Does DC Generations: Shattered #1 preview offer clues to how it fits with Infinite Frontier?

DC's Generations: Shattered #1 goes on sale next Tuesday (January 5) on a busy and important day for the publisher, as it also marks the grand finale of Dark Nights: Death Metal and the beginning of the two-month event Future State, which both then beget March's launch of the Infinite Frontier era.

Those latter three events - Death Metal #7, Future State, and Infinite Frontier are all interrelated according to DC, but how Generations: Shattered #1 and February's companion Generations: Forged #1 by writers Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt, Robert Venditti, and a roster of all-star artists fit into the mix is a little less certain and seemingly up for interpretation.

And as Newsarama consistently reminds readers, if DC is leaving it up for interpretation as to where and how Generations fits into the continuity mix, that's entirely on purpose.

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As Newsarama readers check out the first five pages to Shattered #1 above, let's review what we know about Generations:

1.) Shattered and Forged are a reimagined/repurposed/reconfigured version of what once was DC's big pre-Covid-19/pre-editorial rejiggering 2020 event - a series of five monthly one-shots preceded by a Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) special (which was preceded by a Scott Snyder and Bryan Hitch story in Wonder Woman #750) that was intended to reframe DC continuity into one streamlined timeline and was "the charge towards DC's future."

2.) May's solicited FCBD special and Generation One: Age of Mysteries were never released (and subsequent issues were never solicited) but Generations resurfaced in a story titled 'Generations: Fractured' in September's Detective Comics #1027 anthology celebration, which originally teased the story continuing in 'Generations: Future State #1.'

The reference has subsequently been edited to 'Generations: Shattered #1' on digital platforms.

Generations: Shattered #1 cover — (Image credit: Lee Bermejo (DC))

3.) While DC has said Shattered #1 "explodes out of Death Metal," it has not referenced Generations: Shattered or Forged at all in regards to Future State or Infinite Frontier, despite it being a seemingly a snug fit.

Here's DC explaining Infinite Frontier:

"Dark Nights: Death Metal has created an infinite multiverse.

"DC's heroes saved all of reality from the brink of destruction and shook loose the very fabric of space and time.

"The entire history of the DC Universe has been restored. Every epic battle that ever happened is part of one timeline where everything matters!"

Given Generations: Shattered and Forged are about the future of DC being threatened and features a co-mingled line-up of heroes culled from disparate timelines, it seems like a natural fit into a status quo in which 'everything matters,' but other than the shared Death Metal reference DC has not connected Generations to Future State and/or Infinite Frontier in any marketing for solicitations.

Time will tell how this all plays out over the next several months.

For more on Infinite Frontier and the future of the DC Universe, check out the DC March 2020 solicitations.

I'm not just the Newsarama founder and editor-in-chief, I'm also a reader. And that reference is just a little bit older than the beginning of my Newsarama journey. I founded what would become the comic book news site in 1996, and except for a brief sojourn at Marvel Comics as its marketing and communications manager in 2003, I've been writing about new comic book titles, creative changes, and occasionally offering my perspective on important industry events and developments for the 25 years since. Despite many changes to Newsarama, my passion for the medium of comic books and the characters makes the last quarter-century (it's crazy to see that in writing) time spent doing what I love most.