RatCreature's Journal

After reading about Huntress, I've now read the 2000 retcon of her origin story myself, Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood (written by Greg Rucka, pencils and inks by Rick Burchett, except in #5 and #6 which have inks by Terry Beatty), and overall I liked the story. I was of course spoiled by reading summaries, but I have to say that from just knowing Huntress from guest appearances in BOP and such, and the Nightwing/Huntress series, I wouldn't have expected her to act like this.

Even having read summaries, the end still had something of a sucker punch effect on me. I mean, she doesn't do it herself, but she arranges for Santo Cassamento, the man who ordered her family to be wiped out and also her biological father, to be killed, because she wants revenge, because "blood cries for blood." She asks her uncle Tomaso Panessa for a favor, and while we don't hear her words then (I guess mostly so that it'll hit you harder as a reader later on), it becomes clear that she asks him to kill Santo, and tells him where he'll be able to find him, or something to that effect. Then she arranges it so that Santo has to be at that drug shipment personally, by beating up on his goons, meets Santo outside, letting him believe that he's still blackmailing her with his knowledge of her identity, calmly takes off her vigilante garb after he went inside, and stands by outside while he is murdered, not swayed in the least by the Question/Vic's pleas to stop it either. She also placed an anonymous tip so that Tomaso will go to jail. And as her final act we see her throwing her crucifix down into the water by the pier (which, as far as I can see doesn't reappear in her guest appearances in Batman and Detective after this series, even though she still wears her old costume, not the current one).

I think what hit me, is how she takes off her costume before standing by his murder, as if she somehow doesn't want her vigilante persona tainted by this revenge killing she arranged. It was a really powerful scene, but it changed my view of her.

Unrelated to the Huntress stuff, what's up with Tim and Barbara in this series? Here Barbara knows Tim's identity, when she didn't in BOP #19 which was published the same month as #2 of this series. It's not so much that I have a problem with her knowing, I mean, in a way it's kind of weird that we were supposed to believe she didn't in BOP #19, despite things like Tim's rescue from NML, which should have made the connection between Robin and Tim quite obvious to Oracle, I think. It just doesn't fit.

So crazy person that I am, I am kind of trying to write a first draft of a comic Batverse overview for crack_van, because the Batverse really deserves to be pimped. A lot. So while I'm valiantly struggling to come up with ways not to make the character backgrounds and storyline descriptions ridiculously long, and possibly with footnotes *facepalms* -- lots of footnotes explaining alternate versions, because I'm irrationally afraid to be kicked in the head by people reading it, whose favorite version of the pivotal character past moment is a different one -- I'm rereading bits and pieces, and I'm reminded all over again of why I love the characters so much.

For example young Bruce Wayne. I mean, he's one traumatized little kid, and copes with the loss of his parents in a scary way, but he is also just awesome. He makes the decision not to let something like his parents death happen to someone else ever again in night of the murder, and in a way it's really a thought that an eight year old would have, like, it's not an especially realistic goal or anything. It's not a grown up thought of helping victims of crime, or reducing crime, or saving as many lives as possible -- possible doesn't figure into it. He swears on the grave of his parents that it'll never happen again. But the dedication and drive the loss of his parents start within him, in a way I admire that, because it's not resigned but defiant even against impossible odds. And he keeps that goal, and his oath in mind even as an adolescent and adult, he never revises his goal into something achievable.

I think he's a great person for that. I mean, as far as my reactions to the death of close relatives like my mother or my grandparents go, it just resulted in me being depressed, and kind of fatalistic about death happening, it's not like I decided to dedicate my life to rid the world of cancer or anything. And okay violent death is of course different, but I never got the impression that it was about vengeance for Bruce, or about that particular mugger. I really admire how he takes his pain and transforms it into a force for something positive. Even though his way is probably not the "sanest" one to deal with death, after that night's events he is at least never passive or a victim again.

I mean, in many depictions of the murder and it's aftermath, you can see the moment he makes this decision, when his look turns from that of a scared kid, into the look of someone determined and scary, like this one from Year One, or in the one from the Zero Hour Batman issue, I linked to above. He is still afraid of course, but it doesn't paralyze him anymore. He faces his fear and uses it. I also truly envy his focus-- not exactly in that I would want to be that extreme myself, but-- it may be kind of scary, that he's so single-minded, yeah, but once he's certain of his goal he works to achieve it, and does so with all he has.

