Continuity Cops! Has "Everything Happened" been a success or failure for you?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

We're about a year and a half into DC's current "Everything Happened" approach to its twisty turn-y oft-rebooted contradictory 80+ year old continuity. Surprisingly, the most recent Crisis is explicitly not about tinkering with that continuity yet again.

Over that last year and a half, DC creators have freely referred to pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, New 52, and other media with very little in the way of continuity-breaking, mostly because no one has gotten particularly specific in regards to the stuff that might get readers and creators stuck in the weeds, such as the specifics and timing of Jon Kent's birth & childhood, when exactly Steve Trevor met Wonder Wonder, and what Donna Troy's origin actually is. Thus far, avoiding those topics hasn't really become an issue yet, although I'm sure at some point, they'll have to address it.

From my perspective, I don't mind it all, the "everything in the toy box is at your disposal" option feels like the best one in regards to storytelling. I don't really need everything to fit together neatly. As long as the characters feel like the ones we've been following for decades and the broad strokes of their histories and journey's up to this point are intact, I don't really need them to try to untangle the more knotty parts of their continuity unless that makes for an interesting story...and that's a very rare animal.

What do you think? Are you happy with the current status quo or would you like an exhaustive timeline pegging everything down so you can nitpick it for what it's gotten wrong?

[Jackalope89]

The "everything happened" just doesn't work for me.

Jason waking up in his coffin over being brought back via magic water, yes. Superboy Prime being cause of said wake-up call, not so much.

But overall, no. Just no.

[SJNeal]

*My* DC Universe existed from 1986-2011, and while it certainly had its flaws, the people that built it cared about continuity on a level we probably won't ever see again.

I don't mean this as cynically as it sounds, but I really don't care anymore. The current mandate works for me in that I still read the characters/creators I like, and stopped worrying about how/if/when their stories all tie together awhile ago now.

[Jon Clark]

So far it has been working, but as you say eventually there are going to have to be some stuff that contradicts other stuff. It's a given that if no one knows how anything fits together that two writers will address the same event and include details that can't both be true. Then some third writer will come along and write a story that doesn't fit in with either version.

[James Cameron]

What's so bad about hypertime?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

What's so bad about hypertime?

I also loved Hypertime, but, much like "Everything Happened", few creators (or fans) can wrap their minds around what it actually is.

[John Venus]

There are way too contradictory elements to just say 'everything happened'. Morrison spent ~10 years~ trying to consolidate all the wacky Silver Age stuff with the modern version of Batman. It will take about the same time but probably even longer to do that for the entire DCU.

I don't care about the shared universe. Just give me good stories, the ocassional team up or cross over, connect the dots where they make sense and we're good.

*My* DC Universe existed from 1986-2011, and while it certainly had its flaws, the people that built it cared about continuity on a level we probably won't ever see again.

Same.

[Aahz]

There are way too contradictory elements to just say 'everything happened'. Morrison spent ~10 years~ trying to consolidate all the wacky Silver Age stuff with the modern version of Batman.

I still don't think that this still just muddied the continuity and didn't really added anything of worth to the Batman mythos.

[charliehustle415]

*My* DC Universe existed from 1986-2011, and while it certainly had its flaws, the people that built it cared about continuity on a level we probably won't ever see again.

I don't mean this as cynically as it sounds, but I really don't care anymore. The current mandate works for me in that I still read the characters/creators I like, and stopped worrying about how/if/when their stories all tie together awhile ago now.

Amen, it is MY DC Universe as well. It felt like the heroes were family, hell even the villains felt like family! Joker would run into Lex and they actually acknowledged each other and their previous relationship.

What a time to be alive.

[Timothy Hunter]

*My* DC Universe existed from 1986-2011, and while it certainly had its flaws, the people that built it cared about continuity on a level we probably won't ever see again.

I don't mean this as cynically as it sounds, but I really don't care anymore. The current mandate works for me in that I still read the characters/creators I like, and stopped worrying about how/if/when their stories all tie together awhile ago now.

This is exactly how I feel. The attempts to reincorporate the pre-Flashpoint universe are futile, because DC s feels the need to insert the New 52 and Rebirth periods into their continuity. You can't slap together previous timeline with a hard reboot and say they're one big universe. There's a thousand contradictions that would take a massive, decades spanning project to reconcile, definitely not DiDio's half-assed attempt with the 5G timeline.

I'm just glad that we got 25 years of 70-80% good stories.

[HsssH]

*My* DC Universe existed from 1986-2011, and while it certainly had its flaws, the people that built it cared about continuity on a level we probably won't ever see again.

I don't mean this as cynically as it sounds, but I really don't care anymore. The current mandate works for me in that I still read the characters/creators I like, and stopped worrying about how/if/when their stories all tie together awhile ago now.

