Working back through reboots

[bholderman]

So today, I finally started wading through the menagerie of Convergence titles. The Superman: Convergence #1 seems affiliated with this week's Lois and Clark mini series, so I started there with a few other individual issues.

But, it got me thinking, through the universe, there seems to be a lot of leftovers still hanging around from previous reboots (correct me if Im wrong). We just recovered from Flashpoint, which I thought was a great read, which introduced the new 52. Convergence has led to the DC You, as I take it.

Do I need How many reboots to I need to backtrack on to fully understand the CDU?

Btw, the Superman Convergence was awesome.

[poroto678]

Hard question.

I guess Crisis on Infinte Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, 52 and Final Crisis are the important events. Only the first one led to a reboot, but the rest summarize the history of the modern DC Universe.

That is what i read.

[colonyofcells]

The older events like Crisis on Infinite Earths are not needed to understand the New 52 comics.

[Ascended]

The older events like Crisis on Infinite Earths are not needed to understand the New 52 comics.

This. More or less.

When the New52 began four years ago, the only properties that held onto any of their old continuity were Batman and Green Lantern. Green Lantern you can read starting with Geoff Johns' GL: Rebirth mini (2005 or so) through to Blackest Night (2010 I think), and have all the information you need. Batman is even less grounded in "recent events" and you can pick up those titles from the start of the 52 and, by and large, be fine. The information you need to know is referenced within the pages.

What you do see are older concepts carried over and re-introduced. In Grant Morrison's Action Comics, for example, we're introduced to John Henry Irons, the hero known as Steel. Now, Steel was originally created during the early 90's in a continuity typically called post-Crisis. In the 52, he's still largely the same character but his history is limited to the events of the 52 universe and what came before merely informs the direction of the character, and has no direct influence.

That's not to say that reading older continuities wont give you some insight into the characters, or are not worth reading or not enjoyable. Because there's a lot of really great stuff from just about any era. These characters didnt survive seventy-plus years by being boring, after all.