Road to 5G begins in May! Everything you need to know!

5G is the long rumored and basically confirmed reboot coming at the end of 2020. It will focus on bringing every past timeline and reboot back together into one full timeline.

What is 5G?
5G will be an anti-reboot in the sense that it is sort of reversing the reboots of the past while being a reboot itself. If that’s confusing, let me explain it this way. The main history of DC will begin with Generation 1 (now titled The Age of Mysteries). This is the era of the golden age where Wonder Woman becomes the first hero of the DC Universe and inspires every hero who follows. (Wonder Woman #750, “Brave New World”). It will continue through the silver age all the way up to 2011 at which the timeline will continue through New 52. Events like Year Zero will no longer be continuity and a couple of other events will be removed too. If a reboot is a full restart, this is a reward for everything you’ve ever read having meaning and continuity. 5G will mostly (according to rumors) take place in a Gen 5 where the heroes we love will pass the torch. Superman --> Jonathan Kent, Batman --> Luke Fox, Green Lantern --> (the character from far sector). Note that these are only rumors, however, almost everything we DO know about seems to confirm them. (Jonathan and “future college” and Lucius Fox returning to be a Pennyworth like figure). However, the characters you know and love won’t be leaving you. Instead they will be given Black Label Titles taking place throughout Generations 1-4 in the timeline…

When will it start?

5G unofficially began based on rumors with Wonder Woman #750. In the comic, Wonder Woman saved president Roosevelt from assassination during WW2. Alan Scott can be seen at the end being inspired by her. The next unofficial starting point begins on Free Comic Book Day with Generation Zero: Gods Among Us #1. The story “lays the foundation for even more seismic-level changes in the DC universe.” The story will include an epilogue to Flash Forward, and guess what? a reprint of Wonder Woman #750 “A Brave New World.” (That’s now telling or anything).

What should I read to get ready?
First, remember everything is based on speculation and rumor. A year from now, my recommendations would be WAY better. However, a couple of stories seem to be prepping us for 5G.

Flash Foward #1-6 isn’t the BEST book in the world by any means, but the fact that the first “5G” comic is a flash forward epilogue should be telling.

Wonder Woman #750: “A Brave New World” is the first look at a new status quo from Wonder Woman which will likely set up the next set of 5G comics.

Batman #86- James Tynion is an amazing writer who really understands Batman. Also he’s starting at a time when 5G is already in planning, so he’s likely setting stuff up. Notable a rumor came out that said Luke Fox would become the new Batman, then one month later Tynion reveals Lucius is an important character in the story.

Justice League (2018) #1-46 Scott Snyder release Dark Nights Metal to critical and fan acclaim. Spinning off of his work is one of the biggest and craziest Justice League Titles to ever exist. The scope of his work is OVER THE TOP in the best way possible.

Batman/Superman (2018) #1-6 I’m including this one because of it is important background for this next story.

Year of the Villain: Hell’s Arisen#1-4 Written by James Tynion IV, it brings the plot of Justice League and Batman/Superman together to set up the Metal Sequel.

Far Sector If the Green lantern rumor that Far Sectors protagonist will become the main Green Lantern, then this will be VERY important. The comic is also REALLY special and wonderful and deserves your time and attention!

What should I Plan to Read Coming Up?

Dark Knights: Death Metal will be the follow sequel to Dark Knights Metal and will have MASSIVE consequences on the future of DC. Scott Snyder is writing it and it looks amazing.

Joker War is the main Batman-centric event that looks to kick off the final story of Batman Rebirth. There will be lots of tie-ins and more. Fortunately it looks like it will be a blast!

The 80th anniversary specials According to a rumor, each of the anniversary specials will give little sneak peaks about 5G.

But What actually are the 5G comics?


We don’t have a lot of details yet. We have some knowledge about what is setting up 5G. However we just got our first taste of 5G today with 5 one shots.

Generation 1: Age of Mysteries #1
Generation 2: Age of the Metahuman #1
Generation 3: Age of Crisis #1
Generation 4: Age of Rebirth #1
Generation 5: Age of Tomorrow #1
Writers: Brian Michael Bendis, Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt, Robert Venditti, and Joshua Williamson,
Illustrated by artists including Doug Mahnke, Bryan Hitch, Mikel Janín, Ivan Reis, David Marquez, and more.

Each one shot will reveal a piece of the 5 timeline and will be extra-sized and prestige format. Expect art to appear soon.

This is all I have to share FOR NOW. I will be either updating this document or posting more later.

