The carnage that DC's timeline has gone through in the past ten years.

[PurpleGlovez]

In the past few months I've been reading tons and tons of recent comics and with the Death Metal finale something really funny struck me. Ever since Flashpoint, we have been presented with an increasingly incomprehensible barrage of explanations to the changes in DC's continuity and timeline. Just try to follow this:

- At the end of Flashpoint, when Barry is fixing the timeline, Pandora apparently takes advantage of the moment to merge the DC timeline with the Vertigo and Wildstorm timelines. She (and Phantom Stranger) are both consciously aware of this later on. This was originally presented as the catalyst for the creation of the New 52.
- At the end of Convergence, Brainiac sends a cadre of heroes back in time who supposedly prevent the Crisis on Infinite Earths from ever happening. This causes the old worlds of the multiverse to magically evolve into the worlds we see in the New 52 and Multiversity. In Jurgens' Lois and Clark, Superman says they "reset the Infinite Earths timeline"... and pre-Flashpoint Superman is deposited in the New 52 universe.
- In the DCU Rebirth special, Wally West comes back and reveals someone took advantage of the Flashpoint to interfere with time, stealing "ten years" from the DCU.
- In Superman Reborn, it's revealed that pre-Flashpoint Superman and New 52 Superman were "split apart" at some point (this is never expounded upon) but their timelines are finally merged to create a true, definitive Superman timeline. This also affects everyone close to Superman, i.e. every major character in the DCU.
- In Doomsday Clock, we learn it was Doctor Manhattan who's been messing with time, altering key events in the DCU to create the New 52 timeline. The specific "ten years" comment from the Rebirth special is never explained. Pandora is not mentioned, but we can assume Manhattan took advantage of her actions to enter the DCU and meddle with the timeline. Although it clearly depicts a post-Reborn Superman, the events of Superman Reborn are not referenced at all; Jon is ten years old, but Dr. Manhattan reminisces to Superman's debut in jeans and a t-shirt "five years ago", and other events are very New 52-centric. At the end, Manhattan finally "fixes" things and undoes his alterations to the timeline, restoring the JSA, Superboy, Legion, and Ma & Pa Kent.
- But... these changes apparently did not take hold in the DCU. In Snyder's Justice League, the JLA has explicitly never heard of a super-team from the 1940s. Doomsday Clock apparently happened "outside the heroes' purview". In Death Metal, it's said Dr. Manhattan tried to "heal the cracks in the multiverse" but his actions did not have the intended effect; instead the connective energy that he was apparently brimming with was given to Wonder Woman off-panel. At the end of Death Metal we apparently, finally, get a fully-restored timeline and infinite multiverse where everyone remembers everything no matter what, and the JSA is fully inserted into DC's main canon.
- In Generations: Shattered, Dominus is messing with time once again. Results TBD (but expect even more timeline-altering).

It's like, geez! Could it be any more esoteric and roundabout? It's as if the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. Pandora's role in events is completely forgotten, Convergence is immediately ignored, Doomsday Clock sets up a perfect avenue for the JSA's return but it was for some reason ignored and goes completely unexplained, and finally, with Death Metal #7, almost a decade since the New 52 began, we have the Justice Society of America back, accomplishing the exact same thing Doomsday Clock did the year before. I don't know, I just think it's funny, if you (God forbid) try to view it as one complete story it is just laughable. There is no reason it has to be this convoluted. And despite their best intentions I think Death Metal is going to make everything way, way worse. But we'll see.

[BohemiaDrinker]

It's as if the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. .

It's like you summed everything from COIE to Multiversity in this sentence.

[Holt]

It really is hilarious how attempts at smoothing out the timeline almost always lead to unintended consequences that make certain things more screwed up and convoluted.