First he molds himself exactly into what he wants to be, both body and mind, then later he transforms his home into the perfect base for his mission, his company into the machinery to generate the technology and immense funds he needs, but he doesn't just fight as Batman, at the same time on the Bruce Wayne side of his war against crime he uses Wayne Enterprises to generate wealth and jobs for Gotham, is a philanthropist who gives money to charities, all to transform Gotham.

Um, I think, I don't really have a point, except that I adore the ingenuity of Bruce's whole setup.

...just not not right now. Ahem.

I've finished reading Dead Heat (Flash #108-111 and Impulse #10-11), and overall I enjoyed it a lot, not at least because I like stories with the speedforce playing a prominent role, however one thing bugged me: The way the speedsters talk about Johnny Quick's suicide made them sound like one of the more disturbing cults out there. I mean it's great for them that they're so sure of their afterlife, but still-- when Jay tells Jesse who mourns her father "Your father was a fine man... and, god, I'm going to miss him. But be glad for him, Jesse. After a lifetime of living in darkness, he finally saw a light that took him in and made him whole." (quoted from Flash #111) --it somehow bugs me. It's not only how content they seem to serenely seek out and embrace their death (joining with the field or not, they are still dead) when they feel their time has come, because the speedforce calls to them, which is vaguely disturbing to hear from people who are not terminally ill or in a lot of pain (which are the only circumstances I have encountered that sentiment), it's also that apparently to have their desired afterlife, they can't just wait for dying of old age in their sleep, they have to die through their form of ritualized suicide, by running as fast as they can, and then if they're lucky enough (or favored by the speedforce, or whatever), they can join with it. Which is what reminds me of some wacky cults who tell their members they have to kill themselves in some specific fashion to get into heaven.

I mean, I've been wondering whether in the aftermath (i.e. the funeral in Flash #112) the other speedsters told the assembled heroes that Johnny Quick didn't really die in the fight, but decided to join the speedforce because he "finally saw the light". It doesn't seem that way-- at the funeral Johnny's ex-wife Libby (the retired Liberty Bell) is grieving and fairly bitter, and blames it on the costumed adventuring that he's dead. It seems she assumes he died because of the fight. I assume the speedsters must have told her something about why they are so certain he's not going to reappear, because otherwise I have a hard time how anybody in the DCU would accept someone as dead without leaving a body behind this quickly, just because he apparently disappeared in a big boom of lightening.

I now want to know much of this stuff the speedsters share with their team mates, and what those team mates think of this. I mean I can't imagine that their views on this go over well with everybody.

Another thing I'm ambiguous about is that in Dead Heat we get to see Wally inside the field, which on one hand is cool to see, on the other hand I liked that it was left open and mysterious in Terminal Velocity, and in a way seeing it on page this time, made that less effective. However it's still a really cool sequence in Flash #111 (page 15, 16, 17/18, 19, 20), not at least because even though Wally is in (or at least only one step away from) nirvana-like bliss, he still has a sense of humor as he brings Savitar to join the other speedsters: "And the certainty that all those who have journeyed here before me take care of their own... however they must. So long Savitar. Learn to play well with others."

Last night I've read the Terminal Velocity arc and the issue after, dealing with its fallout, i.e. Flash #95-101, and when I went to bed I had this thought about how Flash's experience is in a lot of ways similar to Animal Man's (first) death and rebirth through the Red in the Flesh and Blood arc in Animal Man #51-56. Since then I looked at the Animal Man issues again, to write this entry -- it's been a while since I read them -- and it wasn't quite as parallel as my half asleep brain thought, mainly because Animal Man recognized his "power field" before his first death, also Buddy is less able to hold on to his previous personality, while Wally manages to push his new insights into his subconscious. But I still think their "near death experience" stories are similar in a lot of ways, because totally different superpowers work on a similar structure, which I find neat. Also I think it's interesting how differently they and their families deal with these things.

