Hooooo boy.

Ok. 

I want to establish something right here and now: I love a lot of DC Comics. In fact, the very story I’m going to be criticizing actually was directly responsible for my favorite era of DC. 1986-2011 (the Post-Crisis Era) was very much my jam, and contains some of my fondest childhood memories when it comes to the 4-color adventures of spandex-clad heroes. Even the gimmicks of the era were things that appeal to me, such as the time Superman became living electricity, or when Bane broke Batman’s back.

But DC Comics has a problem.

And it began with the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I admit, I’ve written about The Crisis before. In many ways, it is the most influential comic of the 1980s that isn’t written by Alan Moore. For those unfamiliar, The Crisis was both a celebration of 50 years of DC Comics, and the way for the company to end their decades-spanning continuity and start over again. Creators Marv Wolfman and George Perez both worked at the top of their game to lay down one of the best comic stories DC had ever told. From the original comics in the 1930s and 40s to the comics from 1984, nearly every character DC owned at the time was represented somehow. While convoluted, it is still a story that contains a lot of magic and wonder and allowed DC Comics to reinvent themselves for a new era by clearing the board and starting fresh.

Aka, the first comic universe reboot.

The problem is, DC had reinvented itself without a reboot before!

You see, superhero comics were in the dumps after World War 2. While Superman and Batman still sold incredibly well, many of their imitators and competitors were suffering from poor sales. National Comics (now known as DC) would stop publishing most of their superhero content by 1951. The Justice Society of America, The Flash, Green Lantern, and dozens of other caped characters would fall into obscurity as their individual books were canceled and the more “mundane” adventures of the western and horror thrillers would take over.

However, comics in general would come under fire in 1954 from psychologist Fredrick Wortham, whose book Seduction of the Innocent would blame all sorts of societal ills on comic books. With crime and horror genres being ditched by the industry in a panic, superheroes could be big again… with a twist.

The Flash was back! However, it wasn’t the Flash who vanished in 1951. This was another guy, who had read the old Flash comics as a kid, and was inspired to take the iconography when he was given super speed through a mix of chemicals and lightning. No, seriously.

A dash of science fiction to existing characters would prove to be a reliable hit, with WWII heroes like Hawkman and Green Lantern both becoming variations of space cops. New heroes like the Atom, the Martian Manhunter, and Adam Strange would also show up, with science fiction as a major aspect of their origins.

For those not in the know, the Atom was a scientist who would use matter from a dwarf star to change his mass. The Martian Manhunter was a shape-changing alien from Mars who was trapped on Earth. Adam Strange is a more modern take on John Carter of Mars, with a normal guy sent back and forth between Earth and the alien world of Rann.

While the new heroes were incredibly popular, fans were not so quick to forget the original heroes who had once graced the four color panels of National Comics. Some fans demanded the return of the characters they knew from before, while others just wanted to know what the hubbub was about these “real” heroes. The fact that Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and Green Arrow had continued on without being firmly rebooted didn’t help things.

September 1961 would address this. 

What we got was The Flash of Two Worlds.

Basically, the Barry Allen incarnation of the Flash was showing off for a community center. During this, he vibrates so fast that he jumps into an alternate universe. The date is the same, the city is the same… but the world is different! Looking through a phone book, Barry Allen figures it out.

The two heroes meet up, and Barry recounts both his and Jay Garrick’s origins. As it turns out, a crime spree has been getting at Jay and tempting him to come out of retirement. Barry and Jay team up to take out the trio of the Fiddler, Thinker, and Shade. Barry vibes back to his original Earth, and that was theoretically where it would remain.

But the fans went nuts! Seeing this other Flash enticed new readers, and older fans loved seeing it come back. Eventually, this Earth filled with Golden-Age heroes would be called “Earth-Two.” Team-ups would happen between the modern Justice League of America and the older heroes in the Justice Society of America would show up about once a year. These crossovers would be titled with “Crisis” in the name, and begin with simpler stories like Crisis on Earth-One and Crisis on Earth-Two.

