#Hypertime

[theblanddcu2021]

The most difficult part of visiting alternate timelines for some heroes is meeting the children of their alternate selves. Some report feeling a sadness they can't quite explain. 57% of heroes polled say they still think about these children and 17.8% of those worry about them.

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[greenarrow-core]

Wait, do we know if Ollie was considered a fellon after the evens of Detective Comics 551 and 552, after he got put in the imigration prison and then broke out and escaped? Because if so, he theoreticaly couldn't vote, right? Tho the story might not even be canon considering DCs current state of continuity?

That's one of my favorite things in this story. He really gives a big fucking middle finger to the law. It's irrelevant to him and he just walks away naturally because it's all just a sham.

However, maybe they couldn't even legally arrest Ollie. The guy running the prison also didn't want any attention, so he may have just set up an alert for the refugees and not Ollie.

I think Ollie is a non-voter. O'Neil wrote him as being very against politicians and didn't seem to like the whole mayor plotline Elliot S. Maggin wrote.

Canonicity in DC is a mess. Currently they are doing hypertime. Each story has different stories that they reference and these are canon to them. Kind of like that.

Like, waid's current stuff is a whole other universe. Condon's run is and waid's current thing are very far.

If we go by Roy's suits, waid has him with a modernized one in World's Finest, while in the cover of issue #25, Taurin Clarke drew Roy with the classic Speedy suit.

[batmanvillainswithcircularheads]

[paullovescomics]

Now I'm up to #75 of the Superboy series that started in 1994. Finally he has a civilian name: Kon-el. The Hawaiian setting has been ditched, in favor of the metallic halls of Project Cadmus. The only supporting cast member who came along is Dubbilex, which does make sense, since he is a product of the Project. However, before we settle in at Cadmus, there's an outing on a lost island full of animal people. It's a take on the animal society of Kamandi, which ushers in a cavalcade of Kirby-created content. This goes hand-in-hand with the Superman titles of the time, if I remember correctly. It is pretty fun, although, as is often the case, it seems like we barely get to know any of these characters as they rush by in the crisis of the moment. We also get Hypertime in these issues. That was a way of re-introducing alternate worlds to the DCU without bringing back the old school multiverse. (In the early 80s folks were convinced that the multiverse was too confusing and off-putting to new readers, and that's why newstand sales were tanking. So it went away for a long time. Little did they know that much larger audiences would later embrace a menagerie of multiverses in movies and tv. Trying to guess what the missing readers want is a very old game, y'all, and nobody is ever very good at it.) This gives us Black Zero, an alternate Kon-El who cooked in the clone machine long enough to emerge at adult size and with more powers. And he's evil, natch. Later, the ex-supermodel-turned-psionic-bullet-firing-vigilante Hex returns, and now she's riding a dragon. All of this is fun, but I have to say that Kon-El often feels like he's just along for the ride. Particularly during the Cadmus arcs, you could put many other heroes in his place, and it would play out much the same. By #75, we're set for another change in status quo. If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned what happened to Tana, that's because that didn't happen. Why would such a downer, lackadaisically orchestrated dismissal of an important character happen in a series that's otherwise concerned with adventure and nostalgia? It doesn't fit the tone of the series, and it sucks, so clearly it didn't happen. Tana is back in Hawaii enjoying being a star reporter.

[fantastic-nonsense]

An Explanation of DC's Multiple Universal Reboots and How to Navigate DCU Canon

This is an expansion of a shorter explanation I gave on my Batfam Starter Recs reading list. I figured it might be helpful to have it as a standalone explanation for new comic readers learning how to navigate DC's various attempts to deal with the concept of canon.

The Multiverse is a storytelling device within DC Comics that explains how most of the comics DC has published are tied together or are separate from each other. There exists a "main" universe, where most of DC's published comics collectively take place, and then several alternate universes where things happened differently than they did in the main universe. The multiverse allows writers to explore various concepts like "what if the Jack the Ripper murders happened in Victorian-era Gotham?" and "what if DC's women were the primary heroes of their universe and fought in World War II?" without affecting anything going on in the main universe.

