How should DC's new continuity work *SPOILERS*

[jaygon]

No DC You was just DC declaring we're gonna be focusing less on continuity between books because in New 52 it was too tight. The characters are still New 52, having and remembering only their New 52 back stories, there are only 52 Earths as defined by Multiversity, and Earth-0 is still the only center of the Multiverse.

After Death Metal there are two centers of the Multiverse and everyone remember everything from previous versions of themselves.

I was more thinking along the lines of the last issue of Convergence which stated that the Crisis on Infinite Earths and the collapse of the original multiverse had been reversed/averted (the original infinite multiverse existed once more)

There was an snippet of text which stated that those 'original' earths had somehow 'evolved' into the worlds of the New-52 (which made little sense as the 'original' numbering had been infinite whereas the New 52 consisted of...well...52)

The splash page at the end of Convergence also gave the impression of an in-continuity 'evolution' within the multiverse.

The above statements aside, the proposed post-Convergence model was still somewhat vague, but I did get the impression (at the time) that with the undoing of the original Crisis, the 'evolution' of the original mulitiverse into the The New 52 multiverse and the statement (shortly thereafter) that the purpose of DCYou was to house a 'less rigid continuity' that DC was considering (in 2015) the direction that they have now taken with DM 7.

[bat39]

In a weird way, this seems like what would have been the original plan after COIE...to have the 'survivors' of the big battle remember the pre-Crisis Multiverse and history while everyone else only remembered the post-Crisis history.

I remember reading an interview where Marv Wolfman talked about how he was against characters remembering the Crisis, because it would lead to confusion about how Crisis could have occurred in the context of the post-Crisis timeline. Which is precisely what happened eventually!

In the context of the post-DM status quo...admittedly I haven't read any Death Metal stuff (apart from Generations Shattered) so my comments on this may not be 100% accurate. But the way I see it, with characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash etc. it doesn't really matter much if they remember 'past lives'. The Flash is used to being affected by time-travel shenanigans. WW just went through 'The Lies' and the notion of her past being fabricated. Even Superman has already gone through a 'merger' and dual memory kind of situation with 'Superman Reborn'.

It gets a bit trickier with someone like Batman. The guy who goes out every night to beat up drug peddlers and homicidal maniacs being the same guy who goes toe to toe with Gods and on occassion travels through time and space already pushes things. Now this guy remembers several lifetimes of being Batman across the past 80 years? Including lives in which he freely used lethal force - breaking the 'one rule' that is the cornerstone of his crime-fighting methodology? There are no doubt interesting stories to tell there, but I feel like this kind of thing becomes a problem for the more 'street-level' characters.

Green Arrow is an even better example of this. When/how did he meet Dinah? Was Roy an alcoholic or a junkie? Was his dad part of a secret Arrow clan or just an ordinary businessman? Was he orphaned as a kid during a safari or did his parents survive into his adulthood?

With Dinah herself it gets...crazier.

[Digifiend]

To be honest, I'm not expecting it will make that much of a difference but I guess it's a way to have, say, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown remember their Batgirl tenure's even if technically that never happened in current continuity...ditto Wally being The Flash after Barry.

Cass and Steph already regained those memories at the end of Tynion's Rebirth era Detective Comics.

So if I understand well, Aquaman marriage is still valid, so why the hell did he and Mera remarry again?

Renew vows?

I'm kind of wondering how this is supposed to work for characters that drastically different origin stories, where race or sexuality (or hair colors) were changed or where their relatives where changed.

And will characters remember be age up and down relative to one another.

Beast Boy and Raven appear to have been aged back up. Wally West, of course, was explained as being the other Wally's cousin. The previous Marvel Family appears to be dead, as their graves were seen in the recent Shazam run - the current Shazam Family appear to be coincidental namesakes, which explains Freddy now being blonde and Billy and Mary no longer being blood relatives.

Poor Donna Troy...

She actually already got her memories back too, at some point before The Infected: Deathbringer where she mentioned knowing all her origins.

Green Arrow could also remember having a son with the mother of his Half sister ...

Wait, Connor Hawke and Emiko Adachi-Queen have the same mother?

