What is the pre-Infinity Crisis timeline thingy with DC comics about?
For many years, the DC universe was in serious disarray. Stories than conflicted with other stories, waaaaayyyyy too much Krytonite, etc. In 1986, DC published the 12-part “Crisis on Infinite Earths” mini-series in an attempt to bring it all together. Worked for a while. In the early 90’s, they had to do it again with the “Zero Hour” saga. Worked for a while…
Presumably what you’re referring to is “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
Assuming I’m correct, here’s the background you want:
DC Comics published stories featuring many super-heroes in the 1930’s and 1940’s, the so-called “Golden Age” of super-hero comics. In the early 1950’s, super-hero comics fell out of favor, and soon, the only ones being published continually were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Aquaman.
In the 1960’s (actually, starting in 1958), DC decided to revive some previous characters whom they had stopped publishing. They brought back the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and others, with radically different looks. This is known as the “Silver Age” of comics.
Not long after the new Flash debuted, a number of old comics fans wrote in mentioning their memories of the original Flash. The writer decided to re-introduce the Golden Age heroes as having lived on a “parallel Earth,” which was from that point on known as Earth-2. Soon, many heroes met their Earth-2 counterparts. The Silver Age Justice League of America and the Golden Age Justice Society of America met one another annually.
But weren’t Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman members of both teams? So DC separated those heroes as well into a Golden Age and Silver Age version, with slight, subtle differences between the two…but it was often tough to figure out what stories took place on which Earth, since those folks had been published continuously.
Also muddying the waters was DC’s acquisition of other comics companies. They bought out Quality Comics and introduced their Golden Age heroes as having been living on Earth-X; they bought out Fawcett Comics and introduced their heroes as living on Earth-S. Soon, DC’s history was riddled with numerous parallel Earths, characters who had been around for decades but didn’t age as much as other characters (the Golden Age ones) had clearly aged, characters who appeared in stories on both Earths, characters whose various versions were ambiguous…you get the drift.
So DC Comics decided that they would clear things up once and for all. They decided that in 1985, the 50th Anniversary of the first published DC comic, they’d feature every super-hero in a series called “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” with the end result intended to be that there would only be one Earth, its history an amalgam of the others, only one version of any continuously-published character (i.e., one Superman, but numerous Flashes), and a consistent time-line. This twelve-issue series was followed up by a two-volume set called “History of the DC Universe,” which laid out the time frame for the events in this merged universe.
DC also used this as an opportunity to modernize their super-heroes. Many of the heroes had accumulated a history that was both cumbersome to remember and, often, ridiculous to think about, given the difference between the publishing audience between the 1960’s and the 1980’s. So Superman, Wonder Woman and to a lesser extent, Batman, had their published histories prior to the Crisis scrapped, and new, simpler, more modernized histories established. Also, DC began publishing a series called “Secret Origins” which worked this same magic for more obscure heroes, especially Golden Age ones.
So when people speak of DC Comics characters, you will often hear them make a distinction between “pre-Crisis” and “post-Crisis” versions of the character.
Then, of course, there’s the Golden Age Bill Clinton, featured on the cover of this week’s Onion.
Unfortunately, they didn’t include their 30th Century in it.
So Legion of Superheroes was left with some major glitches. For instance - Where in the world did they get Superboy?
Luckily (for those of us who enjoy Legion but thought the convolutions they were now going thru sucked), Zero Hour redid the 30th Century completely, resetting the Legion, getting rid of the convolutions needed to reconsile it with the 20th, getting rid of the silly ‘clones’ of the Legion (who weren’t…I never really got that aspect of Legionaires…).
Now DC actually has a consistant history. 
Although Kingdom Come and followups are working on messing it all up again. 
Tengu:
Trust me, I know the Legion. I’m the creator of The Comprehensive Legion of Super-Heroes Hypertext Reference File. I was merely answering the question to the point that it was asked. To get into the Legion mess, you have to mention the Time Trapper, the Pocket Universe, the Glorith/Valor retcon, and Zero Hour (and possibly Hawkworld as well). The guy asks “What’s Crisis”, I explain Crisis.
Chaim Mattis Keller
re: Hawkworld.
Was this when Hawkman became non-human? (I know he’s been a Thanagarian since the Silver Age, but Thanagarians were Tellurian to seven decimal points.) I only ask this because I noticed how he was pictured in Kingdom Come. I mean, look at the size of him. And that hawk-head isn’t a mask anymore…
Neat! But I felt it was neccessary to include the glitches caused by the Crisis, no criticism of you intended.
Doctor Fidelius:
No, Hawkworld is a miniseries that pretty much erased the Silver Age Hawkman from continuity and had him introduced into DC history at a much later date. From what I understand, the writer of the series intended it to be a modernization of Hawkman’s history taking place in the past, but the editors liked that portrayal of the character so much that they wanted it to take place in the DC Universe present.
Hawkman was and still is (to some degree) human/Thanagarian. In the most recent Hawkman series, it was revealed that some primal hawk-god occasionally chose avatars on the mortal plane, and this is what both the Golden Age and Modern Age Hawkmen were. At one point during the series, Hawkman sort of began channelling the hawk-god and previous avatars directly, and I suppose this might have begun making him less human. The exact nature of the Kingdom Come Hawkman is mysterious; Kingdom Come is, in any case, merely a potential future, not a certainty.
At the moment, Hawkman went into another dimension at the end of his series. The only Hawk-person in the DC Universe right now is the new Hawkgirl, a great-niece of the original, Golden Age Hawkgirl, and she is a member of the currently-published JSA. It’s my understanding that next year, the whole Hawkman continuity mess will be dealt with in the JSA book.
Chaim Mattis Keller