Now, it's not exactly uncommon that superheroes die only to come back, whether through magic, some cosmic entity, timeline anomalies, or whatever plot device is en vogue then, however I think that both Buddy's and Wally's experiences stand out. Not only because they both come back changed and actually remember things (while sometimes superheroes don't remember and don't change much, it's not that unusual that the death/resurrection plot is used to tweak or change the character's powers), but also because both do it by themselves -- through discovering a deeper connection to the source of their powers, i.e. the "Speedforce" for Wally, "The Red" (a.k.a Morphogenetic Field) for Buddy. Subsequently that "rebirth" and with it their new awareness of their respective "field" changes their powers, ends up being a spiritual experience for them (though some will get more extremist about it in the long run than others, I mean it's not like Flash has founded a Speedforce church -- I hope *g*), and also leads to tension in their relationship to their "normal" spouses who remained behind and didn't share that revelation. Even though for both their wish to stay with their loved ones longer, and to protect them, was their primary reason not to surrender to the field, but to cling to life and come back.

( a more detailed look at this, cut for lengthy quotes about the Speedforce and The Red, and their nature )

A little while ago when I talked about reading the recent Flash issues which give Wally a secret identity, I wondered how this worked. I mean beyond the "Hey, let's use The Spectre as a giant plot device that works in weird and quirky ways" level. Like, how did The Spectre do it, and what exactly was the nature of his intervention, etc. And then yesterday I read this essay with an introduction/theory of how Hypertime works, and started to wonder whether you couldn't use Hypertime to maybe make the plot device a bit less whimsical from an intra-universe perspective.

Now, I'm not familiar with The Spectre, but I read about his powers (that link goes to the page for the previous Spectre since the one for the current doesn't details Hal Jordan's powers as Spectre), and that bio lists things like "The Spectre is intangible, can fly, turn invisible, inhabit and animate inanimate objects, and sense the intentions of people in the place where they plan to carry those intentions out. The Spectre knows many secrets of the universe and its inhabitants, though even he is not omniscient. The Spectre can sometimes get glimpses into the future, although this is not without great difficulty."

And Hal's powers as Spectre may be different, and probably that has been explored in the most recent Spectre series, but since it's the same Spectre force inhabiting him they ought to be similar, and I have to say that at first glance at least, causing all the changes necessary for this secret identity creation if he does changes only inside the main timeline is hard too swallow. What Hal says in Flash #200 is "I can't raise the dead, Wally. Not in any pleasant way. And like Barry I can't change history. But I can help. [...] You regret revealing your identity to the world. Putting your loved ones in danger. I can't stop that from ever happening--but I can fix it so that from this day forward--no one will remember who the Flash is. No one will remember Wally West is the Flash. No one will remember Barry Allen was the Flash." The Spectre ask Wally to run, and apparently somehow the combination of both their powers controlled by The Spectre made not only the memory changes but also changed physical objects revealing the identity, like that statue of Barry Allen, and I assume that extends to news archives, tv records and the like. Another complication is of course that it is possible to recover the "lost" memories with a sufficient trigger, like Batman researching Flash's identity to find him when he goes "missing," Batman telling Wally he's the Flash etc.

Now, after I read the Hypertime essay, about how Hypertime makes it possible that timelines intermingle, I had this idea. What if the Hal didn't made countless manipulations to the main timeline (though I know the conversation between Flash and Batman in #205 makes it sound like that, but it's not like either of them would be aware what exactly happened), but somehow manipulated Hypertime, making the main timeline interact with a second one in which history really was that neither Flash's identity became known, made them feed back into one another, collapsing both those timelines into the new one. Like the description above says, as Spectre Hal knows a lot about the universe, he also has experience *cough* in messing with time and reality, and while as Spectre alone he may not have the power to manipulate Hypertime, with that knowledge he could have used the Flash's powers in some way to collapse two timelines he's chosen to get a result like this.

With that hypothesis of what he did his statements make more sense. He didn't change the "past" in either separate timeline, but merged the two, ones with very similar events, and with it all people, objects, records, in both timelines merged as well. Since the timelines are so similar, it wouldn't make a difference for most things, so the intermingled objects and people would be exactly like they were before. The conflicting event, i.e. the revealing of Flash's identity, in the new version came from the second timeline. And it helps explain the odd way the memory recovery works too. If you think about the two timelines as intermingling states it makes sense that people know and not know that Wally West is Flash until the final timeline settles, and like an observer makes two superimposed quantum states "collapse" into just the observed one-- like in the thought experiment with Schrödinger's cat-- the confrontation with the previous knowledge makes the person become aware of Flash's identity, and "collapses" the memories into the final version. And maybe whatever it is what intermingles when timelines intermingle within Hypertime can be interpreted in terms of probabilities, so when this superimposition of timeline versions settles into the final one, you could calculate the probabilities of how the final timeline will turn out. Only the probability of that memory of Flash's identity settling into the memory version of the first timeline is much higher if the person worked with Flash and really knew him as Wally, than if there are few and inconsequential memories of public appearances and such.

