DC Time Travel Rules

[Jim Kelly]

I'm not quite sure what time travel rules Johna Hex used, but when he traveled into the future, he ended up discovering his own dead body from the past.

It gets even wilder in New52, when after discovering his own dead body, he ends up getting surgery to correct his scars before going back in time to discover somebody else had stolen his identity. So he takes the identity of the person that went down in history as "the man who killed Johna Hex" kills the fake Hex, and turns his body over to have it stuffed so it'll become the one he encounters in the future.

One of the titles that really bugged me immediately after the Crisis was HEX. Because they set some firm rules for the one universe. There could only be one and it had a set timeline. Other books appeared that weren't part of this universe, but they didn't matter. HEX was in the one universe, therefore its timeline with a dystopian future was set in cement, it couldn't be changed. I didn't like Jonah time-travelling and ending up in a garbage future, but I would have been okay with that if the rules weren't so rigid. It meant we had to accept a super-hero shared universe where the future was already determined to be terrible.

Granted, later on, they completely threw out all these rules, but not in time to save HEX.

On the other hand, maybe one of the reasons why they wanted to crack down on the timeline and keep things straight was to avoid the ridiculous nonsense you describe from the New 52.

[Jim Kelly]

Lately, I've been re-reading early issues of THE FLASH and, reading the Flash-Grams for issue 118 (February 1961), one letter and the response from the Editor jumped out at me.

In his letter, Robert Walker of Knoxville, Tenn., writes--"In answer to a letter in your September Flash, you said that Flash had never broken the time barrier. However, in your first issue of Flash he did break the time barrier. Who is right?"

The Editor answers--"You're right--we're wrong. Showcase No. 4 (September-October, 1956)--the issue in which Flash made his debut--carried a story titled 'The Man who Broke the Time Barrier!' For readers who may have missed this issue (of which, unfortunately, there are no more copies available), the story dealt with Mazdan--a criminal of the far future who traveled back to our time and after a series of harrowing adventures was captured by Flash, who returned him to his own future era by breaking through the time barrier. As the Scarlet Speedster explained in the story, he was able to work this feat 'by travelling fast enough, close to the speed of light, to set up vibrations that will project our bodies into the future.'"

In the story in question (by Broome, Infantino and Kubert), Flash does this by carrying Mazdan around a race track, running at super-speed, until they break through the time barrier. Not long after Robert Walker's letter, in THE FLASH 125 (December 1961), Barry will invent the "Cosmic Treadmill" to travel through time. I guess that this helps him pin-point which period in time he wishes to visit and it saves on wearing out race tracks in Central City.

[The Darknight Detective]

Lately, I've been re-reading early issues of THE FLASH and, reading the Flash-Grams for issue 118 (February 1961), one letter and the response from the Editor jumped out at me.

In his letter, Robert Walker of Knoxville, Tenn., writes--"In answer to a letter in your September Flash, you said that Flash had never broken the time barrier. However, in your first issue of Flash he did break the time barrier. Who is right?"

The Editor answers--"You're right--we're wrong. Showcase No. 4 (September-October, 1956)--the issue in which Flash made his debut--carried a story titled 'The Man who Broke the Time Barrier!' For readers who may have missed this issue (of which, unfortunately, there are no more copies available), the story dealt with Mazdan--a criminal of the far future who traveled back to our time and after a series of harrowing adventures was captured by Flash, who returned him to his own future era by breaking through the time barrier. As the Scarlet Speedster explained in the story, he was able to work this feat 'by travelling fast enough, close to the speed of light, to set up vibrations that will project our bodies into the future.'"

In the story in question (by Broome, Infantino and Kubert), Flash does this by carrying Mazdan around a race track, running at super-speed, until they break through the time barrier. Not long after Robert Walker's letter, in THE FLASH 125 (December 1961), Barry will invent the "Cosmic Treadmill" to travel through time. I guess that this helps him pin-point which period in time he wishes to visit and it saves on wearing out race tracks in Central City.

Forgot about Mazdan, Jim, even though I own a reprint of that particular issue.

[TheRay]

The Flash of Earth 1 builds the Cosmic Treadmill which allows those with super speed to travel through time. After using the cosmic treadmill, the user has to keep their internal vibrations a certain way to remain in the time period because if they don’t they will he returned to the time they traveled from. Pre-Crisis, it also allowed travel between dimensions/universes.

[Lee Stone]

I had a hard time suspending disbelief when major events would effect the current DCU and the Legion or JSA simply because they were being published at the same time.

Crisis on Infinite Earths and Millennium, for example, both occurred in the 20th and 30th century. And just happened to be during the then-current Legion's issues those same months in the real world.
Why didn't Crisis happen during the Grell Legion run instead? Why not a flashback to the Silver Age Legion and have them encounter a Manhunter, instead of a current character being revealed as a Manhunter?

Of course, I know it makes for good comics and everyone loves a good crossover... but when you stop to think about it too long...

[Stanlos]

The current DCU time travel rules seems to be 'saving random woman makes timeline go brrr....Thomas Wayne is Batman and Wonder Woman/Aquaman are at war'.

Yet, prior to that there were more deft handling of time travel:

-I distinctly recall a time travel story from the Silver Age where Superboy from the past coming to the future lead to the Superman of the present to go to the past. As if the timeline had a self correcting mechanism.

-Flash, Starman and Booster Gold all operate on 'Back to the Future' rules and characters are extremely careful not to break from the predetermined timeline. Even if they did, like Booster trying to save Babs from being cripped, the future still somehow came to pass. At the same time there are also various alternate timelines in the DCU.

What are other examples of time travel rules in the DCU either pre Nu52 or post Nu 52?

That was just GJs fanwank