A History Of Time Travel In The DC Universe

As Convergence gets ready to turn the earth of DC Comics upside down and The Flash begins experimenting with journey back and onward in time on TV , it sense like a liberal sentence for DC ’s take on time travel . But really , time travel has been a crucial part of the way DC has structured its comics for decades .

fundamentally , so your psyche does n’t leak out out of your ears trying to grasp all the vagaries of various fourth dimension travel arcs across the history of DC , it ’s easier to understand the way DC creators have used time travel over the year not as simply sliding back and forth across a single timeline . That kind of time locomotion is relatively bare in the DC Universe . Advanced metre travel , however , is basically the crux at which the various state of the DC Multiverse over the year hangs itself : alternate worlds are yield of alternate timelines , and move between the various number ground over the years . It ’s less about reality hopping and more about bend the cloth of time to commute yourself into another timeline . To understand time change of location as a conception in DC ’s chronicle is basically to translate how the Multiverse has amplify and contracted over the years .

but put , from a metatextual level , metre locomotion is an exculpation often an excuse for alternate stories featuring intimate DC heroes , and over the years , the chance to reboot continuity . The DC Multiverse , and thus the role of time travelling in DC funnies , has waxed and wane over the days of the companionship ’ beingness — the more big the existence of alternate humanity , the more likely time locomotion stories are going on . Here ’s a brief recap of how clip travelling shenanigans have tear down and remold the DC Comics universe over the years .

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The Time Travel Wilderness

In the other days of the comics , outside of crossing series like Justice League , DC ’s existence was n’t exactly cohesive and connected . You had the rip between the Golden Age and Silver Age versions of their sturdy characters already make a continuity batch , but in realism writers and editors did n’t really care – each standalone serial publication essentially sat in its own house of cards , adventures only effectuate each other as and when required , rather than immense complication playing out across multiple serial as you might gestate with a comic effect today .

Amid these various continuity and canonical conflict , there emerged perhaps the DC Universe ’s premier time traveler ( at least , in terms of the mainstream hoagy ): Barry Allen , a.k.a The Flash . Barry ’s connection to the amphetamine force-out , and his ability to belt along around at almost on the face of it infinite stop number , play by nature into the character ’s move into time locomotion . In 1961 , the character ’s iconic ‘ Cosmic Treadmill ’ was insert , and Barry start to use his speed to battle enemy not just in the nowadays , but in the far future of the thirtieth Century .

In the early day of the ’ 50 and ’ 60s , time travel was a elementary concept for writer : A single stream , and effects on the past changed thing in the future tense . But as the DC Comics cosmos expanded and expanded , and the desire to knit thing together rise , these once standalone serial publication and spinoffs and what ifs all slow started to merge and link into what would become the first take on the Multiverse . But instead of human beings co - subsist , DC ’s Multiverse essentially trust on disparate timeline to connect itself all together — different case throughout account formed alternate worlds and existences on separate timelines , and Time travel would be used to hop between those worlds , rather than any other sort of account . Eventually , it became too much for DC to handle : There needed to be a path to pass over the slating clean again , and despite time travel fundamentally being what create the trouble in the first place , clock time locomotion would be used to solve it .

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Crisis On Infinite Timelines

Crisis on Infinite world had a massive encroachment on the DC universe in the mid-80 ’s . We ’ve already hash out how the event was usedto revert Superman ’s baron tier to a more believable grade , but its main impetus was to play as strong reboot of the DC timeline .

The plans of the Anti - Monitor ultimately slash the number of remaining ‘ Earths ’ in DC canon down to five , before ultimately , through the heroes and villains unify to stop the Anti - Monitor by travelling across the stretch of clip to discontinue his plans from even happening — and Barry Allen buy the farm to contain Anti - Monitor from destroy the remaining Earths — bring through the day at the price of merging the stay on five world into a remarkable amalgam : a new earth , and a new reboot for the DC timeline .

