The Big #1: Doomsday Clock #1

(Plot type spoilers and a hell of a lot of unfounded and ill-informed speculation await you below.)

It occurs to me that I probably should have finally got around to reading Watchmen before this came out. I fully intend to rectify the problem this afternoon (its one of DC's eternal classics, Waterstone's has to have copy) but for the moment let's all pretend that I intended to go into this series unbiased by the perception of the original series' sacred cow status instead of just being someone with the forward planning skills of a custard doughnut.

Agreed? Moving on.

Through that prism (or lack of prism), I have a few thoughts. Firstly, was the narration from Rorschach always complete pretentious drivel or what? Now, if that was what Geoff Johns was going for with it he succeeds admirably. “An intestine of truth and shit strangled us.” is absolute gold if your intention was to write a dumb or mad person's idea of deep social commentary. Speaking of which...

He's not a subtle man, our Geoff Johns. The US President of Watchmen Earth, President Redford is pretty much Donald Trump pretending to be Ronald Reagan (art imitates life): he's got a wall to keep out Mexicans and he's replaced the entire free press of the United States with his own news channel so he can better explain to the people that he absolutely has to start a nuclear war no matter what those horrible foreign news organisation think is happening.

Okay then.

As to how much this issue tips its hand towards the connection between the Watchmen continuity and the DC Universe... it doesn't. Most of the issue takes place on the Watchmen Earth with only a short coda at the end featuring Superman having a nightmare that's probably some sort of premonition. The nightmare in question features Superman's parents dying on the night of his high school prom just as he watches Pete Ross kissing Lana Lang and being heartbroken.

I hope this means something.

You see, an odd thing over the last decade or so has been the increasing desire to kill off the Kents. It generally started with Pa Kent who was killed off in the comics during the New Krypton arc, in the middle seasons of Smallville, and then was declared to have died years ago at the beginning of the New 52. Now Ma Kent (otherwise known as “WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!?”) seems to have joined him in the great hereafter a lot earlier than I'd assumed.

So the question that occurs to me is this: Is this something to do with the diddling about with history that's been slowly uncovered since the Rebirth one-shot? Is Superman now having a super sad childhood with 100% more dead parents some part of the master plan? I feel confident in assuming it is because Geoff Johns is that sort of writer but also because its an odd nightmare to be explicitly placing as a premonition of doom of those events have nothing to do with the whole Watchmen thing.

As to the actual Watchmen content... I absolutely need to read the original because this seems to follow on pretty directly from what I know of that series' conclusion. We're introduced to a pair of new characters, the Marionette and the Mime who appear to be what counts as super-villains in the Watchmen continuity, who are being recruited by Rorschach who appears to not be Rorschach (though he has what I assume to be a convincing line in imitation of the original's pretentious bollocks) who has a watch that's a bit slow so he doesn't know quite how long they've got until nuclear armageddon.

Its all very atmospheric and darkly humoured, at least I hope I'm meant to be taking it that way. One of the problems with the consensus DC all-time classics is that a lot of them seem to be taken a lot more seriously than they were meant to be. When I finally took a look at some of Frank Miller's Batman stuff I was actually surprised by how many jokes and little knowing nods were in there. You will never convince me that Batman admiring how well Sarah Essen walks in heels as she pretends to be a prostitute being assaulted is not meant to make me smile. On the other hand, The Killing Joke is exactly as po-faced as its reputation makes it out to be and that's Alan Moore.

So, yes, I definitely need to read Watchmen before the second issue comes out. Absent that context the issue is pretty good, visually interesting and well-written if I'm taking certain things the right way. I am painfully aware, however, that we still aren't anywhere near the punchline that I am dreading: the moment when the Watchmen universe and the DC universe finally collide.

I look forward to this moment with dread barely tinged with the distant glimmer of hope. 

Doomsday Clock Watchin'

Today's the day. Today it begins. The series I have been dreading since the DC Rebirth one-shot hit, the potentially horrible punchline at the end of all the good things the entire Rebirth initiative has achieved.

So here's my issue. I have adored the whole groundwork for this. Superman Reborn, A Lonely Place of Living, all the other little bits and pieces hinting towards the conspiracy underlying the whole DC Universe. Unfortunately, we've known since day one that the whole conspiracy somehow involves the mad idea of introducing the Watchmen character to the DCU proper.

I'm not exactly crazy about this idea.

