10 Comic Book Events That Changed Everything

By Chris Quicksilver /

5. Flashpoint

Despite lacking the scope and impact of DC€™s various Crisis storylines, Flashpoint definitely fits the description of an event that changed everything. Without venturing too deeply into the events of the story, Flashpoint followed the recently revived Flash, Barry Allen, as he attempted to set right a world gone mad. In this new timeline, Batman was Thomas Wayne, whose wife Martha and son Bruce had been murdered and who had turned to crime fighting as a result. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman€™s Amazons and Aquaman€™s Atlanteans were engaged in a brutal and bloody war, whilst The Flash€™s classic enemy, Captain Cold, was now fighting crime as Citizen Cold. As a result of Barry€™s attempts to repair the timeline, three worlds were merged into one, the post-Crisis DCU, several of the publisher€™s Vertigo lines and the entirety of WildStorm Comics€™ output. The end result was The New 52, which resulted in September 2011€™s MAJOR re-branding project at DC. All the company€™s books were scaled back to Issue 1 and most were assigned new writer/artist teams into the bargain. Like it or not, Flashpoint is up there with the first Crisis in terms of story significance. It really did change everything...