Batman and Robin, by Vasilis Lolos

I’m a huge fan of Vasilis Lolos‘ work on The Last Call, The Pirates of Coney Island and Northlanders #17. I’m also fond of Robin, in concept if not always in execution. So stumbling across his take on the Dynamic Duo — Robin decked out in baggy gym shorts and Chuck Taylors — just about made my day.

Lolos mentions that he’ll soon be setting up an online store soon, which I hopes means the Batman and Robin piece will be for sale. I’d totally buy that. Check out the blog post for his renditions of Ghost Rider and Spider-Man.

In case you missed it in the rush of SDCC news, Dark Horse is now releasing Star Wars comics on its digital app, and they are posting Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #1 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars #1 for free to celebrate.

New free comics on comiXology include (links are to the comics on their web reader): Batman: Gotham Knights #1, Impulse #1, Robin #1, Titanium Rain #1, and a bunch of previews. And there’s the third chapter of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes prequel from BOOM! Studios—the whole thing is free, so you might as well go back and get the earlier chapters as well.

Free comics on Graphicly include Carpe Chaos: Rising Up #1, The Devil Died Different #1, and a preview of Eye Witness, which “combines a Biblical adaptation, with a modern day action-thriller.”

Here’s another SDCC announcement you might have missed: Square Enix, publisher of such fine manga as Black Butler, Fullmetal Alchemist, Higurashi When They Cry, and Soul Eater, is offering one free volume 1 through August 10. The details are here.

If you’re in the mood for some Deep Thoughts, Wiley is offering the book Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture as a free e-book on a number of different platforms, including iTunes, Nook, and Kindle.

Finally, here are a couple of SDCC manga deals that will be running out soon: Viz is taking 40% off its volume 1s to celebrate the rollout of its web app, and Yen Press is offering volume 1s of its manga, including Yotsuba&!, Maximum Ride, and Highschool of the Dead, on its iOS apps for $2.99

Batman #436, beginning "Year Three"

One of the more precarious parts of DC’s New-52 relaunch is this notion that a whole lot of in-story history happened over just five years of comic-book time. So far, this comes primarily from narration in the new Justice League #1, indicating that the team was formed “five years ago,” when “the world didn’t know what a super-hero was.”

Now, this may not be an entirely accurate measurement of the relaunch’s age. Practically by definition, the Justice League consists of heroes with fairly well-established careers, so we have to think that its charter members had been around for a little while before teaming up. Furthermore, in the context of the New 52 specifically, we can infer from what we know about the new Action Comics — which will show him less-powerful and with a more mundane costume — that Superman debuted some time before the events of Justice League #1. (According to Comics Alliance’s account of Friday’s New-52 Comic-Con panel, Action initially takes place just a few months before Justice League.)

For now, though, the five-year figure is probably as definite as we’re going to get, so let’s start there. As always, DC wants to placate two different groups: hypothetical new (and/or returning) readers, and those of us who have been buying the books already. For the former, the relaunch promises new takes on familiar characters, including some familiar characters returning to their earlier roles. For the latter — and particularly for Batman and Green Lantern readers — comes the reassurance that everything important still happened. Perhaps the two goals collide most dramatically in the case of Barbara Gordon, who will go back to being Batgirl after recovering successfully from the assault that left her paralyzed, and who (as a recent college graduate) will be younger than she was when she was shot.

DC did something similar with the post-Crisis On Infinite Earths relaunches of the mid-1980s. Back then, characters big and small had their histories rewritten, although DC maintained that absent specific contradictions, the pre-Crisis comics were still valid. Still, those contradictions were pervasive, especially for the comics that weren’t supposed to be affected. Changes to Superman affected existing Justice League and Legion stories, and changes to Wonder Woman affected both JLA and New Titans. Young All-Stars (the follow-up to All-Star Squadron) even centered around a group of WWII-era “cosmic replacements” — strongman Iron Munro, mysterious Flying Fox, mythologically-based Fury — created explicitly as substitutes for the Golden Age Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

And not to digress too much, but I get the feeling that DC in the mid-‘80s was more concerned with preserving as much of the pre-COIE stories as it could. By contrast, the New-52 books seem, understandably, more focused on the changes, and inviting readers to discover what’s different.

In this case, those differences apparently come primarily from making these characters less experienced than they are currently. According to CBR’s coverage of that Friday panel,

[Dan DiDio] wanted to return characters to a younger, more exciting age. Barbara Gordon was used as an example, saying that she should be in her twenties but seemed to be in her thirties, while the Teen Titans sometimes “looked and acted like 40-year-olds.” [Jim] Lee also said this would create “a rollback of their experience, where it is more of a struggle,” such that heroes are still finding the level of their powers.

By itself, that’s not an unreasonable or unworkable strategy. Neither is streamlining a character’s history to include only the most important big-event storylines. The problem comes from trying to leave untouched a couple of major franchises (Batman and Green Lantern) while everyone else’s past adventures — and, for that matter, the Justice Society’s very existence — are in play.

Put bluntly, Batman’s history calls for the biggest suspension of disbelief, because it reaches into the histories of both the Justice League and the Teen Titans. In the current timeline, where Damian Wayne is a product of Batman: Son of the Demon’s night of passion between Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, one can argue credibly for a Bat-career of at least fifteen years, and probably more. SOTD was published in 1987, when Jason Todd was Robin and Dick Grayson had become Nightwing. If we presume that SOTD took place in the present (i.e., concurrent with 1987′s comics), Dick would be over 20 years old, having reached that milestone in early 1986.* Damian’s age therefore measures the span of time between 2011′s comics and 1987′s, compressing almost 24 years’ worth of stories into 11 (or, if you prefer, 10 years and 9 months). For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say that Dick turned 20 in the same year that Damian was born. That would make Dick 30 today, and would give him a superhero career of at least 15 years, mostly as Nightwing.** From there we can figure Bruce’s age, assuming (as “Batman: Year One” revealed) that he first became Batman at 25. If Bruce then took in Dick in Year Three,*** when he was 27 and Dick was 15, then the current crop of comics takes place in at least Year 18, when Bruce is 42.

To be sure, we can massage these numbers a little bit, but not much. Starting a superhero career at age 15**** doesn’t give Dick much time to be Robin (or, by extension, for the Teen Titans to go through a couple of incarnations). However, the younger Dick is when his parents are murdered, the older that makes Bruce today; and despite the small army of associates he’s accumulated, no one seems to want a Batman in his forties.

Now, it’s not like the timeline wasn’t already a little dodgy. Dick left Wayne Manor for Hudson University in December 1969′s Batman #217, probably around ages 17 or 18. Accordingly, all of Dick’s college-age adventures — which span over fifteen years of real time — could arguably be compressed into some 2-3 years of comic-book time. These adventures include the initial Rā’s al Ghūl stories, the original Teen Titans’ breakup and the group’s mid-‘70s revival, Dick’s retirement as Robin, and all of the first Wolfman/Pérez run on New Teen Titans.

Speaking of the Titans, Wally West graduated high school in 1978′s Flash Spectacular and turned 20 in the first issue of his solo Flash series (June 1987), so while he has a similar problem, he only needs to compress nine years’ worth of real time into 2-3 years of comic-book time. However, those 2-3 years also include some college, as well as his forced retirement from superheroics, and oh by the way Crisis On Infinite Earths.

Again, I bring this up not to argue that all of DC’s superhero output from 1970-85 must be crammed into the end of the original Titans’ teenage years. Instead, such an exercise reinforces the notion that very few stories can be incorporated into long-term continuity exactly as they were presented. In simpler terms, the story you read today won’t be quite the same story which is referenced later on — assuming it is even referenced in the first place. For example, Tim Drake deduced Batman and Robin’s secret identities after watching news footage of the Dynamic Duo, and seeing Robin execute a move which was part of Dick Grayson’s circus act. However, when later stories claimed that the Bat-family had always been urban legends, this detail was glossed over. Still, Tim’s introduction to Batman and Nightwing was predicated on his knowing their secret identities — so either he saw them on the news, he was somehow present at one of their adventures, or he was an exceptionally gifted adolescent detective. Because this is superhero comics, any of those could be true, but odds are the original story is no longer completely valid.

Where, then, does that leave the New-52′s five-year timeline? If it includes all the Robins from Dick to Damian, I’d say the timeline has already been FUBAR’ed. Actually, the Batman timeline itself may not be affected too much, because DC can trot out the “urban legend” theory. (Remember, an urban legend isn’t necessarily a superhero, so Justice League’s narration is still accurate.) In fact, Batman could have been operating in secret for some ten years prior to Justice League #1. He would have spent a good bit of those years training various red-and-yellow-costumed teenagers, but, you know, urban legend.

Anyway, one solution might have been simply to give the New-52 books a five-year backstory which reflected a less-eventful shared universe. For example, in the rough timeline we’ve been discussing, Dick would be at or the end of high school in Year Five, with Wally not far behind. Likewise, Bruce and his contemporaries would be in their late twenties to early thirties. Generally, it might resemble the development of DC’s shared universe as of the early 1970s, although it could be tweaked to allow for younger characters like Firestorm and the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle. The big drawback to such a truncated history would be losing at least one additional generation of sidekicks: no Robins other than Dick, no Kid Flash or Impulse other than Wally, no Wonder Girl besides Donna Troy and no Batgirls besides Barbara Gordon (and maybe Bette Kane, although technically she was a hyphenated Bat-Girl.) I suppose the Green Lantern history could remain relatively intact, since there seems always to be room for another Earth-based GL.

