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Is Hypertime Feasible?

Or, What the *!@? was Mark Waid Thinking?

by Cecil Adkins

I. Could This Really Work?

I've received a few e-mails that say things along the lines of, "Well, I understand what you're saying -- about how Hypertimelines can interweave with other Hypertimelines to affect changes and mess with continuity -- but I don't agree that it's a feasible way to tell a story..."

Whoa. I didn't say it was feasible, either. My main goal was to show how Hypertime differs from the Pre-Crisis Multiverse, and, judging by the e-mails I've gotten, I think I'm succeeding in that. But to prove that Hypertime could actually work from a storytelling point of view -- that's a much bigger challenge.

II. Why? What's the Big Deal?

The "big deal" is that Hypertime can turn continuity into a big mass of jumbled histories and retconned character origins and dead characters suddenly alive again with no reason given, and... well, you get the point. Hypertime's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness -- it has the ability to compensate for any continuity glitch, no matter how big or small, through its interweaving timelines. There are two potential problems here:

• sloppy creators. Some are worried that because Hypertime can explain away continuity errors so easily, it will be used as an excuse by writers or editors who aren't interested in researching their characters, or who are just plain lazy.
• massive continuity upheaval. Taken to its full extreme, the interweaving of the presumably infinite timelines under the Hypertime system would make reading any DCU book a near impossible task. Continuity would change from issue to issue, and maybe even from page to page. In a universe where history can be retroactively altered without anyone's knowledge or say so, how can we the readers be expected to understand what's going on?

Let's look at each of these problems separately...

III. Sloppy Creators Or, "Those Lazy Bums..."

I mentioned this problem in The Original Theory of Hypertime, in the example of Lois Lane's papercut. Let's use another example, and delve a little deeper.

Let's say that Todd Nauck, penciller of Young Justice, is up late one night working on the book. He's pretty tired, he's had a long day, he's falling asleep faster than Ronald Reagan at an important government function. Try as he might, he just can't remember which ear Superboy wears his earring in. Left? Right? Both? Now, he could go look it up, but if he gets up from his desk, the only place he's going is to bed. So, he just says, what the heck? and incorrectly draws the earring in Superboy's right ear.

Somehow, this gets past the editor and goes to print, and everything's okay, until a few fans who notice stuff like this (myself included, I'm afraid) see the glitch. Most would probably let it go, being such a minor point, but some would bombard the DC offices with letters pointing out the error, and even one or two misguided souls seeking No-Prizes. Backed into a corner, DC would have no choice but to call in. . . Hypertime. Yep, Hypertime: the fix-all. With Hypertime, you could just say that a Hypertimeline which differed from the "one, true" DCU timeline only because of Superboy's earring choice, merged with the "one, true timeline" momentarily, and the Superboy in that issue of YJ was different because of the changing timelines. (For Rip Hunter's exact words indicating that this is what happens with Hypertime, see below.)

See? Minor continuity glitches, which are made all the time due to human error, and which should be expected by a company employing dozens of creators on dozens of titles, could be wiped away with one word: Hypertime. If Hypertime can do this, some fans speculate that Hypertime will do this, and that Hypertime will relieve some pressure from creators to know their characters, leading to sloppy work.

IV. Continuity in Chaos Or, "Stop the Insanity!!"

A bigger problem, in my humble opinion, isn't the minor continuity glitches that can be explained away, but the wide-ranging continuity retconns that should be expected when Hypertimelines collide.

Let's look at what makes Hypertime different from a "normal" divergent timeline system:

"Events of importance often cause divergent "tributaries" to branch off the main timestream. . . On occasion, those tributaries return -- sometimes feeding back into the central timeline, other times overlapping it briefly before charting an entirely new course. . . These Hypertime fluxes. . . these carryovers from one kingdom to another. . . let them simply be a reminder. . . that the lives we lead are forever part of a greater legend."--Rip Hunter (italics mine)

If divergent timelines are returning to the main timestream, and becoming one with it, then there are bound to be continuity changes. In fact, this interweaving of timelines is why Hypertime can be used to explain away continuity glitches (see above). Carried to its extreme, Hypertime would feature an infinite number of Hypertimelines, each of which is capable of feeding back into the "one, true timeline," sometimes only momentarily, sometimes for a long while, and sometimes forever. With this haphazard timestream interaction, there's no way anyone could keep track of DCU continuity from issue to issue.

What if a Hypertimeline, containing a universe in which the Hourman virus from DC One Million succeeded in killing all life on earth merged with the "one, true timeline" of the DCU, in which the Hourman virus was stopped? What would that timeline be like? Would the earth be devoid of life, or would it be unaffected? Would only half the earth's population be dead?

For a more staggering example, let's take a Hypertimeline in which the Crisis on Infinite Earths never happened. In this Hypertimeline, a Multiverse (similar, for all intents and purposes, to the pre-Crisis Multiverse we used to read about) lives on. What would happen if this Hypertimeline were to feed back into the "one, true timeline"? Surely the "Multiverse part" would overpower the "single universe part," right? Maybe not. What would really happen? No one can say for sure. (Interestingly, if this were to happen, it could effectively bring back the pre-Crisis Multiverse as the status quo for the DCU, which is what some people mistakingly take Hypertime to be.)

No one really knows what the ramifications would be for timelines that merge and separate and merge and separate, ad infinitum. The only sure thing is that no one could keep the DCU's history straight for long if it could change at the drop of a hat.

V. Will Hypertime Really be that Bad? Or, "Hey, that Y2K thing wasn't a big deal, after all..."

My gut instinct is that Hypertime is not going to be the end of the DCU as we know it. The second problem mentioned above is really the biggest, but I don't think it'll ever affect the DCU on a permanent basis. There may be a story in which the continuity of the DCU's "one, true timeline" is threatened, but c'mon. DC Comics still has to sell their books, and they still have to merchandise their characters. They're not going to do something so foolish as make the DCU completely unreadable (although look at what the X-Men's convoluted history has done for Marvel :) ). To quote the Federation President from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: "Let us define progress to mean that just because a thing can be done, it does not necessarily follow that it must be done."

Yes, Hypertime could cause massive chronal upheaval, but I don't think it's going to. The feasibility of DC Comics' financial standings is far more important than the scope of what Hypertime can do.

As for the first problem, that of lazy creators, well, there's nothing stopping them, I suppose, form using Hypertime as a crutch. I don't think most of them will, because of editorial control and personal ethics. And if they do, it's up to us the readers to let them know they screwed up.

Conclusion

Hypertime isn't going to be used to its full extreme (unless it's used this way in a story which will be resolved in a finite amount of time). It will be used as a plot point in stories (hopefully sparingly) and as an in-story explanation for normal, everyday continuity glitches that pop up naturally.

Bottom line... Hypertime is a good thing, or at the very least, not a bad thing.

So stop worrying, and enjoy your comics. That's what they're for!