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DC Continuity |
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ev82 
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Joined: 10-Mar-2009 Location: San Francisco Online Status: Offline Posts: 671 |
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 Topic: DC ContinuityPosted: 05-Feb-2012 at 3:27am |
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Could someone explain to me how DC continuity works? I was recently watching Birds of Prey (TV show) and it got me wondering about the comic versions of the characters and when I looked them (and other DC heros) up I learned there are like 3+ different versions and continuities for each character.
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Monolith
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Joined: 20-Feb-2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2629 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 4:57am |
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Oh, Lord. Okay...
The easiest way to break down the DC Universe is with Golden Age, Silver Age, Modern Age, and the newly-minted DC Nu52. The Golden Age started in 1938 with the debut of Action Comics #1, the Silver Age in 1956 with Showcase #4 and the debut of Barry Allen as the Flash, the Modern Age with the 1985 maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the Nu52 began last year with the conclusion of Flashpoint. These signposts aren't set in stone, but they make good markers for this discussion. The Golden Age of DC Comics (then called National Publications) arose in and around WWII. Throughout the 1940's a number of famous characters were introduced including Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Flash (Jay Garrick), Atom (Al Pratt), Hawkman (Carter Hall), Green Lantern (Alan Scott), and many of them joined forces as comics' first super-team, the Justice Society of America. Around the time the 1950's began, comic books came under attack in the infamous publication, Seduction of the Innocent, and even tied into the McCarthy hearings of the era in some ways. They supposedly promoted amoral behavior like vigilantism, homosexuality, and so on. Lots of other factors were involved, but bottom line is the Comic Code Authority was formed and a major crackdown on super-hero and horror comics began. Practically no super-heroes from the then-fledgling Marvel Comics survived into the 50's, and DC only managed to continue publishing very tame versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Super-heroes burst back onto the scene in 1956 with Barry Allen, the new Flash. Barry Allen supposedly took the Flash identity from the comic book adventures of Jay Garrick, the Flash published in the 1940's. In the Silver Age of DC Comics, then, the Golden Age characters were fictional characters within the current DC Universe going forward. After the success of Barry Allen, DC created other new versions of old heroes, like Hal Jordan, Katar Hol, and Ray Palmer as the new Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Atom. Supes, Bats, and WW continued appearing as if nothing had changed for them, and many Silver Age heroes eventually teamed up as the Justice League of America. In the genre-defining classic story, The Flash of Two Worlds, Barry Allen and Jay Garrick met for the first time. It turned out Jay Garrick and his Golden Age pals DID exist on a separate Earth (a convoluted explanation was given on how the Silver Age comic book writer who produced the in-universe comic books about the Golden Agers had a psychic connection to that world, which led him to produce comic books about these alternate-dimension heroes...not important.). This story established the Silver Age heroes existed on Earth-1 while the Golden Age heroes existed on Earth-2. The Golden Age heroes were still WWII vets, meaning Earth-2's heroes debuted in the 40's while the Silver Age heroes debuted decades later in the (then-current) 60's. An important note is that while some heroes like the Flash were just two guys with the same name, others like Superman, Batman, and WW were direct counterparts of each other. Kal-El (or Kal-L on Earth-2), Bruce Wayne and Diana existed on both Earths, they were just a few decades older on Earth-2. The multiple Earths idea proved popular for DC, and for a time they produced a number of different worlds. Earth-3, for instance, was the Reverse-Earth, where Lex Luthor was the planet's sole super-hero fighting an evil JLA called the Crime Syndicate. Most of DC's alternate Earths were actually other companies they purchased alone the way. Captain Marvel (SHAZAM!) was originally published by Fawcett Comics, and when DC bought them out, the SHAZAM! stories became Earth-S. Similarly the Quality Comics and Charleston Comics characters became the heroes native to Earth-X and Earth-4. DC ran with this multiple Earth concept until they decided it had become too unwieldy and launched Crisis on Infinite Earths to clear up the problem. The end result of Crisis was the destruction of the entire Multiverse, and the history of the universe being relaunched in a single timeline, with only one "New Earth". This literal reboot of continuity merged the history of Earths 1, 2, 4, S, and X into a single timeline. The JLA, JSA, Fawcett, Charleston and Quality heroes now, and always had been, operating on the same Earth. The important thing was that the characters didn't even notice the difference. It took about a year for things to settle in, but after that no one even remembered there used to be an Earth-1 and Earth-2 version of Superman -- there had always been just one Superman. No one remembered the Multiverse had even existed. Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis became the official watchwords for DC Comics continuity. DC didn't just throw a bunch of histories into a glass, though...they also turned on the blender. Using Crisis as an excuse, DC lightly or heavily modified the histories of most of their characters, tweaking whatever they thought needed changed in different histories. Superman had a high-profile reboot in The Man of Steel limited series. Pre-Crisis, it seemed like half the planet Krypton survived the destruction and came to Earth: there was Supergirl, Krypto, Zod, the Phantom Zone projector and criminals, the bottle city of Kandor, rainbow flavored Kryptonite, and so forth. Post-Crisis, Superman was the Last Son of Krypton, and all those other characters and concepts were retconed out of existence, including Supergirl's entire history. Superman was also never active as Superboy, but only doned a supersuit as an adult, etc. Wonder Woman was completely rebooted, wiping out her existence in the Silver Age and introducing her to the DC Universe again for the first time in the Modern Age, Post-Crisis. Superman, Batman and WW were all retroactively removed as founders of the JLA, and Black Canary retroactively replaced them to balance the team. The list of Post-Crisis changes goes on and on. DC was never quite happy with their New Earth, however, and after tweaking history once, they couldn't resist doing it again and again. In 1994 they launched Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time; in 2005 Infinite Crisis, and in 2007 Final Crisis. None of these Crises were as widespread as the original, but they did allow DC to perform minor surgery on their history a few more times. Infinite Crisis in particular was the official sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, starring some of the characters who survived the original collapse of the Multiverse, and re-establishing 52 new realities as a minor Multiverse going forward. The Modern Age of DC Comics was rife with attempts to mold continuity to suit their needs. For example, Power Girl was the Earth-2 version of Supergirl from Earth-1. Although Supergirl and the Superman of Earth-2 were retroactively wiped from existence by Crisis, Power Girl remained. And since DC mandate was that Superman was the Last Son of Krypton, she couldn't be his cousin anymore, even an alternate one since the Multiverse no longer existed. So Power Girl was slapped with a new origin as the timelost granddaughter of an Atlantean sorcerer. This lasted until 2005, when people were allowed to remember the Multiverse again, and Power Girl regained her memories as Earth-2 Superman's cousin. Presently, DC Comics is setting the ground for another total continuity reboot. The event series Flashpoint radically altered history Age of Apocalypse style. When the Flash "fixed" things, he actually created a new Earth with a brand new history. Major elements so far seem to be the merging of DC Comics with their previously out-of-continuity Vertigo imprint and the Wildstorm titles acquired from Image Comics. Also, Earth-2 has apparently been restored, returning the Golden Age characters to an alternate universe for the first time since the original Crisis. The NuEarth history is still being established, as the Nu52 titles are only about six months off the ground at the moment. So.... Golden Age: 1938-56. DC is born. Silver Age: 1956-86. New heroes replace the old. The Golden Age still happened, but on Earth-2. Modern Age: 1986-2011. Golden and Silver Age histories merge. Many things happened differently than originally depicted. Nu52: 2011 to present. Many MORE things happened differently. Still working out the kinks. Please buy our comics. Please?
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Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
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grief
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Joined: 08-Apr-2007 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1048 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 5:07am |
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I'm no DC expert, so I'm confident someone more competant than I shall come around, but I'll give ya the brief rundown.
