With the DCU slowly, but surely, re-embracing its past, there are only a few puzzle pieces left missing after the New 52 reboot chucked most of it in the garbage. Since it's an 80+ year long continuity involving at least five different overhauls, obviously there will always be parts that never fit together nicely, but for the most part, it all works if you squint enough
The various resurrections of formerly deceased characters like Ted Kord brought about by the New 52 aren't really a problem because heroes & villains had been coming back from the dead for decades. Despite Blackest Night's valiant attempt to address this issue, the impermanence of death is unfortunately a staple of superhero comics. Besides, I don't think anyone is too upset by Ted Kord being alive again.
However, while most changes and tweaks made during the New 52 can easily be incorporated into their backstories or explained away by comic-y mumbo-jumbo like Rucka did with Azzarello's Amazons, the numerous incidents of race-swapping that took place during the New 52 are little trickier. Unless I am missing anyone, Wally West, Etta Candy, Morgan Edge, and General Eiling all became African-American as a result of the time shenanigans following Flashpoint.
Now, the black teenager Wally West was re-contextualized as the classic ginger Wally West's estranged cousin, both of whom were named after a common ancestor. A minor name change to Wallace West has since removed a lot of the potential confusion this may cause between the two, but this solution is not something that could ever work twice.
Of course, many people could easily say that this isn't a problem. That we should be colorblind and it makes no difference whether Etta Candy, Morgan Edge and General Eiling are black or white. I am not sure whether a lot of people would agree, as I found out when I've suggested in the past that previously white characters like Iris West and Lois Lane should retroactively become biracial. Iris is much better known through the TV show as a light-skinned black woman and Lois Lane's mother has never played any meaningful role in any story that I can remember, so why not make her Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, or Philipino in order to add some more layers to not only Lois, but her mother and her xenophobic military father.
What do you think? Does it matter that, for most of her history, Etta Candy was a freckle-faced big boned red head and now she's a freckle-faced big boned African American? I'm not sure if it makes any difference to Morgan Edge, who I believe had already dead during the Post-Crisis era, so being resurrected as a black man can be comic booked away. Prior to Flashpoint, General Eiling had gone full-on villain by assuming control of the Shaggy Man's body and become The General. Is there any way to reconcile that version of the character with the one we have now? Could he have transplanted his consciousness into the body of another man who happened to be black?
Or is the New 52 race-swapping something we should all ignore and just pretend they were always black? Is this another example of something us continuity obsessives should just squint at like we do with anything else that doesn't fit?
What do you think?