#I'm about to pull a dc and make a crisis in the multiverse

[fantastic-nonsense]

Hey! I feel like I should know this but I'm pulling a blank. Do you know where we in terms of pre-new-52/post-new-52 continuity in DC now? has the pre-new52 stuff been retconned back into canon now and if so when was it? Specifically I was trying to remember if Steph now has ever been Robin, or if that's still out of continuity. She was in Batman Vs Robin which suggested that she had been, but I remember than in Detective Comics Rebirth she hadn't, and I can't remember when that period of history would have been remerged back into reality?

Since Dark Crisis in 2022, 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. 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.

Theoretically this means post-Crisis continuity is basically back in full; in practice, this means that "everything is nebulously canon or non-canon until explicitly acknowledged by a writer to have definitively happened, be something that a character remembers happening to them, or something that still happened but happened differently than it did in the post-Crisis universe."

As far as Steph goes, our understanding of what's canon for her is significantly impaired by the fact that no one at DC seems to know what to do with her if they're not guest-starring her as "Tim's girlfriend/ex-girlfriend" or "Cassandra's best friend," so we've gotten a pretty minimal amount of information about her personal history back.

Her time as Robin has been re-canonized for years, at least as far back as the late Rebirth era (2019 or so, if I remember the stories she started being included correctly). Everything else is unfortunately a bit up in the air, since Batgirls refused to do any real work with Steph apart from make her deal with her dad (again) that one time. So she was definitely Robin, but whether the events of War Games (her firing and death) through Gotham Underground (her "resurrection") happened the exact same way as they did in the post-Crisis universe? I'm not sure.

[flashfuture]

The flashes have:

• weird found family that is a mix of a found family and blood family and most of them actually truly get along and care about each other even if some of them are little sassy.

• have powers where the upper echelon of their brood, with the most power are verging on multiverse and time gods and the ones just starting out still range on the side of most destructive meta humans on earth, if they are still human at all.

• their most interesting villains are crime syndicate with a amazing dental and medical plan who usually have something approaching morals.

I think they make other heroes only a little jelly beans cause they have all these boons and they are still interesting as characters to watch.

like it's actually so crazy if you think about it. in 1938 the DC universe time began. but the way time works in DC it's easier to think of time as the addition of every second. it's static not accumulative. 1 second 1 second 1 second 1 second and on to eternity. A life is made up of seconds coming together 1 2 3 4 5 6. But this didn't happen not for 18 years. Until 1956 when Barry Allen was struck by lightning in both canon and out of universe. Things started moving Forward

(The Flash: Rebirth)

And he made the speed force. He keeps the present in the present and the rest of time away by generating the kinetic force that makes the lightning that gives the Flashes their speed.

Barry canonically moves Time forward by existing but he can also force it. He did so twice once fighting reverse flash/zoom and once fighting the turtle. When fighting Turtle, Barry connected himself to every living being except Turtle and pulled them all into the future by a few seconds to thwart his Turtley plans.

And Wally well I have a theory that Wally stores the memories the moments added together that make a life. In 1986 Barry reset the universe and everyone's minds got Fucked. Before Final Crisis when they bring back Wally from the speedforce it causes Bruce and Hal to remember Barry and incorrectly assume he's the one coming back. In 2011 when Flashpoint happened Barry did it Without Wally. Wally who was in the speedforce and got stuck again and once again everyone's backstories reset and their memories were fucked. In 2016 when Wally breaks out he returns memories to people. With Infinite Frontier this is the first universe reset where Wally's speed force is actively contributing to what happens and not only do people retain their current memories they start getting All their old memories back.

Reverse Flash represented paradoxes in time. But in the most recent run Barry phases through him giving him some speed force. And Eobard gets reset to how he should have been. Becoming connected to Barry fixes his Present. That kinetic wall between the present and time.

Bart I have no idea what they're doing with him they should be remembering that he's the best Fighter of the flashes. That he's vicious and blitzes enemies like Godspeed. Also how Bart is the most scatter brained and seemingly can not slow down unlike his grandpa and cousin. Yet he also is the only one of the entire family to be able to retain what he's learned forever. And has I think the greatest feats of cosmic awareness basically teaching himself about the meta of the DC universes reboots. Bart I think should represent the inevitability of the future coming. No matter how many changes you think you can make a future will always be there. Something to be said for him being a character created during Zero Hour year too I'm sure of it.