Published in 1963, this crossover between the two universes was a relatively simple one. Both worlds were suffering a major mishap of villains teaming up, and the two universes shared heroes to take out their shared foes. However, things would start to get crazy with 1964’s Crisis on Earth-Three, which would feature the heroes of Earth-Two taking on Earth-One’s evil counterparts. And Starman, a personal favorite hero of mine, would nuke the evil Superman, Ultraman. Somehow.

It was a crossover that proved to be remarkably simple, and easy money. DC would use their other properties purchased from mergers and library acquisitions to introduce these heroes to their multiverse. Quality Comics would show up as Earth X, a planet where World War II never ended. Fawcett Comics would show up with the moniker of Earth S, likely for the catchphrase of Captain Marvel: Shazam. However, crossovers with Earth-Two would prove to be the most popular. After all, what could be more thrilling than two Supermen? Two Batmen? Two Wonder Women? Even better, this allowed DC to have their heroes grow and change on the older Earth-Two while they remained with a status quo on Earth-One.

It was a little weird when Black Canary left Earth-Two to become the Black Canary of Earth-One due to her romantic relationship with Green Arrow of Earth-One, though.

The heroes of Earth-Two would even have spinoff comics of their own to show it. Infinity, Inc would focus on the adventures and drama of the children of the Justice Society of America. These heroes would also get in on the crossover action, but not as often as their elders. However, by the eighties, we had superheroes crossing over willy-nilly, some even with multiple issues dedicated to a larger story as comics began to experiment with decompressed storytelling. Comics being comics, this also created continuity snarls as people began to write without diving into DC’s archives to read an obscure comic from 1968 that sold only 30 copies.

However, this also irritated one of DC’s star creators: Marv Wolfman.

Wolfman was convinced the major reason Marvel continually sold better than DC was the streamlined continuity: one major world, no multiple Earths of heroes from other companies they had absorbed over the decades. This lack of confusion made it easier for new readers to pick up and dive into the universe of Marvel over DC. And so, Marv Wolfman talked DC’s editors and heads into a book they would call The History of the DC Universe, and then Crisis: Earth… but that would eventually be changed to Crisis on Infinite Earths as Wolfman realized that destroying all the other worlds DC had would be easier than just writing a new history.

And the rest was history, with the 50th anniversary of DC also killing off the DC Universe in 1985.

And lo, with the launch of DC’s newest mini-series The Man of Steel in 1986, DC was reborn anew for a new decade and would begin to tell stories to establish their new history. Superman would get the aforementioned mini-series, while Batman would have storylines under Year One and Year Two that ran in his main series. Wonder Woman was reintroduced, and a new Justice League was established.

Except… it wasn’t quite right.

DC launched their new universe with several years of planning. Everything was new, everyone was fresh. A new reader could pick up any book, and open a new world of wonder.

Unless you were picking up Green Lantern, which kept every single piece of continuity from Hal Jordan’s first appearance in DC’s Showcase issue 22 from 1959. This included villains like Sinestro and the antimatter universe of Qward, as well as supporting characters like John Stewart and Guy Gardener. In fact, Kilowog and some retired Lanterns were hanging around on Earth while the Guardians were off somewhere in space not leading the Lanterns… despite the fact that they died in the Crisis.

Fans were kept in the dark on the new past of these characters until 1989 brought them Emerald Dawn, which covered some of why Hal was a Green Lantern. 1991’s Emerald Dawn II would cover how Sinestro went from a Lantern to an evil villain, but presumably John and Guy kept their old origins.

Or you could pick up Batman and his umbrella of titles, who kept trucking along like nothing had happened in the first place. Jason Todd was still Robin, Dick Greyson was still Nightwing and on the Titans. You could pick up the mini-series Batman: Year One to see how Bruce specifically became Batman, or Detective Comics issues 575-578 to see the storyline Year Two, but it would be another 14 years before Dick Greyson got Robin: Year One in 2001. Things were made even more complicated when it turned out Batgirl had already retired from crime fighting, and would be paralyzed when Alan Moore’s controversial The Killing Joke was made canonical.

