My understanding of Batman continuity is that pretty much most of the major stuff is still canon, right?

My understanding of Batman continuity is that pretty much most of the major stuff is still canon, right?

Year One, Death in the Family, Knightfall, the Killing Joke, Under the Red Hood, No Man’s Land, Death and Return of Bruce Wayne, etc, etc all still happened, right? The New 52 just condensed all of that down to a five year span (which is pretty ridiculous, but that’s the timeline we’ve been given).

Obviously, there have been retcons and changes over the years, but am I correct in assuming that most of Batman’s continuity is relatively unchanged? That all the post-Crisis events and stories still happened to some degree?

I know Superman got a complete reboot with the New52, and his entire history was scrapped... until Rebirth happened and it was retconned that post-Crisis Superman was still around and the two then got merged, bringing his major story elements back into continuity.

Obviously the Justice League history got an entire overhaul and pretty much all the older stuff doesn’t count anymore.

But aside from the JLA stuff, Batman’s solo stories were pretty much unchanged right?

King's run is basically an elseworld's story. Everyone is out of character, especially Bane.

Every story that you liked is canon, every story that you hate is non-canon.

This. There hasn't been a canon batman story in almost a decade.

shut the fuck up because that's not true. You can't do the "muh story is canon" shit. The only reason they're all "canon" is that they conceivably happened in a universe of the multiverse.

Either you accept that all things are canon are you accept what the Mob recognize as canon. There is no picking and choosing.

canon is for dweebs just read whatever story’s good nigga

thinking it has anything to do with reading is about the plebest shit someone could say.

It's about discussion of the comics. Doesn't matter if you think some shit is good if the person you're talking to doesn't recognize it as anything more than a side story.

I also understand that none of the Crisis events happened?

So did Barry Allen simply never die?

I understand that Hal was still Paralax then Spectre... somehow. So Final Night still happened? Kyle got his ring in the same fashion and Guy went through his Warrior phase too. Right?

Death and Return of Bruce Wayne is crucial to the current Metal storyline. And we’ve been told that Dickbats still happened. How does that work if Final Crisis is no longer canon?

Sue Dibny was no longer raped, and the JLA didn’t need to wipe Dr. Light’s mind or Batman’s mind afterward. So is Brother Eye still a thing? If so, why?

>My understanding of Batman continuity

Look, I'm a big continuity fan, but the truth is most of those older stories are being ignored /retconned / barely mentioned.

N52 discarded most of the old stories, and Rebirth follows that same line. It's a lot more than just condensation, because even then a lot of it happening doesn't make sense, or doesn't add up.

Writers and editors can't be bothered to respect characterization or canon. It's the way it is.

What they do, is take a few elements from old stories, but not the stories themselves.

For example: We know that Jason still died at the hands of Joker, and came back, but the circumstances in current continuity were probably different than they were in "Death in the family".

Bane said he broke Batman's back, but Azrael never replaced him. And of course Tim's story is completely different in current continuity, except for his origin (which was recently retconned again to be more like Pre-Flashpoint).

I'm pretty sure No Man's Land never happend in current continuity.

I’ve often wondered, characters from the future like the Legion of superheroes, Reverse Flash, Booster Gold and Batman Beyond... why aren’t they fucked over hard every time there’s a soft reboot or something?

Not quite as dramatic, but I could quit my job today, move to another city, pick a different career and end up marrying a girl I’d have never met otherwise. Or, I could just keep my life on the course it’s currently on, because changing jobs and cities on a whim for no reason is pretty irresponsible. Either way, this will affect where I live, the people I meet, the kids I have -if any. My future son might befriend some loser who in another timeline would have committed suicide. By not committing suicide, the mental illness in his family gets passed on, and HIS son becomes a mass murderer. Twenty years on, a film gets made about the killings and some unheard of actor gets a breakout role. Some other dude on the other side of the world took his date to the movie, she wouldn’t stop answering her phone in the cinema so the guy got into a fight over it with another dude and the other dude went to jail over it and as a result missed out on the promising career path he was on.

That’s just one example of the butterfly effect that I pulled out of my ass, and the choices we make have unforeseen ripple effects on the future every single day. And I’m just a regular dude.

So when a famous superhero gets involved in an event that reshapes the entire universe, reboots origins, retcons rape crimes, wipes other people from history etc, the ripple effects are going to be even greater.

How do characters from the 25th century even still exist?

This desu.

This is the only way to read comics. Hypercrisis, baby.

>I also understand that none of the Crisis events happened?

Right. But still in Metal we see the tuning fork (which may have been obtained under different circumstances and not because of Crisis)


>So did Barry Allen simply never die?

Correct. And Wally (redhead) never replaced him as Flash (even though by being trapped in the Speedforce, he "remembers" a timeline in which he did)

>I understand that Hal was still Paralax then Spectre... somehow.

Hal Jordan's history is the biggest fuck-up of continuity. They wanted to keep the Parallax fearbug thing, and also mentioned Coast City was destroyed and rebuilt, but this makes absolutely zero sense in N52 context. I don't think he was ever Spectre.


>So Final Night still happened?

Maybe, but if it did, it played out differently and this event has been largely ignored in N52.

>Kyle got his ring in the same fashion and Guy went through his Warrior phase too. Right?

I think so. But Kyle and Guy were never part of the Justice League.

>Death and Return of Bruce Wayne is crucial to the current Metal storyline. And we’ve been told that Dickbats still happened. How does that work if Final Crisis is no longer canon?

They have not bothered to explain that.

>Sue Dibny was no longer raped, and the JLA didn’t need to wipe Dr. Light’s mind or Batman’s mind afterward. So is Brother Eye still a thing? If so, why?

This newer version of Brother Eye is not the same as before, it's not fully developed, and was probably built under different circumstances.

