Off My Mind: The New 52's Five Year Limitations

Great Article! i agree the 5 year time period does seem a tad short, but i dont think everything couldve happened in that five years, theres also the twenty years when superman started, maybe doomsday happened near then (minus the jla part of it) like they could maybe of altered some of the timeline, but probably not wiped itt clean. I do hope they do a big crossover event soon like infinte crisis or blackest night. if people are patient wally and diana will show up sometime, maybe in earth 2? or maybe a infinite crisis storyline? anyways, so far im happy with the new 52, yeah i do miss some of the old continuity but we gotta just go with the flow :)

To me the 5-year period is one of those irritating editorial mandates that does nothing but annoy and serve to explain why some characters appear dumber than they did before. Like the old continuety worked because there wasnt a fixed amount of time attached to any of it, which is why Superman and Batman still appeared to be in their prime despite all they stuff they had been through.

Another very annoying thing is that it appears to have been contemporary sale figures that decided who got to keep their past and who got it thrown out the window.

I call BS on Drake not being a robin. He's by far the best one.

they should had been vague instead of giving us an accurate answers.

The 5 years are here to introduce the new gods

justice league 6 :

pandora and the fantoms stranger are telling the old wizard and god circle is destroyed after some time after their exile

There is no more a power controlling them exept the mysterious one higher for pandora

captain atom 12 :

captain atom saw the former universe being destroyed by an unknow force and being replaced

earth 2 2:

the gods are dying fighting and others are missing for no reason

wonder woman 12 :

orion appear wounded (maybe he survived the destruction we saw in captain atom) and use a boom tube, the baby is referenced as a key to a new gods era, maybe the beginning of new new genesis

And don't forget darkseid searching his daughter (the anti-life equation or a real being ?)

The one detail with which i feel very wrong concerning the five year period is James Gordon Jr. I remember Scott Snyder talking about Year One so we can assume it happened, but that's a story in which he was just a baby. And it seems an essential aspect of the story that he was, as it is the fact that he saved his new born son that made Gordon trust Batman in the first place.

Last we saw of him in the Black Mirror, he was around 20 years old (or at the very least 17, but that's exagerrating a bit) and a serial killer... So, what happened there?

Oddly, I feel quite ok with the rest...

@BatClaw89: Jason Todd is the best Robin.

@BatClaw89: In time maybe that will be the case. But for now Damian is a typical little brat, Spoiled and ahead of his time in many areas but not the all around robin that Drake was.

My thoughts exactly.

And more proof that you could still had an event out of the New 52, revamp your publications/designs/characters and not really need to "reboot" the in-story universe...

with all those stories about universes being erased, changed and reborn...i say everything happened that the reader has read before!!!

and i certainly won't let the picture that i have of some characters in my head be destroyed just because DC says they are more relatable that way

They are so relatable to me because these are the characters i grew up with...and all the stories that i read just makes the connection stronger

and no reboot or relaunch or retcon is going to change that

Despite the good stories of the New 52, 5 years is far too constrained a timeline to have everything happen. And it's not just the sheer number of stories, it's the timeframe they take place in too. I agree with G-Man that 7-10 years is a much better space of time for events to take place in.

Great article by G-Man, however I feel he touched on a good point but trailed off. Comics are printed either monthly or bi-monthly (fortnightly for us Brits), main characters like Batman and Superman also has more than one title (maybe 2 or more at a time). If the title was monthly then 300 (600 for bi-monthly) comics were printed over twenty-five years, in five years their are 1825 days (I'm not including leap years). Even if a hero had four running for twenty-five years straight, it still would only reach 1200 comics within that time frame.

This means that all the comics in the past twenty five years can comfortably fit within the five year gap (with some creative admin behind it), for example some story arc’s continue on into the next issue and most are set in the same day or at least the close as (next day or same week). If you take a logical approach and think of every comics more like a daily diary of the heroes lives and affect less by the real time publications.

Yes this format wont fit everything, but it's not as jarring as most perceive it as, because a comic years back catalogue doesn't necessarily share the same time frame as the real world.

Personally, I say everything is operating on a 10 year timeline in comparison to the roughly 15-20 year timeline of the previous universe. Batman and Superman were pushing 40 before the reboot, and now they're pushing 30 (or in Bat's case, is in his early 30's). Chopping off ten years keeps the characters young the way DC wants them and, for a character like Batman, gives them room for all of their sidekicks.

A Batman who starts at 18-20 can reasonably pick up Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, and Stephanie Brown in the 10 years he would've been active. Characters like Superman could've only been around for 6 years or less, and it still could only be 5 years since the JL formed.

