What DC will learn from the Rebirth initiative?

[Lee Stone]

DC Comics Just Made Their Entire History Officially Canon

Can anyone add some context to this pics here? I just want to know we are all in the same page

Panel 1 - Crisis on Infinite Earths
Panel 2 - Zero Hour
Panel 3 - Infinite Crisis
Panel 4 - Flashpoint

[GlennSimpson]

Fixed that for you. I know your agenda, I am not telling you that DC would not be more enjoyable for you if they did what you want, but don't confuse what would suit your preferences with what makes sense for anyone else.

Saying that some event took place which involved heroes rising from the dead and being referred to as Blackest Night but many of the major characters were not involved with it is entirely reasonable. It is not even that far-fetched of a concept. Many stories that are translated from paper to film have such discrepancies, including things as important as which characters were involved. I don't watch Walking Dead but I read the comics, and I could very easily discuss things with people who watched the shows and spot the things that happened on the show but happened differently, and the difference primarily is always the characters.

That's actually a great example. Imagine that the Walking Dead comics are the pre-Flashpoint, and the Walking Dead show is the New52. Certain things happen the same way, but not necessarily with exactly the same characters.

[GlennSimpson]

Again...no. Its either they were involved or it just couldn't have happened. That's not my personal hang-up. That's just the nature of those stories. You haven't read them so you don't know just how important those characters being there is to the plot. So, no, it just doesn't make sense if they're not there.



Again, no its not. At least not within the context of one universe. We're not talking about comic to a TV show, two entirely separate fictional canons. We're talking about the comics to the comics, and the comics are supposed to be ONE canon. Again, DC hasn't released any "Blackest Night Redux" and I don't see them doing that any time soon, so all we have to go by is the way that it was originally told. And you can't say something just "happened" if the main players aren't even supposed to be on the playing board. That is just common sense. Again, maybe you don't appreciate it because you haven't read those stories, but please don't tell me I am being irrational when I say that you can't tell me something "happened" but at the same time make impossible to have happened.

I have ready those stories, and I agree with cranger. They might have been important to the plot, but they aren't important to the *after-effects* of the story. Because the new story doesn't depend on what happened in the old story, it only depends on what is left at the END of the old story. But there's no reason there could not have been a version of Blackest Night that did not involve Firestorm. Just other stuff kinda like Blackest Night happened, with the bits that are necessary for the current stories being told surviving.

That's like saying the Justice League could not form without Wonder Woman being an original member. Except, for years, she wasn't. And it all worked fine. We all knew the original stories didn't happen exactly as published because having Black Canary there instead of Wonder Woman would have made the stories run differently, but in the end it was OK, because when you had Starro the Conqueror show up in a new story and in his flashback it showed Black Canary fighting him, we all accepted it and moved on.

And no, the comics are NOT supposed to be one canon. Nobody in the history of comics ever made that a rule. You can have fun fan-theories about parallel universes but nobody writing the comics is working under that assumption.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

That's actually a great example. Imagine that the Walking Dead comics are the pre-Flashpoint, and the Walking Dead show is the New52. Certain things happen the same way, but not necessarily with exactly the same characters.

Actually, no it's not. It would only be really analogous example if the Walking Dead TV show SAID it was a separate canon from the comics, but then referenced stories from the Walking Dead comics as if those stories were part of the show's continuity.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

I have ready those stories, and I agree with cranger. They might have been important to the plot, but they aren't important to the *after-effects* of the story. Because the new story doesn't depend on what happened in the old story, it only depends on what is left at the END of the old story. But there's no reason there could not have been a version of Blackest Night that did not involve Firestorm. Just other stuff kinda like Blackest Night happened, with the bits that are necessary for the current stories being told surviving.

And how did the END of the story come about, huh? You do know how absurd it is to assert that nothing that happens before you get to the current status quo has any impact on the current status quo, do you?

That's like saying the Justice League could not form without Wonder Woman being an original member. Except, for years, she wasn't. And it all worked fine. We all knew the original stories didn't happen exactly as published because having Black Canary there instead of Wonder Woman would have made the stories run differently, but in the end it was OK, because when you had Starro the Conqueror show up in a new story and in his flashback it showed Black Canary fighting him, we all accepted it and moved on.

