Post-Crisis, Pre-52 Appreciation 2020

[millernumber1]

Maybe I have the wrong villain. I was under the assumption that Johns and Didio (as chief creative officer and editor in chief) were behind a lot of the drastic creative changes to align all of the IP to their most iconic / silver age forms.

Well, I know that Johns and Didio are responsible for several changes I think are really destructive. I don't know quite what they're responsible for in terms of the way the Batfamily is characterized though.

I'd love to read some of these interviews if you know where to find them! I always loved reading Devin Grayson being candid.

Here's the one I'm talking about primarily: https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...yson-interview

[gregpersons]

Well, I know that Johns and Didio are responsible for several changes I think are really destructive. I don't know quite what they're responsible for in terms of the way the Batfamily is characterized though.

Well, Johns wrote Infinite Crisis which killed Jack Drake so that Tim could be adopted by Bruce, which to me is the point where Tim lost his original characterization. Infinite Crisis segues into One Year Later, which brought forth Evil Cass Cain (I know Adam Beechen wrote those issues but I'm guessing the decision to de-platform Cass came from higher up, ie Johns and Didio).

Here's the one I'm talking about primarily: https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...yson-interview

Thank you!

[millernumber1]

Well, Johns wrote Infinite Crisis which killed Jack Drake so that Tim could be adopted by Bruce, which to me is the point where Tim lost his original characterization. Infinite Crisis segues into One Year Later, which brought forth Evil Cass Cain (I know Adam Beechen wrote those issues but I'm guessing the decision to de-platform Cass came from higher up, ie Johns and Didio).

I thought Identity Crisis, by Meltzer (but heavily pushed into the Dark and Edgy direction by Didio at least, and I think Harras) was what killed Jack Drake? I do think that killing Tim's dad, girlfriend, and probably stepmom (when Bludhaven was nuked) (and I suppose Kon, I just have never really read anything of their relationship) was a horrible series of decision designed to strip Tim of his original lighter aspect and turn him into another angstmuffin.

As for Evil Cass...that's another very complicated tale. I once had a link to a blog that laid out the evidence for who made what decision, but have lost it, and searching has not found it again, sadly. Beechen I believe has said that he didn't make the decision. Tomasi was the editor for that time period of Robin (and a big reason I'm not a fan of Tomasi in general). There's tons of rumors that Didio or someone else at the top made the decision that there could only be one Bat-female at a time, and this was during 52, when Kate Kane Batwoman was created. I have no solid evidence on that one, but it does sound kind of like what happened with the Bat-women during the n52, when Kate and Babs were the only ones who stuck around, while Steph, Cass, and Helena Bertinelli were all erased for 3-4 years.

Edit: found at least one interview which seems to implicate Eddie Berganza as the originator of the storyline: https://casscainnetwork.blogspot.com...-cain.html?m=0

[gregpersons]

If you could import five things from this era into the ongoing Rebirth continuity, what would you bring?

—Tim Drake's presence as Batman's partner in crimefighting, along with Tim's supporting cast, and his Peter Parker-like relatability/ordinariness. It doesn't work quite as well when Tim or Peter are super geniuses and world renowned corporate tech CEOs. I'd be interested to see how Rebirth Barbara Gordon would interact with 90s Tim Drake. With the death of Alfred, right now 90s Tim's dedication to serving Batman -- because he understands that Batman needs help -- would come in handy and it'd be interesting to see him and Selina interact more too; they had a solid and fun dynamic in the Dixon era.

—Tim Drake and Cassandra Cain's original costumes, regardless of codename. Nightwing obviously has his best costuming in this period too. I also think Batman's look in NML when it's all black, yellow oval, and pouch belt is the best version of his suit. Damn, is there anyone who's costumes have really improved in the New 52 or Rebirth? Huntress, maybe? Hmm. Riddler in Rebirth by Mikel Janin is probably my favorite look for that character more than the BTAS bowler hat and tie, or the green onesie jumpsuit.

—The fullest version of the GCPD roster: Bullock, Montoya, Hardback, Essen, Kitrich, Allen, Josie Mac, etc. For as much praise as The Long Halloween gets for doing Batman+The Godfather, Gotham Central is equally deserving for doing Batman+The Wire/NYPD Blue. I'd love to see more attempts at doing Batman stories from other perspectives, especially the Gotham police detectives.

