I am obviously handicapped by the total absence of any of Morrison’s “Animal Man” stories in my own collection, so I have to go on hearsay and bits of online research . . .

A few years ago I wrote a piece which started out by collecting various things Marv Wolfman has said about COIE and what he hoped it would achieve for DC’s continuity. If you’re interested, here’s a link:

Marv Wolfman, Crisis, and Continuity”

For instance, one of the quoted passages in my piece includes the following words:

Were I given the power to change everything today, I would simply say that all books published from January 1st will start over with issue #1. If you want to bring back something from the past and establish it as new continuity, be my guest. If you want to forget something in the past, then you’re free to do that, too.

The origin stories of Supergirl and Hawkman were pretty clear in the Pre-COIE era, and Donna’s was only slightly confused by the fact that she’d originally just been “Wonder Woman at a tender age,” but I’m sure DC fanatics found things to argue about at the time. I have the utmost faith in our collective ability to find other things to argue about again, even if everyone’s origin stories got clearly stated once and for all, without further rebooting for the next 20 or 30 years!

A couple of people on other forums have also made the point about Isis as a Filmation character, but I believe you were the first. I hadn’t realized DC’s “52″ Isis was basically a reboot, with a slightly modified spelling of the “real name,” of a 1970s character whom DC had never really owned or controlled in the first place. At the very least, I’ll acknowledge that in my next draft of this list (someday) even if I decide it still qualifies as a “reboot.”

Thanks for the info about the JMS Squadron Supreme. That’s pretty much what I expected — it’s the equivalent of an “Elseworlds” without having any notable impact on the continuity of any other Marvel title (such as the Avengers continuity of 616).

As to the bit about DC’s fanbase tending to have very long memories nowadays — that strikes me as a symptom of DC’s massive failure to lure in large quantities of “new-generation fans” as it goes along. If its books were still sold in places where juveniles in search of entertainment could easily be found (such as in Wal-Marts), then it wouldn’t matter so much if five thousand diehard Hawkman fans hated what had been done to him by a new writer, as long as fifty thousand teenagers were examining occasional issues of “Hawkman” with open minds, asking themselves “Do I find this reasonably entertaining?” instead of “Does this fit well with the way Carter’s stories were being told 20 or 30 years ago?”

I agree that if you’re going to reboot or “heavily retcon” something, you ought to be more up-front, from very early on, about which old stories are still in continuity and which ones are being thrown out the window. If you want to say: “I don’t know yet if the revised version of Captain Courageous still used to date Amy Airhead back in college before she became ‘Dizzy Blonde,’ his tornado-generating worst enemy,” then come right out and admit that editorial policy hasn’t been set on that point of his backstory yet!

I agree that all Batman stories, for instance, should not be required to rigidly fit into whatever his “new and improved modern continuity” is this week. A lot of good stuff was done in LOTDK on that basis, so that when I heard about the new All-Star line a few years ago, I promptly shrugged and said, “So All-Star Batman will simply be LOTDK all over again? Each creator can ignore any odd bits of continuity which don’t appeal to him, including whatever a predecessor did in a previous arc in the same title? Hardly a new idea!”

Likewise, I think a lot of DC’s best stuff in the 1990s was Elseworlds stories which could actually give well-known characters some sort of “resolution” in their lives, since whatever ‘dramatic changes’ happened within that story wouldn’t just turn out to be a temporary roadbump in a never-ending monthly Batman or Superman title.

For what it’s worth — some of the reboots on my list, such as Loeb’s Kara Zor-El Reboot or Ordway’s Shazam reboot — didn’t coincide with the timing of a cosmic event as an excuse.

I am in the possibly enviable position of having only read the “Final Crisis” 7-part mini, and virtually nothing of the “build-ups” and “tie-ins” for it. No 52, no Countdown, no “Death of the New Gods” . . . so at least I didn’t get terribly confused and annoyed at having spent hard-earned money to watch Orion die 3 different ways (or however many it was?).

Thus, I can’t really gauge how fair you’re being in talking about how badly the overall event was handled. I did feel disappointed by the 7-part mini, though. It felt like a great deal of build-up to something that wasn’t nearly worth making the trip in the first place.

Likewise, since I have not bought any new monthly issues of anything else since FC ended, I didn’t know (but am not terribly surprised to hear) that it’s promptly being forgotten by most of DC’s heroes who still have regular lives of their own and more personal problems to worry about. Kinda reminds me of something I heard about the (very limited) fallout from the old “Last Laugh” event. In it, Nightwing lost his temper and beat the Joker to death. Then (I’m told) someone used CPR to bring the Joker back. Then — in his own title, I’m told — Nightwing agonized over what he had done for about 5 minutes. Then he and everyone else in the DCU just shrugged and implictly forgot the whole thing, never to discuss it again!

That was the entire “dramatic legacy” of “Last Laugh.” Who says actions (such as killing people) have long-term consequences? Not DC, evidently!

I didn’t know anything about what Morrison had said in interviews re: Klarion’s time-traveling, etc. I vaguely recall that when I wrote the previous version of this list, 3 years ago this month, I had seen — somewhere — an online statement to the effect that Morrison had freely admitted he was rebooting Klarion and thereby erasing “Sins of Youth” from the recent history of the DCU. I don’t remember now where I saw that, and I suppose it could have been distorted — evidently I took it at face value at the time!

It occurs to me that when I bought the “Sins of Youth” TPB several years ago, I had never even heard of Klarion the Witch Boy before, and had no idea how long he’d been part of the DCU, who had created him, which heroes he had fought in the past (if any), what rationale had been offered for his incredible powers, et cetera. And frankly, I think “Sins of Youth” is still his oldest appearance in my current collection. Has Kirby’s 70s run on The Demon ever been collected in a reprint volume? (I know I have reprints of some of his other 1970s DC stuff in b&w reprint format — New Gods and Mister Miracle, and I believe Forever People).