By and large, though, I understand why DC didn’t want to turn back the clock that radically. Depriving readers of the younger generations would have alienated their many fans, and DC wouldn’t have wanted to gamble its relaunch on having to replace those fans. However, the New-52 relaunch may have gone too far in the other direction, overstuffing its cut-down history to the point it strains even superhero-comic credulity. A character’s relative longevity weighs significantly on its presentation. If no one is part of the old guard, such that Batman’s origin is only a few years removed from Firestorm’s, it deprives the characters of that source of conflict. Maybe that’ll be good in the long run, if it allows lesser-known characters to compete with the A-listers for readers’ affections. Nevertheless, books as diverse as the ‘70s All Star Comics, New Teen Titans, Justice League International, and the late-‘90s JLA each used rookie characters effectively in combination with the more-experienced members.

In one important respect, nothing has changed. As long as superhero comics come out in serialized periodicals, their stories will play out in an eternal present. When Detective Comics #38 introduced Robin in the spring of 1940, its producers weren’t plotting Dick’s destiny over the long term. They just needed him to fulfill a particular role in Batman’s adventures. Thus, for decades Dick Grayson was a high-schooler of indeterminate age***** simply because the stories wanted it that way. Dick’s transition to college, and his subsequent developments to Nightwing and Batman, each acknowledged that it was time for the character to embrace different storytelling possibilities. A character’s past informs his present, but does not dictate it. Indeed, this month’s issue is next month’s backstory, reduced to data points and added to the reader’s storehouse of narrative knowledge. September’s crop of new first issues will be no different. Like this week’s books, they’ll define DC’s superhero line all over again …

… at least, until the accuracy of Now fades into the haze of Then.

++++++++++++++++++

* [New Teen Titans vol. 2 #18 (March 1986).]

** [Since Dick was still Robin when he graduated from high school, and stayed in the short pants for some time afterwards, I presume he was at least 19 when he became Nightwing.]

*** [Flashbacks in the “Batman: Year Three” storyline from Batman #s 436-39 gave the post-“Year One” account of Dick’s origin. “Year Three” also introduced toddler Tim Drake and led directly into Tim’s modern introduction in “A Lonely Place Of Dying.” However, like its predecessor “Year Two,” no one seems to care about it much anymore.]

**** [In fact, Batman #437 established that Dick was 12 when his parents were murdered. This would have given him about seven years as Robin. Again, though, “Year Three” apparently hasn’t been considered authoritative for some time.]

***** [Michael Fleisher’s 1976 Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Heroes, Volume 1: Batman notes that “[i]t is not possible to establish Dick Grayson’s age with any real precision.” Still, Fleisher observes further that in April-May 1942′s Batman #10, “[t]here were fourteen candles on his birthday cake.” Rest assured, I am not going to argue that only three to four years of comic-book time passed between 1942 and 1969.]

From "Justice League" #1

Cosmic Book News snagged a copy of the DC Comics: The New 52 preview a day early — street dates be damned! — and uploaded scans of the opening pages of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League #1, the vanguard of DC’s line-wide relaunch. It’s an entertaining enough sequence, with Gotham City’s finest pursuing Batman across rooftops as he, in turn, chases some sort of raggedy cyborg villain, only to come face to face with Green Lantern for the first time.

But it’s the first panel, above, that captured my attention, as it establishes the events as unfolding “five years ago,” “when the world didn’t know what a super-hero was.” That the first issue of Justice League takes place in the past isn’t a surprise, but the time frame may be. It could also prove tricky for Batman’s history.

Incoming Batman writer Scott Snyder, who’s wrapping up a stint on Detective Comics, told Comic Book Resources last month that, while not “every piece of continuity will be the same” come the September relaunch, most of “the things you love about Batman” will remain intact. Tim Drake, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd still exist, and Damian Wayne continues as the current Robin. And therein lies the tricky part: If “five years ago” takes us back to a Year One or Year Two-type scenario, where superheroes are largely unknown and the Dark Knight exists somewhere between urban legend and Gotham’s Most Wanted … where, and how, do four Robins fit in? (I can’t begin to fathom Stephanie Brown’s place at this point.) What’s more, where does a 10-year-old Damian, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, enter the super-condensed timeline?

Sure, Snyder and other Batman Family writers can cover a multitude of sins by casually explaining that the Dark Knight operated in secret for some time. But that seems like one of those Crisis on Infinite Earths-style loose threads that can’t be picked at too much.

The DC Comics: The New 52 preview will be available Wednesday at Comic-Con International in San Diego and comic stores nationwide. Justice League #1 will be released on Aug. 31.

Robin concept art from "Batman: Arkham City"

If you were perplexed by the Robin design released last month for Batman: Arkham City by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment, you weren’t alone. Some Robot 6 commenters referred to the look as “Eminem” and even (shudder) “horribly Schumacher-esque,” while at the Batman: Arkham City Community forums the discussion continued at length.

Now, however, Rocksteady Studios senior concept artist Kan Muftic has stepped forward with “the final word on Robin,” providing some insight into the game’s version of Tim Drake and revealing an additional piece of color concept art.

“We wanted to create a Robin that players would identify as a contemporary character and move away from the traditional ‘Boy Wonder’ image that most people know,” Muftic wrote in a message posted on the forum. “Our vision of Robin is the one of a troubled young individual that is calm and introverted at times but very dangerous and aggressive if provoked. The shaved head is inspired by cage fighters, because we thought that Robin might be doing that in his spare time to keep him on his toes. Still, we kept all the classic trademarks of Robin’s appearance, such as the red and yellow colors of his outfit, the cape and the mask. We really hope that people will discover our Robin as one of their new favorite characters in the Batman universe. He is back and he means business.”

Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to the bestselling 2009 video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, is set inside the newly constructed fortified walls that have transformed part of Gotham’s slums into a sprawling maximum-security prison for the city’s gangsters, thugs and criminally insane. Robin will be available as a playable character in the challenge mode to those in North America who pre-order the game from Best Buy.

Arkham City will be released Oct. 18 in North America and Oct. 21 in Europe.

DC Comics

“What would DC have to do to attract more women? Well, not add romance, puppies and rainbows. (I like kitties, though …) No, really, all they have to do is stop actively driving away the female audience with art too often based on porn poses and women so often portrayed as victims and not three-dimensional characters even when they’re in supporting roles. Give us art that’s not so obviously done to make woman sex objects only and make them well-rounded characters and we’ll be just fine. In fact, just keep the heroes you already have around instead of tossing them aside would be a start. Don’t, say, announce that all the Robins will be getting showcase titles when what you mean is that all the male Robins will be getting showcase titles and that the current Batgirl (former Robin) Stephanie Brown is going into limbo, along with former Batgirl current Black Bat Cassandra Cain. Because, apparently, there can only be one Batgirl as multiple ones would be too confusing but four Robins is just fine.”

– Wired.com’s Corrina Lawson, discussing how DC Comics might expand beyond a target demographic
of 18- to 34-year-old males, and why the publisher should do so

Vandalized monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, Bulgaria

Far be it for us to condone graffiti, but if you were going to vandalize public property — say, a statue celebrating the Soviet Army and communist rule — this is the way you should do it: With gloriously nerdy style.

Courtesy of Gawker, the Daily Mail and other outlets comes word that police in Sofia, Bulgaria, are searching for the graffiti artist who over the weekend painted a monument erected to commemorate the 1944 “liberation” of Bulgaria, transforming Soviet soldiers into colorful comic-book and cartoon characters.

From right, that’s Wonder Woman, Robin, Captain America, Ronald McDonald, Superman, Santa Claus, Wolverine, The Joker and … I don’t know. I initially thought it was the Gorton’s Fisherman, but now I’m not so sure. (Any guesses?) On the base was painted the words “Moving with the times,” “In pace with the times” or “Abreast with the times,” depending on which  translation you prefer.

The monument has since been cleaned up, at a cost of about $720. Go here to see more shots of the monument, including the mysterious figure in yellow.

Tim Drake Robin render from "Batman: Arkham City"

Following leaks on retail websites, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment have finally confirmed that Robin will be a fully playable character in the challenge mode of Batman: Arkham City, the hotly anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed 2009 video game Arkham Asylum.

However, the “Tim Drake Robin pack” — yes, it’s Tim Drake, not Dick Grayson — is available only to those in North America who pre-order the game from Best Buy. So, sorry, fans of Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne and … anyone outside of North America.

Batman: Arkham City is set inside the newly constructed fortified walls that have transformed part of Gotham’s slums into a sprawling maximum-security prison for the city’s gangsters, thugs and criminally insane. Robin, who comes with his own gadgets and special moves, will be playable in all challenge maps, as well as to additional maps included with the pack — Black Mask Hideout and Freight Train Escape. There’s also a bonus Red Robin character skin.

Developed by Rocksteady Studios, Batman: Arkham City will debut in October.

Tim Drake and Wally West, in Robin #62

This is not necessarily another post about DC’s post-Flashpoint superhero titles. However, since we superhero readers must deal with a climate of perpetual change, I often wonder just how far DC could go in rolling back its big changes.

In a sense, the first big set of changes started in 1956, with Barry Allen’s debut as the new Flash. Barry’s introduction acknowledged explicitly that there had been a previous (albeit “fictional”) Flash, whose name Barry took and whose costume was Barry’s inspiration. You know the rest: new versions of Green Lantern, the Atom, Hawkman, etc., followed; they all teamed up as an updated Justice Society called the “Justice League”; and they were joined by a number of new characters like Adam Strange, the Hawk and the Dove, and the Doom Patrol.