DC Comics canon works in three "mainline" universes:

the pre-Crisis universe (everything published from the beginning of DC Comics until the Crisis on Infinite Earths event in 1986)

the post-Crisis universe (everything published between 1986 and 2011)

the post-Flashpoint universe (everything published from 2011-now)

In the 1980s, management at DC decided that continuity had become too outdated, convoluted, and contradictory to tell coherent stories within a shared universe as more stories were told, new characters were introduced, and new context to prior stories was added. The company had previously attempted to solve this problem in the 1960s by publishing "Flash of Two Worlds," assigning existing stories to two different universes (Earth-One and Earth-Two), and creating a smattering of other alternate universes (Earth-Three was the home of the Crime Syndicate, evil AU versions of the Justice League, for example), but found that this did not actually solve the issue.

So. They decided to do a total universal reboot. That reboot was initiated by the company-wide crossover event known as Crisis on Infinite Earths, published from 1985 to 1986.

COIE effectively rebooted the entire internal DC Universe from the dawn of time onward. A new universal history now existed: the vast majority of characters/character history, history, and events from the varying alternate timelines that existed in the previous universe were retold, retooled, condensed, and/or thrown out in favor of a new, theoretically streamlined single reality. From 1986-2011, DC Comics mainline continuity was published in this shared universe, which industry professionals and fans alike called the 'post-Crisis' universe; in-universe, we refer to this primary version of DC's continuity "New Earth" (or occasionally, Earth-0).

For a wide variety of reasons that I won't get into here, DC completely rebooted their universe again in 2011 following the Flashpoint event comic. This new primary universe—interchangeably called the New 52 universe, post-Flashpoint universe, or Prime Earth, depending on the conversation—once again drastically changed many characters’ histories, personalities, and relationships with each other (sometimes for the better, most of the time for the worse). This is the current universe for DC's main comic line.

Within these three overarching iterations of the DCU, there were several events aimed to clean up, refresh, or reorganize various continuity problems. You may hear people refer to "post-Zero Hour" continuity, for example, to describe post-Crisis events/character histories that were revamped after Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! was published in 1994. "post-Rebirth" continuity, another common descriptor, refers to the reorganization of the post-Flashpoint/Prime Earth universe that happened after the Rebirth event in 2016.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, these are the most common ones you'll hear about:

Pre-Crisis Universe (1937-1986): "Flash of Two Worlds" (1961)

Post-Crisis Universe (1986-2011): pre/post-Zero Hour (1994-2005), post-Infinite Crisis and One Year Later (2005-2008), & post-Final Crisis (2008-2011)

Post-Flashpoint Universe (2011-present): The New 52 (comics written from 2011-2015), Convergence/DCYou (the first attempt to fix New 52 continuity, lasted from 2014-2016), pre/post-Rebirth (2016-2021)—and within Rebirth continuity there were two events, Dark Knights: Metal and its sequel, Death Metal, that did some minor universal revamps (2018-2021)—and post-Death Metal continuity, also known as Infinite Frontier (2021-present). Dark Crisis (2022) also exists but didn't really change the multiversal lore status quo, just simplified the explanation.

Other important universal lore-related things to note about these events:

Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, the DCU was an "infinite multiverse." There were no limits on the number of alternate universes that existed and no in-depth explanation for how they were connected or unconnected to the DCU's main timeline.

COIE destroyed the infinite multiverse and condensed everything into one, single universe. Between 1986 and 2005, there were technically no acknowledged alternate universes beyond the "antimatter universe."

"Hypertime" was created by Mark Waid and Alex Ross in 1999 as a way to get around this rule and eventually became the "go-to" way of explaining and fixing various continuity errors. Hypertime is a network of alternate timeline "echoes" that branch off from the main DCU timeline and occasionally overlap with each other, causing alterations in reality.

Since there could only be one timeline, continuity discrepencies were often "fixed" by explaining that one version of events happened in a previous, now destroyed timeline (that characters may or may not remember). Characters could cross from one timeline to another if needed, but any changes resulting from time travelers messing with events caused the destruction of their orginal timeline.