-Nathan.Payson
5G Masterpage

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Hm, I still can’t say I’m a fan of all this, especially the mass age up- I mainly favor teenage heroes, some of which only just back in continuity/just got retconned back to their original(read: better) backstories, so missing out on them growing up is rather irritating. But I guess we’ll have to see I suppose

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@Nathan.Payson Thank you for taking the time to break that all down. I have been hearing about this for a little while now. While I realize it is speculation at this point, it is a great groundwork. Really appreciate the reading recommendations too .

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@KamAndi80 To be clear, there is not one rumored 5G fact by Bleeding Cool that has been denied. Even random things like a needed delay to convergence 2.0 (Dark Knights: Death Metal) turned out to have happened as Death Metal has a 1 month delay in the middle.

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@Nathan.Payson do you know if every member of the Justice League is passing on their mantle? I heard a rumor that Captain Boomerang Jr. will be the new Flash. I was kinda hoping that this new 5G event would make the Justice League the JSA. In the way that some of them passed on their mantle (Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, Ted Knight, etc.), and others were forgotten or their mantle was to much for others to carry (Ted Grant, Johnny Thunder, etc.).

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We only know four rumored mantle passings.

Flash --> Captain Boomerang Jr.
Batman–> Luke Fox (Rumored Writer: John Ridley IV)
Superman --> Jonathan Kent
Green Lantern --> Far Sector’s character

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Which Golden Age hero will become history’s greatest villain?

The best answer to this question would be: “none of them”

DC, please stop making our heroes into villains. We only just got the Golden Age heroes back and now you have to turn one of them into a villain… and the “greatest villain in history” no less.

5G sounds like an interesting project. Not sure I agree with all the choices being made, but this one is a big miss in my opinion.

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More at DC PRESENTS 'GENERATION ONE: AGE OF MYSTERIES' | DC

One thing that has me quite interested in 5G is this quote DiDio has made on more than one occasion:

Dan DiDio: “Everything counts, and we guarantee there’ll be surprises along the way!”

We’re getting a new timeline where Wonder Woman made her debut just before WW2 and Superman made his debut as Superboy after WW2, something which doesn’t fit any previous version of DC Universe history, so I’m quite interested in seeing how they’ll make that reconcile with the “everything counts” statement.

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I believe it was also rumored that Wonder Woman would be replaced with Nubia.

Thanks for putting this together. I am curious about the “Age of…”- books and will definitely buy them.

I have no interest in any thing metal, death metal or remotely connected to BWL. I’ll be keeping an eye open, but I have been struggling to find things in DCs lineup that interests me lately. This seems to be a giant leap further away from what I want to read. This could be my jumping off point but we’ll see. Maybe they continue the old lines in parallell.

Everything goes in cycles, maybe this is an opportunity to deep dive into another universe until the next rebirth.

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Can Snyder please move on to a different company? Tired of him ruining the DCU. I just want a JSA book with Power Girl in it. That’s not too much ask.

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@Pow-Pow my understanding is the main heroes will get Black label titles.

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@UHantiHERO my understanding is Metal is Snyder’s last main line DC book for a while. He will be doing creator-owned and Black label for the next year+

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That isn’t going to make me stay, but it’s going to be appreciated by some I can imagine.

This is a mixed bag. While I don’t dislike the age up I’m also not a fan of the characters they’re replacing the legacy characters with. I like the idea of stories taking place in the past with Black Label, but this seems like it will quickly create continuity issues. If “old” Bruce is part of a story taking place in the new present, but someone writes a life altering event story set in generation 4, well, won’t that potentially contradict the story taking place presently?

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@Kon-El I’d like to think the Black Labels are about retelling and adding to the timeline that is established. Ex. what happened between Joker War and 5G, or a retelling of Batman: No Man’s Land for a modern audience. What were Wonder Woman’s early years in WW2 like? Jon when he was 4. That sort of thing.

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I understand, but if those stories are canon won’t the 5G stories have to acknowledge them? You’re saying that at the very least they’ll be adding to things that have already happened. That seems like a difficult thing to address in theory alone. Lots of people have to be working together to pull that off.

Isn’t Black Label their “adults only” line? Or is that expected to change post-5G?

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It currently is. I wouldn’t be surprised by if DC leans more into Black Label because they have recently. Most of those titles have been VERY successful.

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I see. I can’t say I’m interested in “R-rated” takes on these characters, but that’s me.
I’d be willing to give the “new trinity” a chance (I was getting used to Grayson in the role after Final Crisis), but there are certain other details DC needs to clear up in their Generations initiative before I decide to buy any more books.