After that, though, DC’s Silver Age of the 1960s was exciting but uneventful, because (outside of a few marriages) its status quo was never really challenged. Accordingly, when the Doom Patrol was murdered (in September 1968′s issue #121) and Dick Grayson left Wayne Manor (in December 1969′s Batman #217), DC’s shared superhero universe moved into a new phase.

* * *

By my count, there have been several such status-quo shifts since 1956. The first was the aforementioned Silver Age (1956-69). Next came the 1970s (1970-79), which began with such updates as Clark Kent’s television career, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World epic; and ended with Iris Allen’s murder in July 1979′s The Flash #275. For the most part these changes reflected ongoing developments in the lives of the characters, which while not insignificant (i.e., Congresswoman Barbara Gordon) still didn’t alter them fundamentally.

The work of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez bookended the Pre-Crisis ‘80s (1980-85), which got going in earnest with New Teen Titans #1 (November 1980) and finished up with Crisis On Infinite Earths. If we want to get really nitpicky, we can argue about whether this phase ended with Crisis #12, or with 1986′s “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?”; but I tend to think Crisis works better to put a period on the shared universe (Multiverse, really) which DC had spent the past few decades managing. That aside, the first half of the ‘80s saw a number of significant changes to DC’s superhero line. A casual reader of 1984, surveying the books for the first time in a while, would find a new Robin (Jason Todd), a new regular Green Lantern (John Stewart), the Justice Society’s children starting their own costumed careers, and Batman leading the Outsiders instead of teaming up with the Justice League. Of course, Crisis brought its own set of changes and deaths, setting the stage for more radical revamps.

These were the hallmark of the Post-Crisis Period (1986-94), which saw Superman and Wonder Woman starting virtually from scratch, Wally West becoming the third Flash, and the Justice League embracing its global reach. If 1984′s casual reader popped back in during a fairly ordinary month like November 1990, she would find yet another new Robin, a very different Hawkman, new rosters for the (ex-)Teen Titans and Doom Patrol, and Justice League Europe. This period ended with the “soft reboot” of Zero Hour, which was facilitated by the apocalyptic guard-changing just a few months prior in Green Lantern.

In the Post-Zero Hour Period (1994-2004), the superhero line was able to build on all the changes wrought in the previous several years. Clark Kent married Lois Lane, the Justice League returned to its “original seven” lineup (including the current Flash and GL), and other super-groups like the Titans and Justice Society likewise went back to more familiar roll calls. There were still new faces with old names, like Jack “Starman” Knight, Hal “Spectre” Jordan, and Linda “Supergirl” Danvers; and there were new names in familiar roles (Impulse instead of Kid Flash, Young Justice instead of the Teen Titans). Thus, although this was a fairly stable time, it was significantly different from the DC of the ‘70s or ‘80s.

Next, in what I call the Crisis Cycle (2004-09), DC embarked on a somewhat schizophrenic strategy of “death and rebirth”: for example, Sue Dibny and Blue Beetle murdered, but the Green Lantern Corps and Jason Todd back in action. For me, Final Crisis — which, appropriately enough, featured the return of Barry Allen and the “death” of Batman — marked the end of this period.

Accordingly, we’re a couple of years into what I’m calling the Fifth Generation, personified by the fifth Robin, Damien Wayne. If we are at all interested in treating DC’s superhero history as a period of measurable time, then as a Robin, Damien is automatically significant, because his age is a direct clue as to how old his mentor(s) and predecessors are; and therefore how much time has passed since Bruce Wayne rang that fateful bell.

* * *

Damien also represents the inherent impermanence of (for lack of a better term) the “sidekick identity.” This is a concept which, at least in regular continuity, arguably did not exist before Dick’s retirement as Robin. Starting in the mid-‘60s, the Earth-2 Robin was shown as Batman’s adult successor; but even in a gray-and-black costume, he was still recognizable as the former Boy Wonder. That Dick remained Robin until his death in Crisis, and throughout the ‘70s there was no real thought that the Earth-1 Dick would grow old any differently. However, the notion that “Robin” was portable opened up a whole range of legacy characters, enabling DC to perpetuate familiar names and costumes while switching out the folks who played them. In this context, the current thinking that circus-star Dick is actually “performing the role” of Batman brings a unique, almost satirical, layer of shading to the cape and cowl.

So Dick becomes Nightwing, Jason becomes Robin, Wally takes over as the Flash, Kyle carries on the GL legacy, and a whole generation of Justice Society kids steps into the boots of their parents. Occasionally there is backsliding: Jesse Quick briefly took up her late mother’s Liberty Belle costume, Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan both spent time away from the GL Corps, and Bart Allen went from a murdered Flash to a revived Kid Flash. It’s also not impossible — although I imagine right now it is unlikely — that Dick will be Nightwing again, or (not that I wish ill on Damien; far from it) that Tim will be plain-old Robin.

Indeed, many of the changes visited upon these characters over the years — even death — have since been rolled back. Iris Allen and Bruce Wayne weren’t really dead, just in other time periods. Clark’s TV career was over long before the 1986 revamp put him squarely back at the Daily Planet. Justice League International gave way to a new Justice League of America. Even the original Doom Patrol, for a while DC’s most prominent martyrs, has been brought back to life. (Too bad their book was canceled.)

Thus, part of me always wonders whether DC will pull the trigger on a real rollback — back to the status quo of its Silver Age heyday, when there were only the adult heroes and (where applicable) their adolescent sidekicks, when marriages were new if they existed at all, and when the stories were accessible because nothing ever really changed. Scipio at the Absorbascon practically dares DC to do a “universal reboot,” starting everyone from scratch a la the much-beloved “Timmverse” and/or the “Brave and the Bold” cartoon.

I don’t think that’ll happen, for reasons I’ve explained before. Besides, DC’s already started a from-scratch universe called “Earth One.” It’s only one (published) book old, but a Batman book and the second Superman installment have already been promised. Before that there was the All-Star line, which apparently was the victim of office politics.

It’s not that rebooting would be hard — just pick one of the 52 Earths no one seems to be paying any attention to — it’s that at some point, you have to decide whether some changes are inevitable. Chief among these changes are the careers of Dick Grayson and Wally West: either they grow up to be Nightwing and the Flash, or they don’t. Granted, that’s assuming you start with a sort of Silver Age-ish, hero-and-sidekick status quo. If the sidekicks never grow up, you risk losing readers who want at least the acknowledgment of time passing. If the sidekicks do grow up, though, you risk the same kind of legacy structure the reboot probably sought to avoid.

Regardless, the thing about Dick Grayson is that he’s managed to transcend his original sidekick role. A lot of armchair psychology has gone into analyzing Batman over the years, but a good bit has been directed at the junior partner too. Wolfman and Pérez clearly enjoyed using Dick in New Teen Titans, so much so that they found a way to separate him (almost literally, in fact) from the red vest and green briefs. That, in turn, opened the floodgates for the proliferation of legacy characters from the mid-‘80s forward. It also encouraged DC’s creative teams — for good and ill — to focus more on the people in the suits than on what the suits represented. Thus, Dick’s motivation to “play” Batman is vastly different from Bruce’s (although I would argue that Bruce also “plays” Batman); just as Tim’s initial motivation to be Robin was different from Dick’s. As temporary as some of DC’s changes may be, this is why I don’t see them putting Dick back in the short pants permanently, even if he’s a teenager again as part of some grand global reboot. “Robin” may have been created as a way for Dick to cope with his parents’ deaths, but it has become the transitory role of Batman’s partner. Likewise, because it represents Dick’s independence, the Nightwing identity is as inevitable as emancipation itself. Dick may go back to being Nightwing (even as part of Batman, Inc.), but he can never go back to being Robin.

To me, this is a big part of what worked about the Wally West Flash, as well as what many fans seem to resist about Barry Allen’s return. While each of DC’s major characters got some psychological tweaking over the years, much of that — at least, much that fans and professionals pay attention to — came in the past twenty-odd years, when Barry was out of commission. (I hesitate to say that the most radical, if not the only, change to his character resulted from Iris’ death; but that may not be to far off.) Indeed, during this time Barry became “DC’s patron saint,” the bland, square, crewcut-coiffed speedster who fought goofy bad guys and spent the end of his career as a criminal defendant. By contrast, Wally grew up as one of the most powerful Teen Titans, went through some puberty-related problems with his superspeed, and spent his early Flash career perpetually trying to do right by Barry’s memory. Sometimes he was a womanizer, sometimes he was rich, sometimes he was living with his mom. Through it all, though, he was never dull — but readers were reminded frequently that Barry was.

If that sounds somewhat unfair to Wally and his caretakers, it’s not meant to be; it’s just a byproduct of a status quo they probably thought would last forever. Now that Barry’s back, however, he can’t afford to be compared unfavorably to Wally. He must justify his existence, whether that’s through the retconned tragedy of his parents, or merely by demonstrating that he wasn’t all that dull to begin with.

The point is, it’s not enough anymore simply to say “Here are Batman and Robin fighting bad guys,” or “Here is the Flash obliterating a tornado.” Readers want to know the people in the suits. Many readers have spent the better part of their own lives watching the lives of these fantastic others unfold. I don’t want to be That Guy — that “you’ll pry my continuity from my cold clammy palms” guy — but rolling back those lives, even for the laudable goal of accessibility, isn’t automatically the answer.