The "Elseworlds" imprint was another method of writing alternate universe stories without explicitly acknowledging the multiverse existed. DC officially just called these books "non-canon" stories without trying to explain how they existed in relation to the main universe. Most if not all of these stories are now considered part of the multiverse.

The infinite multiverse was briefly restored after Infinite Crisis in 2005 and then merged into a single 52-universe multiverse the year afterwards in 52. This new, limited multiverse was explained as there being an "original" Earth (Earth-0) with each successive universe being further and further removed from that one.

The initial post-Flashpoint/New 52 explanation of the multiverse was that there was a limited 52-universe multiverse. That explanation was somewhat overwritten after Rebirth and fully retconned after Death Metal.

Death Metal introduced the concept of the "omniverse," a multiverse of infinite multiverses. Yes, this is dumb. Yes, we generally ignore it and it has now been fully retconned.

The "Dark Multiverse" (a temporary "dark negative counterpart" of each Multiverse reality created by the fears of a universe's people) is theoretically a thing that exists. No, no one else really understands it either and the concept is generally restricted to the two Metal events.

Since Dark Crisis, the DCU is once again a single infinite multiverse in the vein of late pre-Crisis continuity. Every universe and continuity exists, and some are closer to the mainline reality than others.

Right now, the main DCU is once again a singular multiverse with an infinite number of universes. Technically, every version of "mainline universe" history throughout the existence of the multiverse is now considered to have occurred and is remembered by the inhabitants of Prime Earth. In practice, this means that "everything is nebulously canon or non-canon until explicitly acknowledged by a writer to have definitively happened and/or be something that a character remembers happening to them."

Unfortunately, not a lot of writers are doing much with that concept right now outside of picking and choosing their favorite parts of mainline canon to focus on and/or re-canonize, but it at least presents a path forward where a lot of the continuity and characterization issues created by the New 52 reboot are able to be properly addressed.

I hope this explanation was helpful for people, and I'm happy to try and field any further questions as well!

[heretolurkbutalasitstaken]

I have a guide if you need help. Two, even.

What can you tell me about the Hero Of the Beach, more commonly known as Flex Mentallo? And by extension the others like him, like the Fact for example.

Now. I am gonna say some stuff. And everyone is just going to have to accept that stuff that I say. Because it true, and it attested, and its really, REALLY weird as just about anything having to do with the Doom Patrol is after their resurrection if you start scoping out the details. This one could turn your head into Klein Bottle if you let it so I'm just gonna deliver the down low and we're all gonna be cool about it ok? Ok.

(An old comic book advertisement, showing Flex Mentallo and his "Book of Muscle Mystery") Flex Mentallo originally wasn't real, he originally was barely a character. Created as an ad campaign in the back of comic books from the 1960s to hawk a cheap book of bodybuilding "secrets" along the lines of the iconic Charles Atlas ads from around the same time. The ads weren't well remembered because of their sketchy nature, they were a knockoff of a quickly discredited idea and the very unclear nature of the ad's origin means that a lot of its real world details are lost in the shuffle. UNTIL, those ads were seen by a young boy named Wally Sage (yes, the rockstar) who was inspired by them, Mentallo becoming an artistic muse for young Sage even long after the original ads were out of print. The 'problem' is that Wally Sage was unknowingly a VERY powerful metahuman with the ability to bring his unconscious muses to life. The rest of the beings that surrounded Mentallo, like The Fact as you mentioned, were also hazy remembrances of old comic book ads brought to life by Sage's abilities. No one can say for sure where or when Mentallo popped into existence as a three dimensional being as real as you or me only that it DID happen. Mentallo was then captured by a group called the Men from NOWHERE. The Men from NOWHERE are an organization who shows up in the margins of history but is impossible to pin down, they seemed to be some kind of post war attempt to return the world to "normalcy" via information control and even slight reality alteration. Their mandate was of course shattered when the resurgence of superheroes brought the extranormal into undeniable and daily reality, and their remnants have been thoroughly dismantled through clashes with superheroes like the Doom Patrol. Mentallo was freed from their control and ever since then has existed in an inexplicable spot. He seems to dip into and out of objective reality at random intervals, battling metaphysical and avant garde threats on the margins of logical reality, a task he has more than once roped the Doom Patrol into. Some theories posit that he exists, in full or in part, as a being of what some scholars have proposed calling "The Unhuman Multiverse" connecting him to artifacts like the H-Dial but ALL of that is VERY controversial and VERY cutting edge scholarship and I am in no way certain I understand it. The basic idea is that our "observable multiverse" might only be one infinite facet of an even more infinite system of worlds in which even the notions of physics, space time and observable reality break down past our direct observations. That the vast, vast majority of the multiverse might be made up of realities where some basic facet of our 3 Dimensional existence doesn't apply. In this case Mentallo may exist in a "world" in which fiction is "real" and reality is "false" though of course the obvious insanity of that statement makes it clear that what we're proposing is an idea that we can't actually express in our universe which is basically what the theory proposes. Mentallo and his fellows were brought into our observable reality and now are either transported between them by some outside factor, can transport themselves at will or exist in both spaces simultaneously SOMEHOW because we are reaching the parts of multiversal metaphysics were the difference between math and philosophy is SEMANTIC. For now, he's a really hot guy in a leopard speedo who sometimes pops in to borrow our weirdos for adventures I am SURE are important in a way that would make a lot of sense if you were high, falling asleep, or both.