[Robanker]

I was just using reincarnation as a simple term to explain it. in the issue, The Hands (perpetua's race) restored earth to it's state prior to the BWL's attack and set that history in stone (post-Flashpoint landscape) but people keep access to their previous histories (aka previous memory). so the previous continuities "happened" but they technically didn't happen in this lifetime; in that way, it's like reincarnation. they also mention that people will have flashes of alternate pasts and futures as Hypertime heals, meaning some people will probably get their memories in waves (or some version of them).

how vivid they are is up in the air but what I'm saying is it's all just memory they're receiving; which are fickle. if you remember something that you know didn't or couldn't happen in this lifetime, odds are you'll chuck it up to a dream unless you have context for why it would be otherwise. do I see this making them more competent? for some, maybe, but I also don't think everyone should/would have perfect recall of all their past lives and experiences. people don't remember every doodoo they took in this life, let alone two-three more lives, ya know? so I don't think they'll pay much mind to how it will effect their competency in the field, moreso their mental states and drives will be affected than anything.

basically what Dred said, it's post-Flashpoint but everyone just moves like they've read all their books and wikis.

This is kind of how I read it too, but as more of a "if it works, we'll use it" application with Hypertime. So it's just going fast and loose with continuity without asking the reader to just accept everything. Honestly, you can't have this sort of thing be "Clark remembers every story from 1938 until now" because that effectively flatlines his character. Same with Bruce, Diana, etc. These stories aren't made to make sense.

I think they remember there were cosmic resets and that they had lives before. I think they have vague ideas of what happened. But if you ask Clark what he was doing in the golden age, he'd probably say "fighting for truth, justice and the American way" without much more. DC sometimes lets their characters remember there was a crisis. Sounds like they're just letting that be the norm now. Kind of like Post CoIE where they remembered Barry and that he died saving the universe, but details were vague.

[Goldrake]

Renew vows?

If they would have been still married, it goes against all that Rebirth Aquaman has been, which began with a proposal, than she had to undergo a ritual to be worthy of being Queen, than she was forced to seek a new husband etc
Now we are told that they have been married all the time.
Not to mention that Andy has a deceased brother which her parents never even mentioned.

[WebLurker]

Why does DC's attempts to "fix" continuity always just make things worse? IMHO, just stop worrying about the past and put all your effort into making good content down the line.

[Factor]

I was wondering...
Now that there seems to be a new emphasis on the Multiverse/Omniverse, why did they feel the main continuity's heroes should reflect all past versions when they could just explore those versions on alternate worlds?
Superman doesn't need to remember his 30s origin if there is an Earth where that version is untouched...
Maybe they should have just picked what worked from each continuity to create the new official timeline without having to say the characters now remember *everything* that have happened to them in previous lives.
A simpler solution would be to have Metaverse's heroes be aware that their continuity is ever changing and that in past lives things didn't happen quite the same way. The possibility of them actually meeting these past lives through the Omniverse could actually provide some cool stories without destabilizing the main universe.

[Primal Slayer]

Yeah...that's really stupid and lazy storytelling. "everything happened yet we will continue to not give you a definitive history/origin"

[Black Angel]

I honestly thought Doomsday clock would fix this now its all more complicated again.

[superduperman]

I don't think it should come up very often unless there is some sort of in story reason for them to mention it. So Superman remembers being Superbaby, New 52 Superman, playing football in high school, the Great Depression, fighting Nazis, etc. But other than fun little memories, they don't serve much purpose. His memories of being with WW might be a little awkward but for the most part it shouldn't interfere with his day to day life. This is kind of the model I've wanted them to adopt for a while now. They can have characters from the previous continuity show up once in a while but don't make it a regular thing. Otherwise it can be distracting.

[Primal Slayer]

I just want to know how do characters like Tim/Cassie/Kon take this? They remember being young adults only to be turned 14 again? Wally remembers being a full grown adult with a wife/kids only to be turned back into a Teen again? Supergirl remembers all those times she has to keep finding herself only to continue to try to find herself?

[catman]

It was declared that Earth 0 is not the center of DC multiverse.
Does it mean that despite everyone remember everything, Earth 0 is not metaverse anymore?

