DC introducing a new wrinkle to classic continuity

[MajorHoy]

Ooh, I wonder if they are keeping the story where she swapped bodies with her mom?

I'm not sure when they "swapped bodies".

Are you referring to what I had mentioned before?

. . . By the way, I had an awful thought: is the original explanation of the two Black Canaries, where the daughter had next-to-no childhood and was suddenly revived as an adult but with almost ALL the memories of her (then) dying mother (see: Justice League of America #219-220 from 1983) now back in play?!?

That wasn't a "body swap". That was a story where baby Dinah grew up in isolation and was given her Mother's memories when she was eventually awakened and released.

[Buried Alien]

BEGONE CHEATIN' OLLIE!

On the other hand, CHILI OLLIE needs to return, pronto.



Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[DrNewGod]

Y'Know, this notion is making me whistfully pine for the days when Wonder Girl, Power Girl, and The Hawks were the most messed up things in DC's catalog.

[SJNeal]

Y'Know, this notion is making me whistfully pine for the days when Wonder Girl, Power Girl, and The Hawks were the most messed up things in DC's catalog.

Don't worry, I'm DC will keep them nice an messed up.

Actually, I can't wait to see what new and exciting ways they find to mess them up even further!

[Bored at 3:00AM]

On the other hand, CHILI OLLIE needs to return, pronto.



Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

If there's something we can all agree on, it's that Chilli Ollie is the superior Ollie.

[DrNewGod]

Don't worry, I'm DC will keep them nice an messed up.

Actually, I can't wait to see what new and exciting ways they find to mess them up even further!

Now I need more vodka.

[gambit2051]

Omg let the dust settle before you give them any more ideas! We don't need people hopping from the Linearverse to the Omniverse to the... whateververse creating more continuity quagmires!

I couldn't help myself...it just popped in there...I had to, lol

[Stanlos]

Continuity and shared universes only works if the writers/editors engaged in creating content are acting in good faith. It doesn't work if you have someone like Bendis claiming that he's being held back by the prior work of inferior writers and doesn't care about how a character was used by his supposedly inferior predecessors. Or like Slott/the Fantastic Four editors who deliberately changed a character because they didn't want to share the character with the X-book. Or Joe Q uniterally breaking the marriage because of his personal issues or Dan Didio going above the writers/editors and sabotaging the Flash book because he hates Wally. Or in the case of DC editorial where they pay lip service to continuity, but no one is on the same page and nobody is communicating about what they are doing due to inter-office politics. Ultimately the egos and pettiness of comic book creators undermines the idea of continuity.

If only there was a way to go back in time replace Dan DiDio with someone like Dwayne McDuffie, Mark Waid, or Kurt Busiek.

[Lee Stone]

Hopefully, things will keep getting screwed up over and over to the point that it one day it will effect Batman so bad that something will need to be done.
As long as it doesn't effect him, it's not really a problem to most fans. And certainly not to DC.

Maybe they can cancel Batman and then just simply refuse to use Bruce Wayne, and reboot all the villains of Gotham not once, but two or three times while sweeping Miller's work under a rug...
Y'know... like Legion... :-P

[Robanker]

BEGONE CHEATIN' OLLIE!

Back to the depths of Tartarus with ye!

On the other hand, CHILI OLLIE needs to return, pronto.



Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Finally. Refined opinions from men of impeccable taste.

[bat39]

I feel like in 1969, Ollie was early to mid 30s and Dinah as late 30s. Hardly a May-December romance. And much preferable to the later version, where he's so much older. Especially if he ever had a celebrity crush on her mom. Oh, and I much preferred how the romance developed originally to the later versions where Ollie comes off quite oily. Of course, I've never perceived 1970s Bruce Wayne as 29, no matter how much they want to push it. I don't think of the Silver Age and Golden Age WW/Batman/Superman as different characters* (as they were retconned to be), so for me the bronze age Bruce is the golden age Bruce, and so he's early 30s, too.

I've never quite been sure in the actual golden age (not Earth Two, later established stuff) if Ollie was an archaeologist or just had a collection of artifacts. Haven't read anywhere near all the old stories, and never saw him working. If he was an archaeologist when he met Roy, then than that version would have been older than early 30s, but he had a bit more retconning in some ways (as did Aquaman) even before the big rework by O'Neil in 69/70, so it's more wobbly to me.


* This also results in me thinking of the Earth Two Batman/Superman/WW as different characters than the golden age ones.


