With Back Issue #159 being a celebration of Crisis on Infinite Earths 40th Anniversary (WHAT!!!) and "Doc" Beechler bringing it up on FB, where I posted something similar, I was thinking about Marv Wolfman's original intent, that in 1987, all DC titles would begin with #1 with a new continuity being established. Of course, that didn't happen because DC did not want their top books like New Teen Titans, Legion of Super-Heroes and the rest starting from scratch again.
(Yes, they finally did do it with the New 52 but that didn't work in 2011)
But just imagine if they did? And you could influence their decision?
What characters would you change? Or leave alone? How would you fix the problems that came afterwards with:
BATMAN getting a soft reboot with changes to Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, James Goedon, Barbara Gordon, Catwoman, etc.
SUPERMAN getting a hard reboot but not a "debut", giving us a Man of Steel who had been around for years but not knowing what adventures he had or who he fought as most of his villains began after 1987.
WONDER WOMAN getting restarted properly, "First appearing" in 1987 but even that had its problems i.e. the Justice Society, Justice League and Wonder Girl.
Could everthing be restarted? What about the Golden Age? The Silver Age?
What would you keep and what would you remove/replace?
Replies
It would pain me to do this but I would get rid of all the "duplicate" heroes. Only one Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom and so forth. In fact, I would have no Justice Society at all. No Golden Age heroes, period if it could be done.
Have the heroes begin in 1987 with Superman with no super-powered heroes previously. Ever. You could have the non-powered characters existing prior like the Challengers of the Unknown, Congo Bill, the Secret Six, Roy Raymond, Suicide Squad, King Faraday and the like.
If you had to have Golden Age heroes, then just the All Star Squadron/Freedom Fighters. Have Uncle Sam or the original Blue Beetle be their "Superman".
Next: What about the Teen Titans?
I was okay with a version of the JSA existing in the 1940s. It's not as though Superman and Batman were members, really, except retroactively.
(Yeah, I know. They made a couple of cameo appearances with the JSA in the 1940s. No longer happened)
Freely combining my own ideas with a lot of things that other people have suggested elsewhere or that have actually been used:
It's made absolutely clear that, after the final battle with the Anti-Monitor, all memories of the time before, save for Psycho-Pirate's, fade.
Wonder Woman would have been an immortal or long-lived member, who returns home after the war and re-emerges after Superman and Batman make their debuts.
Dead characters would stay dead-- might make an exemption for Supergirl, who just never existed in this new timeline and could reappear later. Or perhaps an entirely new Supergirl would turn up, but adopt the Power Woman identity when she was older. Wally West would take over as the Flash.
Superman and Batman would both have been around for an uncertain number of years before 1987. Dick Grayson would have just become Nightwing, preserving some version of existing Titans continuity. Introduce immediately the idea that Superman had a "secret" Superboy history before making his adult debut, thus allowing him to influence the future Legion and have some adventures with them.
Most of the Quality and Charlton characters would exist only because of the "stood before the dawn of time" exemption and would die nobly in the final battle. Sure, keep Blue Beetle.
I'm not certain what to do about the Marvel Family. They've never really fit in well in the DCU, but they're too important to leave out. Perhaps their adventures remain rooted in the 1940s/50s. Or maybe they run freely with Fawcett-type adventures in their own comic but are treated more realistically in crossovers. The Angel and the Ape could be handled the same way, if there was a market for the Angel and the Ape in the 80s/90s.
By whatever means, Earth has only one remaining Green Lantern. Perhaps John Stewart with Guy Gardner's uniform.
Several of DC's most innovative post-Crisis titles, such as Animal Man and Swamp Thing and [insert your favourite here], would occur as they did.
In a bold move, the current Batwoman would make her debut in the early 1990s.
The teenage Sugar and Spike would make an unexpected cameo somewhere.
The complicated history that led to DC having divergent sets/depictions of Olympian gods and Atlantises would be easily resolved in the reboot by ɘυlɔ ɒ Ɉ'nɘvɒʜ ʜɒɘγ.
Up late last night. Need more coffee.
As for the Teen Titans or New Teen Titans, it seeems that despite Marv Wolfman wanting all titles to change after the Crisis, his New Teen Titans didn't get affected much.
The original Dove was killed and the Hawk became an unhinged solo act until they introduced the new Dove which I can only assume was always the plan as I can't see Hawk getting his own book or anything.
Wolfman eliminated his creation, Kole but she was always meant to be offed during the Crisis. Good thing that she didn't get super popular!
If there was going to be a "Day One" Teen Titans, they couldn't be teenagers anymore nor be associated officially with any other DC hero, at first at any rate.
Yes, this means that Dick Grayson was NEVER Robin. His parents were killed while performing at the circus. He gets trained by someone else, possibly Terry Sloane, Mister Terrific alongside a slightly older Bruce Wayne. He goes down his own path for justice as Nightwing and eventually meet with similar-minded twenty-somethings as the Titans.
This probably erases Speedy and Aqualad for now until they can be re-introduced with Green Arrow and Aquaman, respectively. Would be odd if it were the other way around!