Except nobody ever tried to claim that those Silver Age stories with Wonder Woman were still canon when they retconned Black canary as a founding member of the League. It was only AFTER Infinite Crisis PUT Wonder Woman BACK as a founding member that they recanonized the Silver Age stories in which she was a founder. They didn't try to say "oh those Silver Age stories still happened but different."

And no, the comics are NOT supposed to be one canon. Nobody in the history of comics ever made that a rule. You can have fun fan-theories about parallel universes but nobody writing the comics is working under that assumption.

Huh. I wonder what Marvel has been doing for almost 60 years then. I also thought you said you read a bunch of Marvel. And even DC was all ONE big canon up until Flashpoint.

Dude, you do realize there's decades worth of evidence to prove you wrong, right?

[skyvolt2000]

Actually, no it's not. It would only be really analogous example if the Walking Dead TV show SAID it was a separate canon from the comics, but then referenced stories from the Walking Dead comics as if those stories were part of the show's continuity.

Well both the comic and show are different universes. Take Tyler James Williams's Noah-he is not in the comic but there was a white kid named Noah in the comic. Also some of those folks still active on the show are dead in the comic.


I think the point you are making is DC needs some sort of set history for those who would like to know where someone came from versus someone just showing up.

Glenn is saying it's time for DC to stop reinventing the wheel and because sooner or later folks will get tired. And for Dc it might happen sooner than later despite the riots going on at Marvel. I am starting to see too many Rebirth books pop up in used bookstores and it's not just Cyborg but Justice League, Batman, Superman, Hal Jordan, Green Lanterns and Flash. With the price hike-a few more books are going to start struggling.

New 52 wanted to reinvent the wheel but doing that screwed so many fanbases and some were done on purpose. Problem with a reboot is how long do you wait to introduce Tim Drake's generation? Damian's generation? And legacy guys.

[skyvolt2000]

Huh. I wonder what Marvel has been doing for almost 60 years then. I also thought you said you read a bunch of Marvel. And even DC was all ONE big canon up until Flashpoint.

Dude, you do realize there's decades worth of evidence to prove you wrong, right?

Marvel never restarted. They just won't stop with the new number ones.

[Lee Stone]

The only problem I had with New52 referencing past stories is that they assumed you knew the story instead of showing a flashback that established it in the new continuity.
And then they reprint the original in TPBs for new readers, who weren't there the first time to know that there is a difference.

New reader reading Green Lantern post-Flashpoint and only knows the New52 universe picks up Blackest Night... confusion. Not because they know what was changed, but because they weren't around for the original to know what has been erased.

Of course, this isn't just restricted to reboots.

Imagine reading a trade paperback where Superman appears in an early issue as classic Superman and then the next time he appears it's as Electric Superman. But there's no narrative in the book explaining how or why he changed or that he was even the same character.
Readers of the time knew what was going on in the greater DCU, so it goes without saying.
But without at least one character commenting on the change, it would just cause confusion for a new reader picking up the trade years later.

[Sacred Knight]

DC doesn't seem to learn any lessons for any meaningful period of time, whatever said lesson may be. I mean, the period between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Flashpoint showed they learned nothing, so I'm not holding my breath that this initiative taught them anything either.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Marvel never restarted. They just won't stop with the new number ones.

I know. That was my point. The only problem is that Didio and some others haven't yet grasped that that's actually one of the reasons fans like Marvel.

[Atomic Man]

Is it? Pretty much every part of Geoff Johns's Green Lantern and the current Green Lantern status quo doesn't even make sense without Pre-Flashpoint continuity. How do you explain Kyle Rayner and Parallax even being part of the current GL canon if not for Emerald Twilight and Hal's transformation into Parallax (an event that Hal himself referenced several times before Rebirth), which itself requires that the Death of Superman Saga (and destruction of Coast City by Hank Henshaw and Mongul) is canon.

