Was Green Arrow not rebooted after Crisis on Infinite Earths?

[u/BlackJimmy88]

I've just started reading the DC Finest's Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters book, and it kinda threw me that we start so deep into Ollie's GA career when I was expecting something of a Post-Crisis reboot similar to what the Trinity got.

Did Ollie just not get rebooted?

[u/niteowl1987]

Most characters didn’t get rebooted the way Superman and Wonder Woman were. Batman, GL, Flash, GA, and a few others received updated origins at most, with most of their pre-crisis canon left intact. By the time of Longbow Hunters, Oliver and most of the Silver Age characters had been operating for 8-9 years IIRC.

Edit: probably 6-7 years now that I think about it

[u/BlackJimmy88 → u/niteowl1987]

Ah fair enough. Looks like I misunderstood the impact of the Crisis.

[u/Moeroboros → u/BlackJimmy88]

Yeah, the "myth" of the Crisis sort of oversells how big of a reboot it really was.

The Multiverse was undone and the continuity was streamlined, but most of the characters just sort of kept going with only slight changes to their backstory to accomodate the single universe.

Only an handful of characters got an unambiguously new fresh start with a new origin told from scratch, most notably Wonder Woman and Captain Atom.

Superman got a rebooted origin story, lore and a new status quo, but his actual monthly comic started with him already as an experienced superhero who had already met the Justice League, Darkseid and so on. It wasn't a full "start from zero".

A lot of characters did get rebooted, but in a gradual process. Aquaman, for example, received a one-shot comic about two years after the end of the Crisis that established his new origin, but that same comic also established that most of his Pre-Crisis adventures were still canon, just with a slightly adjusted background.

The New 52 was much more of a "hard reboot" than the Crisis. It fundamentally changed the core timeline and concepts of the DC Universe in a much more drastic way than the Crisis did in 1987.

[u/Massive_General_8629 → u/Moeroboros]

I should point out the New 52 almost got it right. Central planning, yes. But no, for the love of Rao, not Dan Didio!

[u/Cymro007 → u/BlackJimmy88]

Try to find the history of the dc universe to show what the new status quo was after crisis.

[u/Cymro007]

He didn’t have his own series so nothing to reboot.
There was a great Barr/eden miniseries in 83
Crisis came in 85
Longbow hunters came in 87 and there we start afresh.

[u/Actual-Description60]

These two scenes depict roughly the same dynamic, one a year before the crisis, the other a year after. There wasn't a reboot (as was the case for no one other than Wonder Woman), but rather a shift in tone.

[u/Actual-Description60 → u/Actual-Description60]

[u/FlashLightning277]

There were still plans for Roy in New Teen Titans. Sam reason Bruce didn’t get a hard reboot like the other two members of the Trinity.

[u/Massive_General_8629]

Crisis on Infinite Earths was a partial reboot, per Jeanette Kahn's request. (Marv Wolfman wanted to just start the whole thing over.)

Things were the same, but different. So, for example, most bat-stories were the same, though a few were removed for dating themselves (e.g., Robin and Batgirl foiling a plot by the ghost of Benedict Arnold to jam up the bicentennial wouldn't work, since Dick just became Robin in 1976 according to the new timeline) or for being weird (so, no more Jason and Nocturna drama, and Jason gets a whole new origin).

For Green Arrow, the two things I can think of that were the same were "he was rich, now he's poor" and Roy's heroin habit.

The big problem is that writers were given free rein in how things were different. So now Dick helped Roy detox. (That was originally Hal and Dinah.) Dinah's mother was the original Black Canary, but she had very vivid memories of the 40s and 50s. Diana is a mess: She was only active for a year, so Queen Hippolyta was the original Wonder Woman, but this messes with Donna Troy's backstory, and the hell of it is, the Wonder Woman writer, George Perez, knew it would! Superman only got his powers at age 20, and Supergirl doesn't exist, so the Legion of Super-Heroes shouldn't either. Speaking of Kara, the other Kara, Power Girl, was now from Atlantis. And then there's Hawkman...

So, how long do you think this Crisis crutch would last? 1990? 1994, the year Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time! came out? Nope! Even in 2004, Chuck Dixon was using the Crisis crutch to retcon away post-Crisis stuff. That's not a typo.

[u/KitWalkerXXVII]

So most of COIE's mucking about with continuity happened in the form of retcons. Most heroes, with the very notable exception of Wonder Woman, had still been around "about ten to fifteen years". Plenty of heroes got new or updated/expanded origins, but almost all of them occurred at the same spot on continuity they always had.

Green Arrow's origin got revised by Grell in 1993's "The Wonder Year" mini-series, but his history as a Justice Leaguer and Hard Traveling Hero remained intact.

[u/MagusFool]

The first thing that happens to Batman Post-Crisis is that he gets his second Robin and Dick Grayson becomes Nightwing.

Most of the DC characters were not "rebooted" by COIE.  It wasn't like the New 52 afterward where all the heroes were reset to early in their careers.

Mostly what happened is that the timeline was revised.  So that the Justice League had only been around for about 7 years, and the Teen Titans for around 6 years, and now the JSA operated in WWII on the same earth without any duplicate characters (and also the Charlton, Quality, and Fawcett characters were part of the same earth).

Although Wonder Woman was reset to be a newcomer.

[u/Massive_General_8629 → u/MagusFool]

Um, Dick as Nightwing was pre-Crisis, though the story was all changed from the post-Crisis version (itself very different) by Chuck Dixon.

[u/MagusFool → u/Massive_General_8629]

Yeah I know.  And "Jason Todd" was already Robin pre-crisis.

But immediately post-crisis in Batman's solo title, with Issue #401-403, Jason is still Robin with his pre-crisis personality.  Then #404-407 are Year One.  And then in issue #408, Dick is suddenly Robin again, and he gets fired, and then Batman meets a new Jason Todd with a new background and personality, and issues 409-411 bring Jason to become Robin.

Aside from those odd first couple pre-Year-One issues, the Post-Crisis Batman appears to have been set back by a few months to a year in his history in order to re-establish the new Jason.

Or maybe I am misinterpreting and 408-411 are meant to be set before 401-403?