There was no answer on if Barbara Gordon’s time in congress was still canon.

Or you could pick up The Legion of Super-Heroes, which just completely ignored the Crisis almost entirely as it happened. Taking place a thousand years after the events of “modern” DC did give them the comfort of ignoring the broad strokes of continuity unless it made for a good story. Unfortunately, there was a massive caped elephant in the room.

You see, pre-Crisis Clark Kent would adventure from time to time as Superboy. And also Superbaby when the writer’s block struck particularly hard. This would somehow extend to having teenage Clark hang out with the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st century, and he was a massively important member of their team. While he would eventually be “forbidden” from returning to the future, they still had roughly 20 years of comics with Clark as a major player on the team.

According to John Byrne’s Man of Steel, this couldn’t have happened. Post-Crisis Clark Kent didn’t get his superpowers until he was a teenager. Hell, the man never even took up a costume until after his first superpowered adventure as an adult. So 1987 had the Legion address it by claiming their Superboy was a clone from a “pocket universe” made by their greatest foe, and killed that Superboy off… but the cracks in the foundation of the newest DC universe were now showing.

Not every comic launched fully-planned like Man of Steel. The comics featuring the Justice League showed off what fans would consider the Earth-Two versions of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who were humans with technology. The problem is, these were now considered heroes who fought in World War II, and had no modern day equivalent. Further compounding issues is that Hawkman and Hawkgirl of the modern day would be later introduced as humanlike aliens with wings and DC would try their best to ignore the random appearances of the time-lost incarnations.

Except now we had a Hawkman human named Carter Hall in both the old days and modern days, as well as alien Hawkman Kator Hol running around in the modern day. And maybe one was an alien traitor.

There was also a large issue with the new wave of heroes from Infinity, Inc and Earth-Two who had survived the crossover to what DC was now calling the New Earth. Huntress, aka Helena Wayne, was the child of Batman and Catwoman… only now she was Helena Bertinelli, the daughter of a slain mobster who wanted revenge. This was arguably the neatest conversion, with other characters like Jade being preserved intact with her dad being the WWII incarnation of Green Lantern as a separate concept from Hal Jordan and his friends.

Then you had Power Girl, who was a cousin of Superman on Earth-Two who landed years after Clark arrived…but there was a problem. Superman was not only a fresh hero now, but DC editors now mandated that there would be no more Kryptonians showing up like termites in an old house. There was no Supergirl, no Krypto the dog, no bottle city of Kandor, no colony of Kryptonians living off in space. This left Power Girl essentially adrift in continuity, and writers would flail about to figure out an origin for her. 

Secret Origins was a comic series that premiered in April of 1986. It started by re-telling the origins of the Earth-Two Superman by recreating and further fleshing out the first adventure of Superman. Issue two, however, would tell the new origin for the Blue Beetle and advertise his new book. Every subsequent issue would be dedicated to telling the tales of new heroes, and new origins for older heroes now that we were in the post-Crisis era. Issue 11 would be all about Power Girl, and would make it so that an Atlantean sorcerer threw his granddaughter 45,000 years into the future to save her from a massive evil… and also gaslit her into believing she was Kryptonian.

This still didn’t gel with the Superman we now had from John Byrne, but at least it didn’t make the fans mad… except when it did, since it also changed her on a fundamental level for many fans.

And speaking of Power Girl and the JSA family, the Justice Society of America was equally thrown off. While the team was now solidly existing in the 1940s and early 1950s, it was the roster that was the real problem for the Justice Society. While most of the cast remained in the past with the likes of Starman, Green Lantern, and Atom-Smasher all being elder statesmen or retired by the modern day… there was an equally large issue with some of their stories. See if you can find them on this cover.

Yes. Superman, Wonder Woman (and also Batman) were reoccurring members of the team. They were only reservist members who did not take part in every story, with Wonder Woman also taking the role of secretary because it was the 40s. This meant not all their stories were problematic, but some of the major ones fans loved would now have the problem of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman all being around roughly 40 years early. This wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if writer Roy Thomas wasn’t spending much of the 80s fleshing out these stories even further. The above cover of All-Star Squadron comes from 1981, and the book was still running strong by 1985 when the timeline it was part of was nuked.