I might as well use the rest of this post to describe my *personal* opinions on how continuity should be handled.

-Continuity should get overhauled wholesale after certain periods- not necessarily an exact number of years, but whenever the company feels it’s needed. (DC should have done the Infinite Crisis reboot in the year 2000, in my opinion- it would have gone great along with the whole turn-of-the-century zeitgeist of the time.) Of course, the facts that a) comics are now being made mostly for OLDER fans (who tend to have LONG memories) and b) with things like the Internet, it is *much* easier today to research most characters, should also be kept in mind.

-When rebooting, PLEASE let the audience know WHAT is changing and when. That “the changes will be evident in the near future” crap is just a cop-out. If you don’t have specific plans for certain characters right now, just say so. Sheesh.

-Just because stories don’t fit the current continuity does NOT mean they can’t be published. Just make it clear what isn’t in continuity from the start. ALL-STAR SUPERMAN was one of the best series of last year, it’s noncanonical status didn’t hurt it at all. But things like Superman/Batman just serve to confuse the fans.

-Finally, a big, cosmic crisis is NOT necessary for a reboot. This stuff happens all the time in other media and they don’t do that. In fact, all these crises only help to give the impression that the Time/Space continuum in the DC Universe is VERY unstable, which brings the question of why nobody has done anything to fix it. Next time, just relaunch all your titles (with a press release saying “OK, no previous continuity applies anymore”) and go from there.

Dean, you’re analysis about the Silver Age is a little off. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman simply never stopped publishing. No thought was given to continuity. In fact, the guys in charge didn’t think anyone who’d read the Golden Age stories would still be reading comics. It was really just following the habits of the Golden Age where titles and/or features would change to suit whatever was becoming popular.

Anyway….if they ever have a definitive origin and backstory of Supergirl, Wonder Girl, and Hawkman, what will we DC fanatics have to argue about??

I agree with you about Byrne’s efforts on Hulk. From what I’ve heard, he was just messing around with the origin story (it was a Skrull saboteur instead of a Communist agent, etc.) but wasn’t trying to throw hundreds of issues’ worth of Hulk adventures out the window as stuff that had never happened after all. Therefore, it was not meant to be a true reboot. Even if Byrne’s version had stuck, it still wouldn’t mean Bruce Banner had been rebooted. (Just as I don’t classify Miller’s “Year One” for Batman as a reboot.)

Adam mentioned plans for their old 2099 character stable — I hadn’t really noticed that.

He also mentioned Squadron Supreme — although I’m not clear on whether JMS’s version amounted to really “Erasing” old Squadron continuity, or just creating another timeline-variation of it? In other words, do the Avengers of Earth-616 still remember the Squadron the way it was in their teamups with the group back in the old days?

I’ve vaguely heard of Warren Ellis’s “newuniversal” but never read any of it. Any TPB collections out yet? I almost never buy skinny little monthly issues nowadays.

On the same subject, Dean mentioned “Heroes Reborn” as a reboot. But I have trouble seeing it as fitting my definition, because all of Captain America’s old continuity (for instance) didnt get erased from history in the context of the larger Marvel Universe. He was stuck in another world where it hadn’t happened that way in the history books . . . but meanwhile, Marvel was still publishing plenty of books (Spider-books, X-books, Daredevil, Thunderbolts, etc.) where everybody and his brother remembered Cap’s Earth-616 career vividly and worried about the “mysterious disappearance” of the Avengers and the FF, and so we all knew the Avengers and the FF would be coming back sooner or later, right?

So I don’t think of “Heroes Reborn” as a reboot any more than I think that way of the JLA story arc in which Morrison had The Key trap a bunch of heroes in elaborate dream sequences, thus showing us a grown Kal-El still living on Krypton, and Bruce Wayne getting old and happily married to Selina, and so on and so forth.

Also, as you allude to, the continuity-status of Vertigo stuff is often dubious. Now that you mention it, I probably would have been wise to include a disclaimer about that sort of thing.

As to Giffen’s Doom Patrol: I have no idea just how he intends (or will be permitted) to address past DP continuity. I don’t believe I’ve ever read any of Morrison’s old run on the group, nor any subsequent “Doom Patrol” runs by anyone else.

I knew “Year One” retconned various details, but here’s a couple of quick points:

1. I believe I’ve seen at least one or two Post-COIE stories state or imply that Alfred only became the butler at Wayne Manor after Bruce was a grown man. (Although I admit most go writers of the last 22 years or so tend to go along with the idea that Alfred has been around forever.)

2. I don’t think Miller is directly responsible for Jim Gordon being divorced. At the end of “Year One,” Jim’s first wife was still living with him and there was no talk of her filing for divorce. (Although Miller’s plot had given her grounds for divorce, if she wanted the opportunity, by having Jim fooling around with Sarah Essen for awhile before he came to his senses and broke it off.)

Why I agree that Cap’s JL appearance remains in continuity, I would still call Ordway’s run on the character a reboot. It included the new first appearances of Black Adam, Mary Marvel, Mr. Mind, Tawky Tawny, and Captain Marvel, Jr. for instance.

Technically, the Isis character of the 70s was owned by the TV company Filmation. The current Isis isn’t the same character or a reboot because then DC would have to buy the character from whoever owns the 70s TV series.

It should read: Well, keep in mind that Chaykin’s Blackhawk being a reboot is just my opinion.