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These Three DC Comics Stories Are Canon Again After The Flash #21

Between Action Comics and The Flash this week, the history of the post-Rebirth DC Universe has […]

Between Action Comics and The Flash this week, the history of the post-Rebirth DC Universe has begun to take shape in some interesting and illuminating ways.

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During a trip on the Cosmic Treadmill, during which the pair were searching for evidence pertaining to the murder of the Reverse-Flash, Batman and The Flash saw visions of the past that they themselves couldn’t remember…but longtime DC readers absolutely did.

So…what did we (and Batman and The Flash) learn still “happened” in the modern continuity, even if ten stolen years means not everyone can remember it yet?

Let’s run down the list, shall we?

(We are not going to count Flashpoint, which was never 100% gone and the full return of which started in last week’s Batman, or the Justice Society of America, since they started teasing that story in DC Universe: Rebirth last May.)

More DC Comics news:

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1/JLA YEAR ONE

When Batman and The Flash see the “origin” of the Justice League, it certainly appears to be a much more Silver Age-friendly version of the team’s meet-up.

JLA-forms
(Photo: DC Entertainment)

That dialogue might be lifted from Justice League of America #1 (the Silver Age version) or JLA: Year One, Mark Waid’s 1990s reinterpretation of the team’s classic origin story.

The more modern take, in which the team is thrust together almost against their will and has a rocky relationship for the first little while, was primarily based on 2011’s The New 52 take. That seems to still be what Batman and The Flash remember — so they aren’t quite to the point Superman is, where he is starting to recall the universe differently — but that seems to be coming.

Also worth noting, speaking of the Man of Steel: Both he and Wonder Woman are present at the formation of the League in this version, marking it as likely the original, rather than the Year One reinvention.

 

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

Since Barry and Bruce both had to be present for each of the moments in question, one of the key moments that the pair have ever shared together — when a dying Barry appeared to Bruce to appeal for help in Crisis on Infinite Earths — made the cut, as well.

Technically it has seemed likely Crisis happened in the new DCU for some time, given that Green Lantern’s history was largely un-rebooted and not only did the Anti-Monitor pop up in The Sinestro Corps War, but he also played a key role in the Justice League story that served as Geoff Johns’s New 52 swan song, The Darkseid War.

IDENTITY CRISIS

This one is, of course, the one that’s the most controversial.

Identity-Crisis
(Photo: DC Entertainment)

Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales’s Identity Crisis was one of the best-selling DC books of the modern era, but it also has never been without controversy. From tinkering with the backstory of the Satellite Era of the Justice League to the rape and murder of Sue Dibny to the tragic resolution of the murder mystery, Identity Crisis is one of those stories (much like The Killing Joke) that Rebirth’s “greatest hits” policy of bringing back DC’s most popular stories could have missed and people probably would have understood.

Still, at least for now, it appears as though it’s back in continuity.