Help the New Guy!

[NewGuy]

Hello everyone,
As my name suggests, i'm new here.
So i recently started reading DC comic books. I wanted to know what is up with the comics and the timelines. I mean, i dont get rebirth, the new 52 the flashpoint or the convergence. I mean what is happening?!?!?
Let's say i want to continue reading DC comics; what should i start with so i will understand the Rebirth. I don't mind going waay back.
Please also explain all these major events and what they mean.
You can go to as much details as possible or just summarize, i'm fine with both.

Thank you

[Panfoot]

The short version is back in 2011 there was an event called Flashpoint, that after words resulted in (mostly) a reboot of the universe, with all the books starting back and #1 with a new version of the character, which was called the New 52 as it launched with 52 different books (there were a few cases with old stuff being carried over, specifically with Batman and Green Lantern). Convergence was an event last year that involved various heroes from all sorts of different universes being abducted from their timelines and forced to fight each other, and in the end it resulted in the pre-flashpoint superman, along with pre-flashpoint Lois Lane and their newborn son Jon ending up in the new 52 universe. With Rebirth they have added back a few things missing from the New 52 universe(the most significant probably being Wally West, the original Kid Flash), and some other things such as their now being 3 jokers(probably all from different universes) and that the one behind all this screwiness of the universe over the past 5 years was none other than Dr. Manhattan.

I would honestly recommend just picking a character or characters that your interested in and just start reading. The Rebirth issues out now are transition issues from the previous series to the new ones and all the new #1s that follow are more or less fresh starts for most series(Superman is a little weird) and more than likely won't deal with the actual cause of Rebirth for a while. Find some characters you like and just start reading, worry about the weird continuity stuff later on.

[Icefalcon]

I'll echo the advice about grabbing any rebirth issues that appeal to you and going from there.

If you don't mind a DC animated movie there is one of Flashpoint which covers the central story line. Personally I really liked it.
Flashpoint was a huge event, with a lot of additional issues that informed you more about the Flashpoint world rather than the main story, as always with an event some were really good, others not so much but the general standard I felt was pretty high.

Anyway good luck, I hope you'll find something in Rebirth that really appeals and gives you a good starting point

[Austin316]

I feel like a parrot with this, but do not be afraid to Google . If a comic interests you definitely pick it up, but anytime I'm confused about something I just Google and a combo of wiki, dc wikia and comicvine tend to fill in the blanks for me.

[Dark-Flux]

Id just start with rebirth and read until stuff makes sense.
Going back to read Crisis/Flashpoint/Convergence blah blah blah would only serve to confuse and isnt particularly worth it anyway imo.

[Austin316]

Id just start with rebirth and read until stuff makes sense.
Going back to read Crisis/Flashpoint/Convergence blah blah blah would only serve to confuse and isnt particularly worth it anyway imo.

Yeah, you really only need the cliff's notes from these events.

[Ascended]

Understanding DC history is a pretty tough thing, given their history. I'll try to give you the basic rundown, but even I might have some things off.

So.....1938, Superman shows up. Its the dawn of the Golden Age and everyone follows; Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquaman, so on and so forth. There's a Flash and a Green Lantern, but they're not the guys you see now.

1956, superheroes have been out of the spotlight for a while, with only a handful surviving in regular publication after WWII ended. DC introduces a completely new version of the Flash (the guy we know and love today). Other than the powers and name, its a completely new character, and part of his backstory is that he read comic books featuring the original Flash (Jay Garrick) which helped inspire him to become the "real" Flash. This is the dawn of the Silver Age.

Continuity gets cracked here, since Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and a few others keep on telling their stories without breaking their individual continuities, despite the fact that they have history with a version of Flash and Green Lantern that, with the new world being built around Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, never actually happened. After a little while, we learn that the original Golden Age stuff happened on an alternate reality called Earth-2. So DC quietly starts pushing two versions of many characters; the "Golden Age" Superman on Earth-2 marries Lois Lane, Batman has a daughter, everyone ages, and so on, while the versions running alongside the newer characters like Barry on Earth-1 remain in basically the normal status quo (Superman isn't old or married, Batman doesnt have kids, etc).

Two worlds, some characters who have a similar history to each other, some characters who are completely different versions, and the heroes of those two earths get together to have adventures on a yearly basis. So far so good, right? Not any more complicated than the tv show Fringe, and much easier to follow than LOST.

By the 1980's DC had made a mess of things. There's multiple worlds seeing publication now, some characters are practically the exact same as their doppelgangers on other worlds, people from one world have moved to others permanently....trying to keep track of it all is a pain in the ass and DC is afraid its driving readers away. So they launch Crisis on Infinite Earths, the first maxiseries ever printed and a big friggin deal, which sees the infinite multiverse destroyed and reduced to one world, where the original WWII heroes existed and the Silver Age heroes are legacies (Batman, Supes, and Wondy remain young and single). Basically, all that history from all those worlds still happened, but now its all confined to one world. This "clutter earth" as it was often called by fans, begins the era we call post-Crisis (everything beforehand being pre-Crisis) and for many marks the end of the Silver/Bronze Age of comics and begins.....well, people argue about that, but we'll call it the modern Age.

This caused some major continuity problems, since you now have the histories of several major and distinct worlds meshed together and not everything fits. So DC launches Zero Hour in the early 90's, a big line-wide Event designed to fix the mess. It has....mixed results, we'll say.

