It’s the final issue of the latest ‘definitive’ DC Comics timeline and it’s safe to say writer Mark Waid hasn’t left much out. The research has been exhaustive, and the result is… exhausting.
With each issue the narrative has become ever tougher to find as the series has descended into little – well, nothing – more than a series of events. Events with ever diminishing returns.
Here we begin with Blackest Night…
… and end with a happy Barry Allen and a message of hope.
In between we have the Court of Owls, Trinity War, Forever Evil, DC Rebith, Doomsday Clock, Dark Nights: Metal and so much more.
Barry, as narrator, acknowledges his biggest cock-up, but moves along shamefully/shamelessly quickly.
If this comic had a gimmick cover it would hold a few tablets of heavy duty paracetamol because this is comics migraine – everything is set to ten, all the time. As Barry writes down everything he knows he acknowledges that the weirdness never stops.
Two or three times he mentions powerful forces stepping in to stabilise things, only for someone else to have to drop by soon afterwards to apply yet more cosmic Fixodent. It doesn’t instil confidence that this textbook will remain useful for long… it’ll be out of date by the end of the year. Maybe the week.
But, there is one thing I like a lot.
‘… a time traveller purporting to be Jon’s grandfather Jor-El…’
YES!
The business with mystery Superman villain Mr Oz revealed to be a never-having-died Jor-El was the worst retcon this side of ‘Krypton was deliberated destroyed by Rogol Zaar’.
The big question for me is, why does Mark Waid keep so much flotsam and jetsam in here, so many crossovers and events that were succeeded a month later by the next Biggest Event Ever, then forgotten by readers in the name of sanity? What does keeping the likes of Flashpoint and Death Metal canon within Barry’s reality, the current DC Universe, achieve? Knowing he’d destroyed reality, and that things could change again at any moment, would drive any sane man insane.
And characters that were hot for five minutes such as Punchline, and others that never caught on the way they were meant to, such as Clownhunter and Ghost-Maker, what have they done to deserve commemoration in a company bible?
I’m amazed the repulsive New 52 Joker’s Daughter never made it in… thank heaven for small mercies. I am glad to see Sideways and Monkey Prince in here, they were huge fun.
The original History of the DC Universe worked because it came at the end of 50 years of continuity; the timeline had been destroyed for the first time, and so writer Marv Wolfman could lay out a coherent narrative, ignoring things that weren’t wanted and concentrating on characters rather than events. This, though, is just event, event, event… and even then we should put quotes around the word, as diminishing returns set in somewhere around 1994.
As with previous issues, two artists bring Waid’s script to life. This time it’s DC veteran Howard Porter and relative newbie Hayden Sherman. There’s no storytelling involved but both artists do a good job, even if the contrast between their styles – gloriously grungy vs slickly simplified – is jarring. Sherman’s Justice League Dark page and Porter’s Thomas Wayne focus are among the most memorable.
The colours pop throughout, I can’t credit anyone as yet because someone at Amazon Kindle has failed to include the credits page, along with the text pages with further details of debuts and so on. I can say the lettering is by Todd Klein, so of course, it’s great.
Chris Samnee’s cover is gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
So, that’s the New History of the DC Universe. It’s been fun to see the parade of characters, and some of the art has been stupendous, but it’s lacked excitement. I think I’d have preferred a new Who’s Who project, giving everyone a proper spotlight. Maybe next year.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
You’ll be happy to see “Rogol Zaar, whose loathing of Kryptonians led him to falsely claim responsibility for destroying their planet…” in the text pages, too.
As for the inclusion of all these events, well… I’m pretty sure Mark would have streamlined some of it if he could. The constant drumbeat of event after event takes its toll here, and will likely be smoothed out in a history written 20 years from now, in favor of a focus on newer nonsense. But for now, I’m happy these smaller characters are included, because for every Punchline that doesn’t interest me, we get a Monkey King or a Xanthe Zhou.
I haven’t quite finished the text pages yet, but right now my biggest disappointment (aside from no real hint as to the upcoming Legion book) is that Interplanetary Insurance, Inc. doesn’t get a mention. But that’s a small quibble amongst a galaxy of wonders!
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Oh, oh, I was reading about that nice Interplanetary Insurance chap in the DC Finest Gorilla World book, delightful stuff.
Thank you! Rogol Zaar discredited… or at least with doubt cast upon his stories. This and the Mr Oz business has to be Mark Waid’s ideas.
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I’d only read one Interplanetary Insurance story before the DC Finest book came out, but that book really is making me love the feature. It’s so mid-century capitalistic — a spiritual cousin to the Jetsons. This guy gets into all these amazing outer-space scrapes, and all he cares about is making his boss money and not getting fired!
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Hey Martin,
Haven’t read it yet but I completely expected this. Same thing happened when Waid wrote Marvel’s history mini about 7 or so years ago. The first few issues were very strong, reflecting different times in comics publishing when characters were new, stories were based on fun and science and science-fiction and the industry was not consumed by events, deaths, rebirths, and everything-you-thought-you-knew-was-wrong stories. But the final couple issues really held a mirror up to modern comics and it wasn’t a good look. The Spiderman clone saga. Lots of X-Men drama. Lots of heroes fighting heroes. Turns out the old stuff WAS better. And I expected the same with this project at DC as well. It’s not Waid’s fault. This IS the modern history of DC comics. All of these stories were printed over the last 30 years or so. So he couldn’t leave them out/pretend they never happened.