In the end, the whole five year thing doesn't matter all that much as they are including whatever they still find marketable and removing or changing the things that are unpopular enough to not make a ripple. Some characters can remotely unchanged while others receive a complete overhaul on look, origin and attitude. The end results leaving the average of the universe still half new without hurting the appeal of their big names.

Originally DC stated that Wally West and Donna Troy were left out because their mentors were now younger and they felt having too many sidekicks in their past made since. Thus the two were omitted to allow room for their more marketable YJ counterparts.

However, as almost everything in the Bat family is deemed as a success, they allow for Bruce to have had four younger protegees even though he was also de-aged bit. I mean he is what, about 35-ish now, but he has an adopted son who is around 21? You can make it fit, but it's a stretch and gets stretched even thinner when you fit the other three in.

The stories that got left in had to be watered down a bit. The resurrection of Jason couldn't have a big of an impact as he wouldn't have been dead nearly as long. Same for the rift that happened between Bruce and Dick to lead to Dick becoming Nightwing. Even more so the Killing Joke loses a lot of it's impact in the sense that Barbara was not only able to regain mobility, but also regain it to the gymnastic degree it used to be, and all in such a shot period when originally the damage was so great that constant physical therapy for almost a decade couldn't get her out of her wheel chair.

What ever they want to fit in they will include and then build on it, using the vagueness of five unexplained years to blanket the holes to later be filled it. In fact, most of the DCnU seem to be reverse engineered, in the sense that they established where they wanted everything then gave them selves a section of time to fill in in whatever way allowed the end result to fit.

Unfortunately for me, the reboot has left very little for me to enjoy. I was never a fan of many of the big family characters, but I loved so many of the "fringe" characters that I considered myself a hardcore DC fan all the way. As I have already stated, for certain characters to remain the same, other characters needed to receive drastic overhauls. Sadly all the characters I really loved were the ones to get the green light for from-the-ground remakes.

The version of Huntress that I enjoyed, now only existed as her pre-Huntress self who then was killed and had her civilian identity stolen by the current Huntress.

Martian Manhunter, along with his now far-less passive attitude, now has nearly all of his past with the JLA undone. They have hinted at a trail period that he was on the team which was a failure, but that's almost worse than him never being involved with them at all.

As much as I love Barbara as Batgirl, her time as Oracle really strengthened her character and showed that she could establish herself as her own identity and not just part of the Batclan.

Beast Boy (possibly my favorite character DC ever had to offer) now has the potential for unbelievable changes to his past. With the original Terra still around, it's clear that the Judas contract never happened and with the recent turn in Ravagers we can infer that his time with the Doom Patrol never happened (along with that goes his adoptive parents and his failed Hollywood career). Beyond that it's been implied that his powers were given to him in the Colony which he only recently escaped from, so his past with the Titans and his childhood with scientist parents in Africa is subject. With all this, that fact that they changed his color was the least jarring thing they've done to the character.

Lastly, and probably the worst, is how dramatically they changed The Question. We have only seen him in one page so far, but that was enough to show that absolutely everything about the character has been completely changed. Originally one of the most realistic characters they had who could still qualify as a "super" hero (I would argue more realistic even then Batmn man as the Question only had one super science gimmick whilst Bats has a whole plethora of unrealistic tolls that all fit in an equally unrealistic belt) Now "Vic" is some cosmic-level immortal (on par with Pandora and Stranger) pulled from his point in time and punished for being terribly cruel whose actual face has been made featureless. For all we know they might make him the goddamn Slender Man now (god I hope I didn't just give DC an idea)...

I guess my point behind all this is that the time frame doesn't really matter, it was just a device they would point to so people with questions would have a place to look for when there answers would eventually be fleshed out. Instead of showing the origin and introduction of every single character, we picked up with everything established while they could ease the exposition to us bit by bit. Making it both more natural, and also giving themselves time to figure it all out. Actually it's not very different from the One Year Later stunt. Mix things up in a manner to their liking, then explain why things are different after the fact by giving you the details they wanted to tell.

By setting a hard limit to how long super heroes have been around is just setting up a continuity problem waiting to happen down the road. It assumes that nothing happened before. I know DC wanted a fresh start to escape the problems created from  all 'The Blackers Infinite Crisis on Brightest Earths' like crossovers. So far they seem t be sticking with it, but sooner or later there is going to be a massive company wide crossover that will affect the most titles in the company and the inconsistent plot elements that plagurd the pre-52 world will begin to pop up.

continuity...