Post - Crisis also put a soft limit on time travel for DC ’s writer – with the new macrocosm largely free of alternate timeline with the reboot , DC were hesitating to let it thing get out of handwriting again . There was an unverbalised normal put in place to try and limit the amount of what - ifs and substitute world that lead to Crisis in the first position : A character could only prison term jaunt a smattering of time , before the tenseness of attempting to stick out through time would destroy their bodies .

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A Big Ball Of Wibbly-Wobbly, Hypertimey-Wimey Stuff

But as time passed after Crisis , and the DC Universe began to re - expand itself , writers began to find aside to expatiate into the multiverse once more . The main lesson of this semi - aborted attempt to revive the multiverse do in 1999 , when author Grant Morrison and Mark Waid coined the conception of ‘ Hypertime ’ .

But outside of the fiction , Hypertime was essentially a handwavey way to approach say alternate tale – only a few heroes of the central Timeline would ultimately be aware of Hypertime and its branching world at the last of the events of The Kingdom – and the way Morrison and Waid intended for the concept to wind a single timeline and its branches in and out of each other was meet with staring disapprovement from other DC writers . As the pair stepped away from DC for extended periods to work with other companies , Hypertime was essentially sideline and neglect by DC , until they flat out disavow its beingness in 2005 .

The Rise And Fall Of New Timelines

In unforesightful time though , time travel and the multiverse concept would come to a head again , Hypertime be damned . Infinite Crisis , a 2006 semi - continuation to the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths , saw the substitute Alexander Luthor – who had survived the case of the first Crisis – reattempt to create the original Multiverse timeline , and acted in a similar electrical capacity as a reboot of the DC Timeline , but on a far less extensive scale . During the story , Luthor originally come through in re - expand the individual Post - Crisis Earth into several alternative realities once more , before being untie and re - bang together as ‘ New Earth ’ . This affect on the independent timestream of the DC canon in various ways , but nothing as earth - shattering as the first Crisis – certain characters like Jason Todd were lend back to lifespan ( despite their deaths being remember ) , and disparate stock for heroes were all merged into one universe .

The flabby reboot would only last for 6 years though . unbeknown to the heroes of New Earth , Luthor ’s attempt to recreate the different timelines actually worked . Little by little , branch off the timeline commence to bleed out , form a new Multiverse of 52 Earths : each very like to New Earth , but then ripple in Time vary them into the alternative timelines they would amount to be known as .

The Barred Gates Of The New 52

But once again , this all changed – and once again , it was down to the sweat of the Time Travelling Barry Allen . 2011 ’s Flashpoint , set up in an alternative timeline make by the Reverse - Flash , Eobard Thawne , saw Barry trapped in a reality he could n’t call back – a quasi - revelatory universe where warfare between the Atlanteans and the Amazonians was tearing the satellite apart . Thawne eventually discover this timeline was brought about by Barry himself , in an attempt to travel back in time and save his mother Nora from the Reverse - Flash ( a story we ’re currently realize wager out on The Flash TV show , basically ) . Barry once again has to use his speed to revert the timeline , but in the process , in reality recreated the DC universe of discourse once more . Three disparate timeline , the DC Universe , the Vertigo Universe , and the Wildstorm Universe – a.k.a , the three imprint DC Comics were currently running – were merged into a exclusive Universe : The New 52 .

This new reality , at first met with peachy hostility by DC fan , created a new slating of 52 Earths , but unlike before , contact between them and the main , Prime Earth that much of DC ’s comics currently take place in was restricted – Time Travel between the earth ’s is presently much more strongly inhibited , with communicating and traveling between the human beings restricted ( and , in a slenderly bizarre metatextual manner , can only be behave through amusing books in each Earth retelling the adventure of other Earth timelines ) .

This though , will presently deepen , with DC ’s unexampled Convergence Event setting the point , 30 years after Crisis , to throw the current timeline asunder . Supervillain Braniac , out of doors of Space and Time , plan to pluck various globe and timeline from throughout DC ’s entire story , include pre - crisis event , and throws them all together for merriment .

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