Over the years, there have been many events and continuities. It’s hard to imagine the experiences of the ENTIRE omniverse/metaverse/multiverse as it stands now - from the perspective of the heroes and people that inhabit it. But, there’s a question that crosses the mind when reading the current issues…
What does any given character remember?
For example, does Green Lantern remember the destruction of Coast City? Does Superman remember the Convergence? Does the Flash remember Blackest Night? Wonder Woman…does she know what happened in Year Zero? Does Batman remember Waverider? Intrigued by which current characters remember what…
@Aquamon No, they remember the events of the New 52. The five years were a different five years that were removed which resulted in the behavior of some of the hero’s during the New 52
Excellent topic! I’ve always hoped after Rebirth some of the characters would slowly get some of their old memories back and they’d have to deal with knowing something isn’t right.
I believe we’ve seen this with Wally solo and when he met up with the Titans…also I got the impression The Shade was aware when he showed up a year or so back.
At this point, its whatever the writer wants. I’ve seen characters reference things they ABSOLUTELY they shouldn’t have. Like Stephanie Brown mentioned in HIC she remembers being Robin. But they specifically say many times since Rebirth that bit was crossed out.
I have a feeling there was a cohesive idea for something but it either changed over the course of time or (and this is only speculation on my part) that Doomsday Clock’s delays messed up a lot of stories
I think Montyotho may be correct, it’s whatever the current writer wants/thinks, with maybe the higher-ups’ input. A lot about the reinventions didn’t work on their own, and they don’t work with the previous iterations for the characters. It’d be too complicated to explain everything for every character, and not all of them have high priority.
It’ll be a matter of picking and choosing, but I can’t say any writers currently at DC have impressed me enough that I trust them to make the right choices between older and newer. Some of what they changed was antithetical to these characters, but they might stick with them because it’s easier.
The New 52 really makes this stuff annoying because it was such a slap in the face to anyone who preferred previous continuity, but really, continuity is constantly in flux. How many times have I seen the origin of a villain in one book only to have the origin reimagined five years later in another book. Few people are really that concerned about nailing continuity.
The writers of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths understood that readers actually care a good bit about continuity. He spent a couple years building out a history for almost every character. That’s one of the main reasons CoIE is considered a high watermark among comic fans and comic creators.
The lazy “reboot every couple years” pattern that we’re currently seeing is losing readers.
Questions like the original poster’s should be considered serious. But the current creators obviously have no interest in doing the hard work. (At least, that’s my opinion.)
So those events happened within those 5 year gaps between the start and latter half of the new 52 because they rebooted everything except for Batman and green lantern so they just filled the gap with continuity that previously happened but not 100% the way they went down
Oh gods that changes every month these days, ESPECIALLY in the new “perpetua” story arc. Since Dark Metal, and the appearance of the Watchmen, the DC universe is very “fluid”.