Now as a fan that’s not to say there have not been some really well-crafted books by Marvel and DC these past few decades. Obviously not the case. It’s why you and I and many, many, many others keep reading. But a project like this isn’t meant to shine a light on any particular run or issue and explain why they stand out/are quality comics versus the lousy stuff. It’s about the highlights. And sometimes those highlights are crap, but they happened.
Based on a quick flip through – again, need to read it all – I think one main mistake here is Waid should have devoted a few pages to DC’s futures: The Legion, OMAC, Kamandi, Atomic Knights, Space Ranger, etc. Instead they are relegated to the very wordy way back. It’s nice they are acknowledged, but I would have preferred them to be actual illustrated pages and stuff like Trinity War to have been tossed by the wayside. I think that would have made this final issue more palatable.
I also think too much time was spent trying to integrate New52 concepts. Just acknowledge there was this period between Flashpoint and Doomsday Clock/Death Metal and move on. But maybe I’m being unfair because there are likely fans of that era out there who would be frustrated if those stories weren’t acknowledged. It did last for, what, five years or so, real-time? But I’d have voted to scrap it.
Lastly, Barry Allen is NOT the villain of Flashpoint and I don’t understand why Waid repeated that same error. Prof. Zoom WENT BACK IN TIME AND KILLED BARRY’S MOM. So Barry was only trying to correct the timeline. How many fiction stories are out there about a villain going back in time to do damage and someone trying to stop them/correct their changes. I don’t get why Geoff Johns, and I guess now Waid, insist that Barry made an error. He was trying to correct Zoom’s villainy, and it made things worse, yes. But it wasn’t selfishness on Barry’s part. It was trying to make time right.
Ultimately I think what you’re saying – and I totally agree with – is the original “History of the DC Universe” was kind of timeless. It didn’t prove to be. DC kept publishing, after all. But it has that timeless feel. This current project is fun and def has high points and answers some questions. But it’s ultimately disposable. But, again, I don’t think this is Waid’s fault at all. He worked with what he had. It’s just there is such a big difference between where DC Comics and the industry was when Wolfman and Perez wrote the first history and today. – Brian
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Hi Brian, you are, of course, correct in that it wasn’t really Barry’s fault, the Flashpoint business. And I’ve been corrected on that previously… perhaps this time it’ll stick in my stupid wee heid.
(It’s funny, the further we get from Flashpoint, the better disposed I feel towards it as a brief flash of playfulness. OK, the savagery of the Amazons was horrible, but the Outsider, Element Woman, even the super-stupid Canterbury Cricket… the nostalgia goggles have descended.)
The look into the future really was a highlight of the original History, it’s very odd that we get nothing here but a blurry Legion – they could’ve showed some version of the team and if it didn’t prove to match what Joshua Williamson and friends come up with, well, Barry did note the constant reality fluctuations.
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“The nostalgia goggles have descended…” Great line and so true!!!! I recently picked up the 5 issues of “Zero Hour” in a dollar bin. I hated Hal Jordan’s turn to evil and the death of the JSA and didn’t think that was a well-executed series. But now that those changes have been undone I’m kind of like, “Eh, the final faceoff between Hal and Ollie was handled well and this did lay the groundwork for ‘Final Night’ and the ‘JSA’ and ‘Starman’ series that I enjoyed and I love the Jurgens/Ordway art and the fold out history of the DCU in the last issue…” Nostalgia glasses on!!!! – Brian
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There you go! I’m off to enjoy that Flash run in which Bart was aged up and then beaten to death by the Rogues…
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The nostalgia goggles — or at least a similar effect — was one of the topics of conversation with my friend John on our drive to Baltimore Comic-Con last weekend. Both of us were more positively disposed to story arcs and character beats we didn’t like in the past. A few that come to mind for me are Hal Jordan’s time as the Spectre, or the Englehart run of the Fantastic Four, when Reed and Sue had left the group.
I haven’t read either one of those storylines. But I’m a lot more open to them now. JM Dematteis and Steve Englehart are both talented writers, and they’re joined by talented artists on those runs. And all they’re doing is taking a big swing with some existing characters. The changes didn’t stick. They’re just a moment in time. And, seen as a blip on the timeline, their excesses and missteps will be easier to forgive, I think, and I can just enjoy the storytelling that’s there.
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I think I’ve read just one of those FFs, it didn’t strike me one way or the other. I read a few issues of the Hal Spectre run and it was a bit too philosophical and melancholy for me, and I like JM DeMatteis. He lived on the moon with his orphaned niece and a schoolteacher sent by God.
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Continuing to blame Barry for heroic actions that could not have created the Flashpoint anyways rankles. Nothing in that reality could be traced back to Mrs. Allen surviving because it hadn’t the decades she was alive and some of the change even predated her birth. So what? Was she hit by a ray that turned her evil and able to travel through time? Better to have some D list villain take credit and have Psycho Pirate admit he turned everyone gullible so they’d blame Barry.
And give him his powers back and a book! It’s time since Spurrier seems to be hellbent to make everyone not want to read a Wally book ever again.
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And now I want to read the comic in which Norah Allen is the most importantly woman in thr DC Universe.
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Oh and Hi Fi and Farrell are credited on the color but I have no clue which one is the colorist and which is the letterer.
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The info finally turned up, an update was downloaded. They’re both colourists, Todd Klein lettered.
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