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Quetzalcoatl
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I went into my comic shop the other day and picked up a couple of Batman titles for the first time sense.....1996, I think. I used to read Batman a lot back in the day, and I was wondering if someone can give me a quick rundown of what I missed over the last twenty years. When I quit reading, Bruce had just reclaimed the Batman title from Azreal. At least, that's when things get fuzzy. Now Bruce has a son? And his son is Robin now? Where is Tim? And why is Jim Gordon Batman? I get that Bruce is supposedly dead, but how was he "killed?" I'm not asking anyone to detail for me every single story that's happened during my long absence, just those major status-quo altering events. Just trying to bring myself up to speed.

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I'm NOT a DC guy, but I do like to read Batman regularly-- save for when they do a universe wide continuity-altering crossover event... of which there's been at least four of since the late 90s. There was Infinite Crisis which undid a lot of the changes done in the original Crisis from the 80s by re-establishing the multiverse and restoring a lot of the Golden Age comics to canon... for minute-- until the characters all realized what was happening, tried to stop it and ended up destroying the multiverse.. which lead to establishing the 52-- meaning that the previously un-canoned stories were back, but now everything was arranged into 52 distinct multiverses. Kind of like pre-crisis with Earth 1 and Earth 2. This was supposed to explain and organize everything, but was a mess. All books were basically jumped ahead a year, and gave them a chance to mix everything up and start fresh, while leaving us to wonder about the new status quo.

 

Then they pretended like it had all been planned all along and FINAL CRISIS came along, in which everyone previously dead and lost in other multiverses came back as BLACK Lanterns (cause every color Lantern now exists). Which lead to Blackest Night, which this menace is dealt with. Somewhere in there Darkseid seemingly kills Batman, and Dick Greyson takes over... and of course we find out Batman wasn't killed, just thrown back in time and eventually he comes back.

 

Soon after that the Flash starts time traveling and Flashpoint is an event that all but breaks the multiverse, and once again continuity is effect-- but this time, instead of soft reboot, they go hardcore with it, and basically reboot the entire universe and start over.

 

The NEW 52 again says there are 52 multiverses, but the kicker is, they don't say what continuity goes to what universe. Before they were clear, all Golden Age was Earth whatever, etc. This time, they are starting fresh. A new universe, where every character is approached as a new one. Everything is basically back to zero.

 

Except... Batman had just spent a few years under Grant Morrison and he'd managed to unite all the various eras of Batman into a cohesive history that made sense, so they decided that Batman's history still counted, but somehow it had happened in the shadows and out of the public eye and he was an urban legend until the New 52... kind of like what they are doing in the new movie.

 

This also means though that the timeline is crazy condensed, basically making it so everything Batman ever did happened in under a decade. So now, all the Robins came one after another in quick succession. Basically, they wanted to keep big moments like Killing Joke, Death in the family-- and still say they happened, but at the same time try to see this was a younger new Batman.

 

They even did a Year Zero as his new official origin, supplanting the classic Year One. This started in 2011, and while on the whole this sounds insane, the New 52 Batman under Scott Snyder has had a pretty decent run and he's told some great stories.

 

So now to your questions-- in the current continuity...

 

Bruce's son: Damien. Pre New 52 he was the product of Batman getting with Talia in Son of the Demon (graphic novel in the 80s) and he was raised by the League of Assassins to be an asshat. When Bruce was seemingly dead, he became Robin to Dick Grayson's Batman. In current continuity, in the shorter time span they've revised him to be genetically engineered from Bruce and Talia and was more or less hatched as pre-teen.

 

Tim currently goes by Red Robin and in current continuity his origin is the same, but he never fully became Robin thanks to the compressed timeline, and went directly to being Red Robin.

 

Jim Gordon as Batman has just come about in the last few months as Batman and Joker seemingly died and vanished (for the 1000th time) killing each other. Since this timeline, again, is young and compressed, Jim is still pretty young, allowing him to take up the mantle.

 

While I haven't loved all of this-- all of Scot Snyder's run has been collected to trade. As the current continuity you could catch up pretty easy. Year Zero overs his origin, and you can assume major events from old continuity still happened in some fashion (they do) though the details of it are still unclear.

 

NOW... just to confuse everything further... The DC universe is currently in an event at the end of which it has been revealed that (in a major cop out they will never admit is a cop out) that the New 52 continuity that has been official for the last 5 years is actually just another multiverse alternate. When the current event Convergence ends, they will start telling stories from all over the multiverse-- which will include the Golden Age, the Silver age and the pre-Flashpoint/New 52 continuity as well.

 

Basically, DC is stupid.

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Driver nailed a lot of the highs and lows of it. In addition to Scott Snyder's run on Batman since 2011, there was a 52 issue maxi-series called Batman Eternal that was pretty good for the most part. It weaved together a lot of the different members of the Batfamily through an extended story arc. Some parts of it weren't great, but if you can get it at a decent price, it could be a good story to go through. Especially since there is a point at which Snyder's run jumps past it.

