A little over and a year and a half ago, I began formally writing for Multiversity with a column called Hate Mail. In this column, I took out all of my post-college angst on everything I felt was wrong about comics and comic book culture. In relatively short order, I realized that while I managed to make a few good points here and there, that there was no real point to being a raging asshole to other fans on the internet, and turned my attention to more constructive and generally positive writing. I found that this usually made me feel like a much better person and realized that nothing was really happening in comics worth really getting irrationally riled up about.
Until now.
I’ll be the first to admit that I was an immensely large proponent of the DCnU relaunch and was actively looking forward to it almost since it was announced. Initially, I had just assumed that DC was going to make one blanket reboot and for once I was okay with them giving a giant middle finger to continuity since I saw the huge amount of storytelling potential the relaunch held. When it was later revealed that Flashpoint #5 would actually weave the relaunch into DC continuity so as to prevent it from just landing flat out of nowhere, I felt like it was a considerate thing to do, but by no means mandatory. However, once I put down Flashpoint #5 I not only felt confused, but cheated and more than a little insulted as a long time fan of that universe.
And then I got angry.
Click after the jump as I run down what I’m affectionately calling “The Top Five Reasons Why the DC Relaunch Continuity Makes Zero Sense and Would Have Been Better Left as a Massive Blanket Restart Rather Than Forcing Us to Make Sense of the Explanation We Got”.
Warning: MASSIVE spoilers for the end of Flashpoint are in effect! Furthermore, these thoughts are mine and mine alone and not reflective of the larger Multiversity staff. Even further, I’m actually a nice guy despite not seeming like one sometimes. Promise!
5. Vertigo-A-Go-Go…Oh No! (AKA The Combination from Hell)
Alright, let’s see if I can get this straight…the major crux of the changes to the DCU post-Flashpoint come from the fact that at some point long ago, the DCU was split into three different timelines (DCU, Vertigo and Wildstorm) by some mysterious, unnamed evil menace and while trying to restore his timeline, some mysterious hooded figure woman blindsides Barry Allen and puts all three timelines back together, creating the DCnU continuity. Now, we’ll get to how this occurrence makes zero sense from a cause and effect standpoint in just a second, but for right now I want to specifically focus on how badly this fucks up the entire idea of the Vertigo Universe AND the inherent redundancy in play here.
First of all, near as I can tell, the DCU heroes that made their way into the Vertigo books were NOT entering a new universe, but a new publication imprint. While imprints themselves are frequently indicative of entirely new timelines, I was never under the impression that that was the case for Vertigo (if someone can find me proof that Vertigo was one of the 52 Earths prior to Flashpoint, I wanna hear about it!) Mostly because the DC heroes featured in Vertigo books almost always started out in stories taking place amongst the primary DC Universe and for the most part had all migrated back to the DCU proper prior to Flashpoint, which kind of makes an intentional, on panel reunion of characters pretty goddamn redundant. However, that is not the biggest problem on the table here.
By making Vertigo it’s own Universe, and then jamming it into the DCU, what happens to all of the non-hero Vertigo books in terms of continuity? Will Sweet Tooth be teaming up with Animal Man? Or Tommy Taylor end up butting heads with Zatanna? Or will Skinner Sweet pop up in I, Vampire? (Which, admittedly, would be one of the few things that could ever get me to read that book.) Or are we meant to believe that the Vertigo hero books were a subsection of the Vertigo Universe and ONLY those characters have been reintegrated into the DCnU despite being there anyway and leaving the more creator centric books in their own pocket universes as they have been up until now thereby making the idea of calling Vertigo a timeline pointless in the first place? I’m looking forward to the rational on this one, I really am.
Continued below
4. Didn’t We Already Have One of These?
The DC Multiverse, when last seen, was comprised of 52 separate Earths vibrating at different frequencies that spawned from the central DC Earth following Infinite Crisis. One of these Earths notably housed the characters of the Wildstorm Universe, effectively making them if not part of DC Continuity, at least present in the DC general timeline (yes I am drawing a distinction between alternate Earths and alternate timelines. If you disagree let me know in the comments!)
Now, while I think integrating the Wildstorm characters into the central DCU like the company did with the Milestone and Red Circle characters before them (or tried to at least) is a great idea, I’m not sure how that integration makes sense given the logic in play in Flashpoint. Why would only the Wildstorm Universe out of all of the other 52 Earths be selected as the one that needed to be reintegrated? We know, thanks to the likes of James Robinson and Grant Morrison shooting off their mouths, that the multiverse still exists within the broader DCnU, so why are only the Wildstorm characters landing in the DCnU other than the fact that the company wants them there? And if that was their only logic for making the shift, why couldn’t they just have been honest about it. “Hey we’re restarting the Universe and wanna bring these characters in because they are cool and would lead to great stories if they interacted with the DCU heroes you know and love!” is PERFECTLY GOOD LOGIC. “Oh they were always supposed to be there and now they are again and them being back in the mix causes things to chaaaaaaaaaaaaange” leaves much to be desired, which leads us to…
3. Cause and Effect…Say Whaaaat?
What the hell does having Grifter, John Constantine, Apollo and Voodoo always existing as a part of the DCU have to do with Lois and Clark never being together, the JSA not existing and the Robins turning into Bat-Interns? Seriously now. NOTHING about that makes sense. Nothing.
2. “This One’s Ours, Lets Take Another”
Yes, I actually did try pretty hard to weave a Fugazi reference into this and an am pretty proud of how I figured out how to do it. Now, it should be stated that while I am GLAD about the fact that the continuity in place in the Bat-Books and Green Lantern books is coming through the relaunch relatively unscathed, I’ll be the first to admit that it makes absolutely NO sense that they do. Given all the shifts in continuity that took place, the idea that all of those shifts happened in a vacuum such that Damian Wayne can remain Robin and Sinestro can remain the headliner of Green Lantern is just way too much of a pill to swallow and glossing over details like that ultimately hurts the entire relaunch more than I feel DC cared to acknowledge, since by not creating a uniform rebirth for the universe and having characters at different levels of development only works via editorial mandate and not, in any way, by continuity. There is just no way to do that effectively, which takes us on home to…
1. The Wrong Way to Abandon Logic
Like I said before, when I first heard about the DCnU I assumed that DC would be pulling a “because we said so” power move with their books and drawing a line in the sand and saying on one side is what happened and on the other side is what is happening now. Sever all ties, take what worked, cut what didn’t and jam it all together into a brand new story. THAT stiff right hand approach made absolutely perfect sense to me. THAT is the correct way to abandon logic and continuity and cause a fresh start to occur.
Simply put, DC is trying to make it look and feel like this new era they’ve concocted should have always existed and are jumping through hoops to make it seem that way. But, by trying to make sense of all the changes clearly only being made by editorial mandate and saying that clearly it’s always supposed to have been this way will just make it that much worse then it becomes blatantly apparent that it hasn’t been (most given, ya know, the 75 years of continuity to take place before this one). DC would have been better served by pulling rank on us for the sake of putting out better stories. Now, that is not to say that that the stories won’t be good, but the framework they now exist in is flimsy at BEST and I fear the more they try and jam this misguided logic down our throats, the more I personally will disconnect from the entire universe, and I bet I’m not alone in that.