Allegedly, Thomas wasn’t even told of New Earth until he saw the book on the newsstands.

This drastically changed the angle of the book. After issue 60 hit the stands in early 1986, the book became about establishing the new origins of the heroes Thomas had been so fond of. Liberty Belle, Shining Knight, Robotman, Johnny Quick, and the Tarantula all got new origin stories. There was also a story of what the offscreen Justice Society members had been doing during the Crisis, and the book ended in issue 67 with a new “first adventure” for the JSA. But this left the New Earth’s continuity with a major hole remaining… namely that of the DC Trinity no longer being in those stories.

Rather than sweep the deck and start anew, Thomas chose to use his powers of continuity knowledge to weave in three new characters to take the place of three who no longer existed. In fact, he would add an entire team to the World War II era of DC: The Young All-Stars!

The three in the center were specifically designed to take the place of the DC Trinity. “Iron” Munro is a man with enhanced reflexes and abilities akin to the original appearance of Superman. He has unbreakable skin, and preferred to fight in civilian clothes rather than make up a costume. The gal in gold is Fury, empowered by lower members of the pantheon of Greek gods to avenge her village against the Nazis. She fills the Wonder Woman role while keeping Themiscyra out of World War II so Diana could have a clean introduction into DC’s modern day. Flying Fox is a Native American shaman with the powers of magic at his side. He was intended to take the place of Batman, despite not quite being as similar as the other two to their inspirations.

Despite being rather cool character concepts, and even using the public domain inspiration for Superman as the source of Munro’s powers, they were unfortunately forgotten about once the book was cancelled. A few characters have appeared here and there, and Superman has even stated Munro was his idol when he was growing up… but DC would instead spend more of their time focusing on how modern characters tied into older ones, rather than fleshing out the past.

It also didn’t help that these guys were considered the “junior” league, and thus didn’t have the same standing as the three they were intended to replace. Future writers have gone on to ignore Fury specifically by using Wonder Woman’s mother Hyppolyta.

Donna Troy of the Teen Titans would also have similar issues to Power Girl. Established as an orphan raised by the Wonder Woman of Earth-Two, Donna was now cut off from the Amazons as Wonder Woman actually wouldn’t be introduced until the 1986 Legends event storyline. So now, Donna was somehow made by the Greek Titans of myth… until she wasn’t because writers would continually try to make an origin that would make sense to them, or would make her fans happy.

Other minor issues would occur as DC editorial further crushed the pre-Crisis stories out of existence, and continuity would be untangled as best as possible. While there was some kind of event that resulted in the death of Barry Allen’s Flash, it was left deliberately vague on purpose now. The same applied to Green Lantern and Batman, who were just acknowledged to have longer histories by this point. Roy Thomas, not satisfied with just making Young All-Stars would also head up Secret Origins to continue to supply new origins for every character who needed them.

However, DC still wasn’t happy with the results.

1994 would bring fans Zero Hour. Spinning out of the pages of Green Lantern, anti-hero Hal Jordan had wiped out the Green Lantern corps only a few months back, becoming the nigh-all-powerful Parallax. He would use his abilities to rewrite reality and try to make things “perfect.” Reality would be restored… and changed.

The Legion of Superheroes, who had survived the previous reset, were effectively ”rebooted” for the 90s. Characters were de-aged, names were made more radical, and continuity from the old days was completely ditched. Fans were generally upset, but the Reboot Legion does have its fans to this day. Hawkman’s complex continuity was ignored by combining every single version of him into one person.

It was more confusing than you could possibly expect, and other retcons were about as well-received. So, obviously, a new plan was needed

Grant Morrison and Mark Waid would come up with the concept of “hypertime” not long after. A high level concept, it meant that every story DC Comics (and their absorbed companies) had happened, and they were all canon. It just depended on the writer to decide exactly what stories mattered and applied to each book, and continuity was now a flowing river with branches that would split and rejoin whenever. This meant that any continuity snarl just didn’t matter.