It still kind of makes your head hurt, but I like that much better than The Spectre doing all the changes to all people and objects directly. This way he would just have to know which timelines to choose from all of Hypertime so that their merging would lead to the desired result (with a high probability anyway).

I've been wondering when and how Batman and Superman reveal (or find out) each other's secret identities as Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent (in current comic continuity), and which issue(s) tell of this. The version of their first meeting as it is told in Man of Steel (mini-series) #3 (Nov 1986) -- I don't know if there are others -- doesn't have a mutual revelation of secret identities.

I did some web research, but what I found surprise me, mostly because I previously thought that Superman and Batman found out about each other early. The Superman FAQ has a question on who knows of his secret identity and says that "Batman discovered the secret (ADVENTURES #440, May 88)". I then browsed that site some more and found a three part article Superman & Batman: World's Finest Team, that takes a closer look at their relationship.

That article tells a bit more Adventures of Superman #440. It's apparently continued from Action Comics #594:

Superman asks for his help in trying to determine who has been keeping a scrapbook of his feats before his official debut as Superman (unknown to Superman, Ma Kent had been saving clippings, and her book had been stolen).

Batman brings Robin along to meet Superman. It isn't clear whether this Robin is supposed to be Dick Grayson or Jason Todd. While Robin stands slack-jawed (repeatedly saying "wow!"), the two discuss the scrapbook.
[...]
Superman checks back with Batman in Adventures of Superman #440 for three pages. The meeting is made a bit edgier this time. Batman is in his Dark Knight persona, wondering where Superman is. "I don't like standing idle like this. Gotham is a garden that needs constant weeding". Batman doesn't bring Robin this time and he is abrupt with Superman ("As usual, your humor eludes me, Superman.").

As to the scrapbook, Batman says that he wasn't able to come up with anything except, "the only absolute fact I was able to glean from the thing ... is that you're Clark Kent". Humorously, Superman's first thought is "Maybe I should have enlisted the help of the world's *second* greatest detective!" Batman adds that as a matter of "professional courtesy" he won't reveal Superman's dual identity to anyone.

Superman shows that there are some brains with the muscles when he replies, "Oh, I'm quite sure you won't do that ... Mr. Wayne." Batman almost slips off his batrope as he thinks, "and to think I took all that effort to line my cowl with lead foil."

(quoted from Superman & Batman: World's Finest Team - Part 1 (of 3) by Sean Hogan)

Reading this summary confused me a bit. Both the Unofficial Guide to the DCU site as well as the Unofficial Chronology Site put this in present day, and make the Robin Jason Todd. Thus Batman didn't know Superman's identity until Year Seven (in the ultra compressed "official" DC timeline that seems to have a bizarre "10 years rule" ever more compressing events as time goes on) or even Year Nine (in the timeline constructed by the Unofficial Chronology Site, which attempts to be consistent wrt to actual events unlike the SF&O timelines), which is the year Jason becomes Robin.

While this is consistent with Legends of the DC Universe #6 which tells of the first meeting of Dick Grayson with Superman (and it isn't that scrapbook case), somehow I always imagined them finding out about each other much earlier. I vaguely remember reading stories set before Batman teamed up with the first Robin, where he still knew of Superman's identity. Right now I can only find ones which aren't all that central to other continuity and probably weigh less heavy, e.g. LotDK #24-26, Flyer, a story set explicitly 18 months after his debut as Batman, when he refers to Superman as Clark (LotDK #24 p.17), which I didn't even read until recently, yet I thought they learned each of other's identities early on even before reading that. And I'm not sure to what extent the World's Finest mini-series from 1990 written by Dave Gibbons was intended as in continuity or as standalone, but reading that fit with my impression (which apparently I can't fully trace right now) that Batman and Superman found out each other's identities early, because there's also no Robin, yet they know each other.

