SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Superman #38 by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Sergio Davila and Vicente Cifuentes, on sale now.


The multi-title "Super-Sons of Tomorrow" arc enters its penultimate chapter in Superman #38, where its antagonist finds himself bouncing around through Hypertime. That villain, of course, is the Tim Drake of tomorrow, the one-time future Batman who now calls himself Savior.

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In his attempt to actually prevent his own future from coming into existence, the ironically-named Savior continues to find himself battling the present-day heroes. Of course, he's also fighting against the nature of Hypertime itself, which keeps attempting to pull him back into his own time. During his latest journey, which caps off the issue, future Tim bears witness to snippets of critical moments from key points in various timelines. Parts of the final page montage are familiar and iconic moments to readers, some are less so, but they're all likely important as Rebirth tumbles headlong towards the events of Doomsday Clock.

Crisis After Crisis

Most prominently featured, of course, are the two most memorable moments from DC Comics' first ever event, Crisis on Infinite Earths. George Pérez's classic cover image featuring a devastated Superman holding the recently-slain Supergirl is probably the first to be noticed. Immediately next to that is the sequence showing the moment of Barry Allen's death as he saves what's left of the original multiverse from the Anti-Monitor.

RELATED: Did ‘Super Sons of Tomorrow’ Give Evil Tim Drake a Hopeful Future?

The original Crisis is only one of the publisher's many Crisis events to make this all-star patchwork of DC continuity. There's also a nod to the controversial Identity Crisis, via the pivotal scene of Elongated Man cradling the lifeless body of his wife, Sue Dibny. Then, one of Final Crisis' most memorable moments is also represented, with Superman again holding a lifeless body, this time seemingly that of Batman. The Dark Knight, of course, wasn't really dead – and most of the aforementioned characters in the other Crisis stories didn't stay dead, either.

Zero Hour, Blackest Night, & More

Then there was the event that was put in place to fix everything that Crisis on Infinite Earths didn't, couldn't, or shouldn't have: Zero Hour. That miniseries introduced the recently broken bad Hal Jordan as Parallax, an intro which is also part of the continuity collage. This moment was an eventual precursor to Geoff Johns' revelation that Parallax was actually a personification of the avatar of fear, leading to it becoming a central figure of the Yellow Lanterns.

Speaking of Hal Jordan, the more recent Blackest Night series is also sampled. Longtime DC readers will recognize Nekron, creator of the black power rings that subsequently resulted in the macabre Black Lanterns – resurrected remains of deceased DC characters. Those aren't the only villains seen from the Green Lantern mythos, either. The Red Lantern Atrocitus is also seen, who himself bled into the DC Universe in the aftermath of the Sinestro Corps War event.

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Flashpoint

When the concept of Hypertime was first created by Grant Morrison and Mark Waid, its intent was to fix what the original Crisis – and Zero Hourstill couldn't. It was essentially a continuity catchall that postulated that all stories told "happened," somewhere, even if they were actually alternate timelines. That original essence of Hypertime clearly remains in place, as shown here, as well as recent storylines like the Batman/Flash crossover, "The Button."

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"The Button" leaned heavily on one particularly notable alternate reality storyline – Flashpoint, the event that ushered in the "New 52" continuity in 2011. Despite the onset of Rebirth, Flashpoint was shown to still be floating around in the aether of Hypertime, and is in fact in represented here. Not by way of the expected Thomas Wayne incarnation of Batman, who appeared in "The Button," but instead one of the series' less-remembered characters: the Flashpoint reality's Aquaman.

Rebirth, Metal & More

On the subject of Rebirth, one of DC Comics: Rebirth #1's most significant scenes is shown some love. More specifically, the familial love between Barry Allen and the once forgotten Wally West, as the moment of Wally's grand return to the DC Universe is presented here. Savior is getting quite the education on his trip through DC histories that were and were not – whether or not these moments still "exist," he wasn't a part of any of them and likely had no knowledge of many of the moments he's seen.

Tim even catches a glimpse of one continuity-altering event that's still ongoing: that of Dark Nights: Metal. The cameo features an image of The Red Death (Batman of Earth -52) and The Dawnbreaker (Batman of Earth -32). Most significant about this particular "cameo" is is the idea that the worlds of the Dark Multiverse are also encompassed within the scope of Hypertime rather than, perhaps, some sort of separate Dark Hypertime.

Curiously, there are some snippets that do not reflect game-changing moments from a large-scale event story. Jim Lee's cover from Batman #619, the final installment of his and Jeph Loeb's "Hush" arc, is given some prominence. There's also a shot of The Joker detached face, harkening back to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's "Death of the Family" arc during the duo's run on Batman.

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Do these particular Batman storylines portend some kind of special, still unknown significance to the fabric of Rebirth? As Metal has shown, Batman has played a far greater role in the history of the DC Universe than previously realized. Is there also some special relevance to these and other stories that has yet to be revealed? Is the cameo of The Joker a possible allusion to the oft-cited "Three Jokers" theory?

RELATED: Detective Comics: Is Tim Drake Beginning A Slow Descent Into Villainy? 

Moreover, do the higher profile event samplings also foreshadow some kind of special meaning to the overall continuity of Rebirth? Are these moments just a comparatively random selection of notable occurrences across the DCU spanning the last three decades? Or do each of these harbor a specific connection as part of a much larger, farther reaching story?

One More Trip Through Hypertime

One other curiosity is that this scene is not Tim's only trip through Hypertime this issue. He was pulled through once before in a previous scene, and while Savior himself wasn't shown then, the Titans of Tomorrow's pursuit of him was. In this scene, the Titans catch their own glimpse of Hypertime, but their visions are far more limited, with all moments shown solely related to Tim and his recent sojourn to present day.

Does this moment carry any kind of significance? Is Tim somehow privy to past history that was kept from his colleagues? Have Tim's actions in "A Lonely Place of Living" and "Super Sons of Tomorrow" somehow succeeded in disrupting continuity, enabling only him to witness these past events?

There's still one chapter remaining, so there's opportunity for some of these head-scratching questions to be addressed. Part five of "Super-Sons of Tomorrow" appears, fittingly enough, in Super-Sons #12, on sale January 17.