't think I've seen anyone get yet: G2Y8, GL/GA row, begins with "Hard-Traveling Heroes.") I think it's a safe bet that Didio and the other DC PTB didn't think fans would be able to extract such detailed content from the deliberately low-res images they chose to share! That choice itself suggests, of course, that this is still a beta-level work-in-progress for DC, so we shouldn't take any of this as carved in stone yet. Still, it offers lots of tantalizing potential, and raises even more questions!

It's nice to have the connective tissue of DC continuity restored in a fairly comprehensive way. What Didio is quoted as saying in the Den of Geek piece is "The whole idea here right now is from our standpoint we are trying to organize our stories in a way that makes cohesive sense from beginning to end, from the start of DC Comics to today... This timeline will build a continuity that makes sense across all our characters, showing when they were first introduced, how they interact with each other in one big story that will be the basis for all DC Comics for the future...What you see right now is a story that will be consistent." But as others have pointed out, on the surface level there's just no way this makes sense. It literally doesn't add up. I can see four ways to interpret this:

1) Nobody at DC editorial can do basic math. Okay, this is a cheap shot. ;-) But honestly, the main reason we can rule it out is that the umbrella heading stipulates "82 Years Real Time (1938-2020) / 60 Years Elapsed Time," so they're being explicit about what they're doing.

2) In the DCU, World War II happened in the 1960s. This is just entirely too freaky to contemplate, and it would be perverse to include a major historical event only to divorce it completely from real history.

3) In the DCU, it's currently 1997. This is slightly less freaky than option 2, but seems no more likely, as it would alienate a wide swath of the readership for no good reason.

4) There's a major hidden "gap" between Gen1Year25 and Gen2Year1 in this timeline. This would seem like the most elegant approach, and it's much like what DC has used before to maintain a sliding gap between the Golden and Silver Ages... except that the early lives of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne are explicitly integrated into the Gen1 portion of the timeline. Even if they were (hypothetically) allowed to "slide free" of their surroundings over time, that wouldn't explain how it all adds up now.

So, what are we to make of the assertion that 82=60? As Tzigone put it, and I wholeheartedly agree,

...there are too many odd timing issues. Like I said, we must be missing something because this does not function as either an original, before crisis-events timeline or a after-the-universe-reset timeline. Each generation may be its own timeline, but there are problems within the generations, and even if they weren't, it doesn't provide what I most want - a coherent chronology of the universe where ages and memories make sense.

Can you imagine any human being saying "Yes, I was born 60 years ago, so I'm 45 now," or "I remember being 20 when that happened, but I was actually 12," or "I remember our first meeting well, but of course that's not the way it happened"? Not in any world we can relate to, you can't. And if this is the world DC's characters live in, they must all be questioning whether they're slipping into dementia.

I've long advocated for a real-time approach (as has been shown to work effectively for some characters, e.g., Tom Strong); if some characters don't age normally, just establish that up front, but let time pass the way we understand it to pass. That's not what this timeline does, although it gets halfway there. Conversely, the traditional approach has been to maintain a "sliding" timeline behind an ever-shifting "present," which keeps stories feeling contemporary and keeps characters young but detaches them from their roots; this is what DC explicitly tried to do after Zero Hour, but it's also not what this timeline does. It's neither fish nor fowl.

Granted, it more or less kinda sorta represents the sequence of past published stories, arranged into a more or less kinda sorta logical chronological order. But even setting aside the "82=60" aspect, it's just full of question-begging bits that depict the past in ways that are unintuitive or illogical.

Gen 1 is the most straightforward. It clearly runs from 1938 through 1962, with WWII spanning years 4-8. The biggest change is that Wonder Woman comes first, but that's a clear and explicit editorial decision. The biggest surprise is that the JSA's retirement has been shifted from c. 1951 (as it's been pretty consistently depicted in the past, corresponding to when the characters stopped appearing) up to 1955. This actually moves it beyond the McCarthyist "red scare" period (which basically ended in '54), IMHO doing some damage to the story. The only rationale I can see it that it allows Superboy to have a teenage career that ends at the same time as the JSA's. Moving J'onn J'onzz's arrival from '55 to '56 is also odd, and seems fairly arbitrary.

