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Question received on Fri, February 16, 2018 11:55:26 AM

Kyle writes...

Hey, I'm a big fan of your shows and I was wondering how in-depth you get with certain things regarding timelines, especially in Young Justice. So:

1. For fictional cities - Metropolis, Gotham, etc. - do you have a general outline of the city's history planned out? Or would you only come up/research that kind of stuff if the story needed it? Do you use the same way of thinking when dealing with fictional countries, like Bialya or Qurac?

2. How do you come up with the ages of certain characters? For example, was there a specific reason you and the others working on the show decided to have Dick be 13 in Season One, while Miss Martian and Superboy (who, in the comics, are usually younger, around Tim's age) are 16? (Not that I'm complaining! I really like the change up, and it definitely works for the show, I'm just curious about what made you want Dick to be the youngest on the Team at that point.) Did it just feel right? Or did you base it off Bruce's age? Or vice-versa? (Sorry if this is confusing you. Basically, which elements dictate what the age of a character should be?)

3. For characters like Wonder Woman, Ra's al Ghul, Vandal Savage, Klarion, etc., I know you keep relative track of how long they've been alive, but do you also keep track of what age they are biologically? Rather than chronologically?

4. Are there any real-life incidents that didn't happen on Earth-16? I know you said that 9/11, the World Wars, etc. have happened, but was there any big time incident that didn't? For example: the Titanic, or the Columbine Shooting, or the 2011 Japan earthquake.

5. Not really a question, just me thanking you for you and the Young Justice crew for all your hard work! And thank you personally for keeping up with and adding more of your guys' amazing ideas to your timeline, because, honestly, in my opinion, timelines - especially deciphering them with every little bit of info - is really fun for me.

Greg responds...

1a. No.

1b. Exactly.

1c. Yep.

The only exception is Star City, where I have a little more background info, because I developed my thinking on Star City based on a number of proposals for never-made comic book series that I pitched to DC in the mid 1980s, including the almost-made BLACK CANARY mini-series, a STAR CITY proposal, and a proposal for a new SUPERGIRL character unrelated to Kara Zor-El (during a period when John Byrne didn't want a Kryptonian Supergirl but DC wanted to maintain the trademark name - before Byrne solved the problem himself by creating the Matrix-Supergirl).

2. It mostly just felt right for the show we were developing. A young Dick with the most experience was an important element to the character and the character dynamics of our first season. Generally, I try to make each new character as young as I think I can get away with, given the needs of character and story. This is because we know that, unlike a typical comic book, we're going to let every character move/age through time, so the younger they are when they start, the younger they get to stay (relatively) as our seasons progress.

3. Yes.

4. As far as I know, everything real world also happened on Earth-16. EXCEPT for the 2019-2020-2021 COVID pandemic. Because it began too late for us to incorporate it into Season Four, in my head, the COVID-19 pandemic started exactly one year later on Earth-16 than it did here on Earth-Prime.

5. Thanks for your kind words. We do try our best!