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Nat behind the cut; “the Last Son of Krypton meets Hypertime Kon”. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“Oh,” Kon says, looking a little surprised by the question, so Clark thinks sitting in the armchair was probably for the best. Kon clearly isn’t sure how to respond to him either. “Uh–so like, I guess probably the jacket was tracking other people with the same DNA signature as it was programmed with, or like–usin’ us as anchors, maybe? ‘Cuz I wound up pretty much on top of, like, most of the other me’s that I met. First reality I got dumped in, that one’s me was a friggin’ Robin. Like, he called himself Superboy? But definitely the dude was a Robin. Had the mask and cape and everything. Had the utility belt, even, it was a total trip.” 

“He was?” Clark asks in surprise, then laughs and lightly jokes: “What, were that Batman and Superman doing a sidekick-exchange program?” 

Kon–blinks, a couple times, and looks a little–odd, maybe. 

“Um . . . no, it wasn't . . . and actually, uh, I think his reality probably didn’t have, uh, a Superman in it?” Kon says, wincing a little. “Like–not anymore, I mean. I guess a lot of the realities Black Zero’d made a move on didn’t actually have a Superman in ‘em anymore. At least not the ones he was actually, like, all-out going to war on. He’d never actually met one of you, apparently. Or at least never fought one? Well–actually, technically he did meet . . . look, it’s complicated. Hypertime is weird, basically.” 

Oh, Clark thinks, feeling a little struck as his chest clenches painfully. 

Hell. 

Well, that explains why Kon had looked odd over him making that comment. 

At least that reality’s Bruce had taken their Kon in–Clark assumes that version of him had arranged something with that version of Bruce, given the nature of their lifestyles, but also that’s just the kind of thing Bruce would do for a kid who needed it either way, so who really knows–so Clark at least doesn't have to worry about who’s taking care of that Kon, but the idea that there are multiple realities where he isn't there for the kid is . . . 

God, that's an awful idea. 

Just–obviously it's better that Kon exists, but who's taking care of those versions of him? Do they all have a Bruce, or a Ma and Pa? Do they have– 

( do they have a Lois, he thinks briefly, and then puts the thought aside. 

it's not fair, to ask Lois to give up children of her own. not fair to ask her to be with him when he can't give her that. not– )

“I suppose that makes sense,” he makes himself say, offering Kon the best smile he can manage. “I'd like to think if he'd met a version of me, they could've helped him before you ever had to deal with this.” 

“Uh–help him?” Kon asks, looking bewildered. “Dude, what? Like, he was literally trying to conquer literal Hypertime, how the fuck is that something you woulda wanted to help him do?” 

“I–no, kid, that's not what I meant,” Clark says, softening carefully and gentling his voice. Hell, what did the people who made him put in his head? “You said he had problems. That his reality wasn't safe for him. I'd like to think one of me could've helped him find a place that was. Kept him from hurting himself, and kept him from hurting other people too.”