Very good article!

I started back in the late 80s and early 90s with watching the Tim Burton "Batman" movies and the "Superman" movies with Christopher Reeve as well as with "Batman: The Animated Series".

So you could say that this was my introduction to superhero stuff and the comic universe. Until that I always was interested in stuff like that and always wanted to read comic books. However, I really started reading comic books not until 2009. And I remember when I first walk into my local comic book store I was completely overwhelmed by that monstrous history and didn't know where to start, though I slowly managed to get into it.

Bottom line... I really liked the idea of "The New 52" and think it was a great run so far.

But I also understand all who are upset about changing their world and some kind of 'taking' all their reading experience they acquire over all these years.

For me personally it is just an awesome time to read and I could imagine that the old reader will have their share and will hopefully have the same experience. Maybe they just have to wait a little bit more and see what DC is going to do in the future.

Like G-Man said: "...it doesn't have to absolutely wipe everything out."

I think dick was robin for a year before justice league and then became nightwing 1 and a half years later

Jason was robin for half a year and then killed then there was no robin for half of the next year then Tim became robin two years and then dick became batman and robin damian

and that's 5 years for batman

green lantern

Hal went crazy a year after justice league (John Stewart and guy have only just got rings and are rookies) he dies and kyle gets a ring two years later is green lantern rebirth and six months later is sinestro corps war

then blackest knight a year later then 4 months later is war of the green lanterns and two months later you have the events of green lantern books

i wonder did these 2 stupid dc events still exist in the new 52

- JLApes

- Young Justice - Sins of Youth?

I still don't get why everyone cares so much. Just enjoy the great stories we are getting now. With this many of them going at once there is no way that all of the timelines workout anyways.

This is the best article in a long time! I think the DC writers should definitely communicate a little more in order to clear up the inconsistencies and continuity issues they're facing. The heads of the company should definitely push the writers for a more consistent universe. Having said that I love the stories of the New 52.

The five year limitation was a terrible idea. Nailing it down to something so concrete is very limiting, and creates many of the problems discussed. Basically, they should have just left it open say the first arc of JL and Action Comic happen a generic "years ago" rather than "five years ago, three months, 14 days, 21 hours 34 minutes and 58 seconds" precise. Sure, people would want to know how much time has past, but it would create less issues than it does now.

Honestly, the best solution is just to f'ing ignore it.

@The Stegman: Most unfortunately, New 52 is dull and stupid, showing a lot of disrespect to the old readers, destroying its own continuity + the characters the same company brought to life. Well, what can we say? C'est la vie.

The word of the day is compromise.

I've just ignored the whole idea of the 5 year time span. To me it makes no sense as it just makes no mathematical sense with reguards to the Robins (not to mention everything else). The time span should have been left vague with simple "Years earlier" or "before", as it used to be. Now it would have worked 100% if they relaunched the ENTIRE series of books including the batman and green lantern titles (though fans would throw up a super range about that... yours truly included) but because thats not what they did, and they claim that "some of the continuity is still relevent, while the other isnt" it just doesnt work. They shouldn't have worked with real numbers. It was their primary fault and the major fault of the entire relaunch. Unless it's going to be something solved in the upcomming trinity wars i say that DC writers should get Rip Hunter to fix it.

DC don't put time lines in stone. Thats what fans are for, for speculating and calculating how much time has passed between a and b without having people tell us. Learn from it!

@ThanosIsMad:10 yrs is too long,the previous universe itself had like a 12-14 yr timeline,where all the continuity cld actually fit comfortably,in Superman:the legion of superheroes i think....clark states he's worked at the daily planet for 10 yrs. So from the time that story happened and by the time the old dcu came to an end at least 12 to13 yrs had passed since superman has been active putting him at around 36 37,n he cldve died like 5 yrs into his career,batman was atleast 23-24 when he started and recruited dick say three or four yrs into his career,when dick was 12,so bats was around the same age or lil older than supes,dick would be 21(his current age,it also explains ages of characters like wally west regardless of any speed force induced growth spurts n any others who started young, n in the old dcu i think bats started out like a yr or two before supes but like an urban legend type,and the rest is history.(this is all speculation,bt u know that :P )

@Arkhamc1tizen: thats not bad actually!!

i wld be okay if they kept the time line 5 yrs from justice league, as long as supes has been around for at least a yr more than that n batman was around at least 3 yrs more,(maintaining his urband legend status till JL) partly cuz i cant deal with this whole tim drake not being a robin thing and also because it makes sense to fit in most of the continuity. the yr between superman's debut and the JL shld be when all these other heroes start showing up and Diana cldve left the island n stuff....

oh n also scrap all the crisis's they take up like 4 yrs atleast altogether also barry never died,n find some smart way to tell how batman 'died'. Now If only DC read these comments!!!!