The crises happened, most characters are just oblivious to the changes in status quo they brought in.

New 52 Batman remained mostly intact with the retellings retconning some of the older stuff. Rebirth made anything that wasn't canon back to being canon again. It's best to think that everything is canon until proven otherwise.

King's issues leading up to Batman proposing to Selina hints that even the origins are mixed depending on what you want. Batman and Selina remember their first meeting differently which is likely King's way of saying it's up to the reader who is right as it's never resolved.

What makes you think that the circumstances around Jason’s death were different? I always assumed that they happened more or less the same.

Tim’s story was dramatically different in the New52, people hated it so they brought it back to be more in line with how it was.

I always assumed that Knightfall happened pretty much the same. Any reason why it wouldn’t have? Do we know for a fact that Azreal never replaced Bruce while he recovered?

I was under the impression that Batman was effected the least out of everyone by the New52, that most of his stories were just condensed.

And isn’t Rebirth about bringing back the story elements people didn’t want to see erased (Superman’s history, Tim’s history, Wally, etc).

Is there any reason to assume some of the stories from say, Shadow of the Bat, couldn’t have happened?

In a recent Red Hood and the Outlaws book, Jason mentioned visiting Superman’s fortress before and the editorial note mentioned some old-ass story from when Jason was still Robin. In Metal, Aquaman referenced the time he had a book for a hand and the editorial note said “see the 90s”, so that happened at some point.

Obviously, some stuff simply can’t have happened. The JLA had their history retold, Lex Luthor was never president, etc.

But I was under the impression that Rebirth brought a lot of older stuff back into continuity and that Batman was never really effected that much anyway.

No Man’s Land I’m not really sure about. Isn’t that the origin of Cassandra Cain? Is that different now?

Kind of an autistic question, but can canon affect the real world? Suppose I was kissed by another guy on New Years Eve and felt pretty uncomfortable afterwards... if I never tell anyone about it and enough time passes... can I reach a point where that event basically becomes non-canon to my life, like basically a what-if or a dream?

It's fairly easy to read every Batman story that isn't an obvious elseworlds as canon.

I see no reason why not. If the event wasn’t well recieved, nobody really knows about it and it doesn’t get referenced again in the future, then by all means, declare it non canon to your personal narrative. It pretty much never happened. Now if there were photos on Facebook or something, different story -you can’t retcon that shit. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Everything since Grant Morrison's run doesn't count.
Everything before it does count, though most of it counts only in the sense where they were Bruce having drug induced hallucinations about going on surreal supernatural adventures.

that's equivalent to "think whatever you want, I don't care!!"

Yup. Its great.

hold on to your butt OP as of the Button it's now One Universe One Timeline so everything from the Silver Age to now happened, and the changes are a cause of a malevolent outside force (Dr. Manhattan)

so instead of Pre Flashpoint Earth and New 52 Earths being two different Earths like we were told in Convergence it's the same place.

only LOSH gets fucked because they're based on the concept that Kal-El was Superboy and he was able to warp back and forth to help them out. Superboy is a major figure in Early Legion.

I mean sure. It still happened to YOU though. But it doesn’t need to impact the direction of your life in any way. At least it was a learning experience?


was it that bad?

Something something timeline constants, different variables same results.

pretty sure Hush is still canon

Don't do this, headcannon only leads to suffering

No mans land isn't a part of it anymore but everything else is. Instead of referring to no mans land most writers just say zero year since it had a similar effect on the city.

It was like that before 2011, to the point batman and detective comics were still in their vol 1, something no other character from the 40's can say. Sadly Alan moore forced Johns into writing flashpoint

>Alan moore forced Johns into writing flashpoint

>Everyone is out of character
I never understand this complain when it comes to comic books. Batman has over 75 years of being written by countless authors. There can't be such a thing as "out of character"

God, batfags are faggots if what they read does not have a morrison or a grant on the cover.

The reason "canon" matters is because it influences future stories. Even stories declared out of continuity (like most of pre-crisis) influence new DC stories, so anything a writer has read is effectively canon.
Shit from the Silver Age still informs new stories.

One of these times that DC does a hard-reboot on their continuity, they should (oh idk) MAYBE figure out what counts and what doesn't. Bc it happed post-Crisis and it happened Post-Flashpoint that they couldn't decide what they wanted to keep and what they wanted to throw out, or how things they kept affected things they threw out. At least after Crisis there was that "History of the DCU" 2-parter that tried, but once multiverse stuff started to bleed back in, it all was for nothing. And New 52 was even more of a mess with almost zero planning.

And it's stupid anyway bc the reboots END UP being part of the continuity. It's not a real hard reboot where it totally displaces the other. They're all one continuity which ends up both pandering to, and frustrating long-time readers. And because DC can't not do stories that are multiverse-porn, it just confuses new readers in the end.

Most of it's canon, but some stuff had shit changed around. Knightfall, for example, didn't have Jean Paul Valley replace Bruce. Azrael doesn't come along until BRE, and the Azbats outfit doesn't even show up until the recent run of Detective Comics, where Bruce is active as Batman.

I know this, I've read them. I own a floppy of each issue of his insipid run.

It's garbage. as said there hasn't been a canon batman story in ages.

I fucking love Loeb, Miller, you're right about alan grant, you forgot Denny. God, you casuals are the worst.

Why did they reboot if now all is the same universe and everything was Canon?

No Man's Land has the origins of Cassandra Cain and Harley Quinn both of whom have new origins. Also Zero Year is basically No Man's Land basically.

The simple answer is-It ALL happened.
Every single bit of it.
Just accept it and stop trying to make it fit. You'll rest a lot easier.

Do their old origins really conflict with their new ones to the point where the story couldn’t have happened?