I mean, the whole point of Watchmen is to be a satire of how disastrous superheroes would be in the real world. The DC Universe is not the real world, is actually in fact defined by having a lot of cities and trappings that separate it very much from the real world.

Essentially, I question the sanity of introducing satire characters to the world they were meant to satirise.

That having been said I'm on board for the first issue at least because, well... the car crash mentality in the main but also because every step up to this point has been enjoyable and I have the tiniest scintilla of a hope that maybe this has actually been thought through enough to work.

Just the tiniest bit. 

A Lonely Place of Living: picking up the breadcrumbs

First of all, this moment is very, very sweet. One of the changes to Cass' character I do like in the Rebirth continuity is that she's a lot closer to the family in emotional terms. Back in the day there was affection, yes, but she always held herself a little distant. Also, someone whose primary language is physical should probably make more use of physical contact than she usually did.

Anyway, as sweet as this (and Tim and Luke being complete comp-sci nerds) is what I'm really interested in talking about is the latest little breadcrumb in the mystery of Conner Kent. Here it is:

So, more confirmation that Tim does not remember Conner. Considering that, contrary to my memory, the New 52 Superboy did use that name for a while this might indicate that he has been removed from history. After all, no one's so much as mentioned him since Rebirth started. Either that or Tim literally cannot connect the concepts of “New 52 Superboy” and “friend” which... is not totally out of the question.

The guy was an epic tool, let's face it.

However, this does suggest that somewhere deep in Tim's subconscious he does remember Conner, that there is an emotion tied to the name. A rather shippy, slashy emotion apparently.

This could conceivably be the same process as we saw with Wally West the elder at the very beginning of Rebirth, another consequence of that “stolen decade” business. We know from the experiences that Barry Allen and the original Titans had that memories can be restored from the old history even if it can be a bit oddly selective (none of the Titans remember Cyborg or Beast Boy being on the team back in the day) or perhaps indicates that this is not quite the pre-Flashpoint history that was changed.

The plot thickens and we're only halfway through this arc. 

Untangling Detective Comics #966

[This post MAJOR SPOILERS for Detective Comics #966 as well as recent events in the Batwoman ongoing which also has implications for the whole meta-narrative of Rebirth as well as my own unsupported speculation, be warned, they begin right after the header picture.]

Oh, sweet Jesus, time travel in a multiverse involving the timeline of a character I have an unnatural in-depth knowledge of. Its Christmas come early!

Context: this week's issue of Detective Comics, the second part of A Lonely Place Of Living, features the current Red Robin version of Tim Drake (as seen since the dawn of the New 52) and a future version of himself who is Batman (as mentioned in the recent flashforward issue of Batwoman) being chased through Mr. Oz's prison by Doomsday (the New 52 version that killed Superman except he didn't because there was only one Superman now not two so that's sort of undefined at this point).

Mixed up in all this was a recent promise by James Tynion IV that this issue would bring us some answers on the question of Conner Kent, the pre-Flashpoint Superboy. The issue sort of delivers on that but also uses these answers to set up more mysteries.

So, where to begin?

Tim!Bats: Who He Is And How He Came To Be

Firstly, the future Batman who is Tim Drake and uses guns including the gun used by Joe Chill to kill the Waynes. This Batman originally appeared in a Teen Titans storyline by Geoff Johns over a decade ago. In that story Tim, along with a bunch of the Titans, have turned all-out fascist. In fact, one of the first glimpses we get into how bad things have gotten for the characters is Tim executing Duela Dent, the Joker's Daughter (she was a nicer, more whimsical character in those days and wasn't wearing anyone's face but her own).

Except maybe he's not quite that version of gun-totting Batman Tim Drake. This future Tim says he remembers “an echo” of the conversation he has with present day Tim, a conversation in different context but where he (future Tim) was equally horrified by the depths to which his future self had fallen.

The conversation he is referring to is quite specifically not the one he's currently having with his past self here. Logically, then its the conversation Tim had in Teen Titans with his own future.

The future Batman here is Tim from the pre-Flashpoint continuity who remembers meeting his future self and, in spite of all the warning, still chose to go down this route of being a Batman who kills because he felt driven to it after Bruce's death. However, he also remembers events from the life Tim is now living (or was going to before his abduction) as he refers to getting maybe a couple of months into his life as a student in Ivy Town before being drawn back into the world of costumed vigilantism. In the flashbacks to his native time we also see a conversation between the future versions of Anarky and Spoiler which ties in to the recent Utopia/Dystopia two-parter, though clearly a version of events where either that relationship didn't fall apart or the two reconciled in later years.