That said, I do agree with Scipio that DC shouldn’t treat every comic as if it were someone’s last. Thankfully, a number of titles have been doing fairly self-contained storylines, from the year-long arcs in Superman, Wonder Woman, and Action Comics to the more compartmentalized arcs in Batman and Robin and Detective Comics. Newer series like Zatanna, Xombi, and THUNDER Agents exist in their own little corners of the superhero line, and at the other end of the spectrum (see what I did there?) you’ll find the ever-evolving Green Lantern epic, whose roots go back at least to the 2004 relaunch.

Admittedly, all this could change come September, but I remain hopeful. DC’s great strength is in its willingness to experiment with different approaches to storytelling. If the big changes open up the superhero line in those ways, I’ll be happy. Otherwise — well, I’ve been grumpy before …

Welcome once again to Shelf Porn! This week’s shelves were submitted by Rey Taira from San Francisco, who shares his collection of comics, original art, Gundams and more.

If you’d like to contribute to Shelf Porn, it’s easy — just send your photos and write-up to jkparkin@yahoo.com.

And now let’s hear from Rey …

*****

I just recently set up my studio a few months before SDCC 2010 because we just moved into a new place.

My primary bookshelf is a collection of models, figures, comics and invariably…dust.

I have finally begun construction on a few Gundams now that I have the space to do so.

Other shelves feature action figures from other robot series. This is EVA-01.

I have also started displaying certain collectibles like the Red Hood figure from the special Blu-Ray edition of Batman: Under the Red Hood and my SDCC 2010 exclusive Funko Force 2.0 Glow-in-the-Dark Green Lantern (whew!).

You’ll eventually see that I am primarily a DC guy, so most of these are recent issues of various DC titles. I still have 12 or so Drawer Boxes that I have to move from Las Vegas. Where to put them? I have no idea…

To the left of my shelves, is a glass display case the only denizen of which is Kei Acedera’s Assassin.

Above looms the many Gundams and such I have yet to build.

To the right of my shelves is my non-winning entry into SDCC 2010′s Masquerade. I set out to create a One Year Later Robin suit in the vein of Batman’s suit from The Dark Knight film. Too bad it wasn’t flashy enough to win.

On my work desk is a framed sheet of DC Superheroes stamps that I just had to get.

On my walls, I feature some framed art. This one is my only piece of original art, so far. I love Freddie Williams’ art. This piece of Robin in the thick of it with the 12 Angry Men just blew me away so I had to get it. On the back is his autograph with a quick commission of Tim Drake as Red Robin. And yes, this is acid-free mat and UV glass. ^_^

These next two photos are signed prints by Stanley Lau aka Artgerm. I just love how he paints his women!

And that’s my studio/hobby room. It’s a bit sparse right now, but I hope to fill it with more yummy, yummy things in the years to come! Thanks for visiting.

from Batman & Robin #14 by Frazer Irving

Over on the CBR mothership, Batman & Robin artist Frazer Irving stops by The Bat Signal column to talk to Kiel Phegley about, among other things, his work with Bat-maestro Grant Morrison. Naturally, Irving dishes on some of the darker moments he’s drawn for the Dark Knight and his associates:

The “Robin” two-parter [that Irving drew a few years back] was less than a pit-stop in Gotham. I didn’t really see it as a Gotham story, more a drama about a young dude who has issues with his girlfriend, his butler, and this blue freak that showed up. Adam Beechen’s script was light and easy on the art muscle and that’s not what I associate with Gotham with all it’s madness, horror and dark, dark darkness.

[...]

Your “Batman and Robin” art hit a wide spectrum of flavors from some very direct, emotional character and scene work to some pretty surreal and often scary imagery. Obviously a lot of this comes from Grant scripts, but what kind of room have you had to play with some of the signature visual moments from the Damian/Joker fight to Professor Pyg’s reverse crucifixion to Gordon’s fish-eye awakening on the stage at the Crime Alley theater?

Pyg’s crucifixion is pretty much what Grant wrote. It was such a simple image that I didn’t have to do anything to change it to suit my visual vocabulary. The fish eye thing with Gordon in the theatre was my idea, I am proud to say. Often the best scripts merely tell the story, such as “Gordon is strapped to a gurney, he’s all tripped out on the stage and the crowd are watching from shadows,” which gives me the info on character, plot and mood and yet leaves it open to a wide range of possible visual solutions to get the best impact. I have a strong dislike for scripts where a visual style is imposed because it’s often someone else’s strengths they’re playing to, sort of like giving sheet music for a soprano to Mick Jagger and expecting him to do the job the author has in their head. Grant’s good like that. He does indeed offer some very specific visual solutions, but the option is always there to modify it if I have an idea that suits what I’ve been building on already. And hey, comics that don’t experiment a bit are dreadfully dull to work on.

Amen to that! Read the whole thing, Bat-fans.

“I’m a fan of Robin the Boy Wonder. Any incarnation. So I have folks a million times more talented than I am draw him for me!” says Delsante. He admits to dressing up as the Boy Wonder himself on two occasions for Halloween, for as he puts it “It’s a great character for kids since it’s ultimate wish fulfillment; you can be a kid and still hang out with Batman? Sign me up!”

Ted Naifeh's Detective Comics cover design

We’ve spotlighted that Batman art of Ted Naifeh a couple of times already, but in the past couple of days the Courtney Crumrin creator has moved from character designs and sample pages to taking a stab at covers for Detective Comics and Batman: The Streets of Gotham. The results, needless to say, are lovely.

The final installment (I think) of Naifeh’s Teen Titans co-feature hits shelves today. After seeing his take on the Boy Wonder, I’d pay good money to see DC hire him next for a Robin series.

See Naifeh’s full Detective Comics cover after the break, and visit his website to see his gallery of work, including Courtney Crumrin, Polly and the Pirates, Death Junior and, yes, Batman.

Ted Naifeh's Detective Comics cover design

Batman #8

Last week I talked about rediscovering the ‘70s series Secret Society of Super-Villains. As you might have guessed, this was made possible largely by the Internet. Without it, I would have had to scour back-issue boxes at regional comics shops and/or at the occasional convention. After all, that’s what I grew up doing.

Regardless of where or how I bought those back issues, the fact remains that I bought them pretty much sight-unseen. Oh sure, I remembered random scenes from isolated issues, but basically my yen for SSoSV grew out of two things: its concept and its reputation. I knew what it aimed to be, and I figured if Gerry Conway wrote most of it, it couldn’t be all bad.*

What’s more (at the risk of being obvious) I had to track down these back issues because a collected version of Secret Society of Super-Villains is apparently still trapped in royalty-payment limbo. Not that I am especially bitter about that, mind you; because clearly I don’t mind reading the individual issues and they weren’t that hard to find.

However, I will say that DC’s back issues — especially from buyer-beware periods like the ‘70s and ‘80s — are harder to get into than Marvel’s. Looking back, ‘70s Marvel seems to me to be a company exploring its own potential, building largely on the Lee/Kirby/Ditko ‘60s but also experimenting with other genres. Thanks to the eclectic Essential series, I can sample everything from Avengers to Killraven. DC’s Showcase Presents line includes B&W reprints of House Of Mystery, House of Secrets, Sgt. Rock, Haunted Tank, Enemy Ace, Bat Lash, early Jonah Hex, and even Secrets of Sinister House, but its coverage doesn’t reach into the ‘70s and ‘80s the way Marvel’s does. Again, this probably comes down to royalty payments, and I’d rather have DC resolve those issues first.

Besides, what I really want to talk about is the notion that one buys back issues of comics like Secret Society of Super-Villains less for their merits and more “just because.” I suspect curiosity and nostalgia are big factors in such purchases, but there is also the reality that these stories may never exist outside the original issues. Currently DC collects a good bit of its recent output, including most of the last few years’ worth of monthly comics. Assuming the publisher keeps these collections in print, we probably won’t have to worry about the preservation of those stories.

What, though, is DC’s incentive for preserving the rest of its (considerable) back catalogue? The demands of today’s market accounts for some collections: for example, linking the Black Casebook and Strange Deaths Of Batman books to Grant Morrison’s Batman work. The Chronicles and Archives books apparently address a more general “historical” desire for old stories. The Showcase books do this as well, but I would say they (like Marvel’s Essentials) are intended more as samplers than as library-worthy reproductions. Cult-favorite series like the ‘80s Question have been reprinted in paperback. Finally, in the past few years DC has published more affordable hardcovers focused on well-known series and stories, including the Jack Kirby books, the JLA, Gotham Central, and Starman collections, and the “DC Library” series. These seem less market-driven and more reader-friendly than the chronological reprints. Other “themed” reprint series, like the Greatest Stories and [Character] in the [Decade], have come and gone.

Thus, generally I think DC does a reasonable job covering a broad overview of its superhero line. The major periods of a high-profile character’s history — say, Wonder Woman’s — are fairly well-represented. The first few years of the Golden Age can be found in the five Archives (and, presumably, in upcoming Chronicles). The Showcase Presents books spotlight the crazy Bob Kanigher period and the “Diana Prince” period has those four paperbacks. Much of the modern era, from the 1986 revamp to the present, has also been reprinted. Even so, though, that leaves most of the ‘70s and ‘80s in the back-issue bins. If this were a “DC should reprint Story X” post (and it may well be, you watch), I would suggest the “Twelve Trials Of Wonder Woman” from issues #212-222 (June-July 1974 through February-March 1976), the extended storyline which got Diana back into the Justice League following her “white-suit” period. I want to read these stories mostly because I’ve just finished the four “Diana Prince” paperbacks and would like to see how the book tried to get its superhero groove back.

