Multiversity was the true start of Rebirth

[MikefromGotham]

Wow thanks for finding and posting! Really cool reading!

[Atomic Man]

Wow thanks for finding and posting! Really cool reading!

My pleasure!

[Last Son of Krypton]

See my comments above. Plans were being laid for this earlier, as seen with Jurgens' comments about pre-Flashpoint Superman's return being planned pre-Convergence. This leads me to believe Rebirth (probably not yet named as such) was something Johns and DiDio had in place as a Hail Mary in light of a potential failure of DC You.

I'm aware that at that time (2014/15), as a result of fans complaints, they began to look for ways to bring back things that readers were missing, such as some legacy characters (Wally West, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain...) and the Clois relationship/marriage in the case of Superman. It's no secret that many ideas which were then implemented with Rebirth were already present before. They have even spoken openly about it. This is from 2015...

Dan DiDio: "With the October launches of Batman and Robin Eternal, Titan’s Hunt and Lois and Clark you’ll see us starting to weave in our history. I think it’s important for us not just to look at what we’re telling in the future. One of the aspects of our storytelling that we lost, and we’ve heard this from the fans, is the generational aspect of the DC universe, the sense of history of what it was. We had a very hard start with the "New 52" and nobody had a history more than five years past (as we used our line in the sand). A lot of people felt that the history of the characters, the generational aspect of who they were was lost because of that. We’re going to great lengths to address that issue.

What I loved about the first issue of Lois and Clark is that in the first six pages it tied in aspects of Convergence, aspects of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the launch of the "New 52" all in one book. Once you pull those things together it shows that we’re acknowledging we have a past, and there’s a past history that our characters are very intricately involved in, and it helped formulate and create the stories that are coming forward.

What we’re doing now is try to pay as much service as we can to our past history but find a way to incorporate it into our future storytelling so we’re telling stories forwards and backwards, enriching the DC universe without just retelling old stories or repeating ourselves."

http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/3...ee-nycc-part-1

Sense of history? Acknowledging the past? Generational aspect? Heard the fans? It all sounds familiar.

The subsequent Rebirth initiative/plans has brought these ideas to the next level and expanding them to other franchises. But the really distinctive things about Rebirth (characters bonds, 10 years stolen, bring the characters to their "iconicity", etc..) are something they have worked on after October 2015 as told by DiDio. When Abnett was writing Titans Hunt (and Jurgens his L&C), "Rebirth" was still in the "test case" phase...

Comic Vine: When you started working on TITANS HUNT, did you know it would lead into TITANS?

Dan Abnett: I didn't have the first clue. I honestly didn't know. I was asked to do Titans Hunt, which was very exciting. It was an opportunity to reinvent or reconstruct a hidden history for the Titans in the New 52 framework. It also was meant to deliberately draw upon the Nick Cardy/60s era rather than the classic Perez and Wolfman era. We wanted to capture some of that spirit and take it back to the beginning. It was only once I got going and the series began to progress I started to ask, "Can I do this?" Occasionally they'd go, "No, you can't do that." I'd ask why not and they'd just say, "Because..."

After a little while, about two or three issues in, they finally began to unofficially tell me that something big was coming down the line and Titans Hunt was a road into it. It was almost like a test case or experiment, but it was also a set up. That obviously made things very interesting. We started to really get into what we should do and what we shouldn't do and what we should leave to set up later.

So I didn't know. When I was first asked to do it, it sounded like a technical experiment on how to build continuity that previously didn't exist into an existing one and have fun with some of the characters. Suddenly I realized it was the cunning spymasters at DC had a much deeper plan in mind. It became very exciting. I think if they told me right off the bat, I would've gotten too excited and wouldn't be able to write anything.

http://comicvine.gamespot.com/articl...i/1100-155653/

[RedWhiteAndBlueSupes]

Found the article about Morrison referring to the Multi-Multiverse, an DiDio said he suggested at the time of Multiversity.

ETA: Here's the interview with Jeff King wherein he explains that he, "Dan, Marie, and Geoff" worked on Convergence and that the idea for the God Brainiac, which is the result of all the timelines his alternate versions have experienced, was Grant Morrison's idea. Reading this in light of Rebirth is fascinating, as King says that Brainiac's goal was to restore the pre-COIE status quo because he had become corrupted by the "corrupted timelines" that proceeded COIE.

I wonder if Brainiac will return at some point during Rebirth...

Well... if I were a bettin' man I'd say that he probably would LOL. Thanks for the link too and yeah I'm still curious about the Atom's "microverse" as that seems like a potentially big deal regarding "multiple multiverses"

[RedWhiteAndBlueSupes]

Who knows what they had planned back when Mr. Oz first premiered in 2013 but if I had to publish the Ultimate Rebirth Omnibus I'd probably start with his 1st appearance back then, or at least include that issue in there.