Dates are less reliable in this section than in the Golden Age, and things start to get tricky… since obviously, these are the years when many Silver Age stories were originally published, yet those stories are no longer set in this period due to latter-day revisionism. In addition, this period keeps growing, as the present-day DCU “slides” frustratingly forward. (Indeed, while Zero Hour is an “anchor point” for dating some events, it’s a highly relative one, as it has itself unavoidably shifted—see 1997/Year15, in Section V, “The Modern Age.” Many events are clearly better dated relative to Superman’s debut.)
To accommodate these complications, I’ve introduced an extra feature to the Chronology starting at this point. Any entry with a solid dark-gray vertical bar at the far left of the text denotes events that may eventually be forced to slide further forward on account of additional present-day “time compression.” Entries without the bar should be able to remain comfortably in the years they currently occupy. The need for this distinction I find personally distasteful, and it underscores the intrinsic instability of DC’s current policy toward its characters’ history; when the artifice of fiction is so baldly exposed, it pulls readers out of the enchantment of the story. The instability must nevertheless be acknowledged, and this is the best way I could conceive to do so. It doesn’t eliminate all ambiguities, but it does help to illustrate where the stress points lie.
There’s still more need than usual for personal judgement calls, as will be apparent, and many of these events could arguably be adjusted relative to one another (though not out of this period). Far too many tales set shortly before or after Superman’s debut have been casually dated as “ten years ago,” in apparent deference to the ZH timeline rather than to any internal logic. I’ve tried to be diligent about stating my reasoning and citing sources.
Note also that the birth years of a disproportionately large number of DC’s characters lie within this period. Except where a date of birth marks other events of significance, though, I’ve generally chosen not to give those dates entries of their own, so as not to clutter the timeline. However, birth dates for all characters for whom such can be determined (along with current ages) can be found in Section VII, “You Say It’s Your Birthday.” And any curiosity about the dates assigned to those few characters whose births and/or early years are included here can likely be resolved by reference to the introduction to Section IV, “The Silver Age.”
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Last updated 11/13/2003.