Are there other versions that explore the identity thing further or retell the version from 1987? I haven't read the World's Finest twelve issue maxi-series, does that one maybe cover it? I'd really like to read relevant issues covering this more in-depth than the Adventures of Superman issue mentioned above seems to do, though I guess I'm going to look for it too. So if anyone has further reading suggestions and/or more insight into this, it would be much appreciated.

(Note: I first posted about this a while ago, but moments later noticed I'd overlooked things, so I deleted that post and reposted after having read more, just in case you saw the previous post appearing and then vanishing on your flist and wondered about it.)

The first post is here.

The first section on Batman (of which this post is the first part) covers stories/issues I'm aware of which deal containing information about Bruce Wayne/Batman's childhood, his years of training and travel, as well as key moments early in his vigilante career that formed the present day Batman. Like I explained earlier, I'll deal with key first encounters separately.

Issues/stories are listed in order of their first publishing date. The ones I haven't read (yet) are marked with a "*" (For those I linked to the sites I took the information from, the numbering of the resource sites is the one I used in the first post.):
( a longish list )

Now a more in-depth look at these stories, starting with the central Year One storyline, which I'll also use as a "baseline" to compare other stories to, because it is at the core of modern Batman continuity. As is often pointed out [1] [3], Batman didn't get a "clean" break in his continuity during Crisis with a neat retelling like Superman, however Year One has a similar function, even if there was no full rewrite.

Year One, i.e. Batman #404-#407 (Feb - May 1987), gives us the following information (I won't summarize the whole plot about corruption and organized crime in Gotham, but just highlight some stuff, especially since I'll cover the early history of Batman, Dent and Gordon in a separate post. I guess everybody just a little interested in the comic version of Batman -- and who else would read detailed comparisons of information on his origins? -- will have already read Year One anyway):

( notes on Bruce/Batman in Year One )
tbc...

Okay, I should be sleeping at way past three in the morning, however instead I've been wondering about Batman, secret identities, and personality splits, and how I've seen the relation and balance between the different aspects of Bruce/Batman's persona handled in the comics dealing with this. I blame it on reading JLA v3 #50-54 earlier today.

And just for the record, it is really annoying when characters make camp like this in my mind, the last time that happened had been with TS, and somehow Jim and Blair with their neat 65 episode canon, fairly normal personalities, and their small regular supporting cast have never been this much trouble. Not like Batman, Nightwing, and Gotham in general. They brought less gargoyle decor too. I mean, I assume fanfic writers learn to live with characters (and thoughts about characters) clamoring in their head, but I actually don't think much about the characters in most of the fandoms I'm interested in, except when I'm discussing them intentionally. They and their history don't pop up in my mind at inappropriate and inconvenient moments, or deprive me of sleep. I guess I can count myself lucky that it needs a high level of involvement and exposure for this to happen.

So, in this JLA story the superhero identities get split from their "cover" or human identities for those JLA members who have both, i.e. there are suddenly Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Plastic Man, Martian Manhunter and Flash, as well as Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Kyle Rayner, Patrick O'Brian, John Jones and Wally West, while Wonder Woman and Aquaman remain whole.

And I found the way Batman's split was handled interesting, because it was different from the "usual" way the personality parts "separate" in Batman storylines. The split identity thing is a fairly common theme in Batman comics (at least in recent ones, I haven't read that many of earlier ones yet). The integrity and unity of the Bruce-Batman personality isn't very stable, despite or maybe even because his amazing mental abilities and discipline.

I mean, he can make the conscious decision to forget whole aspects of his self, like he did in Transference (in Gotham Knights #8-11), where he made himself "forget" that he was Batman to protect himself. Transference ended January 2001 (the cover date), when the JLA issue #50 is from February 2001. Obviously that's not a direct correspondence to the internal timeline, as the chronology relation between different series isn't easy to figure out, but his personality integrity sure took a lot of battering around that time. Not much later in Close Before Striking (Batman #588-590, running from April to June 2001) he overidentifies (to put it mildly) with his alter ego Matches Malone, foreshadowing his identity problems and then mental breakdown during the Bruce Wayne Murderer? storyline. In Gotham Knights #24 Bruce talks to "Batman", sees him, hears voices, and can't clearly remember all his actions. And at least if you consider the recent one-shot Batman: Ego to be in continuity, that hasn't been the first time Bruce sees Batman as a corporeal entity he can talk to. In Batman #600 during Bruce Wayne Murderer? he then declares "Bruce Wayne" to be the mask. Anyway, lots of complicated identity problems.

