DC's Latest Do-Over: A Running Commentary

This is a quick and painless entry. No frills, very short and to the point. Just me typing up my DC Universe Rebirth #1. When DC completely rebooted their continuity in 2011, it was a vexed endeavor. It was an event that was meant to reset continuity and create familiar, easily accessible entry points for new readers to jump on-board. However, in the process, it alienated the existing fanbase by its exclusion and/or erasure of characters, as well as important character arcs, backstories, and relationships that had become important to DC's various properties since whatever metric editor-in-chief Dan Didio used to determine what the classic version of the characters were. This metric was incredibly haphazard. For instance, in the pages of Green Arrow, Ollie and Dinah don't even know each other, but his ward had already been trained and was off on his own and running with a renegade group of anti-heroes at the start of the New 52 relaunch. Action Comics had a version of Superman starting off in Metropolis wearing a very plainclothes costume with a Superman tee (because those would exist in a pre-Superman world), who wasn't associated with The Daily Planet, had no romantic attachment to Lois and instead ends up with Wonder Woman. You know, classic Superman. Over in Justice League, one of its core founding members and the one most consistent overall members, Martian Manhunter, was excluded and his slot was filled by Cyborg, who was never a Teen Titans (a team whose New 52 continuity was a mess in its own right, but had been mostly addressed in Titans Hunt). Then there's the Batman family of titles. For the most part, the Batfamily's continuity remained intact, but where it erred, it did so in really upsetting ways. Near as I can tell, in one fell swoop it eliminated two female characters from the Batfamily, one of whom was Stephanie Brown, a fan favorite. This was done so that Barbara Gordon could be the classic Batgirl again. Of course, that meant removing Oracle, Barbara's then-current identity from existence and thus obviating DC's most prominent character with disabilities from their catalog of characters. It also greatly decreased Barbara's agency, considering how central Oracle became to the DC Universe.

These barely scratch the surface of all the confounding changes that the New 52. The most important for the purpose of this entry, however, is that Wally West has been absent. Oh, they attempted to introduce an incredibly different character as Wally West, whose characterization, aside from the name and becoming a speedster, doesn't resemble Wally at all. Naturally, fans were not amused.

And with that bit of background out of the way, I can begin my run-down.

• Wally West is back. Yay! 
• In his Kid Flash costume. #YoungJusticeFeels! 
• It looks like Wally being stuck in the Speedforce is our framing device and the first stop is the Batcave. So far, so good. 
• All Wally needs is for one person to remember him. Or else, he's gonna die? This is gonna hurt, isn't it? 
• So, the Justice Society IS part of the main continuity, now? Okay, DC. Let's see how you feel about your multiverse next reboot. 
• Was the Legion of Superheroes not in the New 52 or did they just never interacted with the present timeline? 
• If we are in Wally's POV and he's being drawn to characters with whom he has a prior connection, why are we seeing Maggie Sawyer? 
• Superman's missing? He might be dead? Oh, no. I'm so invested in the apparent death of a character who is central to DC's line and we'll never see him again. I'll light a candle for him.
• Ray Palmer is stuck in the Microverse. Did DC procure rights to the Micronauts? 
• I'm assuming every character I'm unfamiliar with in this series is previously established, since this event exists to fix the New 52's erasures. 
• The Blue Beetle's scarab is magic and not extra terrestrial tech again. Sure, why not? 
• A black, gay Aqualad? Ye gods, I can only imagine the complaints of pandering and/or tokenism on the message boards. Sigh... 
• I don't know who Pandora is, but she and Rachel Grey/Summers go to the same tattoo artist. 
• Wonder Woman has a twin brother? We're getting even further away from her original origin story and I'm okay with that. 
• Supergirl is right where I left her 18 issues into the New 52. Still wearing an awesome cape and a unitard with an S-shield guarding her vag. 
• Yes, it's okay to fix the Green Arrow/Black Canary relationship now that Worst Canary has been killed off on the live action show. 
• Pre-Flashpoint Lois and Clark are here. Plus a son. I guess you have to take the good with the meh, sometimes. 
• A guy in a cloak and carrying a scythe named The Grim Reaper Mr. Oz(?) tells Clark that he and his family are not what they think they are. Considering they know they're from another reality, you'd think they'd know Clark is Superman. Whoever made that arrangement lacks common sense. 
• Aquaman proposes to Mera. I did not realize they weren't already married in this timeline. 
• Linda doesn't recognize Wally. My soul is crushed. 
• Yeah, that put Wally in freefall. I'm glad they didn't do more than a couple panels of Vic and Dick not recognizing him is probably more than I could bare. 
• So, the elephant in the room is the other Wally West. At least they explain him away as Iris' nephew from another sibling and they were both named after the same ancestor. That sort of thing happens a lot in my family. 
• And yet it's still terrible. With both a Flash and a Kid Flash covered, all he cares about is no Linda. :( 
• And finally, we reach Barry Allen. Wally seems resigned to the fact that even Barry won't recognized him since his own personal lightening rod didn't, but wants to say his farewells anyway. 
• They took six pages between Wally appearing to Barry and the final payoff. And IT. WAS. WORTH. IT. The highlight of the issue thus far beyond the shadow of a doubt. If you aren't crying by the time Wally finishes his farewell speech, you certainly are once Barry pulls him out of the Speedforce and embraces him like a son. I'm glad they took their time and used compressed storytelling to it utmost in this sequence. 
• And they follow up that perfect moment by showing a montage of Barry's memories, rattling off info we already know. You tried, Rebirth #1... 
• Wally is suddenly forgetting part of his history now that he's out of the Speedforce and in reality. My guess is whatever is effecting the others is effecting him and his time as the Flash is still going to be extra-canonical for a while. 
• Wally is certain that Flashpoint wasn't Barry's fault. It seems more accurately like it was *clearly* his fault. It's the New 52 reality that isn't Barry's fault. 
• And Batman finds the Comedian's button lodged into the walls of the Batcave. Sigh... I feel a rant formulating, but for now suffice to say I am not down with the idea of the characters of Watchmen existing in the DCU, or at least as they were presented in The Watchmen graphic novel. 
• The issue ends on Mars, where a broken wristwatch begins levitating in mid-air. It is implied to be Wally's based on the inscription. The unseen force (cough cough Dr. Manhattan cough cough) disassembles and reassembles it, getting it working. We pan in on the clock until it turns into the clock image featured throughout The Watchmen. 

Overall, despite my issues with the final moments of this issue, it's a great set-up. I do have issues when it deviates from Wally's POV, but that's minor. I'm wondering how well if at all The Watchmen will work in the DCU. They are so very much of a bleak crapsack universe and such an evocative, singular narrative that I wonder if the characters will feel diminished when inserted into the mainstream DCU. Dan and Laurie I could see being folded into continuity, albeit they'd get lost in the shuffle of DC's thousands of characters. Ozymandias, and Comedian, and Rorschach I honestly think would be more interesting as broken heroes gone villain. I know this book is highly suggesting that Dr. Manhattan caused the New 52 problems, and I'd buy it provided he's not an outright villain. I'd honestly be more interested to see him take on an Adam Warlock affect, where he's reached a plain of existence where human morality and concerns simply do not register compared to the greater workings of the universe, which he was very much split on in the graphic novel.