You could also define it as “it’s just a comic book, I should just relax.”

It wasn’t used much, unfortunately.

DC would do more patching of the universe with 2006’s event Infinite Crisis. Characters who had been orphaned and reborn in the New Earth were restored with their original origins in most cases. They remained behind on New Earth as remnants of the previous Crisis, but the Multiverse was also completely reborn as well. Crossovers, if there were any, were brief.

And then DC editorial chose to completely reboot their universe a second time in 2011. They were launching a new digital release schedule, and wanted to capitalize upon that with a fresh universe. With that, the twenty-five years of the post-Crisis continuity was vaporized, replaced with a fresh cast of heroes in the “New 52.” And it was literally all the fault of Barry Allen messing up the timestream, which DC hoped we would forget.

The Legion of Superheroes were, again, left untouched. They had just been “unbooted” from their 1994 reboot and 2004 “threeboot” and restored to their original incarnation. A crossover with the other two continuities in 2008’s Final Crisis had also fleshed out why their reboots happened, and fans were mostly happy with that.

However, it was still a sloppy mess. Batman had been running around for 10 years, with all of his comics allegedly having happened during this time. Dick Greyson had been Robin, as had Jason Todd and current title holder Damien Wayne, but now Tim Drake (the third person to hold the Robin mantle) was not a Batman sidekick anymore. Despite his stories being canon. All of the other heroes existed within the last 5 years, with Superman somehow being the first public hero in theory. Also, the worlds of Vertigo (DC comics made for mature readers) and Wildstorm (hyper-90s comics) were blended into the New 52, without an explanation for what was considered canon and what was ignored.

Superman’s continuity was considered “fresh,” but he mentioned dying at the hands of Doomsday before when he guest-appeared in Swamp Thing issue 1. Without more information, this meant that the Death and Return of Superman had somehow occurred. This disagreed with the comics published in the first wave of the New 52, featuring a Superboy who was not the clone of Lex Luthor and Superman. Continuity continued to spiral, with it becoming painfully obvious that no one working at DC had the slightest clue how the timeline for the New 52 worked.

It also didn’t help that Green Lantern and Batman continued to ignore the reboot, trucking on like nothing had happened at all.

Some aspects of the previous universe were brought into the New 52 with 2015’s event Convergence. Superman and Lois Lane were imported into the universe, with Clark replacing his New 52 counterpart after the latter’s untimely death. They also had a kid, to the delight of many fans who had wanted a side of dad with their superheroics.

2016 would bring DC walking the reboot back, with DC Rebirth and blaming the entire changed continuity on Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen. Superman and Lois turned out to have been split into two characters each, rather than coming in from outside the New 52. Characters like Wally West, who had been missing since the New 52 reboot, were also restored piece by piece.

And now, no one is entirely sure what the continuity is for DC. Not even the writers can truly keep their stories straight, and the mess that Marv Wolfman had been concerned with back in the early 80s has truly grown to the worst case scenario.

And rumor has it DC is going to reboot their continuity once more. Perhaps to celebrate their 90th anniversary.

All of this chaos, mess, and angered fans could literally have been prevented with one small change back in 1985. Rather than wipe out and reboot, just make a separate universe once again.

Around the time of the first Crisis, some books were allowed to tell “final” stories of their heroes. Alan Moore would tell the highly-praised story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, which was Earth-One Superman’s final story and provided a decisive conclusion to the never ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way. Some books were allowed to do the same as 2011’s Flashpoint event loomed with the reboot of New 52 already announced after - again, with Superman having several stories that could have been considered an ending.

Imagine if DC had just let the Crisis on Infinite Earths exist as a final adventure for the already-known worlds, and just launched Man of Steel as the first story of a brand new Earth?