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I didn't read Death Metal at any stage, but if everyone remembers all their past continuities, then how does that allow for Superman remembering being in the 1940s when that was eventually revealed to have been the Earth-2 Superman, Kal-L?

Since there were Justice League stories that featured Superman-E1 meeting Superman-E2, what does that mean in the current context?

Are they now the same character and had always lived on one Earth? If so, that doesn't make all the past stories valid, it wipes out the pre-Crisis multiverse where there were 2 Supermans.

Also, how would any of this explain where, for example, Batman-E2 died while Batman-E1 was still alive? Does the current Batman remember being on 2 different Earths and dying on one of them?

Based on what I'm hearing, the goal of this Death Metal event was to say that every story that was published happened, but for that to be true, there would still have to be multiple versions of each character, not simply the same character existing from 1938 to today because there were years of DC stories where there were 2 Supermans, 2 Batmans, 2 Wonder Womans, etc. at the same time who met each other face-to-face. So, you can't just merge their memories into one character. What would they remember of the times where the E1 version met the E2 version?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I didn't read Death Metal at any stage, but if everyone remembers all their past continuities, then how does that allow for Superman remembering being in the 1940s when that was eventually revealed to have been the Earth-2 Superman, Kal-L?

Since there were Justice League stories that featured Superman-E1 meeting Superman-E2, what does that mean in the current context?

Are they now the same character and had always lived on one Earth? If so, that doesn't make all the past stories valid, it wipes out the pre-Crisis multiverse where there were 2 Supermans.

Also, how would any of this explain where, for example, Batman-E2 died while Batman-E1 was still alive? Does the current Batman remember being on 2 different Earths and dying on one of them?

Based on what I'm hearing, the goal of this Death Metal event was to say that every story that was published happened, but for that to be true, there would still have to be multiple versions of each character, not simply the same character existing from 1938 to today because there were years of DC stories where there were 2 Supermans, 2 Batmans, 2 Wonder Womans, etc. at the same time who met each other face-to-face. So, you can't just merge their memories into one character. What would they remember of the times where the E1 version met the E2 version?

Doomsday Clock explained that Superman has always been the same guy, but every time his history was rebooted, a new back-up was created of his prior incarnations, which became the Pre-Crisis Earth-2. The same thing happened to the Earth-1 Superman when he was rebooted by Man of Steel. He's preserved by the Metaverse on Earth-1985, whereas the Byrne Superman is presumably backed up on his own Earth.

So, the Earth-2 Superman was this Superman in the same way that the New 52 Superman was Superman, but co-existed with the Pre-Flashpoint Superman.

As to how this will all work in practice, who knows, but I don't imagine it will change the way Superman acts or behaves moving forward. For all the quibbling over details we fanboys do over the details, the broad strokes of Superman's personality has largely been the same for decades, give or take a dead parent or two.

[Patrick Gerard]

In my point of view there would need to be some rules:

- Only the characters involved in Death Metal can remember anything about their past lives and even so, they don't remember them vividly.
- Regular citizens are completely oblivious to all continuity changes.
- There would be a new "official" continuity. It would merge elements from all previous ones but would eliminate inconsistencies (eg: Cyborg joined the League after being a Titan and got a power-up when doing so, but that wasn't during the League's first mission).
- The previous item would be needed if characters time traveled to the past. There would need to be a proper continuity characters could go back to when the story dictated.
- Unaltered versions of previous continuities would exist in parallel Earths or through Hypertime. They could also be visited when needed.

Bonus rule:
- In this new continuity, Heroes in Crisis, Cry for Justice and other terrible stories like them would be ignored.

Superman: Reborn already did most of that including setting the Johns/Lee JL after Final Crisis and having Superman wearing the New 52 suit basically from the end of the Electric Saga (around Jon's birth) through present.

It lined up with everything except Tim Drake's age.

Williamson's Flash implied that Barry died and Wally had been Flash. Titans referenced Wally being in the Morrison JLA.

My take has always been that aside from the Legion and JSA, the Superman books already brought back a familiar 15 year timeline. Doomsday Clock brought them back. Young Justice brought Superboy back.

Ted Kord and Supergirl were a bit fuzzier. But you could infer Max Lord missed him and he had a heart attack that sidelined him.