The Weirdest Thing About DC Rebirth

So DC Rebirth has, for the most part, been fun and exciting, and I'm an old DC fan and I'm just the main target for it. Batman's not being a dick (yaaaaaaay), Superman has been an adventure, and Wonder Woman's got me more excited for the character than I have been in a while (and I love Wonder Woman as a concept). I'll admit to being disappointed in The Flash, but the reasons for that are for a whole other time. No, I'm here to talk about the thing I find weirdest in DC Rebirth. You see, Rebirth has all the signs of something that they didn't really plan out ahead of time, but rather something that they decided on after deciding they needed to win old fans back, and they'd fix all the inconsistencies in the process. And that's fine; that's part and parcel of serialized storytelling. But of all the "fixes" they're doing, there's one thing that bugs me.

See, Rebirth kicked off with the return of Wally West, a white dude who was one of the characters that older fans demanded return, Iris West's nephew and former protege of Barry Allen. (Incidentally, also, one of my favorite characters of all time, even if I only really care about one particular version of him.)

Terrible costume and everything.

But the current DC Universe already had a Wally West, a black teenager who was also Iris West's nephew and protege of Barry Allen.

So you had original Wally, who is meant to appeal to the older readers DC is trying to win back, and new Wally, who you can't get rid of because you're using him to get a whole new set of readers. You can't get rid of either without alienating a fan base, so you have to keep them both. So how do you reconcile this?

Well, they're cousins, of course. They were both named after Iris's grandpa.

Okay, full disclosure, my brother and I have the same first real name. And while even I think that's weird, okay, yeah, I acknowledge that it happens that people in the same family can be named the same. Where it gets weird is...

DC already has that. Green Lantern Hal Jordan's cousin is a superhero known as Air Wave. And his name is also Hal Jordan.

So DC has two sets featuring iconic superheroes who just so happen to be cousins and have the same first name? That's preposterous! And clearly, that's the single weirdest thing about DC Rebirth.