And Johns's GL run, which was simply just continued into the New 52, picking up right where War of the Green Lanterns left off, all started with Green Lantern: Rebirth, which itself requires that Final Night and again, Emerald Twilight and the Death of Superman are all canon. And even events that took place within Johns's GL run, events that are still referenced post-Flashpoint, like Blackest Night and Sinestro Corps War still relied heavily on years of DCU continuity.

Blackest Night doesn't make sense unless you have the deaths of Ronnie Raymond, Ralph and Sue Dibny, Jean Loring, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Batman, Terra, Captain Boomerang, Vibe, and several others so that they can all rise from the dead. That requires all the stories in which they died to also be canon, including Legends, Identity Crisis, Final Crisis, Sword of Atlantis, Judas Contract, etc. And not only their deaths, but you also need their history as being members of the League/Titans or villain in the DCU in order to justify their existence anyway. At the very least, the entire premise of Blackest Night meant that there had to have been several iterations of the Justice League just for them to be able to have number of fallen comrades, but apparently that never happened. And then Sinestro Corps War also required stories like Infinite Crisis, COIE, and the Death and Return of Superman to have taken place as well, because Superboy-Prime, Anti-Monitor, and Cyborg Superman all had MAJOR roles in that story.

And don't even get me started on Batman.

We've had this discussion before, but its obvious that you just don't want to accept the conclusion. Like it or not, the very nature of a shared universe requires that stories build off of each other. In fact, that's kind of the whole point.

Well-written, and 100 percent on the money.

We could go through your examples, but you still haven't come close to "almost every story".

You can read Nightwing stories without worrying about Teen Titans. Or most stories where he was Robin.

You can read current Teen Titans stories without having read any previous Teen Titans stories.

You can read Batman vs. Joker stories without having ever read a Batman vs. Riddler story, and vice-versa. You don't need to have read "Grounded" to understand a Superman story. Or "Amazon Attacks" to understand a Wonder Woman story.

Not to mention, you don't necessarily have to have read a previous story where a status quo was established in order to understand that status quo or need to know how that status quo got there. Sinestro has an army of yellow-ring-wearing soldiers. You don't need to know the origins of that to appreciate a story with them in it.

Blackest Night doesn't have to make sense. All you need to know is that Black Hand attacked the Earth at some point in the past. That's all you should need to know. But you also seem to subscribe that if Character A is in Story B, and Story B is canon, the every other story with Character A must also be canon, and that's entirely not necessary. In most cases you could cut out huge chunks of a character's background and as long as they showed up in time for story B.

As an example, following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, in the grand scheme of things, DC tried to elevate characters like Iron Monroe to take the place of the Earth 2 Superman and whatnot who were wiped out. But they didn't go far enough, they should have set it up so that Iron was Power Girl's cousin, for example, since Power Girl was an ongoing concern. And he should have been a JSA member, since the JSA was an ongoing concern. But even then, that doesn't mean they have to go in and have Iron fight every fight that the Earth 2 Superman fought - if the story wasn't factually connected to a current story, it can easily be ignored/wiped out.

You are making it WAY more complicated than it has to be.

You continue to ignore the rather pretentious statement in your own signature. You dismiss everyone else's opinion but YOURS as simply "their opinion," yet consider your own to be irrefutable truth. You can't have it both ways, unless you're just here to troll.

DC doesn't seem to learn any lessons for any meaningful period of time, whatever said lesson may be. I mean, the period between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Flashpoint showed they learned nothing, so I'm not holding my breath that this initiative taught them anything either.

I'm not defending DC, but I look at COIE itself and the years that followed and I see what is most likely corporate interference from people who knew nothing about the creative side of things. I wasn't reading comics regularly pre-COIE, so I don't know how many people really complained that the DCU was "too complicated," but the feeling I have from reading about the history of COIE is that it was a corporate mandate handed down from the WB. Making things "simpler" is corporate-speak for "dumb things down enough so that we can try and sell more units and product to people who haven't been buying it." The way COIE went down was at least respectful of the overall history of the DCU in that characters, themes, and histories were united into a new whole rather than completely abandoned like we saw with the New 52. COIE was an "either/or" approach, but at least the core of the DCU (those Earths that had come to represent the previous 50 years of continuity to that point, as well as the Fawcett and Charlton characters) were retained mostly intact. The biggest casualties of COIE were the JSA and the LoSH, the latter of which shouldn't have existed at all given the final outcome of COIE.