And I don't see a problem with with a 29 year old dating a 39 year old. It's throwing the JSA/BC back to the 1940s (where she wasn't when Dinah was brought across to Earth One) that's the issue. Or, I guess removing them from there (and moving Dinah in the period they were removed) could be considered the ultimate problem. But I'd argue it's the 1940s-tying. No one except Jay looked older in those JLA comics in the 1960s and early 1970s. Them being 10 years older than the main-earth heroes and timesliding along with them was what was being done then, or so it seemed to me. Obviously that changed later when Huntress was introduced (and both she and Power Girl being young adults at the same time bugged me so much).

I agree with you that the Golden Age characters and the Earth Two characters, at least as far as the Trinity are concerned, are separate.

In fact, the mechanism that Geoff Johns introduced in Doomsday Clock pretty much makes this canon. Due to various temporal shenanigans, the Golden Age characters 'evolved' into the Silver Age characters, and so on into the contemporary versions. But when the Golden Age transitioned into the Silver, the Golden Age versions (or an approximation of them anyway) were 'preserved' on what we came to know as Earth Two.

And I believe that's what the Linearverse reveal is all about. I think its basically a new term for 'Earth 0' or whatever we're calling the mainstream DCU earth these days. They're not literally saying that the Batman in the current books was active in 1939. I think their point is that, in a multiversal sense, he's the same entity as the 1939 Batman, but due to various temporal shenanigans, he's aged a lot slower and has evolved into newer iterations over the decades. Basically, Waverider is able to view the mainstream DCU earth the way readers have - we know that the 1939 Batman became the Golden Age Batman, the Silver Age Batman, the Modern Age Batman and so on, and barely aged 10-15 years in over 80 years of a publishing history, with retcons, reboots and updates along the way to keep him 'contemporary'. But if you ask the Batman from Tynion's current run how long its been since he started out, he'd probably say its been only about 15 years or so. But he might actually remember stuff from the Golden Age and Silver Age...

Essentially its a very convoluted way to make DC continuity work a lot more like Marvel continuity. The Fantastic Four experienced 60 years worth of stories but only aged about 10-15 years. The origins may have been tweaked, so that they were originally trying to beat Commies to space and now they remember their space mission was about something else entirely. But FF # 1 technically still remains canon and still 'happened' in a way (and there have been in-universe explanation from Marvel about why time slides forward for certain people and events). So I think DC is now essentially trying to have the same thing in place. Batman experience 82 years worth of stories in about 10-15 years. 'Tec # 27 is still in canon, but so is Year One, since it all 'happened' in a sense, due to various in-universe temporal shenanigans. Death Metal may have paved the way for Batman and other heroes to be aware of this.

PS: On the subject of Green Arrow - back in the Golden Age, he was a kind of antique dealer, as far as I recall...not an 'archeologist' per se. His origin was retconned by Jack Kirby into the island version in 1959, but the character himself pretty much stayed the same from 1941 all the way to 1969, when Neal Adams did his revamp.

In terms of character ages, if it helps, the Batman Special in 1984 that introduced Wrath had the Wayne murders taking place 25 years ago. Which means that, shortly before COIE, Bruce Wayne was canonically around 33-35 (assuming he was 8-10 years old when he lost his parents). I guess most of his Justice League contemporaries would have been around the same age give or take a few years, Green Arrow included.

And yeah, the JSA's ages will continue to be a problem even with this Linearverse model. Whether 'Tec # 27 or Year One or both are canon is a moot point now. But Batman can either be a contemporary of the JSA or the JLA in current continuity...not both. And if they continue to be tied to the 40's while others are ambiguous more 'modern'...well, somethings gotta give.

[Restingvoice]

I don’t think he would start dating her until after the switch was made.
So technically, he only dated Lance, but neither he nor Lance knew this at the time.

Until Lance is taken to see her dead mother and is told the truth, they both believe she’s really Drake, who had left the JSA after her husband’s death.

That's the one I was afraid to ask wasn't it? Man my question was simply whether Ollie, who's gonna be Drake's generation who age slowly, will date Drake or her daughter, Lance, who I imagine would be in Dick Grayson's generation

Right, which is why they should have figured out a plausible reason why Dinah looked like she was still in her twenties (like Ollie was in actuality), while still having all of those experiences. I'm not saying it would have been a pice of cake to do, but I think it could have been done without making the crapola they did in reality.

There's no need for that explanation because Batman and Superman would've been in JSA too

Now the real question is how young they're gonna make Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, and in relation to that, Hal and Barry. If we're going by real time, Hal and Barry will be 20 years younger than Bruce, Clark, Alan, and Jay, and physically in the comics they will be... 10 years younger?

Like Bruce, Clark, Diana, Alan and Jay will be in their 40s while Barry and Hal in their 30s?