—Jim Gordon is retired but still in contact with Batman, and new commissioner Michael Akins respects Batman but fundamentally disagrees with his whole operation.

—Nightwing. Rebirth started so strong...

[gregpersons]

I thought Identity Crisis, by Meltzer (but heavily pushed into the Dark and Edgy direction by Didio at least, and I think Harras) was what killed Jack Drake? I do think that killing Tim's dad, girlfriend, and probably stepmom (when Bludhaven was nuked) (and I suppose Kon, I just have never really read anything of their relationship) was a horrible series of decision designed to strip Tim of his original lighter aspect and turn him into another angstmuffin.

As for Evil Cass...that's another very complicated tale. I once had a link to a blog that laid out the evidence for who made what decision, but have lost it, and searching has not found it again, sadly. Beechen I believe has said that he didn't make the decision. Tomasi was the editor for that time period of Robin (and a big reason I'm not a fan of Tomasi in general). There's tons of rumors that Didio or someone else at the top made the decision that there could only be one Bat-female at a time, and this was during 52, when Kate Kane Batwoman was created. I have no solid evidence on that one, but it does sound kind of like what happened with the Bat-women during the n52, when Kate and Babs were the only ones who stuck around, while Steph, Cass, and Helena Bertinelli were all erased for 3-4 years.

Edit: found at least one interview which seems to implicate Eddie Berganza as the originator of the storyline: https://casscainnetwork.blogspot.com...-cain.html?m=0

Ah you're right, it was Meltzer and Identity Crisis not Infinite Crisis, and thanks for the additional context. But yeah, all of these choices were really shortsighted for the long-term health and growth of the characters.

On the other hand, you know, it's interesting to me to also try to look at this whole era as one giant story that does, more or less, have a beginning, middle, and an end.

The story is very much a tragedy, and it's exceedingly bleak for everyone involved. Bruce experiences nonstop loss for like two decades... it's sort of rosy for Tim and Dick for a minute, and then accelerates into a series of brick walls for them. In the "end" of the story, Tim is no longer someone with a way out of this life -- he's as committed as Bruce ever was, if not more so, and same with Dick.

Barbara starts the story at a lowpoint with The Killing Joke, but it becomes a blessing in disguise as her life actually generally improves, relatively speaking. She does lose her stepmom and her home and she's almost murdered by her brother.... she still lives in Gotham. But compared to the losses accumulated by Bruce, Dick, and Tim, she becomes more powerful than almost any Justice Leaguer, and she's doing it all at a computer, eventually becoming Batgirl of the meta-internet or something in Batman Inc. Plus she mentors two successful Batgirl proteges and, under her watch at least, neither of them die.

[gregpersons]

Here's the one I'm talking about primarily: https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...yson-interview

Fantastic interview from Devin Grayson... sounds like for a time it truly was a dream job and Denny O'Neil sounds like a dream editor. And it seems like she's pointing to Didio most of all at the end?

Googling around for less than a minute yielded this interview from 2014 which is also great, and she more explicitly names Didio. https://thebatmanuniverse.net/tbu-exclusive-3/

More of her interviews are nicely compiled on her site: http://www.devingrayson.net/links.html

[godisawesome]

Devin Grayson is someone who, unfortunately, I first got to know via her Nightwing run, and only really towards the end, when she made a few bad decisions right at the most unfotunate time, with War Games interrupting her “Born Again”-esque tale for Dick. I saw her work at its worst, and right at arguably the nadir of the Batbooks as a whole.

Only later did I actually get ahold of some of her earlier stuff and start to realize she was one of the best Batfamily writers, particularly for odd ensemble pieces.

I’m also that odd duck who actually really liked Nicieza’s runs on Robin and Red Robin, though in hindsight I understand people’s issues with them. Not to say I didn’t love Chris Yost’s take - I really like that as well. Looking back, you can see how maybe some of the reason I liked Tim’s Nicieza characterization was because it was trying to simultaneously fuse his old Peter Parker-esque days with Bruce Wayne’s Post-acrisis and Bronze Age characterization - because Bruce was at first gone from the ensemble, then transitioning into a new phase with Inc.

I like Spider-Man, and I like Batman... so I was a sucker for Nicieza’s take on Red Robin. It also helped that his sense of humor is genuinely good, and he was doing some great worldbuilding with his, Dixon and Yost’s pieces. Again, though... I do get the complaints about Tim going darker and more, frankly, Machiavellian.