There was no Barry Allen. Wally West was never Kid Flash. He gained his powers and became THE Flash, the one and only. He would feel more comfortable with the Titans than the future Justice League, at first. The Rogues would be re-introduced with slightly different motivations. Eventually Wally will join the JLA with his spot in the Titans being taken by Jesse Quick.
This was how they portrayed Wally in the Justice League animated series and the world didn't come to an end.
Donna Troy would still have a mysterious past and call herself Wonder Girl but wearing her red costume. She would have the bracelets and lasso but not know their origins, only that she earned them. Soon after going public, Wonder Woman would debut but she doesn't know her and is resentful of her. But Diana can't answer her questions either.
Changeling/Beast Boy's back story remains the same except that he is trained by the Chief before there is a Doom Patrol and gets "adopted" by Steve Dayton before he meets Rita Farr. He is still the youngest Titan and its only minor member.
Cyborg, Raven and Starfire keep their origins more or less intact.
Next: Sure you're a Martian...
Hindsight is 20/20. I have the benefit of having thought about this back in 1997 or so, after some of the main difficulties and dilemmas made themselves clear aplenty.
In any case, extrapolating mainly from the Legion of Super-Heroes between Crisis and the late 1990s, I think that reboots are inherently tricky. There is a permanent, unremovable tension between nostalgia and the desire for innovation. In 1956 it was not clear that people might remember Jay Garrick, last seen in 1951. In 2025 it is very clear that people will keep revisiting the 1940s and demand _both_ consistency and change "ad eternum".
It really runs in cycles, which are fairly unpredictable on their lasting power and periodicity. They may also manifest differently among various characters, teams and sub-universes.
Therefore, it seems to me that ultimately the best way of handling the challenges of a shared continuity universe that is apparently meant to last for a century or more is to embrace that cyclic and unpredictable nature.
Make the canonical continuity explicitly dynamic and provisional in nature. Make it so that the DC cosmology is inherently self-reinventing - perhaps it is ultimately shaped by the inescrutable actions of the Lords of Chaos and Order, who like to tinker and experiment with their own nature and manifestations, perhaps even as a competitive team sport.
So, for instance, you could have an initial post-Crisis period of ten years (real time), from about 1985 to 1995, where the existence of Superboy is an explicit paradox, since the LSH remembers him oh so well while Superman know that he was never Superboy. Wonder Woman is new to the world of mortals and there is a period of adjustment as it becomes clear that she will eventually become a major ally of Superman and Batman, but has to decide what exactly she thinks of each of them before committing. The new Flash, Wally West, finds out that his powers are in flux and that he has a surprisingly incomplete understanding of what exactly they are. The Guardians of the Universe realize that their very personalities and abilities were changed by the Crisis, not necessarily for any discernible reason. Swamp Thing has become dangerously unstable due to the vague yet powerful sensation that realities unlimited have simply died, coupled with recent discoveries and revelations about his own nature.
Doctor Fate feels an instinctive urge to question and rediscover what he knows or thought he knew about the mystical nature of the Universe, and while at it has surprising encounters with other mystical beings that may or may not have a firmer grasp on that subject matter (and may or may not be mistaken about that) - Madame Xanadu, Spectre, Constantine, Deadman, Phantom Stranger. At some point that collective finds out that they are running not so much on borrowed time as in compartimentalized time; while very exceptional events may perhaps enlarge or contract the duration of the bubble of reality they live in, the truth is that their perception of human history as a bubble of thousands of years inside a larger cosmic history of billions of years is just the current configuration of something that is bound to change time and again every few years.
Comes 1995, there is an Event - call it a Crisis, whynot - as the fragile yet cosmic configuration of the DCU itself is rearranged due to its own figurative weight, perhaps modified by designs from the Lords of Chaos and Order and even some particularly epic recent tale. Perhaps Hal Jordan lost his sanity and destroyed Oa and the Guardians. Perhaps the Spectre ceased to be because in a recent storyline he went on a run to achieve greater, more spiritual powers that created a brief yet very meaningful period of worldwide change before the cycle runs out. Perhaps Batman was led by Deadman to some mystical realm where he finally meets and makes peace with his dead parents, leading to a very significant change of priorities for his life, including his retirement as Batman. Perhaps Swamp Thing screamed from deep within Earth and that somehow awakened what would once be called Earth-Two, still in vestigial form, but ready to be reborn in full in the cycle to begin. Perhaps Superman has found out that he is truly immortal and decided that he would rather not be in the cycle to come.
It is perhaps a bit derivative of the Michal Moorcock idea of Multiverse, but I think it is the best way of dealing with the creative tensions that comics impose on themselves. Or, at least, to do that under the expectations of a commercial enterprise of DC's nature. Instead of thinking of ongoing series, limited series and volumes, we would attempt to think about publishing periods that try and tinker with multiple and myriad possible configurations of a functional DC Universe. Some characters would have memories of their previous existences (to a limited degree), but most would not.