[surelysilly]

ghost-like echoes, yeah

[pocketramblr]

You think you know me? I'm the only one who came out the way Westfield wanted!

Westfield was no saint, but I think circumstances twisted his better qualities - while they've been reinforcing yours.

Every time you won't give up, every time you keep fighting when everyone and everything's against you- that's me too.

Oh, cut that new guy running the place some slack! Black Zero can't be all bad! He busted me out before Lex Luthor could grow me into his own custom-made Supergirl, didn't he?

But Black Zero's everything I hoped that boy would be - and never was!

I didn't want to be a conqueror - I was going to be the next Superman!

I wanna take Black Zero back with me! I still think I can help him.

[arctic-hands]

I like having joined a book fandom that's still new and fresh cause we get to nerdily bond as we devour a release of a new book in the series and I get to see all the theories and discussions and memes in real time as opposed to years later when everyone else knows how it ends so I have to block the fandom bc of spoilers. It's a feeling I haven't had since a teenager bc as of late I drag my ass into a fandom like a decade after its hayday and miss all the fun stuff

But it sucks ass that I am no longer as weirdly and eerily patient like I was as a child and the nine month wait for Heavenly Tyrant to come out is driving me crazy

[theblanddcu2021]

In an alternative universe Bruce Wayne is an Amazon and Diana’s younger brother ( formerly her younger sister.). Diana is extremely supportive and protective of him. It’s kept a secret and those closest to them know. What do you think?

‎

[thehandwixard]

im just saying my personal joker canon is that hes fully entirely aware of the fourth wall in a way no one else is especially the fact of like hes in a comic book specifically. he knows this. how do i know this. well many things but points to the jason todd death poll. you ave to know this about me is that my kingdom hearts and dc comics meta are very different but both of them do pull from me thinking metatextual understanding is important in pieces of media like this that pull from decades of very famous artistic works in media. whether thats disney movies or its own canon and mythos

[mamawasatesttube]

do you ever think about tim taping wendy for kon while he was bouncing through hypertime, because despite his teasing he knew kon would be upset if he missed any new episodes? bc i think about this often

[cluescorner]

We need to bring back Gun Batman immediately where the FUCK is he

titans of tomorrow

aftermath:

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for yesdangerpls behind the cut; “the Last Son of Krypton meets Hypertime Kon”. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“Anyway, I wouldn’t mind an extra serving of dessert myself,” Clark says with a little smile, and Kon lets out a surprised little snort of a laugh. It’s adorable and makes Clark want to pinch his cheeks like the grandmas and aunties at church all drove him nuts doing when he was growing up. He internally apologizes to said grandmas and aunties, because if he was half this cute a kid, they were bastions of self-restraint. 

“It was lime jello with whipped cream on it, man, you really that into that?” Kon asks. Admittedly, Clark would be into literally any excuse to feed up his interdimensional kid without having to send said kid up to the food line alone when he’s clearly more than a little nervous about his current situation, but he does like lime jello. 

“Well, Ma usually made grape or cherry when I was a kid, but jello’s always a bit nostalgic, I won’t lie,” he replies, smiling a little wider. Kon–blinks, looking thrown-off for a moment, and Clark wonders, again, if Ma’s still around in his reality or not; if the kid even got the chance to meet her or not. Or Pa, considering. Much as he’s worried about both of his parents, he’s always half-expected to lose Pa first, awful a thought as it is. Just, well–his heart, and all. 

If there’s a chance of Kon happening here, Clark really hopes the kid will get the chance to meet them and they’ll get the chance to meet him. He’s felt some guilt over the years, knowing he wouldn’t ever be giving his parents any grandchildren–obviously not biological ones, of course, but it’s not like adoption was ever really on the table for him either. Even if he managed to pass an agency’s evaluations, the idea of adopting a human child just seems . . . unethical, maybe. He wouldn’t be passing those evaluations honestly, for one thing. For another, he’d be keeping that kid from a normal life where they didn’t have to lie to everyone they knew, or where their parents weren’t lying to them, and putting them at a higher risk of ending up in dangerous places and situations when they were too young to understand those risks. 