This era though... I feel like you could make several good TV shows with it, if you selected the biggest and most memorable interconnected arcs from it, cleaned up a few of the inconsistencies, and even reworked some of the lesser stories.

Imagine if you were doing a Robin cartoon series, and knew you were going to launch a Spoiler/Batgirl III story... and so you revised some of War Games to better serve that story, removing the “Spoiler did it twist,” maybe faking out the audience with Steph’s death, before revealing that the whole Batfamily is faking her death and she’s becoming one of Batman’s personal spies, before returning to become Batgirl back home.

Or if you replaced “Evil Cass” with “dislussioned Cass,” having her go through something like her book’s final arc, and needing to do some soul-searching outside of Bruce’s purview, she leaves the mantle for Steph, before returning as Black Bat.

Or if you embraced the way Judd Winick restructured Under the Red Hold in the movie version to save time and create a better story for Jason’s resurrection... which is incidentally what I think Greg Weismann is doing on the side in Young Justice, while also incorporating Jason’s return with Damian’s early years.

Or you want to give Babs a good las story as Batgirl that directly ties into Killing Joker and her rise as Oracle - you want to keep Joker’s awesome monologue, but you want the more important event to get handled actually well (i.e., to do the opposite of what Brian Azzarello thought was a good idea for the animated TLJ movie.)

Or maybe, you rethink how to do Talia’s transition from someone Bruce loved to his enemy, instead of weirdly combining stories where, at first, she was more ambiguous and more believable attractive to Bruce before being brainwashed, then rewritten to just always be bluntly evil. I mean, you’d want to use stuff like the seven where she confronts Bruce to get him back in the game when he’s out of Gotham during NML (great issue), with stuff like her having Damian, and heading Leviathan, but maybe playing it up more tragically and with more real heartbreak.

And I think that doing something like that would maybe lead to a more intentional maturation for Tim, rather than the one that the writers had to go with when his kith and kin suddenly started dropping all around him.

[kevink31593]

So...the question of "who killed Steph" has no real answer, and I've been looking for 15 years. Didio and Willingham, the biggest targets, have both denied it, saying that the decision was made before they got their respective assignments (Didio in a back of the comic interview, I believe, and Willingham in a podcast around 2014). The other writers who have denied responsibility are: Devin Grayson, Ed Brubaker, Dylan Horrocks, and Gail Simone. That leaves pretty much just Andersen Gabrych (one of the co-writers of War Crimes as well, and one of the only people who has on-the-record interviews about War Crimes, in which he is very enthusiastic, which points my suspicions directly at him) and Bob Harras, the Batman Group Editor at the time, who just doesn't give interviews at all. So I personally believe it's Gabrych and Harras, not Didio or Willingham, who made the decision.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Didio actually did make the decision, and forgot or obfuscated later.

I tend to credit Chris Yost more for pulling Tim out of his darkness - yes, he wrote the early part of Red Robin, where it started very dark, but Collision was a beautiful climb into the light. Nicieza stayed in the light for an arc or so, but by the end, it was slipping down into darkness again, which has really affected my view of the second half of Red Robin.

I do think it's interesting that all of the writers who work with Dan consistently say nice things about him. At least the ones who go on the record. I don't actually know if there's NDAs preventing the cranky ones from saying anything mean. Devin Grayson's interview last year seemed to indicate that there was really something rotten in the Bat-offices after O'Neil left, and she said that the same people are still there...which could mean it was Didio or Harras or one of the other long-runners.

I’d just like to point out that it was actually Bob Schreck, not Harras, who was the Batman editor at the time. Schreck took over when O’Neil retired in 2000, and he was the Batman editor until Tomasi took over with One Year Later in 2006.

[kevink31593]

Devin Grayson is someone who, unfortunately, I first got to know via her Nightwing run, and only really towards the end, when she made a few bad decisions right at the most unfotunate time, with War Games interrupting her “Born Again”-esque tale for Dick. I saw her work at its worst, and right at arguably the nadir of the Batbooks as a whole.

Only later did I actually get ahold of some of her earlier stuff and start to realize she was one of the best Batfamily writers, particularly for odd ensemble pieces.