More to the point, I want to read these stories because they make up one of the few extended Wonder Woman arcs I’m aware of from that period. I did not read Wonder Woman regularly as a youngster, and George Pérez’s presence was a big part of me picking up the relaunch. I mean, I know she fought Kobra, and I know the original Silver Swan and second Cheetah were created in the ‘80s, but beyond that I’m hard-pressed to think of anything. This is why I liked the [Character] in the [Decade] series of reprints — a Wonder Woman in the Eighties book would really have helped me out.

And this, of course, brings me back to the central conundrum of any reprint program: why reprint bad comics? Because people might just pay money to read them, sure. (That would explain the Super-Sons paperback.) But still, isn’t a bad reprint just the opportunity to pay money to see how bad those comics are? By ignoring such a long period of Wonder Woman’s publishing history, isn’t DC basically saying “trust us, you don’t want to read this?”

Maybe … but eventually, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If no one is curious about Wonder Woman in the ‘70s, or Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’ Mister Miracle, or Arak, Son Of Thunder, or Young Heroes In Love, the only place anyone will find those stories is in the back-issue bins; and in the current state of the market, back issues are — well, on the back burner.

Again, these concerns may not all be demand-driven. I am fairly sure that, thanks to royalty issues, there won’t be a Showcase Presents Secret Society of Super-Villains anytime soon; and that may hold true for reprints of other ‘70s and ‘80s series (All-Star Squadron comes immediately to mind). Nevertheless, if DC is willing to let these stories slip into obscurity, will it be satisfied with its reprint catalog in five, ten, or twenty years? By now you can probably name my perennial suggestions — ’Mazing Man, Amethyst, the Tom Peyer/Rags Morales Hourman — but just off the top of my head I can think of several other market-friendly stories and/or series which (where applicable) might be worth a little more negotiation on the royalty end:

– All-Star Squadron, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by various people. There are four paperbacks of Marvel’s Invaders series currently available. DC’s WWII-on-Earth-2 saga ought to be good for at least a couple.

– Blackhawk (1988-91), written by Martin Pasko and drawn by Rick Burchett and others. This series picked up where the Howard Chaykin miniseries left off, but it sought to tie the paramilitary aviators more closely to the postwar period. It began as a recurring feature in Action Comics Weekly and ran as its own title for 14 issues and an Annual.

– Chase, written by D. Curtis Johnson and drawn by J.H. Williams III and others. This fondly-remembered series tie into the equally-fondly-remembered Manhunter (Kate Spencer edition), but did I mention it features the art of master craftsman J.H. Williams III? Maybe DC is waiting for the new Batwoman series to debut before rolling this reprint out.

– Green Lantern #s 172-183, 185-86 (January 1984-March 1985), written by Len Wein and pencilled by Dave Gibbons. These issues featured Hal Jordan’s return to Earth after months in outer-space exile, but things didn’t end well for Hal. Following a devastating attack on Ferris Aircraft, Hal quit the Corps, leaving John Stewart to protect Sector 2814. GL-mania in general, plus Gibbons’ art and the Predator’s introduction, seem to argue pretty strongly for this reprint.

– Green Lantern #s 188-200 (May 1985-May 1986), written by Steve Englehart, pencilled by Joe Staton, and inked by Bruce Patterson. These issues starred John, but they brought Hal back into the Corps, returned Guy Gardner to active duty, put the Guardians out to stud, and tied into Crisis On Infinite Earths. There’s also more Predator, plus Star Sapphire, Sinestro, and Guardian-lore, so I’d think it would have the same appeal as above.

– Justice League of America #s 139-46, 149-50 (February 1977-January 1978), written by Steve Englehart and pencilled by Dick Dillin. Englehart brought some of his Avengers mojo (not to mention a certain cosmic mom) to JLA, and one of his storylines inspired an animated “Justice League” two-parter. Superman died in one issue and got punched out by Wonder Woman in another; and the League finally caught up with disaffected ex-mascot Snapper Carr. At the time Englehart’s run was somewhat controversial, but I’ve always thought it was a high point of the Satellite Era.

– The original Jason Todd origin, in Batman #s 357-66 and Detective Comics #s 524-33 (March-December 1983), written by Gerry Conway and Doug Moench, and pencilled by Don Newton and Gene Colan. These stories brought into the Bat-universe the Flying Todds, an oddly-familiar family-acrobat-act with an oddly-familiar fate. Now, in hindsight, this storyline is pretty much a blip in the overall history of Robin, the Boy Wonder. It was canonical for about four years before being retconned away by Max Allan Collins and Chris Warner in June 1987′s Batman #408; and Jason’s current backstory has been the law of the land ever since. Still, I like these issues as a good example of the cross-continuity between the Bat-titles in the 1980s, and also for the way they eased Dick Grayson out of the Robin role while still giving him a meaningful role in the series. Plus, there’s some fine Don Newton art, which is always worth reprinting.

– Firestorm, written by Gerry Conway and John Ostrander, pencilled by Al Milgrom, George Pérez, Pat Broderick, Rafael Kayanan, Joe Brozowski, Tom Mandrake, et al. Firestorm is either a shameless example of a writer protecting his creation, a remarkable survivor, or a little of both. His first series only lasted five issues, but co-creator Gerry Conway put him in the Justice League not long after. He then found a home in backup stories in Flash, which led to a second series, which lasted an impressive 100 issues and featured a game-changing revamp just past the midway point. It would take about four Showcase books to tell the whole story, and I think some royalties might be in the way, but it would be worth it to see exactly why the Nuclear Man stayed popular throughout the ‘80s.

I could go on, even with stories not written by Steve Englehart, but you get the idea. I own many of these comics in single issues, but I certainly wouldn’t mind having them in handy book form. (Not discounting a digital archive at all, but I still like paper.)  I also think these comics are generally good, which kind of goes against this post’s bad-comics-reprint theme.

Aha — but with DC collecting just about all of today’s titles, clearly it is preserving at least a few bad comics for posterity, no? At a minimum, I imagine those comics are valuable on an informational level, as in “this may help you enjoy this other book over here.” The bad comics of yore don’t necessarily have that appeal … but they shouldn’t all be dismissed as blog fodder, either.** DC has plenty of good-to-great comics it hasn’t yet reprinted, and it has a whole lot of bad comics I’m in no hurry to see collected. The rest isn’t all bad, and I’d like to think the missteps contain some teachable moments. We may never know, though, until DC pays more attention to the gaps in its permanent library.

++++++++++++++++++

* [Bob Rozakis wrote #7, my favorite single issue, but still.]

** [Mind you, I really have no desire to read The Green Team.]

A Lego Robin

CubeDudes is a Flicker set of Lego figurines made by a variety of brick-obsessed folks. In addition to the Robin above, there are a number of comic-related characters to check out, including Batman, Spider Jerusalem, MODOK and even Calvin and Hobbes. (via)

The Dynamic Duo by John Porcellino

From King-Cat to Dark Knight: Minicomics master John Porcellino tackles the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder for the Denver Comics Fest sketchbook. Click the link to check out the final version with colors from Noah Van Sciver. Then check out Noah’s take on his comrade-in-cartooning-Van-Sciverhood Ethan’s cover for The Flash: Rebirth #3 for the Covered blog. Gee, the Joe Chiappetta/Mark Chiarello collaboration of our dreams can’t be far away at this rate…

This is why YouTube the internet was invented.

Via Topless Robot > Gorilla Mask

Batman #1 logo

As you may have guessed, we’re big fans of the Logo Studies feature letterer Todd Klein runs over on his blog, where he looks at various comic book logos and how they evolved over the years. Yesterday he shared a bit of history about the original Batman logo from the 1940s, which was designed by comics legend Jerry Robinson.

“One of the things I expected when I started doing my Logo Studies was that I would never be able to find out for sure, or at all, who designed many of the original comics logos from the 1940s,” Klein wrote on his blog. “Today I proved that expectation wrong when I spoke to Jerry Robinson, one of the first Batman artists, and involved with the character almost from the beginning.”

Klein had originally gotten in touch with Robinson to ask about the Robin logo that appeared on the Boy Wonder’s first appearance, and Robinson told Klein he also designed the original Batman logo, seen above.

Check out Klein’s complete rundown of the Batman logos over the years here and here, and his commentary on the Robin one here.

Grumpy Old Fan

Marvel tends to revisit its past with a specificity that DC doesn’t duplicate. In projects like World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!, What If?, the current X-Men Forever, and (apparently) the upcoming Clone Saga miniseries, Marvel not only spins new stories out of particular points in continuity, it attempts to give particular creative teams the second chances at closure which the fates denied them. Of course, DC does quite a bit of looking back itself, but most of the time it’s not facilitating such second chances. Still, there are certain points in DC’s publishing history which seem to ask for their own “what if” moments; so I’m going to talk about a few of those today.

* * *

1. What if Jason Todd had “won” the phone poll?

Early in 1987, DC followed “Batman: Year One” (issues #404-07) with two projects: “Year Two” in Detective Comics, and “Did Robin Die Tonight?” in Batman #s 408-09. The former has been largely ignored, but the latter certainly wasn’t. Indeed, it might have been the beginning of the end for the character it was meant to rehabilitate.

