On this date in 2020, in the pages of Superman: Heroes #1, Booster Gold was among the first to tell the world that Superman had always secretly been...

Everyone in the DCU would know that Superman was Clark Kent for almost two full years... until Lex Luthor and Manchester Black forced most to forget that fact in Action Comics #1050. In that issue, Batman makes it clear that "the Justice League, reservists, and the Titans all have psychic defenses set up by Martian Manhunter," so we can be sure that Booster Gold still remembers.

The real question is how he knew something that everyone would forget.

The answer to that, I think, is that the psychic suggestion that forced this forgetfulness influences living minds to ignore any evidence to the contrary that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person, but it does not actually erase that evidence. Considering how widespread the psychic suggestion is, it is probable everyone just stopped talking about it.

Therefore, the historians of the 25th century, unaffected directly by the psychic effect, will learn from primary sources exactly when Superman revealed his identity, and a young Michael "Booster" Carter will be taught exactly when Superman revealed his secret identity without realizing that the information was ever again restricted.

See? No retcon is necessary. There's nothing to see here. Move along.

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Last week DC published its latest anthology one-shot, DC's I Know What You Did Last Crisis, which contains eight 10-page stories set during eight different crisis events. The third story is titled "At the Point of Vanishing,". Written by Matthew Levine with art by Jordi Tarragona and Luis Guerrero, this story is a... reimagining of events originally presented in 1994's Zero Hour issues #3 and #2. (Contrary to the conventional method of incrementally increasing issue numbers, Zero Hour issues counted backwards, starting with issue 5 and ending with issue 0.)

Now, I don't so much mind the revisionist history here. Zero Hour: Crisis in Time did come out three decades ago, and a lot of what happened then isn't particularly relevant now. So a little retconning is fine, maybe even useful. I have no problems with the change that it was Sandman, not Flash, who survived to tell the tale of the Justice Society's fateful encounter with Extant. Whatever. This isn't a Flash blog.

But it is a Booster Gold blog, and I am a bit of a stickler for Booster Gold continuity.

Which brings us to this panel:

DC's I Know What You Did Last Crisis #1 page 40

The costume worn by Waverider here belongs to Michael Carter, who became Waverider beginning in 2015's Convergence: Booster Gold #2. That Waverider was presumably removed from DC continuity following the Rebirth event in 2016 where the histories of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths and post-Flashpoint Booster Golds were merged.

Matthew Ryder was the one and only Waverider at the time of publication of Zero Hour. His costume was simpler (and dare I say, without fear of offending artist Dan Jurgens who designed both characters, much better). But in the original panel being homaged, Waverider isn't even Waverider. He's Extant!

Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #2 page 2

One of the things we learn in Zero Hour is that Extant (also known as Monarch, also known as Hawk, also known as Hank Hall) will at some point in the future kill Waverider and steal his power. If this sounds familiar, maybe it's because stealing Waverider's time-warping power will be a plot point again in 52, Time Masters: Vanishing Point, and, of course, Convergence. Don't worry; Waverider usually gets better. (Time travel is a tricky business.)

Of course, since this story is itself a retcon, maybe it is also retconning Zero Hour such that the Booster Gold who became Waverider in Convergence is the one that Extant killed and stole powers from. Or maybe, as I expect, this is just a simple artist's error. I mean, you can't expect everyone to have read thirty-year-old comic books, can you?

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