Birds of Prey - the tv show - had practically NOTHING to do with the show other than the name and basic premise. If you want to buy the comics, any of them, feel free to ignore the show and everything you learned from it. The Birds of Prey, in all their iterations, are a team of women who fight crime and injustice. In their "classic" set-up, the team is run by Barbara Gordan (aka Oracle) and made up of various members. The most frequent characters to show up though are the Huntress (Helena Bertinelli, a violent vigilante) and Black Canary (Dinah Lance, on-again-off-again love interest of Green Arrow, kick ass fighter, Justice League member). Due to an event six months ago called Flashpoint, the entire DC universe got a slight restart. In regards to BoP, Barbara Gordan's injury - which crippled her and set down the path to become Oracle - was miraculously healed, allowing her to return to the field as Batgirl. In the current series, the team is led by Black Canary, and consists of Poison Ivy (the Batman villain), Katana (who...wields a katana), and Starling (of whom I know nothing). The current series is a "soft" reboot, meaning that the creative team and basic make-up of the book was altered from it's previous incarnation. It's my understanding that the previous Birds of Prey series are still in continuity though. If you're looking to start from the beginning, or at least the best places to start, Chuck Dixon was the original series writer. Gail Simone later took over the book at issue 58 and really made a name for it until the book was cancelled at issue 127, with brief stints for writers Sean McKeever and Tony Bedard. It was then restarted with Gail Simone writing it again for another 14 issues before being cancelled for Flashpoint. |
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Winner of Best 617 Hero for 2007 - Magneto (Magneto Cado Rex)
First (and only?) winner of Story of the Month for August 09 - misseDirections #3 |
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Crawler
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Joined: 07-Apr-2007 Location: Indiana Online Status: Offline Posts: 1333 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 7:03am |
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@Monolith - This question comes up every so often. It's tempting to save that somewhere just in case it comes up again in a few months.
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Hunter's Crosshairs, a blog about everything
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Monolith
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Joined: 20-Feb-2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2629 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 2:03pm |
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Perhaps, but this is DC. In a few months, the answer will be different.
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Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
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ev82
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Joined: 10-Mar-2009 Location: San Francisco Online Status: Offline Posts: 671 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 5:32pm |
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Thanks Monolith! I never know DC had multiple Earths. So if one were to try and get into DC the new 52 would be the place to do so?
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grief
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Joined: 08-Apr-2007 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1048 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 6:20pm |
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The new 52 are the latest and easiest books to get your hands on, yes.
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Winner of Best 617 Hero for 2007 - Magneto (Magneto Cado Rex)
First (and only?) winner of Story of the Month for August 09 - misseDirections #3 |
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Lorr
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Joined: 09-Apr-2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1508 |
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 8:47pm |
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I like how marvel and dc have two similar but different approaches to continuity. Marvel is very fluid yet dc is constantly stopping and restarting. I always have found dc easy to get into because I only have to go back as far as the latest reboot to catch up and understand how the current books relate to each other. Approaching dc continuity like marvels just becomes a huge mess because it is not set up to be followed in a straight line from the 40's onward. dc tries to use crises and such as a storyline reason for their constant reboots to give the appearance of fluidity, but that just confuses the matter when i feel a clean break between reboots would make things much simpler.
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EvilMonkeyPope
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Posted: 05-Feb-2012 at 10:51pm |
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DC continuity post-Crisis was pretty good, even though they still tweaked things with Zero Hour. I think it was a big mistake to bring back Crisis events so frequently. Doing maxi-retcons just confuses everybody unlike Marvel's policy of micro-retcons when needed. Even the architects of the latest retcons, Johns & Morisson, didn't do much with the rebooted status quos until post-Flashpoint.
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marhawkman
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Joined: 10-Oct-2008 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2934 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 5:00pm |
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Yeah, I really don't like the regular continuity reboots. :(
It is kinda cool how the latest one was not JUST a continuity reboot though.
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Skrulls rule! Now you can learn to read skrull: http://marhawkman.deviantart.com/gallery/30658027#/d1mujcm |
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Kipe
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Quireclops Joined: 08-Apr-2007 Location: Kansas City, MO Online Status: Offline Posts: 1641 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 7:10pm |
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I didn't think the Vertigo Imprint was added into the history of the DCnU. I thought that the Vertigo Imprint remains separate but there are now DCnU versions of Vertigo characters in the DCnu. For instance, Constantine and Shade from JLDark are not the same Constantine and Shade that have appeared in Hellblazer and Shade the Changing Man.