[zahri-melitor]

Dark Nights: Death Metal:

Well, this was an event that accomplished what it was intended to do (set up Infinite Frontier) but also was incredibly full of itself and self-referential. You know when you go into a story and the story itself has tie-ins making fun of how overblown this all is, it probably should have been reined in harder.

I do think there were some cool designs in this story, but the problem was that a lot of it was purely hung up on aesthetic, rather than any level of in-universe reasoning. The redesigns exist for the Rule of Cool, not for any storytelling reason. There wasn't any real consistency to who had a redesign and who did not. Which, when you're dealing with a full-DC universe event that is busy talking about COIE, Infinite Crisis, Dark Crisis and Dark Nights: Metal, means several characters were already appearing in multiple costumes when talking about the earlier events, making things even harder to track (for one example, Mary Marvel appeared as a tiny background image in both her red and her white costumes in a double page spread, because she wore different ones in different Crises. This is both attention to detail but also something that is going to confuse people). On top of this, Greg Capullo being the artist on the main book meant that there was no hope of telling characters apart by facial features, which when you've changed someone's costume and hair style, makes life even more difficult.

I also think part of the problem and clear reliance on the Rule of Cool was that, after inventing a whole Justice League of evil Batmen for Dark Nights: Metal, none of them other than The Batman Who Laughs did anything in this event other than sort of decorate the scenery. You spent an event and series of one-shots designing these characters 2-3 years ago and they're not even being used, in favour of newer Evil Batmen versions? And event TBWL gets a whole makeover and redesign by getting his brain implanted in a Dr Manhattan clone body. Like, what is the point in getting invested in these characters.

Why does Diana have blue-ombre hair and an invisible magic chainsaw. Why would Diana want to have an invisible magic chainsaw. What about Diana's character, the diplomat, peace advocate and negotiator, suggests her approach in this situation would be to feel she needed to have a chainsaw as her main weapon. This is the sort of problem the event's dealing with.

I think it was an epic-scale event, but the main emotion I had coming out of it was 'I don't care' in regards to all the fighting. I don't care about there being a Batman-version of every single possible hero and villain across the Multiverse and Dark Multiverse. I don't think it provides an angle for particularly interesting commentary, and the event didn't even properly dig in and interrogate what this means about how DC as a company leans into the Bat franchise above all others.

The Batman Who Laughs' first appearance in the entire event was explicitly saying "I know you're tired of me but look you're back reading me again!" and it's like...thanks, genre-savvy Joker!Batman, but I'm not actually here or interested in reading this for you. I'm working through this story to see what particular strings are being pulled to change future storytelling.

I think when you look at some of the structural moving parts of the event, such as the various links of previous big events to damaging the Source Wall, how that led to Perpetua getting free, and the process of saving and rebuilding the Multiverse, the discussions of where they’re taking the now Omniverse, there was an interesting epic plot under everything being used to justify the moves wanted from the event. The intent to shake-up the status quo and restore more of post-Crisis in characters' memories was something that had been drifting around DC for several years at that point, with some characters explicitly getting post-Crisis memories back via various means.

But it's such layers of 'doesn't this look rad? I think it does!' on top of the bits of plot I actually cared about.

I think there was some more interesting work done in various tie-ins and backups as writers used the space to interrogate some ideas (or in the case of Joshua Williamson, get on with the Wally West Rehabilitation Project). I have a soft spot for using the setting to allow some people to have necessary conversations they would otherwise avoid. And I’m a sucker for a good splash page full of a dozen different variants of the Titans over the decades.

But oh it was the sort of giant event where it felt designed to fuel comic book debates. Why is Sgt Rock here as narrator? Because we’re including everyone! Even though I think most active fans of the character are probably in their dotage now, we have to include all our different facets and genres. Including the old military comics.

I know I’m usually more positive than this, and look I did get emotional in the final quarter of the story, as everyone but especially Diana prepared to sacrifice their lives.

I just feel there was a lot of red herrings and page time wasted on concept art that was ultimately meaningless.