A kid like Kon, though . . . a kid who wasn’t born to a “normal” life and wouldn’t have any chance at a normal life if someone like Clark didn’t take him in–someone who could protect them if the place they came from tried to pull something dodgy, who had the kind of resources he’d need if anything ever went wrong with his DNA or his powers, who could help him learn how to use his powers, and also learn how to belong to and be accepted by a much more fragile world, and additionally learn when to not use his powers . . . 

Well. That’d be different, obviously. And especially it’d be different because if it was a kid like specifically Kon . . . 

Kon is Kryptonian too. He’s an El too. He’s something that Clark has always thought he’d never, ever see exist in the world–someone he would’ve thought was impossible to ever see exist in the world. Someone . . . familiar, in a very different definition of “familiar” than Clark has ever experienced before. 

A gift, though Clark’s just about certain that’s not what the people who made him were thinking of him as when they made him. 

Kon’s not any less of a gift just because of the less-than-ethical intentions of some lab with an alleged asshole of a director, though.

[dcdreamblog]

I sent a message about the missing superhero phenomenon, focusing on I remember called Spider-Man. Nobody else believes me, as I'm sure you remember. You probably deleted it because you thought I was mad too. As I mentioned, the only places I could find something similar were an old Tarantula fan-site and some newspaper clippings from the circus. Trail went cold there. Well, I HAVE MORE PROOF NOW! I remembered a Daily Planet issue about this figure meeting Superman. SEE!! I'M not crazy, everyone else is! The article could have been pulped, I admit, but he was real! Use your historian abilities to show that history has been altered, please.

Ok my friend let's take a nice, deep breath. 1. I did NOT delete your ask as you saw when I answered it. I don't delete asks given in good faith even if they're totally misled, or if I've answered them 8000 times. I just find a new angle to attack them.

2. As you probably saw when I answered that ask, you are right in that the Marvel Comics superhero Spiderman DID appear in our universe for a brief time before returning to his home dimension

3. I can't prove history has been altered. Nobody can. Because of the Chronal Uncertainty Principle (or the "Last Tuesday Rule"). The timeline could have been radically altered in 1584, 10 seconds ago, or last Tuesday at noon and because that time alteration would have changed everything that happened afterwords it would be impossible to prove. If a Spiderman did exist in this universe and was erased via a Crisis event (unlikely due to the laws of Hypertime) then evidence of his existence would have been wiped along with him.

But to prove that you're not crazy I can give you another example of how this sort of thing happens all the goddamn time.

(A photograph of Batman and the Marvel Comics character The Hulk standing in the remains of a ruined warehouse)

The Hulk appeared on our Earth due to the machinations of a being from his Earth known as the Shaper-of-Worlds (which unlike many other unfathomably powerful cosmic entities I don't have to take guesses at or talk around the unknowns, I can just look him up on the Marvel Wiki haha!) who was losing the ability to absorb the dreams of others. Unfortunately his attempt to rectify this situation was to ally himself with the strongest "imagination" he was able to grasp across the multiverse: The Joker That went about as well as could be expected, the Joker infiltrating the Marvel Universe to steal an experimental gamma gun that that world's Bruce Banner had been working on. The Joker, being the Joker instigated Dr. Banner to transform into the Green Goliath and when he followed the Joker back to our world the Joker was able to turn him against Batman for a short time. Eventually however the problem was rectified, the Joker was captured, the Shaper-of-Worlds was healed and he returned the Hulk to his home reality. This doesn't mean that the Hulk was always present on our reality or the the Shaper-of-Worlds had some unknown ties to our dimension. Beings who are able to traverse the multiverse can usually do so as they please depending on their levels of power and beings who appear in our world often do so only for a short time for the obvious reason that this isn't where they belong and its not where they hope to stay. Dimensional anomalies are frightening I know, but they're also rare and usually contain themselves given time and the intervention of our own native marvels. Like time travel or multiversal retcons the best thing you can do for yourself is not work yourself into a frenzy about it.