For those who don’t know the background, here’s the short version. In 1983, Jason “Robin II” Todd was introduced as the son of murdered circus acrobats, just like his predecessor Dick Grayson. The similarities were intentional, because Jason was supposed to roll back the clock on Robin — to put the “boy” back in “Boy Wonder,” as it were, since Dick was already a college dropout. Regardless, after The Dark Knight Returns foretold his untimely death, and after “Year One” gave Batman a new coat of grit, Jason’s retro origin and vanilla disposition needed to keep up. Thus, Batman #408 (cover-dated June 1987; written by Max Allan Collins and penciled by Chris Warner) famously recast Jason as a street urchin who Batman caught trying to steal the Batmobile’s hubcaps. When writer Jim Starlin came aboard in issue #414 (December 1987), Jason acquired a certain antisocial attitude which apparently wasn’t that endearing. Unsure about what to do with the character, editor Denny O’Neil chose to let his readers decide Jason’s fate via a telephone poll. Some 20,000 readers voted, and the “kill him” choice won by 28 votes.

The rest is history: starting with “Year Three” in issue #436, writer Marv Wolfman set in motion the introduction of Robin III, Timothy Drake. Tim was pretty popular, headlining three miniseries (1990, 1991, and 1992), a feature in the Showcase ’93 anthology, and an Annual (a “Bloodlines” tie-in, but still), before receiving his own series in 1993. Although Tim’s no longer Robin, thanks to the new Red Robin series he’s still a headliner.

Without Jason’s death, though, none of that would have happened. A Jason who’d survived the Joker’s bludgeoning would have learned some valuable lessons, and might have been more palatable to the Bat-books’ readers. However, in the long run it might not have made much of a ripple, considering that Jason would merely have lost the sneer which Starlin had given him. Maybe Jason would have gotten a new costume made of tougher material, not unlike Tim’s original long-pantsed duds, but the big changes probably wouldn’t have gone much further. In fact, without Jason’s death, the Bat-team might have been more reluctant to replace Bruce Wayne in “Knightfall” — and since Tim’s first series was a “Knightfall” spinoff, the odds of Jason getting his own book would have decreased accordingly. Would a rehabilitated Jason have received the attention that Tim did?

Well … probably not. Judging by the relative indifference which greeted Adventures Of Superman #500 and Captain America #600, “returns” don’t seem to be as popular as introductions or deaths. Remember, not only was Tim Drake the new Robin, his debut as Batman’s full-time sidekick was teased for over a year while he got trained. Jason would have been back in action in a lot less time, and perhaps with less fanfare.

That in turn raises the question of whether a less-popular Jason/Robin would have affected the creation of other teenaged characters like Superboy, Impulse, and Wonder Girl II. I think those characters would have come along anyway, but their chemistry with Jason would have been different. For one thing, I suspect he’d be a few years older than any of them.

Actually, now I’m tempted to take back a bit of what I said earlier about “Knightfall.” In the wake of “The Death Of Superman,” I still can’t see DC turning down any of that filthy ’90s event-storyline cash. However, instead of Bruce’s back being broken, I wonder if DC wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to kill Jason at that point. A distraught Bruce would still leave Gotham in the hands of a replacement Batman, but in his lonely travels around the world perhaps he’d come across a new protégé, eager to learn and ripe for his own ongoing title….

2. What if Wally West hadn’t become the Flash?

According to the Crisis On Infinite Earths Compendium (the Absolute edition’s companion volume), Flash writer Cary Bates was told in May 1984 that the title would be cancelled with the next summer’s issue #350. Perhaps in recognition of his years writing Barry Allen, Bates was “given a chance to use the name and start all over again” (p. 9). At that point Wally “Kid Flash” West was effectively retired, thanks to the great pain which then went with using his super-speed. This left Barry with no obvious successor, and for a little while it looked like the next Flash would be a new character.

Regardless, a July 3, 1984, memo mentioned “cur[ing] Wally West [so that] he could possibly become the new, revised Flash” (p. 16). As Crisis penciller George Perez explained in Amazing Heroes #91 (March 15, 1986), making Wally the Flash “became almost an 11th hour decision after DC couldn’t quite come up with an idea for a new Flash. No one could think of anything without feeling like they were somehow insulting the name by giving it to a concept that had nothing to do with Barry Allen” (p. 50). Besides, Perez and Crisis writer Marv Wolfman had given Wally his affliction in the pages of New Teen Titans, so they didn’t have any problems taking it away.

While affection for Barry Allen’s legacy would have been understandable among the DC professionals who had both grown up with and worked on the character, it’s worth pointing out that Barry himself had no real connection with his predecessor beyond being a fan of Jay Garrick’s comic-book adventures. Thus, there was a precedent for the third Flash being someone unconnected to Barry. (However, according to Perez, such a Flash probably wouldn’t have been a woman, considering that Crisis was already introducing female versions of Dr. Light and Wildcat.)

If — and this is probably a bigger “if” than any of the other examples in this post — DC had gone with a heretofore-unknown Flash III, I think it would have had a huge effect on the company’s concept of superhero “families” and “legacies.” Wally was the standard-bearer for that sort of thing, at least until Jack “Starman” Knight came along. Additionally, Wally’s need to emulate Barry let his writers indulge whatever love they had for the Silver Age. Bill Messner-Loebs made the Rogues’ Gallery a bunch of avuncular goofballs, and Mark Waid used Barry’s reputation to inspire Wally to new heights. In fact, Waid’s work on The Flash is said to have inspired Grant Morrison’s JLA, so there’s another combination which might not have come to pass without Wally in the red suit. Overall, the Wally-to-Barry transition is widely regarded today as an excellent example of an older character given a dignified exit and his successor growing organically into the role.

At the time, though, the fans were not so happy; and fans of Barry were particularly upset at their hero’s death. (I specifically remember one angry letter to Amazing Heroes saying that Wally wasn’t fit to fill Barry’s boots.) If DC had gone with someone other than Wally West, the publisher might have gotten a preview of the spleens which would be vented upon them by Hal Jordan partisans in 1994. Fortunately, future Big Events would provide a few opportunities to switch out Flashes. Wally could have been “promoted” either in 1994′s Zero Hour or as a result of 2005′s Infinite Crisis. Failing that, surely Dan DiDio would have wanted to bring Barry back at some point….

3. What if Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor Von Eeden had finished Thriller?

At the end of his interview in the new Comics Journal (#298), artist Trevor von Eeden says he’s open to the idea of revisiting Thriller, the 1983-84 cult-favorite series which showcased von Eeden’s unique storytelling style. Von Eeden only penciled eight of the series’ twelve issues, and series creator Robert Loren Fleming only wrote the first seven. This resulted in a steep drop-off in quality. In the words of Thriller uber-fan David Allen Jones, the replacement creative team of Bill Dubay and Alex Nino “could never recapture the spark that the original creators had and the book limped to the finish line, mercifully killed.” Accordingly, I consider Thriller “unfinished,” and have always wondered what Fleming and von Eeden would have done with the title had circumstances not forced them off.

Since Thriller was one of the least conventional comics DC has published, it would be futile of me to predict any narrative specifics. Instead, I think that if Fleming and von Eeden had finished at least twelve issues, DC might be more amenable to collecting them, which in turn could have built on the book’s existing fanbase. The situation reminds me of the post-Jack Kirby Fourth World, which DC revisited in the mid-1970s with new creative teams, and which — despite big names like Gerry Conway and Don Newton on Return of the New Gods and Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers on Mister Miracle — Fourth World fans largely ignore.

Eventually, in the last issue of a miniseries reprinting the original New Gods, and in the follow-up Hunger Dogs graphic novel, Kirby produced his own conclusion to the saga. It’s not too late for DC to do something similar with Thriller, and I bet it’d make a dandy paperback when all is said and done.

4. What if DC had used Gerard Jones’ “Emerald Twilight?”

Attentive solicitation readers of the mid-1990s surely noticed that DC’s advance word on Green Lantern #48 didn’t quite match up with what was eventually published. The original solicitations for issues #48 and #49 promised dueling groups of Guardians, with the winners taking away the power rings’ weaknesses and appointing Sinestro the new head Green Lantern. As former GL writer Gerard Jones put it in the 1997 edition of The Comic Book Heroes (p. 358), the differences arose because his plot wasn’t “shocking enough.” To retool “Emerald Twilight,” Paul Levitz had “assigned [Denny] O’Neil, [Archie] Goodwin, and [Mike] Carlin to plot a new direction in one night.” As scripted by Ron Marz, this became the apocalyptic turning point which Green Lantern fans know so well.

The background for Jones’ “Emerald Twilight” goes back four years, to the beginning of GL volume 3. The first arc (issues #1-8) of this Green Lantern series picked up at a point where there was no Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians had gone off into another dimension to make super-babies with their female counterparts the Zamarons, and there were only four working power rings (Hal Jordan’s, John Stewart’s, Guy Gardner’s, and Ch’p the squirrel’s). By the end of that first arc, the Guardians had returned, but the one called “Old-Timer” (who had relinquished his immortality in the early ’70s, as a consequence of joining Hal and Green Arrow for their road trip) had gone insane. During the course of his GL run, Jones hinted that the other Guardians might not be entirely trustworthy either.