Devin’s run on Gotham Knights was great! For those unaware, there is a lost issue of Gotham Knights soon to be released in the upcoming Arkham Zsasz trade paperback! I posted about it a while ago here https://community.cbr.com/showthread...leased-in-2020

A year or so ago I read a DCU novel Devin wrote back in 2006 titled “Inheritance”. It starred Batman, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Arsenal, Aquaman, and Tempest. She was at her best there and it was a great story.

[Wrestler]

Just read The Last Arkham, really good story, I wasn't expecting much, but it delivered after all, first time Zsasz appears on my reading order, well, I highly recommend it.

Now it's time for Knightfall saga, but maybe before I go full force in this saga I'll read Joker Killer Smile, it's a story out of my reading order I'm looking forward to.

[millernumber1]

If you could import five things from this era into the ongoing Rebirth continuity, what would you bring?

1. No surprise to anyone: Steph Batgirl title, with Oracle as her mentor, and preferably Cass as a frequent guest or co-star.

2. The pre-Identity Crisis/War Games Tim Drake status quo - it preserved something different for him out of the Robins.

3. Birds of Prey, with Oracle - first Simone run, not second (second was too warped by Cry for Justice's damage to Black Canary, and Simone was not in nearly as good writing form)

I think, honestly, that's it for me. The other stuff I would like was already mostly done by Rebirth.

On the other hand, you know, it's interesting to me to also try to look at this whole era as one giant story that does, more or less, have a beginning, middle, and an end.

The story is very much a tragedy, and it's exceedingly bleak for everyone involved. Bruce experiences nonstop loss for like two decades... it's sort of rosy for Tim and Dick for a minute, and then accelerates into a series of brick walls for them. In the "end" of the story, Tim is no longer someone with a way out of this life -- he's as committed as Bruce ever was, if not more so, and same with Dick.

Barbara starts the story at a lowpoint with The Killing Joke, but it becomes a blessing in disguise as her life actually generally improves, relatively speaking. She does lose her stepmom and her home and she's almost murdered by her brother.... she still lives in Gotham. But compared to the losses accumulated by Bruce, Dick, and Tim, she becomes more powerful than almost any Justice Leaguer, and she's doing it all at a computer, eventually becoming Batgirl of the meta-internet or something in Batman Inc. Plus she mentors two successful Batgirl proteges and, under her watch at least, neither of them die.

That's a really great look at the story. It does make me very sad for Tim and Dick. Bruce, though, seemed like he was kind of on top just before Flashpoint - Batman Inc vol 1 was full of victories and cool stuff for him.

Fantastic interview from Devin Grayson... sounds like for a time it truly was a dream job and Denny O'Neil sounds like a dream editor. And it seems like she's pointing to Didio most of all at the end?

Googling around for less than a minute yielded this interview from 2014 which is also great, and she more explicitly names Didio. https://thebatmanuniverse.net/tbu-exclusive-3/

More of her interviews are nicely compiled on her site: http://www.devingrayson.net/links.html

Haha, that's the website I edit for (but long, long before I started writing for them) . I do really wonder about Didio sometimes...

I’m also that odd duck who actually really liked Nicieza’s runs on Robin and Red Robin, though in hindsight I understand people’s issues with them. Not to say I didn’t love Chris Yost’s take - I really like that as well. Looking back, you can see how maybe some of the reason I liked Tim’s Nicieza characterization was because it was trying to simultaneously fuse his old Peter Parker-esque days with Bruce Wayne’s Post-acrisis and Bronze Age characterization - because Bruce was at first gone from the ensemble, then transitioning into a new phase with Inc.

I like Spider-Man, and I like Batman... so I was a sucker for Nicieza’s take on Red Robin. It also helped that his sense of humor is genuinely good, and he was doing some great worldbuilding with his, Dixon and Yost’s pieces. Again, though... I do get the complaints about Tim going darker and more, frankly, Machiavellian.

This era though... I feel like you could make several good TV shows with it, if you selected the biggest and most memorable interconnected arcs from it, cleaned up a few of the inconsistencies, and even reworked some of the lesser stories.

