Eureka Moment, Or Not

So, I don't post a lot about 52, but I'm reading it all, and I did post here about butterfly references -- specifically, the Chang Tzu quote about dreaming you are a butterfly, and Charlie's mumblings about butterflies. Omitted was the most obvious reference, which was Mister Mind actually cocooning in Week Three, to emerge later in an as-yet unidentified form.

But it wasn't until Sunday night, when I was reading my daughter a Disney picture book version of Alice in Wonderland, that I realized that Charlie isn't just a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but he's THAT caterpillar -- from Alice in Wonderland.



Charlie's first and recurrent question -- "Who are you?" -- to which Renee always responds "I don't know", is taken directly from the conversation between Alice and the Caterpillar, complete with smoking and getting lost in the clouds of smoke. And of course, their adventure begins at 520 Kane St. when they fall through the trap door together (down the rabbit hole . . .)



Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Alice is dreaming, of course, and I have always suspected that Ralph Dibney is dreaming, or hallucinating, or whatever, since his Helmet of Fate experience doesn't line up with the Half-Helmet stuff going on the Helmet of Fate mini.

Which got me thinking about the other threads, and I wonder if I'm extending metaphors too far . . . The Steel/Natasha Everyman stuff doesn't happen until after Dr. Irons starts hallucinating that he is talking to Steel after identifying the "other" Luthor . . . Are Starfire and the space gang trio replaying the Wizard of Oz going after the wicked witch (Lady Styx) after Dorothy bumped her head during the Crisis?

Maybe I'm overanalyzing, but that's just how my mind works, I guess.