Gen 2 puzzles the heck out of me, as it basically seems to restore (most of) the post-COIE, pre-Flashpoint (let's call it PCPF) version of DC's Silver and Bronze Ages, but it stretches them out more than necessary. For a long time, it seemed clear that from (Batman's) Year One through Crisis was an 11-year span... and that worked remarkably well with the vast majority of stories set in that period. Now, suddenly, it's 15 years instead? And it's not as if that represents some simple ratio like "we have 30 years of published stories, so let's compress 2:1," because that's not what was done. Clearly some thought went into this, but the reasoning involved is opaque. In PCPF reality, most of what's in the first two years here (Batman and his earliest villains, Barry and Hal's debuts, etc.) fit into a single year... and likewise most of what's in years 3-4 (Wally's debut, the founding of the JLA, etc.) also fit into a single year. Hence, we're in Year 5 before we get to "Flash of Two Worlds," when it could be Year 3... and while Robin's debut could be placed in Year 5 (according to the Dark Victory account of things), instead it's in Year 3, per earlier accounts, but now seeming relatively "early" compared to JLA-related events.

Then you get things that are simply out of order, compared to either their original publication or their sequence in PCPF history. Barry's marriage to Iris should fall c. Year 6, not Year 8; Guy Gardner's debut should fall c. Year 7, not Year 5. The original Teen Titans were established to have existed for three years, but here it's reduced to two, accomplishing nothing except to extend the "gap" before the team's next incarnation. Barbara's debut as Batgirl is anomalously late relative to everything, so much so that this appears to be another deliberate editorial decision, perhaps to keep her age closer to Dick's. Finally, virtually everything in Years 12-14 could and should be compressed into a single year. As it is, instead we're left with the Crisis in Year 15, which unavoidably raises the questions this thread has already been discussing about "how old was Dick"? Back in the day, Marv Wolfman made it pretty explicit that Dick was 18 when the New Titans formed, 19 when he became Nightwing, and turned 20 right around the Crisis. But now, if that's when he turned 20, then he was 8 at his costumed debut and 11 when he joined the "Teen" Titans, which surely can't be what's intended. Long story short, he and everyone else could be four years younger if this generation were left at its most logical length.

(to be continued)

[lawman]

(continued!)

Gen 3 is just a mess of unsequential entries, almost as if no one looked back at the order in which these stories were originally published before plugging them into slots... which is odd, as they're the stories almost everyone at DC is most likely to remember reading firsthand. Some of these have already been discussed here and some haven't, but just to offer a brief rundown...
* The Joker shot Barbara before he killed Jason, and if things are paced proportionately then both those events should fall in the first full year after the Crisis (G3Y1).
* Zero Hour has never before been described or depicted as more than four years post-Crisis, but now suddenly it's six. The debuts of Tim Drake, Bart Allen, and Kyle Rayner all could and should fall a year earlier than they're placed here, as should Superman's death and return. ZH would then slot into late G3Y4.
* As originally published, "Reign of the Supermen" preceded "Knightfall," and also led directly into the destruction of Coast City, which of course gave us Hal's breakdown and Kyle's debut.
* Years 5 and 6 could and should easily compact down into one, and Clark and Lois's wedding (and "electric blue" Superman) should be slid back into it from Year 7 (as should the "all new" Titans team), as those stories followed immediately out of Final Night, and certainly preceded the Gotham earthquake that set up "No Man's Land" the following year.
* No Man's Land fits well in G3Y7. But otherwise, if Zero Hour seems to have been pushed later than necessary, the opposite is true of a lot of post-NML stories placed in this range, as they seem inexplicably early. For instance, once you make room for all the events leading up to the election of President Luthor (which should fall the year after NML, in G3Y8), and related storylines including "Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive" (unmentioned on the chart), there's no way "Hush" fits just one year after NML. In fact, it should be nudged all the way into G3Y11, along with a lot of other events currently placed in Y9 — including the fall of Luthor ("Public Enemies") and the return(?) of Supergirl, "Sub Diego," Stephanie Brown's tenure as Robin, and Identity Crisis and the death of Jack Drake — all of which occurred in very rapid succession as originally published.
*Infinite Crisis and the beginning of 52 should the year after Identity Crisis (as references in 52 made clear), not two years, hence G3Y12. Wonder Woman's killing of Max Lord belongs there, as well.
* The final years of Gen3 seem needlessly "stretched out," just as with Gen2... perhaps for the symmetry of two 15-year periods? In a more logical sequence, the end of 52 (and the events of "One Year Later") belong G3Y13, with Damian's debut fitting into the end of that year, and Barry's return and Blackest Night both moved up into G3Y14 (bracketing the events of Final Crisis).
*After that...

