History Of The DCU inaccuracies

[Vic Von Doom]

I'm not sure if this technically belongs in the 52 thread since it's the backup story but whatever. I'm gonna go with it.

I was never really that fond of the series to begin with, it was marginally interesting to see the current continuity of New Earth, but I felt it was hindered by the four page format it's being presented in. Anyway, I have officially since become disgusted by it. There were at least three continuity errors or lapses in judgement in the last two issues and there might have been more previously that I missed.

1 A minor one in 52 #8. It mentions that Stephanie Brown was tortured and killed by Black Mask. Technically true. But it's also true that she might be alive today had Leslie Tompkins helped her like doctors are supposed to and not let her die to teach Batman a lesson about putting kids in danger. Maybe DC wants to forget they ever let such a gross error in uncharacteristic behavior happen. Fine, just don't ever mention it again.

2 In 52#9, the round computer thing mentions that Ralph Dibny went on patrol the day Sue died even though it was his birthday. Except it wasn't his birthday, it wasn't for months. Sue thought that by doing the mystery thing early she'd catch him off guard.

3 This one bothered me most. Round computer thing tells Donna that the death of Sue caused Batman to remember about his mindwiping, causing him to create Brother Eye. Wha...? What was the timeframe in between the end of Identity Crisis and the release of Countdown, our time? Two months? Three? What is that, a week in their time? Assuming Batman actually did devote his time during IC trying to find Sue's killer and not building a super-advanced worldwide satellite system that spies on everyone on Earth. And if he did...how long was it in his control before Max Lord swiped it? An hour?

I realize that I sound like a total nerd nitpicking. But it's not like these stories are twenty, thirty years old and he had to dig through the archives. These are barely two years old, Jurgens and the 52 editorial staff can't be bothered to open a copy of IC #1? I'm sure there's one lying around there somewhere. I'm being nerdy on a Simpsons Comic Book Guy scale, but if you're going to put this in a book that's being marketed as one of DC's flagship books for the next year, a chronicle of the DCU recent history can at least get the details right.

 

[sinewave]

in reference to #1, i'm hoping that the merging of the muliverse at the end of infinite crisis repaired the fact that leslie allowed spoiler to die. REALLY HOPING!

 

[Not Jake]

i think the biggest inaccuracy was DC editors thinking people would like to have the DC history explained to them by a weird Donna Troy and Skeets Jr

 

[Darthphere]

in reference to #1, i'm hoping that the merging of the muliverse at the end of infinite crisis repaired the fact that leslie allowed spoiler to die. REALLY HOPING!

i think the biggest inaccuracy was DC editors thinking people would like to have the DC history explained to them by a weird Donna Troy and Skeets Jr

Really, this is all that has to be said.

 

[Harlekin]

I thought OMAC was just the result of Batman's paranoia anyway. I always figured he really started remembering around the time of Sue's death too.

 

[sinewave]

I thought OMAC was just the result of Batman's paranoia anyway. I always figured he really started remembering around the time of Sue's death too.

i think he started remembering not soon after they mind-wiped him. he's got such an intense sense of memory that he probably realized he couldn't place those 10 minutes and figured something was up.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Doubtful, given that he didn't remember the events of the original Crisis anymore than anyone else did, yet he never bothered to question that. I don't see how an "intense sense of memory" would lock in on one but overlook the other entirely.

 

[Harlekin]

i think he started remembering not soon after they mind-wpied him. he's got such an intense sense of memory that he probably realized he couldn't place those 10 minutes and figured something was up.

Well, we never saw how the others explained those 10 minutes.

"Hey, hey, Bats, you awake?"
"What, what happened?"
"Dr. Light knocked you on your ass man. You must be getting old."
"Really funny Ollie."

Tada.

 

[BrianWilly]

Batman does remember the events of the original Crisis. Everyone does. They just remember it differently than how it actually happened.

As for the birthday error, Ralph knew Sue was throwing him a birthday party and he went out anyway 'cause that's what they wanted. That could be the "birthday" that they were referring to. Probably not, but I'm "no-prizing" it a bit here.