Future Tim claims that certain events are fixed so the obvious conclusion is that if the pre-Flashpoint continuity had continued it would have reached the status quo Johns set out and it would have passed through at least some of the events of Rebirth.

Considering that the whole premise of Rebirth was to restore a whole bunch of pre-Flashpoint continuity this isn't surprising. Presumably then the future we're dealing with here is one unfiddled with by whatever “stole a decade” from the DC universe.

It is also the future as seen in Batwoman, a Rebirth-continuity series.

Two options: either this future is inevitable (as it happens in both pre-Flashpoint and Rebirth continuity) or something is going to happen now future Tim is loose in the present to make this future happen, Terminator-style.

Then there's Conner Kent.

Kon Artistry

The big twist at the end of the issue is that future Tim remembers Conner but present Tim does not. This isn't much of a surprise as even the New 52 version of Conner (who never adopted the name, I don't think) hasn't even been referred to since Rebirth. Neither version was even present in the flashback to The Death Of Superman during the recent tour of Superman continuity that established what was and wasn't canon in the new continuity where the two New 52-era Clarks have been merged into a single history.

This might or might not be meaningful. It might tie into what we're talking about here or if might just have been editorial buying themselves time over a character they had no real use for.

So, is Conner coming back? It all comes down to whether we're dealing with two distinct futures with similar aspects or some unified future no matter which timeline we're looking at. The future we see in this issue has both Conner (not a part of the future we see in Batwoman) and Commissioner Montoya of Free Gotham (both featured in the Batwoman issue).

If the future Batman Tim comes from is exactly the same future we saw in Batwoman, if it is the future of the Rebirth continuity, then it makes sense that Conner's presence within that future means there's some future planned for the character. If, however, the lack of Conner in the Rebirth continuity is just a good mechanical way to establish that time is mutable and this dark future can be prevented (as Batman Tim actually says in the issue) then it makes sense that he'll stay gone.

Or both these theories could be way off because Tynion is a better writer than me or just because this was all a cute nod for fans rather than something deep and meaningful that a sane person would spend the better part of a thousand words trying to noodle out. 

Comic Reviews

This week DC buttons down the hatches; the ghost of Donald Trump comes up against Judge Dredd; the teen team of my childhood returns; Luke Skywalker and Doctor Aphra get their party clothes on; and, Brian Michael Bendis slips a surprise into my pull list.

The Flash #22

Boy, am I starting to hate events. I knew before I opened this that it wasn't the end, that Doomsday Clock was coming and this was just another tease on the way to the big thing. Still, up until this issue The Button was actually quite a nice, self-contained little story that looked like it was going somewhere. I admit, I did hope that where it was going was restoring Jay Garrick, if not the whole JSA, to the main continuity. As it is, that didn't happen and the story I'd quite been enjoying for the last few weeks just sort of fizzled out. I had a lot of fun while it was running and I do think that it was worth my time, especially the Batman side, though I do question killing Thawne again in a issue running an add for his return in three issues time.

2000AD prog2031

After months and months of being behind, I'm finally caught up on the best British comics ever, so here we go...

I can't tell you how much I love the Sons of Booth storyline running in Judge Dredd right now. 2000AD has never had any chill to speak of and seeing them take on the Trump phenomena in their own bitter, cynical is just beautiful. Plus, you just know, this being Judge Dredd and all, that a fair number of them are going to get shot in the had by the end of the story. Its interesting to see the typical “directionless white male” story that always seems to feed in to these things presented as a bad thing. Oh, young Kelvin is sympathetic enough in his basic situation (when you basic situation is Mega-City One, its hard not to be) but as we see him falling hook, line and sinker for the Sons Of Booth propaganda vids its clear that he is also very, very stupid. Then there's the moment when he dares to have an idea and the Sons' boss encourages him but one of the minions declares they don't need no experts telling them what to do, its perfect.

Aside from that, Scarlet Traces: Cold War book two has a bit of a filler episode with lots of people running around in the middle of an air raid and Defoe continues to broaden its list of suspected necromancers. Cursed: The Fall Of Deadworld is probably my favourite feature aside from Dredd this issue, mainly because of the beautifully twisted art design by Dave Kendall who has so many ideas for zombie Judges. Plus, there's probably the best installment of Brink yet as Kurtis and Gibrani wander through darkened corridors in the depths of the unfinished space station jumping at every noise and shadow.