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"I'm a prisoner. I have to be a prisoner. I'm a political prisoner. I'm not going to let them turn me into a criminal."
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Monolith
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 7:28pm |
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The Vertigo imprint no longer exists, and the Vertigo characters have been incorporated back into the DC Universe. The JLD characters are the same as the ones who appeared in Hellblazer and Shade, at least as much as the JLA characters are still the same as the ones who appeared in Superman and Batman before Flashpoint.
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Charisma: the fine line between winning them over with charm and ruling them by fear.
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XtremeOne1
THOIN Editor [Mod] ![THOIN Editor [Mod]](forum_images/4_star_rating.png "THOIN Editor [Mod]")
Joined: 07-Apr-2007 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 2565 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 7:38pm |
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Well Vertigo still exists in terms of Fables and the like...Just not the "Vertigo" world(was there ever one...I only read Fables and of course I read Y: The Last Man)
Edited by XtremeOne1 - 06-Feb-2012 at 8:24pm |
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Blackcyclops
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Joined: 13-Apr-2007 Location: Chi-Town Online Status: Offline Posts: 7262 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 7:43pm |
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Sorta kinda...as far as I can tell (which isn't saying much). "Vertigo World" (nice one btw) seemed to be like all those characters who had either started in the DC proper or had some type of connection to it. THey are the ones now incorporated into the DCnU. The Vertigo Imprint of titles like Fables and such are completely separate still. I like to imagine it more like the creator stuff Marvel has like Kick-Ass, Powers, Scarlett, etc. If that makes sense.
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"And someone's mom wants to eat all their souls. As a mom, I was offended. Moms should get to be role models, too."-Savant
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Kipe
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Quireclops Joined: 08-Apr-2007 Location: Kansas City, MO Online Status: Offline Posts: 1641 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 7:45pm |
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Then I suppose the last few months of me reading Vertigo's "The Unwritten" must have been a dream. Damnit, I hate it when I lose my grasp on reality!
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"I'm a prisoner. I have to be a prisoner. I'm a political prisoner. I'm not going to let them turn me into a criminal."
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grief
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Joined: 08-Apr-2007 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1048 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 8:45pm |
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To be fair, the Unwritten will do that to you, especially in regards to reading. |
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Winner of Best 617 Hero for 2007 - Magneto (Magneto Cado Rex)
First (and only?) winner of Story of the Month for August 09 - misseDirections #3 |
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XtremeOne1
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Joined: 07-Apr-2007 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 2565 |
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 9:23pm |
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I really want to read the Unwritten! |
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EvilMonkeyPope
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Posted: 06-Feb-2012 at 9:35pm |
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There are 2 John Constantines now. The young John Constantine that appeared in pre-Vertigo Swamp Thing is in JLD. The older John still stars in hellblazer & his reincorporation in mainstream DCU hasn't affected him.
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Lorr
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Posted: 07-Feb-2012 at 4:35am |
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tangent alert
I wanna see a vertigo batman title. I don't give a damn about how it reconciles with any sorta continuity or anything, I just wanna see someone like Garth Ennis writing batman fight his rogues gallery in a f'd up mature readers only setting. That's all. |
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EvilMonkeyPope
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Posted: 07-Feb-2012 at 4:57am |
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Based on The Boys/Punisher/Hitman, I'd imagine an Ennis Batman would spend most of the time humiliating other superheroes for not being as hardcore as him rather than fighting crime.
Speaking of which, will All-Star Batman & Robin ever resume publication?
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Wolfthomas
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Posted: 07-Feb-2012 at 5:53am |
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To be fair on Ennis I think his Batman wouldn't be that bad, while his created works can swerve into the over the top and obscene, he's fantastic at capturing characters that aren't his own's tone. He's written the best Punisher and Constantine, and during Hitman he wrote a fantastic Superman (issue 34 I think).
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