As for the OMAC inconsistency...ah, well, yeah, there's not really any way to explain it. Oops, DC. But for the record it wasn't Max Lord who originally converted Brother I into Brother Eye; he just thinks he did. Alexander Luthor was the one who actually reprogrammed it. If he was watching and planning for his takeover all this time, especially with the f'ed up time-passage in his little heaven, then it's conceivable that he could have started screwing around with Brother I the minute after Batman was done with it.

And actually, I think it makes sense to say that Batman didn't actually have the OMAC satellite for that long. If he did, there are a lot of stories where he could have just used that b**ch to find out a lot of things that he could have, but didn't.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Batman does remember the events of the original Crisis. Everyone does. They just remember it differently than how it actually happened.

What does that even mean? I know Wally remembered that there was a big event that threatened the entire universe, and that Barry gave his life to stop it, but I thought he was always fuzzy on the details. That was fine for Wally, but if it's the same for Batman, I imagine he would've started poking around to figure things out.

 

[Darthphere]

Batman had that mind-wiped as well.

 

[BrianWilly]

I don't know how it worked for Wally, but around 2005/6 some DC mofo said in some interview or another that everyone remembers the Crisis and the Anti-Moniter and all of that. I don't remember exact words, but basically there was red skies and the universe was under attack and the superheroes had a big fight to save the world and a lot of heroes died. Anything that has to do with multiple Earths are probably forgotten, but other than that there shouldn't be any obvious memory gaps. That's why CRISIS appears in a big headline paper posted on the wall in Infinite Crisis #2.

Obviously that may contradict some earlier comics, but that's the stance they're taking now. The Crisis happened and it's a part of DCU history, and everyone remembers it.

 

[Assassin]

they're not inaccuracies, thats the new continuity for new earth silly

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I don't know how it worked for Wally, but around 2005/6 some DC mofo said in some interview or another that everyone remembers the Crisis and the Anti-Moniter and all of that. I don't remember exact words, but basically there was red skies and the universe was under attack and the superheroes had a big fight to save the world and a lot of heroes died. Anything that has to do with multiple Earths are probably forgotten, but other than that there shouldn't be any obvious memory gaps. That's why CRISIS appears in a big headline paper posted on the wall in Infinite Crisis #2.

Obviously that may contradict some earlier comics, but that's the stance they're taking now. The Crisis happened and it's a part of DCU history, and everyone remembers it.

Wouldn't that still stir Batman's "super-duper memory sense," to paraphrase another poster? Batman's a detective and detectives are, by their nature, a bit obsessive about details. Knowing that the heroes fought a big battle and people died and all, but not having the memories of infinite Earths, which are crucial to the actual reasons for the Crisis, would probably make Batman wonder. Motive's a major part of any criminal investigation, after all.

It's a bit of a catch-22. The official stance seems to be that Batman knows enough about the Crisis without knowing about the infinite Earths to satisfy him, but if Batman's as good a detective as he's purported to be, huge gaps concerning the motive for the Crisis would indubitably arouse suspicion that he'd probably want to investigate.

 

[BrianWilly]

But there are no gaps, that's the whole point. If the motive for the Crisis wasn't multiple earths, then everyone simply thinks that the motive for the Crisis was something else. Either that, or that they do remember the multiple earths but simply remember it differently than how it actually was. If you think about it, what happened during the first Crisis is actually fairly comparable to the hypertime crisis during Zero Hour; apply alternate realities, throw in time travel tomfoolery, stir and repeat, and you have your motive right there.

Considering that the Spectre was able to erase everyone's memory of Hal Jordan being the Spectre and Wally West being the Flash and have life go on reasonably unquestioned, is the idea of a singular, solid memory of the Crisis so impossible? If the Crisis really was such a muddled affair that no one can recount accurately it then everyone, much less just Batman, should have been doing nothing these past ten years (DCU time) but to try and figure it all out. Batman doesn't get the patent for paranoid bastards, after all.

