I feel like I say this every year, but now at your Local Comic Shop:

This softcover reprints the hardcover DC Comics: Generations, which was itself a reprint of Generations: Shattered and Generations: Forged. If you've been waiting to read these issues until DC knocked $10 off the price, your day has come!

By the way, in the very recent Justice League 2022 Annual #1 — yeah, it's an awkward name, but at least it doesn't have any colons in it, so... progress? — Batman recognized an accidentally time-displaced O.M.A.C. when the rest of the Justice League didn't. Says Batman:

words by Brian Michael Bendis; art by Sanford Greene, Matt Herms, Josh Reed

Is this evidence that the Batman who was plucked from the past for Generations is the same Batman now a member of the modern day Justice League? I choose to think so. (I don't know how, but time travel can do weird things to continuity.)

It sure seems like DC Comics: Generations has become must-read material for DC continuity wonks. Get it while it's hot!

And while you're at your Local Comic Shop, if you're interested in following Booster's appearances in Human Target, know that he gets a name drop in this week's issue 5. It's only this one panel:

words by Tom King; art by Greg Smallwood, Clayton Cowles

Speaking of continuity, I can't say I care for the rest of this issue's events and characterizations. But, hey, Greg Smallwood's art always delivers!

Enjoy your shopping!

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Today at your Local Comic Shop:

This hardcover reprint of Generations: Shattered and Generations: Forged is being called DC Comics: Generations because DC can't bear the thought of putting out a comic without a colon in the title.

According to solicitations, this book contains only those two comics plus the related prequel story from Detective Comics #1027. If you'd bought those three books when they came out like I did, you'd have paid $29.97 (or more, if also like me, you bought multiple covers of each issue... 2020 was a very lonely year). DC Comics: Generations has a cover price of $29.99. Two cents is small price for the convenience of having the whole story in one book.

And while you're at your Local Comic Shop, you'll also find Booster Gold in the Tales from the Dark Multiverse II collection, which reprints the alternate reality horror story from Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Wonder Woman: War of the Gods #1. If that's not enough colons for you, you're going to have to find a different publisher.

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You may recall that this time last week, I asked whether the "Linearverse" introduced in Generations Shattered and Generations Forged should count as continuity. That question got answered (in a roundabout way) when earlier this week Russ Burlingame took a break from writing books about movies to interview Generations writers Dan Jurgens, Robert Venditti, and Andy Schmidt in a spiritual successor to his old "Gold Exchange" column for ComicBook.com.

ComicBook: The idea that realities have always been there, just out of sight, rather than actually being destroyed, is a revelation to the characters here -- but is that how you view the worlds that are destroyed in each subsequent Crisis event? Certainly it's how The CW explicitly dealt with their post-Crisis multiverse.

Dan Jurgens: I hadn't thought about it that way, but I certainly see your point!

For me, on a personal level, I find it harder to accept the notion of entire planes of reality being destroyed, only to be recreated again. “Hiding” them or making them inaccessible actually seems much more believable. The amount of energy required to destroy and recreate universes is tremendous, after all.

Plus, we weren't going to change anything. The Linearverse was meant to stay much the way it had been, which is a place that is belt around DC's published history.

Robert Venditti: To steal from Dan a bit, I hadn't really thought of that. I don't know if it's important to me that definitive explanations are made. Mostly, I want to leave toys in the sandbox for other creative teams to play with. I think we've done that.

Andy Schmidt: One of the things that I generally want to shy away from as a creator is writing over someone else's work or saying that it never happened. Because it happened for the reader and for the creators who put those stories together. They're real and they're important to someone.

Most of the comics I grew up reading that got me into comics in the first place have been retconned so they never happened, but they're still what made me fans of those characters in the first place. So, for me, it's just kind of a respect thing for fans and creators both. If it's real to you — I should treat it as such. Generations Shattered and Forged gave us a platform to re-validate those "hidden" stories as you called them. To let readers and creators know we remember, and we still love those stories, while also crafting something new to introduce those takes on characters to new fans. It's challenging and it's fun and I think it's upbeat in the approach and hopefully in its execution.

