Young Justice (Rebirth): Continuous Continuity Confusion

Recently I finished the three-volume trade of Young Justice from the Rebirth Era of DC. Rebirth was an amelioration of the New 52 Era in which the continuity on which DC had based its identity was rejected, except for the series that were selling well. Most reboots of the universe after various crises have this flaw, which might even be described as a metaflaw; at least explicitly out-of-continuity stories can pick and choose their Robins and even the order in which they apprenticed.

Young Justice is a pleasurable read if you either ignore the continuity mess it is trying to fix, or you (like me) love overly complicated continuity. Since there has been "not a Crisis" since publication, and a new Crisis looms at the time of writing, the former option is probably better.

The initial lineup of Young Justice is Wonder Girl (Cassie), Robin (Tim Drake), Impulse, Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, and new kids Teen Lantern and Jinny Hex (one of them is LGBTQIA+). Thus it contains three of the original members of Young Justice, a princess whose origin lies in pre-Crisis continuity, a descendant of another  pre-Crisis character, and the mandatory new kid. The politics of Gemworld are as eternally contentious as Gotham is crime-ridden, so the six members end up as prisoners on Gemworld. Once they escape, they meet Superboy. This is the Superboy (Kon-El or Conner Kent) from before the New 52, the Superboy who is a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor and really likes leather jackets. Due to secret experiment shenanigans, Superboy had ended up in Gemworld and therefore survived the Crisis reboots; there was a clone Superboy in the New 52, but we don't talk about him. Young Justice saves Gemworld but is thrown into the Multiverse as thanks. The final Earth is Earth-3 where they meet their counterparts, who have taken over for the Crime Syndicate of America, the Justice League of Earth-3, who had died in a previous storyline in the New 52. Tim for some reason borrows the costume of his Earth-3 counterpart and commits the one sidekick sin that no previous Robin had: using his own name as his "code name." When Young Justice gets back to its Earth, it is somehow widely known despite being kidnapped almost immediately. They recruit Naomi, Bendis' Miles Morales for DC, as well as the Wonder Twins, who are interns for the current Justice League and whose series was amusing but perhaps too silly for some people's taste. 

They confront the evil secret scientist, which raises even more continuity issues. If this Superboy is the one from before Flashpoint, then this scientist is not the same scientist as the one who ejected Superboy into Gemworld; so if this scientist remembers a Superboy, it cannot be this Superboy. If this scientist ejected a Superboy into the Multiverse, that Superboy (the New 52 one? a new Rebirth one?) must have ended somewhere else.

At the time of publication, when I saw that Superboy (Conner) had been brought back, I thought that he might be a replacement for Superboy (Jon Kent). Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois had been unfortunately aged-up because Superwoman (Lois Lane Kent) of Earth-3 (or an Earth-3? Didn't Superwoman die earlier?) had imprisoned him for his teenage years. Jon was then recruited by the newest version of the Legion of Super-Heroes to receive some of the training he needed to become the heir to Superman and therefore inspire the Legion with which he was now. Even when Jon would return to present to engage in such inspiration, Conner would still exist to provide a Robin (rather than Drake) solution to the limited number of Kryptonians; apparently Kara doesn't count. 

And then Dark Knights Metal and Future State happened. And everything mattered, so for some nothing mattered.