But all the identity splits I recall in the Batman comics have in common that, broadly, "Batman" is both the trauma and the coping mechanism, while Bruce Wayne is the "rest personality," whereas in the JLA story Bruce Wayne remains as a "normal" human with the trauma, but without the coping mechanism of "Batman" and the skills to channel his anger, whereas "Batman" has the (superhero) skills but not the drive of the (human) trauma.

I found this view of the different aspects of Bruce-Batman's persona interesting, because it draws a holistic picture of how the aspects are interdependent, and approaches the topic of the sometimes warring parts of him from a different angle than all the "split personality" stories that culminated in Bruce Wayne Murderer? Which I liked too, but ultimately I like that Batman and Bruce Wayne are parts of a whole, neither more "real" than the other, nor possible as separate, even if the "whole" in this case is rather complicated.

I'm not sure I'm expressing myself really well, but then you can't expect much from insomiac pre-dawn rambles. *g*

I was feeling grumpy and depressed, because I'm home alone with my cold (yeah, still *grumble*), and wasn't feeling up to going out, but then I decided that lying in bed, zapping through 24 hours news channels who intercut terror alert news ^(*) with New Year's celebration pictures wasn't the way to go for New Year's Eve, and I should really start New Year on a more positive note.

So I thought about what I could do to improve my mood, and I decided to take a look back on one of the most fun things for me in 2003, which was getting into Batverse fandom. It's my newest main fandom, and I'm still feeling the squee a lot.

I'm still feeling very much as a newbie too, but I've learned a lot about the universe, the characters, and DCU continuity, though I was (and still am) puzzled and confused a lot. So I present you A Newbie's Journey into Batverse Comic Fandom, and hope it conveys a bit of the fun I had this year with discovering this cool fandom.

( A Newbie's Journey into Batverse Comic Fandom )

Now that I'm in a much better mood, I wish a cheerful: Happy New Year! to all of you.

(*) There was some kind of "intelligence" on a supposed car bomb threat against a military hospital here, which led them to close off the whole parts of the hospital's neighborhood, complete with armed security forces, armored vehicles, car searches and other fun stuff (still ongoing), and now local and federal authorities are squabbling whether that is an overreaction or not, i.e. the federal authorities argue that the reaction now lowered the chance to catch the two people they suspect of planning that attack, whereas the locals argue that they had to react as precaution,...and it doesn't help that they're from different parties either.

Did you ever start writing a blog entry, thinking that you had a point or an argument, and then a few paragraphs into it you just sort of lost track, or rather noticed that what you are saying doesn't really lead anywhere, and turned all rambly, but you already spent like an hour an a half on it and don't want to abandon it? Well, this is that kind of blog entry...

So anyway, a few days ago sanj posted in the gotham_gazette about how hard it is to "convert" people to Bat-fandom, and what could be done to make it easier. (Somehow I'm not really happy that the fandom vocabulary for this process is either reminiscent of proselytizing some religion or, with the alternative "to pimp," of soliciting seedy sex, but I digress.)

And I'm down with the goal of attracting more fans to the Batverse, I'm just not really sure that a primer would work, that is, I'm not sure people don't get into Batverse comic fandom because there isn't enough info on what happened before, or because they don't know where to start reading, or even because comics are expensive. Don't get me wrong, comics are expensive -- compared to watching tv at least, and having a good primer does help with easing into reading the comics: character bios, recommended reading lists (for main events, for important character moments, etc.), synopses, excerpts, FAQs, etc. all that is very helpful. I mean, after a couple of months I still have to look up things that are confusing and unfamiliar to me.

Still, I think the main "problem" goes deeper, and I put "problem" in quotes here intentionally, because I think while it prevents (some) people from getting into the Batverse comics, it's inherent and not really a "problem" as such, like, say, that comics are expensive is a "problem" -- I think most comic fans would like it if comics still had so large print runs that they were cheaper and the artists and everybody else involved could still make a living. So what is it?