Appropriately enough, Jones’ original “Emerald Twilight” plot — which would have taken seven issues, #s 48-54 — builds on these hints, by introducing a second group of Guardians. The newcomers claim they’re the real deals, and Hal’s bosses are fakes who are guiding the universe into chaos. The Old Guardians counter that the new ones are really despots who will use the Green Lantern Corps to enforce strict, tyrannical order. However, the “new Guardians” (not to be confused with the short-lived New Guardians group) are also the parents of the Zamarons’ super-babies, who will supposedly be powerful enough to rule the universe. Therefore, the new Guardians’ claims look pretty solid, and most of the GL Corps sides with them. Nevertheless, Hal’s instincts and experiences tell him to trust the Guardians he knows, although it will alienate him from the Corps. This decision is especially painful because, thanks to the destruction of Coast City and his (latest) breakup with Carol Ferris, Hal’s decided to focus exclusively on being a Green Lantern, and the Corps is all he has left.

As a result (Jones explains),

Hal […] enters the [Central Power] battery to increase his power, fights the Corps and takes the Old Guardians into hiding as he seeks a way to convince his fellow GLs or beat the New Guardians. The stakes for Hal are high: if he’s RIGHT about the New Guardians, but they WIN, then the universe is doomed. If he’s WRONG in his gut-feeling and HE wins, then HE’S doomed the universe. If he’s WRONG and he LOSES, then the universe is okay but Hal is ostracized from the only group that means anything to him. The pressure is on him not only to win, but to be damn sure he’s right.

As Hal gathers his own army (other Earth superheroes, a splinter group of GLs led by Arisia, and Star Sapphire), the new Guardians reinstate Sinestro as leader of the GL Corps. Naturally, Sinestro’s program of “purifying” the universe includes things like destroying the Khund homeworld. Even so, the bulk of the Corps are either “wowed or cowed” (Jones’ phrase) by Sinestro’s leadership. Furthermore, the real power behind the New Guardians turns out to be Entropy (formerly Krona). If all that weren’t enough, Hal learns that the real Guardians arranged his father’s death.

And yet, Hal soldiers on, protecting the Guardians regardless of what they did to him. Entropy is beaten back, Sinestro is defeated, the Zamarons’ children wind up on the side of good, and the Corps is reunified. Hal, though, is tired of being manipulated by the Guardians, and quits the Corps. Using the powers he gained after going into the Central Battery, he strikes off on his own as “The Protector.”

Clearly, the eventual “Emerald Twilight” took quite a few beats from Jones’ original. Both feature Hal fighting fellow Lanterns (including Kilowog), both involve Sinestro, and both have Hal assuming a new identity after entering the Central Power Battery. However, just as clear are the differences in tone and effect. Jones’ “ET” only changed Hal, and left the Guardians and Green Lantern Corps intact. Ironically, from what he told Newsarama, his goals weren’t that different from eventual GL revamper Geoff Johns:*

… [M]y main goal was to restore Hal Jordan to glory. It didn’t exactly turn out that way. I was a huge fan of the John Broome-Gil Kane Green Lanterns of the ’60s and specifically a fan of Hal Jordan as they had conceived him, very sure of himself, even a little
arrogant, supremely competent, and I made say [sic] ‘simply heroic.’ I felt that character had [been] weighed down horribly with self-doubt and depressiveness and too many weird character turns, and the series as a whole had been choked by a too-complicated train-load of continuity that it always seemed to be dragging along on its back. I wanted to do a ’90s comic, with ongoing plots and continuity development, but with the cleanness and verve of those old Green Lanterns, and a more mature but equally admirable Hal Jordan in the center of it.

Because Jones also mentions bringing in a “new, younger GL,” a la Kyle Rayner, it’s hard to say whether he would eventually have returned Hal to the GL Corps. Since this was an early-’90s “replacement hero” storyline, and since the Corps itself would have made it easy for Hal and his replacement to coexist, it seems like that probably would have happened at some point. Accordingly, I have to think that DC could have saved itself (and the potential members of H.E.A.T.) a lot of grief by going with Jones’ original plot. Depending on the timing of Hal’s return to the Corps, the chemistry of Grant Morrison’s JLA might have been affected, but beyond that the ripple effects are harder to calculate.

One thing seems clear, however: without the “Emerald Twilight” readers saw, there would have been no need to rehabilitate Hal Jordan, and no need to restore the Green Lantern Corps. That would mean no Green Lantern: Rebirth, and from there the dominoes start to fall. As I remember, Jones considered the power rings’ weakness to yellow to be something the Guardians put in on a whim, and not an omnipotent creature which was the manifestation of fear. Thus, if there is no room in the GL mythology for avatars like Parallax and Ion, the whole “War of Light” concept is undermined … and suddenly DC has no Big Event for the back half of 2009.

Perhaps more significantly, Jones’ Green Lantern Corps was still basically the Corps of the Silver Age. Because the revised “Emerald Twilight” destroyed it and all but one of the Guardians, Geoff Johns had more freedom to recreate the Corps as he saw fit, giving the group a more distinct command structure and explaining the power rings more metaphysically. Although Hal had been around for thirty-five years before he turned bad, one could argue that he couldn’t sustain a title for more than about ten years at a time. Green Lantern vol. 2 lasted eighty-nine issues (including reprint issues) before being cancelled. When the book returned in the mid-1970s, it lasted about ten years (to issue #200) before being retooled into Green Lantern Corps. That version lasted twenty-four issues and gave way to Hal’s feature in Action Comics Weekly. Hal then went from ACW to GL volume 3, and there became Parallax in issue #50. Kyle then took over the title for the next ten years, until the book was cancelled to make room for GL: Rebirth and Hal’s current title.

Now, ten years is nothing at which to sneeze (from 1986-96, it seemed like the Justice League was being retooled every two years), but I have to wonder whether a kinder, gentler “Emerald Twilight,” with the status quo largely still in place, would have created enough interest in Green Lantern to sustain it without subsequent revitalizations. In other words, if Hal had returned to the Corps, say around issue #75, what would GL‘s handlers have done to shake things up? Would they have even felt the need to do anything? I suppose that, in one best-case scenario, Green Lantern would have been the same kind of Silver-Age-friendly book as Waid’s Flash, and it would have been popular enough on its own merits … but I am probably too cynical to see that happening. Some temptations are just too strong.

* * *

Obviously these are not the only examples of creative teams needing closure.** However, each presented an opportunity to make radical (and perhaps arbitrary) changes to the existing status quo. Foregoing these changes therefore looks like the less risky choice, and I don’t think corporate-superhero-comics overlords want to be remembered as risk-avoidant (not in this sense, at least). Still, Wally West’s Flash lasted some twenty years, with Tim Drake’s Robin lasting sixteen and Kyle Rayner having Green Lantern to himself for ten. Indeed, those runs were themselves cut short to accommodate radical status-quo changes (even if the changes to Flash and GL were basically rollbacks). I suppose the most radical reinventions look routine, and the most conventional alternatives look risky, after enough time.

+++++++++

* [And they both have the same initials, just like Alan Scott and Abin Sur. Did I just blow your mind…?]

** [For instance, there's the news that Wolfman and Perez might actually finish the Games graphic novel.]

Grumpy Old Fan

So there I was in the spring of 1988, a college freshman buying snacks at the local convenience store, when I saw Amazing Spider-Man #300 sitting on the magazine shelf. I knew artist Todd McFarlane had helped make the book pretty popular, and I had fond memories of writer David Michelinie from his earlier work on Iron Man and Avengers. Accordingly, I stuck with ASM through the end of McFarlane’s run (in #325), and never gave much thought to Spidey’s two other regular titles. Spectacular Spider-Man and Web Of Spider-Man might have been great reads, but for whatever reason, I just wanted the “headliners,” Michelinie and McFarlane.

I suspect the same is true these days with the Batman line. Yesterday’s releases of Detective Comics #854 and Gotham City Sirens #1 close out the first month of the Big Batman Relaunch. The Grant Morrison-written Batman And Robin (drawn initially by Frank Quitely) has drawn the most attention, with much of the rest going to Detective‘s Batwoman lead (written by Greg Rucka, drawn by JH Williams III). Each of these high-profile creative teams has been charged with producing new-reader-friendly stories, and thereby building an enduring foundation of loyal consumers.

However, DC is not about selling just two Bat-books at a time; otherwise, they wouldn’t have stopped at just Batman and Detective. The new Batman, Dick Grayson, has already made one guest-shot (in Booster Gold #21, which came out two weeks ago), and will be showing up in books like Vigilante and his own Blackest Night miniseries. More to the point, though, the revamped Bat-line now includes two books written by Paul Dini (Streets Of Gotham and the aforementioned Gotham City Sirens), as well as Red Robin, the continuation of/replacement for Tim Drake’s original solo title. Therefore, to give you the reader a little more guidance than I got back in the day, here’s my survey of June’s Bat-titles.

* * *

Actually, considering all that’s been said about Batman And Robin #1, I don’t have much to add. More than likely this series will be the line’s best seller, and readers of multiple Bat-books may well look to it for the “definitive” portrayals of Dick and Damian. I find that a little ironic with regard to Dick, considering that returning Batman writer Judd Winick handled Dick-as-Nightwing in various titles (including Outsiders and Titans) over the past few years. Still, I’m not here to stir up trouble. B&R is undoubtedly meant to stand alone, so that people who wouldn’t touch a Batman book without Morrison and/or Quitely can read this one without further obligation. After all, that’s why I didn’t go any further into the Spider-books.