The New 52, on the other hand, was an even greater corporate mistake: "throw out everything that doesn't work (Batman and GL), 'fix' Superman (because we don't like/understand him) and make everyone 10 years younger with no marriages so that the characters will appeal to younger readers." The problem was (and remains) that there are hardly any younger readers, and no reboot or publishing initiative is going to fix that. The real solution to that issue is one of distribution and rethinking where and how comics are packaged and sold.

[sustainentropy]

Just because the reboot altered continuity doesn't mean that everything that happened beforehand doesn't make sense. You can just assume that the events referenced happened, but they happened in a slightly different way than before. A way that fits with the new timeline.

It's really not that hard.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Just because the reboot altered continuity doesn't mean that everything that happened beforehand doesn't make sense. You can just assume that the events referenced happened, but they happened in a slightly different way than before. A way that fits with the new timeline.

It's really not that hard.

Yeah, it really is difficult, though. In the example of Blackest Night, the only way that that story could happen for the "new timeline" is if the heroes that were brought back to become Black Lanterns...were heroes that we'd never met before. I mean, literally almost every example of the heroes resurrected as Black Lanterns couldn't have been because, in the post-FP continuity, they never died or even served on the League. And not only them, but characters that were part of that story not as Black Lanterns, but as the protagonists (like Jason Rusch and Ray Palmer) couldn't have been there because in the post-FP canon they hadn't even started their superhero careers yet. So, in that case (and in a lot of others), to "fit the new timeline," it wouldn't be just slightly different, it would have to be changed entirely.

And you do realize how its hard for anyone to invest in a universe when the picture of its history is defined by the people in charge as "oh, this story happened in some way, somewhere, somewhen, somehow...but don't ask us how or when or why," don't you?

[sustainentropy]

Yeah, it really is difficult, though. In the example of Blackest Night, the only way that that story could happen for the "new timeline" is if the heroes that were brought back to become Black Lanterns...were heroes that we'd never met before. I mean, literally almost every example of the heroes resurrected as Black Lanterns couldn't have been because, in the post-FP continuity, they never died or even served on the League. And not only them, but characters that were part of that story not as Black Lanterns, but as the protagonists (like Jason Rusch and Ray Palmer) couldn't have been there because in the post-FP canon they hadn't even started their superhero careers yet. So, in that case (and in a lot of others), to "fit the new timeline," it wouldn't be just slightly different, it would have to be changed entirely.

And you do realize how its hard for anyone to invest in a universe when the picture of its history is defined by the people in charge as "oh, this story happened in some way, somewhere, somewhen, somehow...but don't ask us how or when or why," don't you?

I get what you're saying. You aren't happy with the history that the current stories are built on being changed and altered without explanation, but unfortunately that's what's happened here. At least in the exact way they were told before. Who's to say Blackest Night wasn't changed entirely anyway? It hasn't been revisited yet as far as I know. Just mentioned here and there. It obviously happened way differently to gel with the current timeline, but they're obviously avoiding getting too deep into details to avoid having to explain it.

Honestly dude, I understand your point and I get that you're frustrated about it. It's a pain in the ass when they come along and just wipe away continuity on a whim. Hopefully the New 52 thought them a much needed lesson about reboots.

[BrianWilly]

And you do realize how its hard for anyone to invest in a universe when the picture of its history is defined by the people in charge as "oh, this story happened in some way, somewhere, somewhen, somehow...but don't ask us how or when or why," don't you?

I think this is a really succinct way of putting it.

I do understand that DC's intended approach to this stuff at the time was: "Versions of pre-Flashpoint storylines happened in ways that make sense in the New 52 continuity." But the problem is that those storylines would've had to have happened so completely differently in order to make sense in N52 continuity that it's basically useless to try to base any characterizations or relationships off of them.