The DCU is riddled -- completely riddled -- with continuity breaches up and down the street that everyone should be questioning all the time but no one does; there was a Wonder Girl before a Wonder Woman and then there was another Wonder Woman before this Wonder Woman and they all screw each other's histories right up the bum; there's were not just one, but two Supergirls that were prominent DCU characters but now just don't exist anymore and no one cares why; and let's not even touch Carter Hall, Hawk-god-Red-alien-Egyptian-man. To the citizens of the DCU, I'd say that the Crisis on Infinite Earths is actually pretty low on the scale of weird continuity and things simply not making sense. A lot of them we can now blame on Superboy punches

, but a lot of it also has to do, as Donna Troy said during her return miniseries, with the universe simply fixing itself the best that it can. Some of the fixes were easy enough to improvise, but others -- like aforementioned clusterfcks and said Crisis -- are a bit more complicated. But that doesn't mean everyone in the whole DCU just has dozens of huge memory gaps you could drive an airliner through; the entire universe would literally just not make sense, if that were the case.

 

[sinewave]

Wouldn't that still stir Batman's "super-duper memory sense," to paraphrase another poster? Batman's a detective and detectives are, by their nature, a bit obsessive about details. Knowing that the heroes fought a big battle and people died and all, but not having the memories of infinite Earths, which are crucial to the actual reasons for the Crisis, would probably make Batman wonder. Motive's a major part of any criminal investigation, after all.

It's a bit of a catch-22. The official stance seems to be that Batman knows enough about the Crisis without knowing about the infinite Earths to satisfy him, but if Batman's as good a detective as he's purported to be, huge gaps concerning the motive for the Crisis would indubitably arouse suspicion that he'd probably want to investigate.

i don't understand your points. it's not like batman would investigate the hazy memories of the first crisis like it was a crime? as knowlegeable as batman is about his teammates and their abilities, he has to know that zatanna is capable of wiping someone else's memories, and the situation would seem pretty questionable if he just lost time like that in her presence. and then they might have slowly come back to him. wait, didn't despero give batman and the villains their memories back? if so, maybe it was earlier than we think and there was time to for batman to build brother eye and max lord to steal it.

 

[Fledermaus]

wait, didn't despero give batman and the villains their memories back? if so, maybe it was earlier than we think and there was time to for batman to build brother eye and max lord to steal it.

That's exactly what happened. In Crisis of Conscience in JLA. Desparo give all the villians there memories back. Not only that, he gave them knowledge of the mindwipes.

 

[GoldenAgeHero]

I'm not sure if this technically belongs in the 52 thread since it's the backup story but whatever. I'm gonna go with it.

I was never really that fond of the series to begin with, it was marginally interesting to see the current continuity of New Earth, but I felt it was hindered by the four page format it's being presented in. Anyway, I have officially since become disgusted by it. There were at least three continuity errors or lapses in judgement in the last two issues and there might have been more previously that I missed.

1 A minor one in 52 #8. It mentions that Stephanie Brown was tortured and killed by Black Mask. Technically true. But it's also true that she might be alive today had Leslie Tompkins helped her like doctors are supposed to and not let her die to teach Batman a lesson about putting kids in danger. Maybe DC wants to forget they ever let such a gross error in uncharacteristic behavior happen. Fine, just don't ever mention it again.

2 In 52#9, the round computer thing mentions that Ralph Dibny went on patrol the day Sue died even though it was his birthday. Except it wasn't his birthday, it wasn't for months. Sue thought that by doing the mystery thing early she'd catch him off guard.

3 This one bothered me most. Round computer thing tells Donna that the death of Sue caused Batman to remember about his mindwiping, causing him to create Brother Eye. Wha...? What was the timeframe in between the end of Identity Crisis and the release of Countdown, our time? Two months? Three? What is that, a week in their time? Assuming Batman actually did devote his time during IC trying to find Sue's killer and not building a super-advanced worldwide satellite system that spies on everyone on Earth. And if he did...how long was it in his control before Max Lord swiped it? An hour?

I realize that I sound like a total nerd nitpicking. But it's not like these stories are twenty, thirty years old and he had to dig through the archives. These are barely two years old, Jurgens and the 52 editorial staff can't be bothered to open a copy of IC #1? I'm sure there's one lying around there somewhere. I'm being nerdy on a Simpsons Comic Book Guy scale, but if you're going to put this in a book that's being marketed as one of DC's flagship books for the next year, a chronicle of the DCU recent history can at least get the details right.

just a nerd nitpicking.