First, it might be self-evident, yet is still worth pointing out in the context of "promoting" Batverse comics to reach new fans: some people just don't like reading comics. Incomprehensible as this is to me as a lifelong comic fan. And I don't mean that some people are sort of "snobby" and don't take the medium seriously as something adults might enjoy. Sure that happens, just like some don't get why one could be interested in tv series or sf, but I haven't really seen that attitude much in the broader (media) fandom. It's just, far more people are familiar with tv as a narrative medium than with comics (reading cartoons now and then really isn't the same), and at the same time that comics became less common, their visual language has developed further, just like in any other media, but fewer people followed those changes or are used to them. Like, I've really noticed that some people have problems to "read" comics, when I showed them some. Not the text or the images, but they just don't get the whole. I imagine it would be much like someone familiar only with very early movies, like from the 1920s, trying to follow a modern movie which uses lots of cuts, or something like that. It's not that there is some insurmountable barrier preventing understanding, but it is unfamiliar and takes time getting used to. Fairly often if you want to convert someone to Batverse comic fandom, you might well have to convince them to give a "new" medium a try, and not just a fandom.

Second, you just have to approach continuity differently than for tv series, and I've noticed in myself that I just have to get over some of the "habits" that I acquired during a few years in tv fandoms, or otherwise I'd see things as "failings" that are also really cool if looked at differently, and in fact also strengths of a source as sprawling and diverse (and as a result also often overwhelming and contradictory) as a long-lived comic universe. Anyway, I've talked about the challenges Batverse canon presents compared to for example the typical tv series canon before. It comes down to that in tv fandoms there is a strong emphasis on knowing all canon, if you are a "real fan." Or at least knowing of all canon if you haven't watched everything. Even in "fanfic-centric" fandoms like TS, where a fair number of people seem to be into the fandom more for the fanfic than for the show, those who haven't seen the eps are most likely aware of what eps there are, and what, at least in general terms, happens in each.

For example when I first found TS fandom I had only watched up to the middle of season two, because that's what had been aired here before a hiatus started, and I was looking on the net whether there were more episodes in the US. And soon, even before I figured out how to get tapes, I was aware of all the episodes aired then (it was, iirc, towards the end of season three around the time Crossroads first aired in the US), and read at least summaries. And it was fairly easy to get the gist of what everybody was talking about and feel reasonably certain about events and characters. It helped that TS wasn't a show where I was worried about being spoiled for episodes before having the chance to see them, unlike Buffy for example. I might not have known all canon first hand, but I knew of all canon, was aware what canon there was and knew what I didn't know, so to speak. And it didn't take more than an afternoon of reading episode summaries, reviews and some transcripts.

With Batverse comics even that is impossible. Okay, I guess it is possible in that the totality of all DC comics, and thus all comic canon involving Batman and related to Batman, is a finite set, and with enough resources you could possibly buy them all, and probably there are even indexes out there somewhere giving summaries of everything (though I haven't found one yet), but for practical purposes, there is no way new Batverse fans can orient themselves in the manner new tv series fans are used to. Nor would that approach really make sense for this comic continuity.

A couple of times I have heard someone say that they can only write (or even get into) series with a "closed" canon, i.e. after the series ended. Obviously to those fans the Batverse will be a hard sell, no matter what. I mean, they could choose some fixed time period and decide to be just into Silver Age Batman or something, but I'm not sure that would work for them either. And that might be an extreme example, most fans don't seem to have a problem with series that are in production after all, but I'm just saying that there sometimes people might not "convert" to the Batverse, no matter how appealing characters, stories and themes may be to them. (There might be a better chance with all those fans who are frustrated that their favorite shows are always cancelled prematurely. Even if a comic series get discontinued, chances are that your favorite character will appear elsewhere or at least that you can still spend a lot of time catching up with collecting all past comics the character was in.)

Of course all of this isn't an argument against compiling a "primer" like Sanj proposed, I think primers and such are helpful for the (potential) newbie fan, and I think that excerpts showing key moments cater more to the comics' strength, especially their visual appeal and the art, than continuity overviews, timelines and such things do. Much like vids are more likely to lure new fans to tv shows than "dry" episode guides or transcripts. (As much as I really enjoy all things related to continuity and the organization of information relating to it, it's probably not the most obvious attraction, and accentuating that image of "it's all really complicated" is maybe not the best way to go either.)

Um yes, this is the point where I stop without any conclusion or point, but hey, I put a warning at the beginning. <g>