By 2011 more than a decade has passed since Zero Hour, nearly twenty since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and individual titles have tweaked their own histories here and there, so nothing makes much sense anymore at all, and the entire comic line is failing hard. So DC reboots and starts its universe over again. The idea is that in the New52 five years have gone by since the dawn of superheroes and some stories from the past still happened, but perhaps in a different way, or perhaps not at all, and unless its actually mentioned its not supposed to be something to worry about. Fans dont take too kindly to the nebulous nature of it, and right from the start there are continuity problems where one story contradicts another, no one is sure whether some central, super-important stuff happened or not, and since then DC has tried to smooth it all out.

Which brings us to now. Rebirth. The idea now is that.....honestly, Im not sure. The current world, which is still "technically" the New52 continuity, had ten years "stolen" from it and history has been changed. This is allowing DC to re-introduce a lot of concepts they ditched in 2011 and, in theory, will smooth out the history. Though none of us know how yet, and the entire thing just seems more confusing to me.

.....so.....just go to Wikipedia and start reading. As for the comics themselves, if an issue grabs your attention, buy it and read it, and if something doesnt make sense, Google it or ask us.

Bottom line is, none of this makes sense, it hasnt made sense since 1940, and thinking about it too hard is a good way to give yourself a headache. Read what entertains you and dont worry too awful much about the details or, especially, the history.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

Hard to say. Unfortunately, this isn't nearly as much a new-reader friendly initiative as some of the other relaunches of this sort. With say, Batman, you could jump right in; Superman would require some reading material or at least a briefing. I'd say let us know which characters you're interested in, and we'll do the best we can.

As far as timeline stuff goes, Ascended summed it up pretty well, but here's my shot:

30s/40s: You've got Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the original versions of Green Lantern and Flash, etc. They're all together as a group going by the Justice Society of America.

50s/60s/70s: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are the same, but there are new versions of Flash and Green Lantern, the ones that became the classics, who join up with them in the Justice League. It's eventually explained that these are also different versions of Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman, with the guys that ran around with the original Flash and Green Lantern existing on a world called Earth-Two in a parallel universe. Other universes like Earth-Three (evil mirror universe of Earth-One with the Justice League), Earth-X (Uncle Sam leads a team of superheroes on a world where Nazis won WWII), Earth-S (Captain Marvel), etc. start to appear as well.

80s: Having decided the parallel Earths and different versions of history are too confusing, DC published the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a cosmically destructive event that destroys most of them and recombines what's left into a single Earth, where the Justice Society was around in the 40s, retired in the 50s, and then Superman and the rest showed up in the modern day. Also importantly, the Earth-One Flash Barry Allen died saving the world and was replaced by his former sidekick Wally West, and spoilers:

Watchmen was published, a book set on a dark Earth with psychologically damaged vigilantes where the one superpowered being - the godlike Dr. Manhattan - ends up leaving the Earth at the end with the idea of creating life.

end of spoilers

90s/00s: Continuity tweaks are made a few times (Superman's origin is retooled more than once, incidents like Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis slightly alter history) to try and smooth things out to varying degrees of effectiveness, and a limited Multiverse of 52 worlds is restored. Also, in the events of Final Crisis, Barry Allen returns to life, sharing the role of Flash with Wally West.

2011: DC decides a relatively full clearing of the deck is needed. In the event Flashpoint, Barry Allen learns that one of his enemies, Zoom, used his powers to change Barry's history, murdering Barry's mother and framing his father for the crime. He goes back to try and fix it, but inexperienced with changing history, he accidentally distorts the timestream beyond recognition into a hellish parallel universe. He fixes it, but a being called Pandora intervenes at the moment of reset, resulting in a new universe, i.e. the New 52, where superhumans went public only 5 years ago with the emergence of Superman. This also alters the other 51 universes, the state of which was explored in the phenomenal miniseries Multiversity.

2015: A higher-dimensional version of Brainiac and his lackey Telos gather cities from across multiple prior incarnations of the Multiverse and force them to fight one another; this event Convergence is crappy and mostly pointless - it was a two-month filler story prepared in advance to cover publication while DC changed its headquarters - but at the end causes a massive change in history, preventing the events of the original Crisis and restoring the infinite Multiverse (though the 52-universe Multiverse exists in its own 'bubble' with the Multiverse now being made up of many such 'bubbles', each containing anything from 1 to infinite universes within; the main Earth remains in the 52-bubble).

2016: Major spoilers for the events of DC: Rebirth spoilers:

The pre-Flashpoint Wally West has been trapped outside of reality, but the death of the god Darkseid in a recent Justice League arc has disturbed things enough that he is able to get back in, albeit in the body of his younger New 52 self (separate from the Wally West appearing in the Flash comic at this point; it's explained that they're cousins); it's unclear if he has taken over this version's body, replaced him, or if the New 52 Wally was himself trapped outside of reality and gleaned knowledge of his prior self. He reaches Barry Allen, and reveals some of the history of the previous universe to him, along with the revelation that not only was Barry Allen not responsible for rewriting reality in the Flashpoint event - nor was Pandora - but that this is in fact not a new version of the universe, but the same universe with events altered and removed for an unknown purpose. Unbeknownst to them, the force manipulating events that took advantage of the Flashpoint to change things is in fact Dr. Manhattan, who has interfered in the timeline to unknown ends.

end of spoilers

[colonyofcells]

Maybe start with the Justice League title.