In this respect, it’s a little hard to believe that Batman And Robin is connected to the rest of the Bat-line, let alone the rest of DC’s superhero books. Sure, there are references to the Justice League and “[giving] Tim Drake his old job back,” but reading issue #1 I was more aware of Morrison’s and Quitely’s particular styles than the book’s contributions to its shared universe. It reminds me of their work on New X-Men, which was great on its own but (so I’ve heard) was tough to reconcile with the other X-books. Conversely, Morrison’s JLA was very much plugged into current DC events, incorporating such things as Superman’s new powers and Wonder Woman’s temporary godhood. Still, that was a function of JLA‘s format, and it’s hardly a requirement for quality superhero fare. Accordingly, the heavy continuity lifting falls primarily on the Batman title.

It’s probably not fair to judge the bulk of writer Judd Winick’s return to Batman by his first new issue, #687. For one thing, penciller Ed Benes won’t be back for #688, since Mark Bagley is coming aboard for four issues. Furthermore, issue #687 is subtitled “An Epilogue To Battle For The Cowl,” and it functions pretty much as a bridge between that event and B&R #1. Nevertheless, that in itself suggests Winick’s orientation towards the Bat-books’ (traditional) flagship. Batman And Robin is the main attraction, and Morrison no doubt has considerable leeway to do what he wants with the title. That leaves Batman with the task of making the new Dynamic Duo make sense, both in the immediate context of the Bat-books and the larger DC Universe. Batman #687 depicts a number of “housekeeping,” gap-filling moments which longtime readers probably expected to see, but which weren’t necessary to the stories other writers wanted to tell. These include a visit from Superman and Wonder Woman, Bruce’s low-key funeral, Dick and Alfred’s shared grieving, and the establishment of the new Batcave. Future solicitations indicate that Winick will be picking up on at least one of BFTC‘s subplots, the power struggle between the Penguin and Two-Face. Like so much of BFTC, I thought that thread was given short shrift, so I’m looking forward to seeing what Winick does with it. Indeed, using the familiar villains as supporting characters is something I have always liked, especially in the Bat-books of the 1980s.

Therefore, I hope there’s some soap opera in Batman, because otherwise it could all wind up in Streets Of Gotham. When the title was first announced I compared it to the late, lamented Gotham Central, but that’s not really accurate at all. SOG‘s twenty-one-page lead story focuses on Commissioner Gordon, Harley Quinn, Firefly, and Tommy “Bruce Wayne” Elliott; features both Batman and Robin; makes reference to Catwoman and Black Mask; and introduces two new characters, child runaway Katy and her hulking rescuer “Abuse.” One plot thread flows into the next, with Firefly’s new scheme tying most of the issue together, but the whole thing is a narrative sprawl. Since writer Paul Dini and penciller Dustin Nguyen were most recently the creative team on Detective Comics, the Tommy Elliott/Hush subplot they started there is picked up here. However, it shouldn’t confuse a new reader, since the gist of it (and the related reference to Catwoman) is explained quickly in dialogue. Assuming those hypothetical new readers aren’t skeeved out by the depravity which threatens little Katy, SOG‘s biggest weakness might be its ambition. Again, it covers a lot of ground before setting up a Firefly-vs.-Batman confrontation, and I’d say it needs to focus more efficiently in future issues.

Dini also writes this week’s Gotham City Sirens #1 (illustrated by Guillem March), which I found enjoyable enough. It too picks up on Dini’s use of Hush, but this time from Catwoman’s point of view. The unnecessary heart surgery Hush performed on her (and the measures taken to heal her) have left her a lot weaker than normal, so she links up with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn to get back on her feet. They all fight aspiring new villain Boneblaster, a punk with sonic-pulse gloves looking to make a name for himself. That part of the story is pretty simple, and is told pretty well, but I was struck by the allusions to previous story arcs. First of all, Dini also brings in Zatanna and the (reformed) Riddler, two characters he used often in Detective. However, the bad blood between Ivy and the Riddler goes back over four years, to an extended arc which tried to bridge the gap between his role in “Hush” and his short-lived makeover in Legends Of The Dark Knight. That arc is referenced only in passing here, and reading it certainly isn’t required to make sense of GCS #1. In fact, it helps justify the setup (Ivy’s mind-controlling the Riddler into servility) without alienating the new folks. By contrast, the references to Catwoman’s erstwhile successor Holly aren’t explained, and — arguably worse — they relate back to Harley and Holly’s friendship as shown in the Dini-run Countdown To Final Crisis. Now, maybe we’ll get some more background on Holly in future issues, but for a first issue, that sort of vagary sticks out.

There’s no good transition to this next topic, so I’ll just say this: I didn’t think Gotham City Sirens #1 went out of its way to be Teh Sexxay. The cover features provocative poses and come-hither looks, and Zatanna gets tied up in a bathrobe with her butt in the air, but that’s about it for the gratuitous cheesecake. Admittedly, that might be enough for some readers, and it’s not like I was expecting Tarot, but I was a little concerned.

You’d think I’d take that opportunity to cruise onto Detective Comics #854, the grand reintroduction of Batwoman, but I want to talk a little about Red Robin #1 (written by Christopher Yost). I have never been a real Tim Drake scholar, at least not in the sense that I could tell you the details of his various peer relationships. However, according to RR #1, the turmoil following Bruce Wayne’s death has completely put the zap on his head, such that by the time the issue opens he’s already telling us he’s broken people’s bones. Tim never struck me as a bone-breaker before, is what I’m saying. Indeed, if there is such a thing as an emo tough-guy, the new Red Robin is he.

Granted, since he talked his way into Batman’s good graces twenty years ago (or, in comics time, while in junior high), Tim’s seen both biological parents murdered, had his adoptive father fried by a being of pure evil, and has lost the only job for which he’s received any meaningful training. I suppose that would send me to Europe in a new crimefighting costume and under the name of “Tim Wayne,” but this is such a tonal shift from my perception of Robin III that it almost reads like a parody of angsty ’90s Batman. It also doesn’t help that artist Ramon Bachs makes “Red Robin” look about five years older and fifteen pounds heavier than Tim. Obviously Red Robin is supposed to fill the void left by its canceled predecessor — with the pre-release bonus mystery of who would be in the suit — but I’m glad this doesn’t tie directly into the rest of the line, because it’s simply not that engaging.

At the other end of that particular spectrum is Detective Comics #854. I’m happy to see that it apparently isn’t tying into the rest of the Bat-line for a while, and it is incredibly engaging. Thanks to artist JH Williams III and colorist Dave Stewart, ‘Tec #854 features a gorgeous lead story which will undoubtedly reward multiple readings. It too picks up from another storyline, specifically 52‘s “church of crime” arc; but the references to that arc are explained pretty well (and expanded upon) in the context of this story. Actually, Rucka and Williams are using their first four issues to tell Batwoman’s origin story, so her place in the overall timeline won’t be any clearer until that arc is over.

Anyway, issue #854 does a great job with both Batwoman and Kate. Williams’ work is fairly detailed, but his Batwoman is a combination of black costume, red highlights, and blank white eyes. Without making it sound like I live an excessively sheltered life, I was impressed with the way Williams uses Batwoman’s ruby-red lips. Just as her eyes are white voids against the black of her mask, so her lips are isolated against her deathly-pale face. Together with her cascading mane of red hair — which itself turns into a neat visual joke after Batman makes a crack about it — those features combine to make Batwoman seductive, scary, kinetic, and generally a joy to watch. (Also, she’s comfortable with firearms, which should be interesting whenever she runs into Batman again.) For her part, Kate Kane plays well off her ex-Marine dad, who’s also Batwoman’s support staff; and a scene where Kate is dumped (because of Batwoman) manages to transcend its familiar origins. As with Batman And Robin, I paid more attention to the creative team’s techniques than I did to the continuity mosaic. (It would have been exceptionally hard not to pay attention to Williams’ dynamic layouts.)

In short, I really liked this first in-depth look at Batwoman. My expectations were probably affected somewhat by the long interval between 52 and this issue, but I’m not sure whether they were lowered or raised. Either way, it was worth the wait.

I realize I haven’t mentioned the co-features in either Streets Of Gotham or Detective, but neither of them ties directly into the Bat-relaunch. In SOG‘s “Manhunter” (written by Marc Andreyko, penciled by Georges Jeanty, inked by Karl Story), prosecutor Kate Spencer has moved to Gotham, where she’s gushed over Commissioner Gordon and reconnected with colleague Barbara Gordon, but other than that she’s got her own case to solve. Likewise, “The Question” (in Detective; written by Rucka and drawn by Cully Hamner) is connected to the lead story only by the two characters’ longstanding relationship. I enjoyed both co-features, both as complements to their respective leads and as solid shorts in their own right.

* * *

Overall, unlike the current Superman line, the revamped Bat-books aren’t really exploring different facets of the same macro-story. So far, half of the line’s titles (Batman And Robin, Detective, and Red Robin) are isolated unto themselves, and the other half (Batman, SOG, GCS) appears to be building its own set of interconnections. If I were asked to recommend only one title, honestly it might well be Detective, but it’d be a close call with B&R. The two Dini books seem geared more to longtime readers, with Streets Of Gotham probably the more accessible. (Plus, SOG has “Manhunter.”) The regular Batman book looks similarly rooted in existing subplots, although Winick’s return and Dick’s new perspective may make it more new-reader friendly. Finally, I don’t know that anyone but longtime Tim Drake fans will find much in Red Robin.

Generally, though, it’s a strong start to the relaunch. This status quo might only last a year, but it looks like it could be a good one.