The final year of Gen3 (Year 15) and the first year of the next phase (G4Y1) are logically the same year, the one containing Flashpoint. Several items listed in this year don't belong there, either; specifically, Donna's brief tenure as Wonder Woman belongs during "One Year Later" (G3Y13), while Dick and Damian's stint as Batman and Robin belongs during Bruce's absence in the aftermath of Final Crisis (G3Y14). Beyond that, I have no opinion on events from Flashpoint through the present (as I haven't read most of them), so AFAIK four years looks as plausible as anything.

Long story short: G2 could be 11 years, and G3 could be 13 years, for a combined total of 24 instead of 30, with nothing lost and a more logical arrangement of events.

That still wouldn't solve the problem of how old some of these characters are (although it would reduce it a bit), much less what year it's supposed to be. But it would at least reflect PCPF history more like we remember it, and show that DC hadn't just thrown this thing together in slapdash fashion.

Whew! So those are my thoughts (for the moment). Counterpoints, anyone?

[Rod G]

So, DiDio is starting to realize now what fans knew since decades ago?



This doesn't make any sense. Continuity stopped making sense precisely because of the mess that was The New 52 and then what Rebirth brought back from previous continuity. The DCU was fine before Flashpoint, there wasn't any need for a reboot.

No, it wasn’t fine.

It was an utter mess.

[j9ac9k]

DC has turned their continuity messes into the backbone of the DCU. They create continuity messes whether on purpose or they just incidentally pile up, then create a Big Event to "fix" them, where they're not fixed, but they're addressed and used as fodder for a story. It's their formula.

And they'll never just reboot everything from the start, because they still have a massive catalog of comics that can make them money. That's why they want us to think that "it all matters." A cogent continuity simply isn't their priority - they just know that enough fans care about that kind of thing that they'll keep doing things like this.

[vasir12]

Well I would read it as saying "WW2 happened in the 60s now" and more so that "WW2, the start point, happened in the 40s and the time between that to now has wiggle room. A sliding time scale of sorts. This still would age heroes and their supporting cast significantly (like Steve Trevor) but I think that might be the point if the 5G rumor is as it says.

[Vordan]

So, DiDio is starting to realize now what fans knew since decades ago?



This doesn't make any sense. Continuity stopped making sense precisely because of the mess that was The New 52 and then what Rebirth brought back from previous continuity. The DCU was fine before Flashpoint, there wasn't any need for a reboot.

Pre-Flashpoint continuity was a mess. Superman had three reboots, Byrne, Waid, and then Johns all with completely unreconcilable origins. WW continuity was also a mess given all the constant widely about turns and each new creator tossing out previous continuity. Aquaman, holy **** Aquaman was wild, go look up his handling before the New 52. Batman and GL were fine and that’s why they didn’t get rebooted at all. But it’s incorrect to say everything was perfect continuity wise before the reboot.