Mark D. White

Bleeding Cool has a lengthy interview with Scott Lobdell, chiefly about his Teen Titans relaunch – this part stood out to me as reassuring-yet-confusing:

Tim Drake is a perfect example.  Yes, he figured out Bruce’s secret identity and yes he became Robin and yes things happened in his past that prompted him to move on from that role and become Red Robin.  How long ago was that?  What brought him from there to issue one of Teen Titans?  I’d like to leave it vague enough that long time fans can take comfort in knowing a lot of the stories they loved still happened…and a lot of new readers (or fans who haven’t read the book in five or ten or twenty years) can sit down with issue one and feel they haven’t missed out on several decades of continuity with these characters and this world.

Similarly, Superboy comes to Teen Titans and his own series with a lot of his D.C.history in place.  He still showed up shortly after the Death of Superman, he is still the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor.  How we reconcile his past with the opening issues of Teen Titans and Superboy?   That, I’m afraid, has to remain vague for now (it is bad enough if someone in the audience shouts out the ending of the movie — imagine how much more depressing it would be if the writer shouted out the end of the movie four months before the movie was released!).

Are there changes and trims and tweaks — in some cases total re-imagining of characters?   Yes.   But, you’ll find, even with those characters, 95% per cent of them are totally recognizable.   (Bart isn’t a serial killer sentenced to the present from the 30th Century.   Cassie is still the daughter of archeologist Helena Sandsmark.)

OK–how can some characters undergo a "total re-imagining" yet "95% of them are totally recognizable"? Besides that, I find Lobdell's explanation reassuring, if only because Tim's background seems relatively unchanged (yet I don't see how a de-aging will be possible, but the inconsistency of that across the DCnU is one of the most frustrating things about the relaunch.