DC Retconning

I am not a big DC fan for many reasons. The first of those being retconning. Okay, so Batman's parents were killed by Joe Chill, right? Well, Pre-Crisis, Joe Chill was a hitman who took out the Waynes because he was hired to. Post-Crisis, I can't quite tell, but I think it was a random mugging. Post-Zero Hour, Batman didn't know who killed his parents. Post-Infinite Crisis, Chill did kill the Waynes and was arrested shortly after. What?

It all started with the Flash. By vibrating fast enough, he broke the border between dimensions and ended up in a world where he didn't exist, but Jay Garrick, the original Flash, did. After that, the worlds were established as Earth-1 and Earth-2. There were occasional events called "Crisis on Earth-(NUM) where NUM was whatever Earth there was a crisis big enough for heroes to go from another dimension to help out.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first major time where retconning occurred in DC. Trying to simplify everything, they decided to get rid of the DC Multiverse and make it all one Earth where nobody really knew about the other Earths that had existed. Instead, Jay Garrick and Barry Allen lived on the same world (albeit Barry died, but whatever, Wally took over). Both Keystone City and Central City existed on the same Earth, etc. Things were different, but people were happy enough.

Zero Hour came next. It had the subtitle "Crisis in Time", being a not so subtle hint that this was a follow up to Crisis on Infinite Earths (which I will now just call Crisis, as it is the Crisis). Zero Hour decided to unify all the separate timelines, such as Booster Gold's future, the JSA's past, the Legion's future, etc. In much the sane way as Crisis, it took many and combined them, and retconned everything to fit. It was not nearly as good a read as Crisis (which is really good), but it was okay, and served its purpose.

Identity Crisis was smaller, but I guess it was next. The retconning that occurred (they used Crisis, so retconning occurred), was mostly that superheroes has altered people's minds to keep their identities. Also, Dr. Light was an idiot for different reasons and some other small stuff. The most amazing DC story I've ever read, but all in all, not as big as a Crisis event.

Infinite Crisis. Wow, that is a subtle. It has two words specifically from Crisis. Anyway, this was major too. They decided, "You know what? I liked the multiverse! Let's bring it back! I know! Let's take the heroes of Crisis and make them villains!" Brilliant! Take the greatest good guys and make them supremely evil. DC's never done that before (Hal Jordan doesn't count?). Anyway, it is a fun story, but all in all, it really felt like a slap in the face. Basically, it made me feel that Crisis never really happened. The main part of Crisis now doesn't matter any more because they reignited the multiverse with the same freakin' characters that were heroes originally! Sigh...

Stupid retconning...