DC Comics is much more complicated than Marvel. DC continuity is full of reboots, and that can make things rather confusing. These reboots have had varying levels of success, from the highs of post-Crisis DC to the lows of the New 52. Often times, the stories that do the heavy lifting are changed in the history of the resulting reboot, and things don’t happen the same way they did in the original issues. That’s why a moment from the excellent Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #1 is such a big deal, as it references one of the most important Superman stories of the last decade, one which melded two different histories in a piece of major continuity surgery — “Superman: Reborn.”
“Superman: Reborn” is a complicated bit of DC history, and to understand why mentioning it in Trinity #1 is such a big deal, one has to look at the story and what it accomplished. The Superman books were in a weird place when DC Rebirth hit, as it combined the New 52 with the pseudo post-Crisis Superman, Lois Lane, and Jon Kent introduced in Convergence: Superman and Superman: Lois and Clark, both by writer Dan Jurgens and artist Lee Weeks. It was the biggest continuity patch in DC Rebirth, and it’s generally an excellent Superman story.
“Superman: Reborn” Fixed the History of Superman In the DC Universe
So, we’ll start at the beginning. The New 52 rebooted the DC Multiverse, creating a new version of Superman. This version was never very popular, so in Convergence, DC took the chance to bring back the Superman and Lois Lane of the pre-Flashpoint DC Multiverse, along with a bonus character — their son Jon Kent. Around this time, DC killed off the New 52 Superman after a few years of shenanigans with his powers, so there was no Superman. DC Universe: Rebirth #1 came along, and DC began bringing more post-Crisis ideas into the New 52 DC Universe. This included Superman, Lois Lane, and Jon Kent stepping in as the Kent family (meanwhile New 52 Lois Lane was killed in Superwoman #1, a highly underrated series). This didn’t completely fit the timeline — this Clark and Lois were older, and they lived in Kansas. Everyone remembered the old New 52 Superman and Lois Lane, so they had to learn to trust these new versions of the characters. Eventually, DC decided to implant this version of the Kent family into the New 52 Earth, and that’s where “Superman: Reborn” came into play. It was a crossover story between Superman and Action Comics, by Pete Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Dan Jurgens, and Doug Mahnke.
RELATED: 5 Major DC Characters That Need Absolute Versions ASAP
The story revolved around Mr. Mxyzptlk, not the New 52 one introduced in Grant Morrison’s Action Comics run but the post-Crisis one, kidnaps Jon, forcing Superman and Lois to figure out what happened to their son. It all leads to Mxy using his powers to combine the two universes — the New 52 one and the post-Crisis one — but only at a Superman level. So, it wasn’t a wholesale combination of the two different sets of DC continuity, just the Superman parts. It’s one of the better stories of the Rebirth Superman years, and finally made sense of the weird tangles of continuity. It also completely invalidated stories that came out only a year or two before, including the Trinity series, which combined the new Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman as they remade their relationship. It’s one of the weird little things that can happen in DC Comics because of the way they use the continuity reboot. “Superman: Reborn” was basically a continuity transplant, two different realities being put together to fix the problems of the Superman books. In the past, stories like this only technically happened, since they usually ended with the universe have a wholesale reset. So, for example, the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths didn’t happen the way they did in the resulting DC Universe, because in that DC Universe, there was never an infinite multiverse. Instead, the events of Crisis were just an attack by the Anti-Monitor. That’s the way the heroes remembered it. Most readers assumed that something like this would have happened with “Superman: Reborn.”
Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman Pokes Fun at DC’s Continuity Reboots
Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #1 presents an argument between Jon Kent and Damian Wayne about whose father would win in a fight. This leads to Damian insulting Jon by calling him a “fingerman,” and then Jon referencing not only “Superman: Reborn” but also his imprisonment in “The Unity Saga” from Brian Michael Bendis’s Superman. It’s an awesome little joke that shows just ridiculous DC continuity reboots can be.
Jon Kent’s existence in the DC Multiverse is one of the most complicated parts of DC history that has been introduced in recent years. The fact that Jon himself knows that there was once a universe where he didn’t exist that was combined with one where he did is insane and the way he says it is hilarious. He even makes sure to reference the “strengths and weaknesses” of both, letting fans of both know that each of them is pretty cool. It’s a wonderful little moment in a great comic, canonizing one of the DC’s best continuity transplants.
Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #1 is on sale now.
The post Turns Out One of DC’s Most Complicated Stories Is Actually Canon appeared first on ComicBook.com.