 

Two other thought to add to what Driver said:

 

– In addition to being Red Robin in the current timeline, a Time Drake from 5 years in the future is now the Batman Beyond from further into the future. He is now starring in the new Batman Beyond book. This apparently jumps out of another recent weekly maxi-series that DC did called Future's End. Given that Teen Titans, the only other regular appearance of Tim post-Flashpoint (other than Batman Eternal), is terrible, this might be where you want to turn if you want to read current stories about Tim. Then again, this series is very new, so it might be awful, too.

 

–The event Convergence is already (mercifully) over. The two main results are that they've launched new status quos for many of their iconic characters (including Jim Gordon as Batman and a depowered and outed-as-Clark Superman) and that DC has some actually fun books again, which is nice since they really only had Harley Quinn within the past few years.

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My problem with DC has always been... (and sadly Marvel is now starting to be the same way) that you can't jut pick up an issue as a casual reader and follow it. When I was a kid, all you had to know was that Batman fought crime in a crappy city, his parents were killed, he was highly skilled, a detective, and could kick ass. You could pick up any issue and get a Batman story.

 

Now, you have to be steeped in DC wide lore to understand anything, and no storyline seems to run less than a six issue arc (because that's generally how many you can fit into a trade.)

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Guest El Chalupacabra

My problem with DC has always been... (and sadly Marvel is now starting to be the same way) that you can't jut pick up an issue as a casual reader and follow it. When I was a kid, all you had to know was that Batman fought crime in a crappy city, his parents were killed, he was highly skilled, a detective, and could kick ass. You could pick up any issue and get a Batman story.

 

Now, you have to be steeped in DC wide lore to understand anything, and no storyline seems to run less than a six issue arc (because that's generally how many you can fit into a trade.)

I agree Batman may have become bogged down with back story (I don't know this to be true, just taking your word for it, and from what I have read here and there), but Marvel was like this at least as far back as the 1980s (Spiderman, Xmen\Xfactor\New Mutants, Secret Wars, etc) all come to mind. Maybe you didn't have the mess of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, with multiple versions of various heroes until the Ultimate Marvel universe, but Marvel has long had a "multiverse" as well. Also, Marvel is far more serial, and it was DC who was always accused of having simplistic, episodic one-issue stories. In fact, you can argue DC has been emulating Marvel's method of being more serial. You can argue maybe Marvel has done a better job of being serial, but you can't argue DC is bogged down with back story, and Marvel isn't.

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Marvel certainly has it's backstories and multiverses too, no doubt. But Stan Lee had an edict that any given issue would be somebody's first comic book, and that shouldn't be looked over. So I think Marvel certainly celebrated and honored it's deep continuity history, but they didn't hinge every story on it. Whether or not that is successful, I don't know, but the effort was made.

 

My Marvel over DC arguments are more about character and story than anything else. But like I said, these days, both of the big two are disappointing me.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I can see that, and granted I haven't been into comics for a long time aside from GN or compilations, and this may simply be telling of how long I haven't been a regular comics reader but it seems to me I remember xmen and spiderman (this is early-mid 90s, maybe as late as 96? I am referencing) especially being hard to read without knowing what was going on, by just picking up one comic. It would take 2-3 issues where characters would call back to events to fill the reader in. I am not saying it took a long time to get up to speed mind you, but it did take more than 1 issue. At the same time, I was reading Batman and Superman. Superman has always been easy to get caught up on. Batman had more back story, and as I remember, was like Marvel: took a couple or 3 issues to get caught up. This was before the internet made it easy to look up, so both DC and Marvel released comic encyclopedias (DC called it Who's Who, Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe), but that was how I would get up to speed on back stories to fill in the gaps that the comic issue "call backs" didn't fill in.

 

Why am I bringing that up? Because I think maybe both DC and Marvel knows today's reader will simply go to a wiki and get the quick and dirty on events, to get up to speed. Since it is easier to look up than it was years ago, maybe that has allowed comics to feel like they no longer need to be episodic?

 

As to your second point, yes I agree Marvel is a lot better at character development, at least as I recall.

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Wait. Wasn't the whole point of the New 52 continuity to start fresh and make things simple again, to wipe out all of that convoluted multiverse crap no one could follow and tell stories that didn't require the reader to have a PHD in DC lore? Now we're being told that the new 52 continuity is just another earth in DC's multiverse?

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The Nu52verse is supposed to be the original Post-Crisis/Post-Zero Hour/Post Infinite Crisis/Post insert latest reboot here combined with the Wildstorm universes and a bit of Vertigo. That's why they have the characters from Gen13, WildCATs, Authority, etc. running around the DCU now.

I think it was supposed to be a fresh start but then they decided they needed to keep Batman and Green Lantern's recent history intact. Sooo in the last five years Batman has gone through 3 Robins and Hal Jordan was replaced as GL 3 times, too. Kind of hard to keep that Greatest Green Lantern ever!!! title with that track record! Then again, the original Guardians turned evil and died, so...yeah.

