Grumpy Old Fan | Lincoln's log: lessons from Legacies

There's a weird little sequence in the middle of DC Universe: Legacies #3 when the

narration's timeline goes all hazy and oblique, in order to move the story from

sometime in the Eisenhower/Kennedy years right into the "X years ago" of modern

continuity. Because Legacies tracks some sixty-five years of costumed crimefighting,

this sequence bridges the gap between the Justice Society's retirement and

Superman's debut.

"Hazy and oblique" are also good words for describing DC's approach to long-term

continuity. The history of the DC Universe is well-settled up to the early 1950s,

but past then it becomes elastic. This is something we've come to expect: fudging

the calendar keeps our heroes both as experienced and as youthful as they need to

be. However, each passing year also widens the gap between the end of the Golden Age

(early ‘50s) and the beginning of the Silver (thought to be 12-15 years ago).

Through reader-identification character Paul Lincoln,* DCUL's writer (and longtime

DC favorite) Len Wein aims to put a human face on all those four-color adventures.

That sounds like the premise of 1994′s Marvels and its spiritual descendant Astro

City. Really, though, any halfway-entertaining super-survey needs a narrator with a

recognizable point of view. Even 1986′s History of the DC Universe, which was

basically a series of George Pérez pinups arranged in chronological order, took its

florid prose ostensibly from Harbinger's meditations on the nature of heroism.

Here, then, is our Mr. Lincoln, would-be juvenile delinquent turned Metropolis cop,

whose life is changed after an encounter with the Golden Age Atom and Sandman. Over

the course of ten issues, Paul goes from street kid to nursing home, marrying his

childhood sweetheart and becoming a father along the way, all the while constantly

and steadfastly affirming his faith in DC's costumed crusaders. As a protagonist,

Paul makes a decent narrator; but Paul isn't exactly DCUL's main problem. It's

almost as if Wein isn't confident in Paul's ability to carry the narrative, so Paul

is constantly distracted by various superheroic milestones. Moreover, either Paul is

a classic Unreliable Narrator, or Wein and company are doing some serious rewriting

of established DC continuity.