Superman is the first new hero, and his mini-series establishes the rest of the universe. Batman can also have his origin as well, if they want to work with the “urban legend” angle that so many editors obsess over. Meanwhile, the previous universe can still tell some stories in that old universe while they wait for their own reboot. Things wind down, and eventually the Earth One/Earth Two pair are retired as New Earth premiers in full with a new event. DC could even still have run their old Legends event, which introduced Wonder Woman and the New Gods to the New Earth of DC.

This also brings the bonus of being able to make a brand new continuity. Minor issues could be brushed aside as growing pains of telling the stories of a brand-new universe, and the Earth-One and Earth-Two incarnations of fan-favorite characters could always be brought back for events or crossovers. This would allow the Silver and Bronze Age heroes of DC the chance to also grow old, while making a new continuity that would update DC for the then-modern 80s. This has a triple bonus effect of not alienating those fans by essentially killing off their favorite characters and replacing them with new incarnations.

Some research has even shown fans had this opinion back when the Crisis was first being released. While the internet as we know it today didn’t exist, peer-to-peer communication still existed thanks to Usenet. Thanks to blog DC in the 80s doing some deep research, we now know some fans believed Marv was somehow a plant from Marvel to obliterate DC as it was. While the specific article cited was satire, this was still the feeling of many: that DC had shot themselves in the foot. Another post shows fan opinions on John Byrne’s Superman. In October of 1985, user JSDY wrote this:

Effectively, continuity died in the Crisis. I don’t see why Superman has to change so much; but, then, this will by Byrne’s artistic effort. Consider this: when some of us fix a small bug in a program, we fix the bug and maybe a little of the infrastructure. Others of us will rip the program to shreds and re-write it to suit our tastes. Then again, the latter approach is needed if the program is intrinsically buggy, or if it is internally artistically offensive. (;-))

While the pre-Crisis set of comics was hardly the best representation of continuity, it’s hard to argue against. While some books like Teen Titans under Bob Haney effectively ran with a negative continuity, DC was also working hard at making their newer comics in the late 70s and early 80s gel together better. There were long-running storylines like Superman’s Kryptonite No More! or the pages of Green Lantern and Green Arrow, where readers could still pick up a random issue without getting too lost… but ongoing readers got a richer experience and more full story.

But perhaps the biggest opinion I found comes from user CF, who opines this after complaining about the changes planned for Superman by Byrne:

Am I the only one who gets an awful pang of sorrow when I hear about the “revitalization” of the Superman mythos? I grew up with things like the Phantom Zone and Krypto and Supergirl… And I always liked the idea that Superman and Batman were friends. It didn’t make a heck of a lot of sense, but in the old days, it didn’t have to.

…

But why get rid of Superboy?

…

Oh well, maybe I’ll just have to consider the Superman I grew up with as having died in Crisis #10.

However, the vast majority of the conversation and opinions shared actually was something different: people hoping minor characters they hated would die, and slapping up prediction lists of who would die and who would live. This also means comics discourse hasn’t really changed over a good 40 years. It’s comforting in a weird way.

Now sure, it’s easy to play armchair comic writer and make these decisions almost 40 years after Crisis on Infinite Earths was published. However, maybe DC can learn from their past mistakes.

A new universe doesn’t demand a reboot. It just demands care and love from the creators. While it eventually spun into madness and weird stories, the Ultimate Universe from Marvel is a fantastic example of a modern reboot working right… aside from horribly-aged and problematic aspects like with the Ultimates. That’s not to say making a new universe from scratch could pay off, however. Marvel’s own New Universe from 1986 was likely Editor in Chief Jim Shooter’s answer to DC’s reboot of their universe. And we all know what happened there.

A world where everything was “the real world” until a specific event happened to grant superpowers to the people sounds like a cool idea. However, it was undercooked before release, concepts were broken to keep them down to Earth, and basically failed to do anything but flood back issue bins with content.

If DC does ever plan to reboot their continuity again, which seems remarkably likely, I hope they choose to just shape another Earth. A fresh continuity, where writers can make what they want, and references to the previous continuity won’t necessarily break what comes after. It could work. 

And if it ever failed, DC could just bring back the New Earth continuity snarl.

After all, they even did that too with Convergence. And Legion of Three Earths, too.