Anyways! I don't think DC is sticking with the "only 52 universes" thing anymore. Convergence showed that the Pre Nu52verse is still around, along with a bunch of ones not seen in a while.

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Why am I bringing that up? Because I think maybe both DC and Marvel knows today's reader will simply go to a wiki and get the quick and dirty on events, to get up to speed. Since it is easier to look up than it was years ago, maybe that has allowed comics to feel like they no longer need to be episodic?

That's part of it. The larger part is that most series are collected into trade paperbacks every 5-6 issues anyway, so many writers write every arc as a single, continuous 100-page story instead of a 5-chapter story to cater more toward that experience than to those of us who stick to the monthly singles. There's a lot more money to be had in selling trades than there used to be, and some readers whine if every chapter of their 5-chapter trade contains too much repetitive new-reader exposition. All of this means today's writers don't have to use any precious brain power trying to come up with ways to make exposition interesting or give a flying fig about new readers at all.

 

All of this is why I've walked away from most Big Two books in general and crossovers in particular. I gave up on nearly all of DC's New 52 within a year of relaunch, and now I'm only down to the most crossover-proof books -- at this point, solely and specifically, that's just Batman '66 and Prez. On the Marvel side, I ignore ALL team books and follow mostly solo books that crossovers wouldn't hurt much if they did intrude.

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I can see that, and granted I haven't been into comics for a long time aside from GN or compilations, and this may simply be telling of how long I haven't been a regular comics reader but it seems to me I remember xmen and spiderman (this is early-mid 90s, maybe as late as 96? I am referencing) especially being hard to read without knowing what was going on, by just picking up one comic.

The 90s, in general, was crap for storytelling in comics and everything became a huge over-blown spectacle. It was impossible to be a casual reader in the 90s ad the crazy boom in the business at that time drove the decision to try and retain regular readers and get new ones through trades, which at this time were finally getting mass releases in bookstores.

 

Wait. Wasn't the whole point of the New 52 continuity to start fresh and make things simple again, to wipe out all of that convoluted multiverse crap no one could follow and tell stories that didn't require the reader to have a PHD in DC lore? Now we're being told that the new 52 continuity is just another earth in DC's multiverse?

Yup. But they had the easyout of saying JUST KIDDING IT WAS AN ALT UNIVERSE THE WHOLE TIME if it failed... which is basically what they are doing now.

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I appreciate that Marvel at least puts a one-page recap at the beginning of their books (or at least most of them). I often forget exactly where previous month's books left off, so it's a nice reminder. It also helps at least somewhat if a crossover spills over into a book. They don't include this page in the trades (or at least didn't up until a few years ago), which sort of makes it the best of both worlds.

 

For some reason DC refuses to even consider doing this. They claim they don't have the space to do it, but then put in other nonsensical stuff in its place, such as Channel 52 for a good part of the New 52 era (not even Ambush Bug could make this worthwhile). Since Convergence ended, they've stopped this and put in brief "interviews" with various creators. I think I read one or two of those just to see what they were doing with this, but that space could still be better utilized.

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It depends on the book for me. I would do this with trades before I started using Comixology. Even then, I would do this at first until my library started growing so much. The main books I do this with now are Saga and Morning Glories because there is no way I could keep track of everything otherwise.

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If it's a newer series, I might pull out the previous issues and revisit them to help the names and plotlines stick in my head. In recent memory I know I've done this for No Mercy because it started with nearly twenty main characters (though that's, um, no longer a problem) and Descender just because Dustin Nguyen's watercolors are wondrous to keep beholding.

 

With series I've been following for a while, my memory's usually up and running within 2-3 pages.

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It's an Image Comics suspense/survival-thriller series about a busload of teens on a field trip to Mexico. Their bus crashes hard in the middle of Nowhere; deadly consequences and tribulations ensue. It's only five issues in, and the first trade will be out in October. It's a too-rare instance of a series with an all-female creative team, and they're killing it on this book. I think you'd dig it.

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The 90s, in general, was crap for storytelling in comics and everything became a huge over-blown spectacle. It was impossible to be a casual reader in the 90s ad the crazy boom in the business at that time drove the decision to try and retain regular readers and get new ones through trades, which at this time were finally getting mass releases in bookstores.

 

 

 

 

 

The 90s...gimmicks, the rise and deserved fall of Image 1,0, X-everything and the speculator's market sending every obsessed fan or greedy outsider to think all of that over-produced crap was going to be their Action Comics #1.

 

Oh, then there was Wizard....

 

Ugh.

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Basically, DC is stupid.

 

Since you're talking about the more recent DC screw-ups, I will hold back from beating you over the head with a rolled up copy of The Incredible Hulk #181.

 

Like I said, even my beloved Marvel has tanked. SOME of the random Secret Wars alternate reality stories are fun-- but they aren't staying and the new status quo when they wrap is going to make so many people unhappy. I really don't get why the looked at DC's continuity bullcrap and thought they should try to outdo it. I haven't dropped so many books since the 90s!

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