Yeah, only people who care could create disasters like Hawkman.

[SJNeal]

Yeah, only people who care could create disasters like Hawkman.

Yes, I'm well aware of that particular disaster. The Hawks and Donna Troy remain the glaring post-COIE continuity mistakes, but they've both been addressed ad nauseum. And the fact that they jumped through so many hoops to try and make it work *does* show they cared; much more so than shrugging their collective shoulders and saying "it all happened!".

I'd still take that DCU over the current one, in the context of the OP's topic.

[SanityOrMadness]

"Everything happened" has clearly been abandoned, otherwise Cassie Sandsmark would have known Artremis in Jones' Wonder Girl series, since the latter was her mentor for a decade of stories.

At most, there's a lot of one-line summaries of stories which all happened, but the actual details of the stories are invalidated to a greater or lesser extent. (So Wally West was zapped into the speed force so that everyone forgot him by Abra Kadabra - similarly to how it happened with Linda before - but it happened c. 2011 stories, not while he was Kid Flash. Johns' New 52 JL origin story happened, but it was a reformation of the team after the pre-Flashpoint Dick-Batman/Donna Troy/Jade/Jesse Quick*/etc lineup broke up; and the details are blurred away - like them being strangers to one another - so that anything which contradicts other stuff is just Not Part of History. And so on...)

*Don't ask what happened to Jesse's kid.

*My* DC Universe existed from 1986-2011, and while it certainly had its flaws, the people that built it cared about continuity on a level we probably won't ever see again.

I don't mean this as cynically as it sounds, but I really don't care anymore. The current mandate works for me in that I still read the characters/creators I like, and stopped worrying about how/if/when their stories all tie together awhile ago now.

Nowhere near 2011. Zero Hour's borderline - it didn't change that much, except Captain Marvel's origin changing from Shazam: A New Beginning to Ordway's Power of Shazam GN - basically just deleting one miniseries, since his appearances in Legends, JLI, etc stayed intact and he never had a series between the two - although I think it may be the point where Batman & Superman officially stopped having been JLA founders, there was never a JLA origin between Crisis & ZH as far as I recall.

The post-Crisis DCU really died with the Superman: Birthright origin rewrite, which rewrote huge chunks of Superman's history - e.g., Lex Luthor being the same age as Clark and having grown up in Smallville rather than twice his age and growing up in Suicide Slum, Kandor being Kryptonian again rather than a grabag of random alien races, Krypton being completely different (which invalidated the Eradicator's origin amongst other things), the whole Pocket Universe thing (including Superman killing Zod & co) being erased... . And around the same time, you had Kon-El's origin being rewritten without explanation by Geoff Johns to match the fanfic he wrote and had published in a letter column a decade earlier (Superman/Luthor hybrid) rather than his existing origin (Paul Westfield clone, altered to have tactile TK and look like a young Superman).

And then you get to Infinite Crisis, after which Wonder Woman had suddenly been around for a decade longer and she, Superman & Batman were JLA founders again (invalidating JLA: Year One; and also leaving her history essentially a blank slate since the Perez run was predicated around her being a newbie in the late 1980s, including a major crossover spinning out of her public debut).

[phonogram12]

I don't mean this as cynically as it sounds, but I really don't care anymore. The current mandate works for me in that I still read the characters/creators I like, and stopped worrying about how/if/when their stories all tie together awhile ago now.

This is probably for the best, tbh. I've always assembled my own continuity, anyway, so this just validates that decision even more.

I mean, my main Batman continuity starts at Batman Year One and continues to where we are now...except from the point where Jason was resurrected. For me, that starts at the New 52, since that's the first time his resurrection meant anything to me.

My Superman continuity's origin is the Birthright origin, but then borrows bits from Superman Secret Origin.

Don't get me started on WW.

The whole everything happened thing probably works best for the Flashes, tbh, since not a whole lot changed for them from one age to the next. And when it did (the nu 52) it later got explained away in a surprisingly satisfying fashion (Rebirth).

Hawkman? I get a headache just thinking about it, so I just go with the latest series (although I surprisingly liked JLU's version).

Power Girl? I like the JSA Classified's explanation.

It seems too overwhelming to think that Wonder Woman remembers being every version of her past self, for example.

If anyone could handle it, it would be WW.

And most Wonder Woman fans don't actually wanna go back to Post Crisis despite their claims, because they don't want Steve Trevor to be old and married to Etta Candy, nor do they want the old origin story for Cheetah, nor do they want Amazons Attack to be canon.

The problem with WW (and less so with Superman lately, it seems) is that the fanbase is so fractured that it's probably impossible for the book's numbers to hit anywhere near where editorial would like them to hit. I mean, the only version of WW without the secret id I've ever enjoyed is the New 52 version, which is controversial to say the least.