The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Time Runners & the Chrono-Quixotes

Former Legendaire and general light in the darkness, Chris Miller, recently popped up in an email to let me know that he's continued to work on his Unauthorized Chronology of the DC Universe, having just made some updates to the Modern Age section. Chris noted:

Improvements to the site include:

· Analysis and chronological placement of key DCU events from 2001 to 2005
(Our Worlds at War through DC Countdown), sorting out the many complications
arising from (in particular) Flash, Robin, and Identity Crisis, among other
intricately connected recent titles and stories
· A concise summary timeline is now included in the Introduction, just as
in the Golden and Silver Age sections
· New entries throughout all sections of the site, for historical events
revealed in series such as JSA, Power Company, Batman: Death and the
Maidens, Nightwing ("Year One"), Green Lantern: Rebirth, and more
· Analysis and inclusion (insofar as possible) of events from the
controversial Superman: Birthright

Having taken stabs at similar projects over the years, I've long been interested in attempts to pin down a chronology for events in various comics universes. My attempts were mainly restricted to the Marvel universe, which became ridiculously rough going as the '80s flowed into the '90s, and what was once Marvel's greatest strength - a strong history for their characters going back decades - was devalued and in many respects disposed of by a now publicly-traded company whose financial peak years were built on a pyramid scheme of "hot" artist speculation that no longer had much care for their characters and the universe they inhabited.

These projects are eventually doomed by the accumulation of noted years (birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc.) , even if topical events are discarded or retroactively updated. Just the accumulation of Christmas season stories in a series - often written so their publications coincide with the holidays out here in the real world - become an accellerator for a comics universe timeline. Most of the rest of the time the lives of comics characters proceed at a snail's pace compared to ours, many times with the events over the course of several issues -- months to us -- chronicling mere weeks, days or even hours. The constant source of flaws was that most comics relentlessly place the current issue in the current year, leaving would-be historians with Peter Parker in high school in 1963, college stories stretching well into the 70s, and here in 2005 a guy who's still locked at some vague spot in his late 20s well over 40 years after we first met him. While it's tempting to allow them to endure the years by claiming special protection from the same source that granted him his abilities, that does nothing to explain the relative ages of contemporaries or his eternally elderly Aunt May.

While more historical events -- let's say from WWII on back -- could often be neatly connected to specific years, months and dates, when it came to events in more contemporary times my attempts found me contenting myself with merely attempting to establish a chain of events and to pin down items that were occurring simultaneously. Noting events and establishing a sequence was as much as I felt I could usefully pin down.

Still, I've long had an admiration for Chris' dogged attempts to stick to calendar details - not to mention his restraint in keeping the timeline trim. Each of my long-ago attempts eventually devolved into prolix histories. I could barely help it, because it was all interesting to me, including why the characters did what they did.

DC comics did a continuity reboot in the mid 1980s (Crisis On Infinite Earths) and something of a clean-up event (Zero Hour) in 1994, both of which gave Chris more recent reference events to work out from, but as you'll see by going through his wonderful attempt, problems pile up and placement of events in terms of years since a given event (the first appearance of Superman, for instance) have become matters of greater and greater disagreement between an archivist like Chris and the official DC editorial line. Read through his site, and you'll see. It's all there.

None of this diminishes my enthusiasm for Chris' continued attempt to make it all fit. It's an expression of a true fan's loving spirit, and the ongoing effort warms this fan's heart.