Green Lanterns #23

Last issue, I said I was looking forward to seeing Guy Gardner training Jessica. Funnily enough, that's not the part of the issue I ended up liking. See, Guy's approach to training Jessica is just to keep shouting at her, the archetypal drill US Army sergeant, and unless there turns out to be more to it than that then I think Sam Humphries just doesn't get Guy.

On the plus side, Kyle training Simon in creative thinking is great. It hones in on something that's less a flaw in Simon and more of a limit: he's a very straight forward thinker and in this Humphries absolutely has it right. There's also a subplot with Volthoom reading about the New Gods which... eh, I can't say I've cared much for the New Gods since the New 52. Like the multiverse, they're an idea DC keeps fiddling with, doing nothing with the new version and then rebooting all over again. I mean, the initial New 52 version of them gave us the Orion subplot in Wonder Woman and then they got another reboot in Multiversity which, far as I can tell, no one has done anything with at all so I'm not sure I much care at this point. It would be nice if DC had a great idea for them for Jack Kirby's centenniary but I sort of doubt it.

Generation X #1

This issue might be the most wrenching transition between cover art and interior art I have ever experienced. Its not that the interior art is bad, after a couple of pages I was really into it, but it is so very, very much unlike the cover its almost painful.

As to story, its our first real glimpse at the “normal” working of the new Xavier's and the traditional new student, Nathaniel Carver, takes a long wander through the halls for cameos galore (Broo! Pixie! Shark Girl!) and the traditional bad first impression of the place as the rest of the book's teenage cast have a brawl that knocks down a wall and covers a room in goose droppings. Nature Girl was a bit of a missed opportunity in the Wolverine The X-Men days and I'm glad she's part of a main cast now.

Then, for the old bastards like me, there's the return of Jubilee and Chamber, original GenXers turned young teachers. I'm glad to see that Jubilee retains both her vampirism and her single motherhood even if neither are played quite as comedic as they were in the Patsy Walker title. This is definitely a funny title, I mean Quentin Quire's in it, it can't help but be. That said, the cliffhanger harkens back to one of the biggest traumas of Jubilee's life so this looks like its going to be a real tone rollercoaster.

Star Wars #31

Jason Aaron has certainly improved his Aphra since Vader Down (or was it Rebel Jail, the last time he wrote her?). I was actually a little worried that the Aaron-written parts of this crossover would be the weak ones but he does a really good job here of matching Gillen's tone, including a downright classic Triple Zero put upon quip. In spite of the title on the cover, this remains more Aphra's story than Luke's and I can't say I exactly mind. More Aphra is always welcome and more Triple Zero even more so.

Powers #8

Creator-owned series and their haituses... I'd completely forgotten I was subscribed to this. Not an unpleasant surprise but it did cost me money.

Okay, for a start I flat out do not remember anything that was going on in this series before the hiatus. I'm pretty sure this is the beginning of a new story and that it is a flashback. I only started following Powers with the beginning of this particular series so the fact that Walker is in a costume is my only clue that this is the past. On the one hand, that's interesting, seeing the world of our of control super people that I'd only previously seen the aftermath of is good. On the other, well, its a transition I wasn't prepared for and spent most of the issue until someone called Walker by name absolutely befuddled by.

Still, its an entertaining read and hopefully its going somewhere interesting that affects the present, otherwise I might drop this and follow it as trades which is probably the better way to read a mystery series. 

The Comics Ramble: Young Justice Rebirth

For context: there are rumours out in the wild about the future direction of the DCU now that some of the mysteries of Rebirth are being revealed in the like of Superman Reborn and the upcoming Batman/Flash crossover The Button. Amongst them are the tantalising concepts of Bart Allen returning as part of a speedster themed team book and Tim Drake escaping his current presumed death to lead the Outsiders. Whether this is true or not we'll see. Also, the recent announcement that the Young Justice cartoon would return for its long-awaited third season leads me to ask:

Can the Young Justice kids/third generation Titans get a little of that Rebirth return to form, please?