Good article! However, I always ran with the assumption that all the JL members were operating well before the formation of the JLA, only not in public. Superman was learning his powers, the Robins were being trained, Aquaman was leading the Others, the Green Lanterns were being selected and going to space, Wonder Woman was working with Steve Trevor, and Barry Allen was being boring. Only Cyborg was "born" in that story arc.

My concerns are not "how do they fit it all?" so much as "why weren't they consistent?" Especially with the younger heroes, having all four Robins but none of the Batgirls—or the confusion over were or weren't there previous Teen Titans—that more than anything else throws a wrench in things. With the Green Lanterns they were more successful.

And then of course, there's the 2nd and 3rd generation (from Silver Age) characters that just don't have a place after the revamp:

• Wally West
• Donna Troy
• Connor Hawke
• Ted Kord
• Cassandra Cain
• Mia Dearden
• Stephanie Brown
• Renee Montoya
• a whole mess of JSA characters, young & old
• supporting characters like Lian Harper
• etc

I get that they had to cut people to simplify things, but without these characters, it can get real strange when trying to figure out if old stories stuck around or not. They'd have been better off with a clean reboot, not this revamp stuff.

Hawk & Dove mention a crisis as the cause for Don's death

Static Shock shows characters from the Final Crisis/Terror Titans arc

I am in the camp that believes 5 yrs ago the JLA was formed.

And I thought it had been stated that Batman had been operating for a while before that, thus making it easier to fit in ALL the Robins into the Bat-story.

I agree with the above writer that said the 5 yr start was for the JLA and the PUBLIC's beginning to take real notice of the heroes. They had to have been around before that.

Cue eyeroll. This is what happens anytime anything is rebooted/remade. I remember when "Batman Begins'' came out. Everyone kinda shrugged their shoulders and went "eh it's alright". But there were some who were saying that it was worse that Batman and Robin and that it "disrespected the continuity" or whatever. Then "The Dark Knight" came out and everyone got a nerd boner. Give it time. It's only been a year. I bet the next eisner award winning, jaw dropping comic book is gonna come back in the next few years and everyone is gonna look back on New 52 just like Crisis on Infinite Earths. Come to think of it, I bet older reader who were younger readers when Crisis came out looked at Crisis how I look at DCnU, "it's not perfect but it'll get there". It might seem like disrespect, but DC probably just saved their comics from becoming obsolete. Think about this; The Killing Joke came out in '88 and Crisis happened in '85. Just sit back and enjoy these comics, they're all good, the artwork is the best I've seen in my entire life and the characters are WAY more relatable. That's coming from a guy who's been reading comics for close to 12 years now

@fodigg said:

Good article! However, I always ran with the assumption that all the JL members were operating well before the formation of the JLA, only not in public. Superman was learning his powers, the Robins were being trained, Aquaman was leading the Others, the Green Lanterns were being selected and going to space, Wonder Woman was working with Steve Trevor, and Barry Allen was being boring. Only Cyborg was "born" in that story arc.

This is what I've been going with as well. There's even evidence to support it in Action Comics with Corben preparing to become Steel Soldier/Metallo for five years which means Superman could have been doing his Man Of The People routine for longer than we originally thought, not necessarily in Metropolis but maybe on his world tour bit. Or to put it in Smallville terms Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, etc could've been in a Blur period for the years prior to Action Comics/Justice League with only their names being spoken of as urban legends. Lots of wiggle room if one takes this approach.

I think it would have been better if it was "a few years ago" instead of "five years ago". It gives them more wiggle room. To me that means less than ten. Five seems a little to short seven or eight maybe better

I hated the 5 year limit as well, but >>>>OBVIOUSLY<<<<< you wouldn't assume that Batman went through 4 Robins in only 5 years. The assumption, using Batman for example, is that he's been operating for quite some time... a sort of 'Gotham legend', before blowing wide open to the world (along with the other heroes) with the Justice League '5 years ago'.

Don't get me wrong, its still pretty stupid and sucky, but wanting to assume all this Green Lantern and Batman history occurred within 5 years isn't right either.

There is a serious lack of cohesion (ESPECIALLY between Action and Superman) in the overall DCU that annoys me. Take each title invidually, they are good and bad in their own right, but trying to look at the overall picture... its a mess and I don't get how they can relaunch in such a messy way.