I like the "it is what you want it to be" approach to the DC Universe — which in the past has made such titles as Formerly Known As The Justice League possible — so I'll choose to consider the story canon. Thanks, guys! I think I'm going to like this Linearverse.

Elsewhere in the interview, the creators also talk about why they chose the characters they chose to include in the story, as well as the long shadow Zero Hour cast on Generations. I recommend you read the whole article yourself at ComicBook.com.

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I said at the start of the week that I wanted to talk about Generations Forged, so if you haven't read that yet (or for that matter Generations Shattered or Dark Knights: Death Metal ), beware that spoilers follow.

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You've been warned.

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You know from cover (and timing) of Generations Shattered, this story takes place in the DC Omniverse created in the wake of Dark Nights: Death Metal.

Dark Nights: Death Metal #7, January 2021

As if the Omniverse wasn't a big enough concept to take in, it only gets bigger. ("Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy," explainsthe Hitchhikers Guide the Galaxy.)

At the end of Generations Forged, as Waverider returns the Batman of 1939 (abducted by Kamandi in Detective Comics #1000) to his native time, he introduces us to another concept:

Generations Forged #1, February 2021

Waverider goes on to imply that the Batman of 1939 will continue fighting into the modern day, that the Batmen of all publishing ages (Golden, Silver, Modern) are the same character (who may or may not have memories of all of his adventures.)

While the Omniverse just increases the size of the bucket for potential story settings, the Linearverse is a radical revision to understanding DC Comics' publishing history.

For GamesRadar.com, Michael Doran has already written several articles on the implications of this revelation, each quoting Generations Forged architect Dan Jurgens on his intent with this new Linearverse.

"It's fair to say that what we built here, the Linearverse, is its own universe that can fit into the larger context of DC's Omniverse," explains Jurgens. "It's a place where some unique and individual stories can be told."

Jurgens himself admits that this is an imperfect solution to an artificial problem. Comic book fans have always struggled with reconciling how Dick Grayson could be a boy in 1940 and still a young man in 2020 or how both Superboy and Superman could each have co-existing adventures for most of 80 years. These are only "problems" when trying to reconcile the lives of fictional characters with the passage of nonfictional time, but they are problems that fans have nonetheless tried to resolve for as long as we've been reading and relating to new monthly comics.

I don't mean to suggest that I think the Linearverse is necessarily any worse than any other attempt at reconciling the impossible. From my restricted point of view as the chronicler of the adventures of multiversal time-traveler Booster Gold, I've always attempted to to harmonize the many incarnations of Booster Gold onto a single entity, albeit an occasionally fractured and splintered one. That's no so different from what happens in the Linearverse.

So, to finally get to the serious question I referenced in my post title, what I want to know is whether the adventure told in Generations Shattered and Generations Forged happened to a Booster Gold in a previously existing continuity or not? The rules as explained for the new Linearverse would seem to suggest it happened to all known Boosters while at the same time happening to none of them, or maybe only those that exist inside a Linearverse that reflects the sum of all other universes.

For reasons I can't quite express, I don't find any of these options entirely satisfying (thought that may not be surprising coming from someone who obsessively tracks super hero minutia for a hobby).

Perhaps there is no definitive answer to my question, at least not yet. As GameRadar reports,

"There are all sorts of stories and adventures worth exploring in the Linearverse," Jurgens concludes. "If readers like what they've seen, react well to the concept, and ask for more, it might just happen."

Like so much else, maybe the answer to my question will only become clearer with time.

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Assuming you live in a place where your weekly comics shipments haven't been affected by blizzards or power outages or shipping delays, you'll find this at your Local Comic Shop today:

Despite having a different title and being marked as issue number one, this is the second half of Generations: Shattered, released last month. You can find a preview online at comic-watch.com.

Also available today is Future State: Suicide Squad #2, which continues the adventures of Gold Beetle. Her connection to Booster is made clearer in this issue, with a brief cameo by none other than our beloved Chronal Crusader plus a significant role for Skeets in the era of DC One Million!

Buy both of them and make Skeets happy.

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