So how does Time Travel in DC work now exactly...???? Not like it was "working" before, but still...

Currently it would be linear, since there will be no cut off point with Crisis

[bat39]

That's the one I was afraid to ask wasn't it? Man my question was simply whether Ollie, who's gonna be Drake's generation who age slowly, will date Drake or her daughter, Lance, who I imagine would be in Dick Grayson's generation



There's no need for that explanation because Batman and Superman would've been in JSA too

Now the real question is how young they're gonna make Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, and in relation to that, Hal and Barry. If we're going by real time, Hal and Barry will be 20 years younger than Bruce, Clark, Alan, and Jay, and physically in the comics they will be... 10 years younger?

Like Bruce, Clark, Diana, Alan and Jay will be in their 40s while Barry and Hal in their 30s?



Currently it would be linear, since there will be no cut off point with Crisis

That's the thing...I don't think its going to be quiet like that.

I think the Linearverse is going to be based off the broad template of current continuity, while acknowledging that previous versions of mainstream DC continuity still happened in this universe. The idea is that time is fundamentally unstable in the mainstream DCU, characters are always getting tweaked and the past is a bit fuzzy...but it more or less fits together if you squint enough. Kinda how Marvel has operated so far.

So in practice, this means that a flashback to Batman's first year could be done in the style of the earliest Kane/Finger stories. OR it could be done in the style of Year One. Which...is kinda how Morrison approached it (as did Tom King in his recent run).

But when it comes to certain specifics like the JSA and other Golden Age heroes...I think they will lean towards what mainstream continuity has been. And mainstream continuity, for the last 60 years or so, has leaned towards the JSA being precursors to the JLA, with Superman, Batman and other Golden Age 'survivors' like Green Arrow being contemporaries of the JLA (it remains to be seen how this works with Wonder Woman).

So in practise, I think they will stick with the idea that Green Arrow is a contemporary of the JLA, and that he dated the second Black Canary AKA Dinah Laurel Lance...to keep things simple. Now exactly how old her mom, Dinah Drake is, will be a whole other debate...I think maybe an argument can be made that the JSA were 'extracted' from the Linearverse during its Golden Age iteration, and then 're-inserted' during its Modern Age iteration Post-COIE (which does reflect the real-world publishing history with E1/E2 and then the merger. Time will tell). Maybe, if someone wants to have fun with the idea, some modern GA/BC story can throw a sly reference to the time Dinah had her mother's memories and thought she was her mom for a bit...and how that freaked Ollie out! But by and large, I think the Linearverse is more about broadly honoring all past iterations of DC mainstream canon...without necessarily deep-diving into these kinds of nitty-gritties.

With Jason too, I can see them sticking to the Crime Alley origin. Maybe, like Morrison did, they'll bring back the red hair angle.

[Lee Stone]

That's the thing...I don't think its going to be quiet like that.

I think the Linearverse is going to be based off the broad template of current continuity, while acknowledging that previous versions of mainstream DC continuity still happened in this universe. The idea is that time is fundamentally unstable in the mainstream DCU, characters are always getting tweaked and the past is a bit fuzzy...but it more or less fits together if you squint enough. Kinda how Marvel has operated so far.

The problem with DC is that, unlike Marvel, they've rebooted characters and teams enough times that it takes a lot more than squinting to get them to fit together.

[bat39]

The problem with DC is that, unlike Marvel, they've rebooted characters and teams enough times that it takes a lot more than squinting to get them to fit together.

True.

But its not impossible.

Morrison did a pretty good job putting together a coherent chronology of Batman from the Golden Age till the present day (or rather, what was the present last decade). That seems to be the approach they've been taking to Superman too over the last few years, since Superman Reborn.

Obviously you have to make choices. Superman could be wearing the original Siegal/Shuster suit in a flashback to his first year, or the more classic suit. But Jonathan and Martha Kent can't be both alive and dead. In such a situation, I'd say go with the more additive choice - so the Kents are alive, but a story flashing back to the 'Golden Age' doesn't have to mention them. If you really want to reference a scene like, say, Jonathan Kent on his deathbed, maybe have Superman remember it as part of a previous timeline or version of history. Or just explicitly say the story is set in a previous timeline or history. With Death Metal, there's ample precedent for this kind of thing.

I think some of the big changes DC made over the decades are likely to stick because they've now become the 'default' setting of those characters. Jason Todd's origin as a kid stealing the tires of the Batmobile. Superman and Batman being contemporaries of the JLA not the JSA. The modern Black Canary being the daughter of the original. Probably a few more I'm missing.