I think what George Perez stated must have ran through the whole company... they didn't seem to communicate very well and some writers/artists were allowed to do whatever they wanted to do and keep the rest of the creators in the dark about it.

Why is everyone so concerned as to the whereabouts of Stephanie Brown? I'm starting to think people will never be totally satisfied with The New 52 until she shows up. Is she really the most important character in DC or something? She gets mentions in EVERY article!

@fodigg:

OMAC pays homage to Ted Kord's death as a Checkmate/Kord employee influenced by Brother Eye tries to kill Maxwell Lord, this employee wears some sort of bulletproof vest with the Kord Industries name

Batwoman mentions Renee as a former lover of Kate, there's the possibility that she was killed as we see a picture of her on a GCPD wall

Green Arrow shows a female archer whose name is not yet revealed, she could be Mia Dearden

Donna Troy could appear on Earth 2 as it was said that this Earth's Diana was not the last amazon

@DerfelMacklin:

Action Comics also shows the birth of Captain Comet at the same time that Clark's ship lands on Smallville, and is shown that he developed his powers at a really young age and used them in "heroic" acts 10 years before Clark's first appearance

Well just because the Justice League showed up 5 years ago doesn't mean thats the window. Like maybe Hal Jordan got his power ring 8 years ago ya know, but he only went public as a superhero 5 years ago. He does have a whole space sector look after, maybe a planet other then earth was trying to be blown up.

@Psycho_Soldier: Yep, Clark was definitely active as a hero for a long time prior to taking down Glenmorgan in Action Comics. He might've been not public/in-training but it still counts, so he was around for the same amount of time as Batman if not longer. :)

@Psycho_Soldier said:

@fodigg:

OMAC pays homage to Ted Kord's death as a Checkmate/Kord employee influenced by Brother Eye tries to kill Maxwell Lord, this employee wears some sort of bulletproof vest with the Kord Industries name

Batwoman mentions Renee as a former lover of Kate, there's the possibility that she was killed as we see a picture of her on a GCPD wall

Green Arrow shows a female archer whose name is not yet revealed, she could be Mia Dearden

Donna Troy could appear on Earth 2 as it was said that this Earth's Diana was not the last amazon

I appreciate the list, but cameos give me nothing.

I think we all figured out that the reboot wasn't as planned as we initially thought it was at the beginning. Nor was there a lot of communication between certain writers when incidences like the George Perez thing comes out in the light. If this reboot was more of a natural change, the problems that are apparent now wouldn't be there at this point.

I think Superman was referencing the "death" and return of Clark Kent rather than his death at the hands of Doomsday.

Dang Hal,you screwed up a lot in five years time man.Same goes for you John.

I'm trying not to be too much of a continuity stickler when reading my new 52 books. Having said that, I started off buying 9 of them and I'm down to 3 now. Some of my favorite stories ever (ie, All Star Superman) work with a loose concept of continuity, and there are definitely some writers in the new 52 who have made good use of this new freedom. Ultimately, though, the less cohesive feel has made me feel LESS invested, though. I no longer have any sort of certainty in characters history, relationships, etc and that's decreased my excitement somewhat.

I thought that there was something of a staggered start to things. When this was all launched last year, Justice League took place 5 years ago, Action Comics was 6 years ago and Batman had been an urban legend for a few years. That means Dick could have been Robin as long as 8-9 years ago, leaving more room for Jason Todd and Tim Drake.

I really think that it is a failure with the editors. There doesn't seem to be a good master plan to help the writers know when things happened. Considering the whole 5 year thing, it is a small amount of time and it just was odd.

I was under the impression that all was to start new.no past events.continuity in dc comics is a joke and thats bad bad bad .dc should get all the editors together and set the guide lines.why is there a blackest night event?it shouldnt be there.how can bats have all these robins and a batgirl?it dont add up.nothing should have been left over from the past universe,its all cunfusing for the reader.and i thought it wasnt supposed to be confusing.thought it was all supposed to make things clean and clear.

I still doesn't like the New 52 and the new universe. They should have create a new Universe for new readers and the old universe for the old readers. The characters are not the same anymore. Like the Teen Titans - everytime I look at the new Teen Titans, there is a different feeling. The whole Teen Titans times was erased. Gar Logan isn't a Titan anymore? That sucks ... Whats happend to Raven? The good old friendship between Tim, Conner, Bart and Cassie isn't the same anymore. What about Wally West? Nope, I don't care for the New 52. I really tried it and I really like some of the new characters but the New 52 Universe isn't the DC Universe that I loved ... to bad ...