Of all the characters mangled by the New 52, that particular generation were the worst maimed and for the most part they've just been ignored since Rebirth. Tim Drake, being a Batman mainstay, got back on form pretty quickly. He lost the showgirl wings and returned to being the smartest and most independant Robin in the pages of Deective Comics. Steph Brown and Cass Cain, once written off by a DC editor as the “toxic” Batgirls, have had a massive resurgence since turning up again in the Eternal series. As for the rest of that generation, well...

Bart Allen is now Barr Torr, a mass murderer and part-time amnesiac from an aggressively anti-theist future; Cassie Sandsmark is trapped in a suit of armour that literally tortures her; Superboy is destined to go mad and kill everyone because apparently that's just what happenes to Kryptonian clones now; Solstice was trapped on a horrible future penal colony with Barr Torr but then he returned to the present and I don't think anyone's too sure what happened to her; Mia Dearden, as far as I can tell, no longer exists in any shape or form; nor do Secret, Empress or Arrowette.

As much as people complain about the sexual politics of Red Hood And The Outlaws, to me the absolute platonic example of the New 52 aestethetic is that Teen Titans series. Everything about it was miserable. Every character that survived was transformed into something painful and edgy and somehow more Nineties than the way the characters were written when they were actually created in the Nineties.

I admit, this offends me more than most of the New 52's acts of butchery because that was “my” generation of teen heroes. Peter David's Young Justice and Chuck Dixon's Robin were the first DC comics I ever bought, Geoff Johns' Teen Titans is one of my favourite titles ever and no matter how many Robins DC shoves my way Tim Drake will always be the greatest.

Rebirth is a nostalgia project, something I am usually sceptical of and this is no exception. I am extremely dubious about the idea of introducing the Watchmen characters into the universe they were created to satirise and, as ever, the titles I like the most are the ones that push in new and interesting directions like Simon Baz finally getting his own GL title after six sodding years. Still and all, it would be nice to get a little nostalgia going for what is rapidly becoming DC's “lost generation”.

In a way, I understand it, there isn't much real estate for them to occupyright now. Wally West the younger is Kid Flash, Jon Kent is Superboy and Donna Troy might not be using the Wonder Girl name but she's only just recently returned and they're only just getting into her latest origin story. The first generation of sidekicks is having a hard enough time getting restablished without the their latter day counterparts coming back. Also, as much as all those twice monthly books obscure the fact, we're still very early on in the Rebirth experiment. Its been less than a year and already we've regained married Superman, the Titans are a legacy again, hints have been dropped of the Legion Of Super-Heroes and Justice Society coming back, amongst others.

The thing is, though, that I would like some assurance that the Nineties and early-2000s aren't being left in the dust because those were, at times, good years for DC creatively. Also, not to be too mercenary, but there is a TV series to be marketed here.

And I just miss them. I miss Bart and Cassie and Kon as I knew them, not as the ostentatiously tortured characters the New 52 relaunched them as. Rebirth and its predecessor DCYou brought the fun back to a lot of characters and having this crew back together, especially now the Dick Grayson generation are being treated as experienced veterans again, would definitely fall in line with that.

Plus, pre-Flashpoint Bart is still running around somewhere out there, one of that crossover's lingering plot points that has never been referred to since. Maybe he could jump out of the Speed Force and reawaken some memories. 

The Comics Ramble: Superman Reborn: WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?

SPOILER WARNING: This post goes into the events, conclusion and possible consequences of the Superman Reborn crossover (that's Superman #18 - #19, Action Comics #975 - #976 and Superwoman #7) so if you aren't caught up on the Super-books this is really, really not the post for you.

That having been said...

… “WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?” to quote Adam Blampied.

To break down the result: it turns out that when the New 52 was created Superman and Lois Lane were split in two. One half became the New 52 Superman and Lois who wasn't married to him, the other became the Superman we've been following since Rebirth who remembers the pre-Flashpoint continuity and Lois that he is married to and has a child with. Now the two versions have been fused together and history has changed around them so that there's only one version of Lois and Clark and they've have been married for years, raised their son whilst working at the Daily Planet and the events of both the New 52 and Rebirth era Super-books happened to them.

This is the perfect platonic example of the DC retcon: it fixes the big problem and leaves us with a lot of little questions.

Now, I can't deny that something like this needed to happen. Superman is Clark Kent, he works at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. People who have never picked up a comic in their lives know this as concrete fact so having to constantly explain that a Superman like that existed but died and now we're following his counterpart from another universe who is living under an assumed name on a farm in Hamilton County, Kansas for the benefit of confused new readers is more effort than its worth.

There's also the fact that this is a completely different attitude to the pre-Flashpoint/New 52 split than the rest of Rebirth has been exploring. Take the original Titans, who have recently discovered that their memories of being a team were taken from them and have now been reunited, memories restored. The same holds true for Barry Allen's memories of original flavour Wally West. Other series have either chosen to bring back pre-Flashpoint ideas as new events or just things that never rated a mention before and were totally always canon, honest guv. Either way, the message was that these comics were restoring something, be it restoring an erased past or re-introducing something fans remember fondly.

The Superman books, meanwhile, had this complicated (and, admittedly, pre-Rebirth) compromise of bringing back Superman's marriage but also jettisoning the Daily Planet status quo and there were alternate universes involved. It was complicated, it actively removed elements from the series readers expected to see, and it didn't work with the larger context of the company's line-wide relaunch. It had to go.

So it went and that is good. Superman should not be a series whose status quo is even close to hard to explain. It should be the most accessible, most straight forward series DC publishes: he's a superhero who has every power going and everyone knows who he's dating and where he works. Sometimes expectations are meant to be met.

And now they will be. What little we see of the new version of history, in a single splash page summarising Superman's new history, strongly suggests that the traditional status quo is back plus Superboy Jon. This is, on the larger scale, a good thing.

For those who believe in Rickard Stark's admonition that nothing that comes before “but” counts for anything that was around six hundred words of waste of time but here we go...

The problem DC has always had with these retcons is that whilst they usually do fix big picture problems they aren't that good on following through and figuring out how it affects the little things. Take, for example, Guy Gardner in the New 52. Guy Gardner, as with most of the Green Lantern characters, retained his pre-Flashpoint personality in the relaunch. This personality, however, was heavily based in the relationship he shared with Tora back in the Justice League International days, a relationship that was reduced in the new continuity to a couple of dates, no deep emotional connection and no bereavement because she never died.

Much as I love Guy Gardner, that is small potatoes compared to this.

The death of the New 52 Superman was used to launch Superwoman, New Super-Man and Lex Luthor's current status quo as seen in multiple titles. The fact that they're working with an unfamiliar Superman is central to almost every relationship Superman has with the Justice League, not to mention Nightwing, Batman and even Superwoman.

And that is what this is going to live or die on. Yes, there's a lot of foreshadowing about the big mystery of Rebirth and how the New 52 was created and how it all ties in to stopping Alan Moore getting his Watchmen rights back but, ultimately, what matters is the reader experience.

Are we going to be pissed off by whatever level of pointlessness becomes attached to the Hamilton County era? An era, let us remind ourselves, that covered almost forty issues of the core Super-books plus whatever else one of DC's most famous and widely used characters appeared in during that time. Will the new status quo make sense or will we just be asked to take on faith that all the elements of the characters that carry over from Hamilton County still make sense?

How does it affect Lana Lang and Kong Kenan, both characters whose series I am enjoying and whose origins just got scrambled? Superwoman, at least, had a tie-in that promises the next issue will answer those questions and I assume that with the current arc of New Super-Man is set in Metropolis we'll get some answers there.

So it at least looks like there's a solid plan to explore the consequences of this change up front, not let the questions fester as they did with the New 52.

I want to hope here. The Rebirth experiment, by and large, has been very well thought out. Unfortunately it has also largely ignored until now the Watchmen connection that Superman Reborn brings front and centre. With the Batman/Flash crossover The Button just around the corner, this might be the moment when the wheels start to come off and this very simple, very effective relaunch is about to fall down the same history-twisting rabbit hole DC relaunches all too often fall into. I admit I am cynical about the Watchmen thing for many reasons from its IP dispute origins to the questionable sanity of importing satirical characters into the continuity they were created to satirise.

I also worry about piling retcons on retcons. On that note, I do hope I'm right in thinking that Superman is a special case, a pre-Rebirth retcon that needed fixing to match Rebirth rather than the first in a series of such supplementary reboots.

For once, a DC line-wide reboot was simple, elegant and worked. It restored numerous beloved characters and relationships to the DCU whilst largely maintaining the simpler, more accessible continuity of the New 52. Half the characters and concepts that returned didn't even need extensive explanation. That simplicity was important.

What I am hoping is that DC, going against decades of instinct, keeps this simple.