My problems with Nicieza's runs on Robin and Red Robin have a lot to do with 1) the way he treated Steph in Robin (she was clearly meant to be on a bad path, and incredibly incompetent as well) 2) the really weird plotting (more in Robin than Red Robin, but there's a lot of weird elements that are either dropped because the universe ended, or just incompetent, like Cricket, Lynx, etc), 3) the really unpleasant feeling that Tim Drake was being put in a very inappropriate harem anime, making out with or being threatened with sexual assault or even just saying weirdly creepy and completely history-ignorant things about "hormonal tension" between him and Steph, and 4) the way he went really dark with the final two storylines (though, to be fair, Johns did a lot of the groundwork for that in the few issues of Teen Titans I have read, mostly the Titans of Tomorrow stuff).

I love your pitches for shows, and it makes me so sad we'll never get it. There's a thread on here for a hard reboot, and if I trusted DC to actually honor their character history and do something like this - like Batman Year One - where they take the raw material of their 80 years of history, and put it together in a new, more condensed, accessible form - I would be all for a hard reboot. But I know a hard reboot would look like what most hard reboots do - ignoring most of what happened, picking the worst aspects, and ignoring the stuff that was dearest to me.

I’d just like to point out that it was actually Bob Schreck, not Harras, who was the Batman editor at the time. Schreck took over when O’Neil retired in 2000, and he was the Batman editor until Tomasi took over with One Year Later in 2006.

Good point. I got my Bobs mixed up.

[gregpersons]

Devin Grayson is someone who, unfortunately, I first got to know via her Nightwing run, and only really towards the end, when she made a few bad decisions right at the most unfotunate time, with War Games interrupting her “Born Again”-esque tale for Dick. I saw her work at its worst, and right at arguably the nadir of the Batbooks as a whole.

Only later did I actually get ahold of some of her earlier stuff and start to realize she was one of the best Batfamily writers, particularly for odd ensemble pieces.

After reading a bunch of Devin Grayson interviews last night, I went back to re-read her Gotham Knights run and I think that is absolutely one of the very best runs on any Batman title by any writer, imo.

This era though... I feel like you could make several good TV shows with it, if you selected the biggest and most memorable interconnected arcs from it, cleaned up a few of the inconsistencies, and even reworked some of the lesser stories.

Imagine if you were doing a Robin cartoon series, and knew you were going to launch a Spoiler/Batgirl III story... and so you revised some of War Games to better serve that story, removing the “Spoiler did it twist,” maybe faking out the audience with Steph’s death, before revealing that the whole Batfamily is faking her death and she’s becoming one of Batman’s personal spies, before returning to become Batgirl back home.

Or if you replaced “Evil Cass” with “dislussioned Cass,” having her go through something like her book’s final arc, and needing to do some soul-searching outside of Bruce’s purview, she leaves the mantle for Steph, before returning as Black Bat.

Or if you embraced the way Judd Winick restructured Under the Red Hold in the movie version to save time and create a better story for Jason’s resurrection... which is incidentally what I think Greg Weismann is doing on the side in Young Justice, while also incorporating Jason’s return with Damian’s early years.

Or you want to give Babs a good las story as Batgirl that directly ties into Killing Joker and her rise as Oracle - you want to keep Joker’s awesome monologue, but you want the more important event to get handled actually well (i.e., to do the opposite of what Brian Azzarello thought was a good idea for the animated TLJ movie.)

Or maybe, you rethink how to do Talia’s transition from someone Bruce loved to his enemy, instead of weirdly combining stories where, at first, she was more ambiguous and more believable attractive to Bruce before being brainwashed, then rewritten to just always be bluntly evil. I mean, you’d want to use stuff like the seven where she confronts Bruce to get him back in the game when he’s out of Gotham during NML (great issue), with stuff like her having Damian, and heading Leviathan, but maybe playing it up more tragically and with more real heartbreak.

And I think that doing something like that would maybe lead to a more intentional maturation for Tim, rather than the one that the writers had to go with when his kith and kin suddenly started dropping all around him.

Another killer post. Love all these ideas.

I'd love to see an animated series basically adapt this era "Under the Red Hood" style... going from basically "A Lonely Place of Dying" to "Batman Inc" (I'd skip past Killing Joke and A Death in the Family since both were already basically adapted and just reference them as having just occurred before the series began).

Given how important legacy and family is in this era, I think "Batman Family" would be an appropriate title.

[godisawesome]

It would be killer to see someone do DITF, than a Lonely Place of Dying, integrate Tim into the whole thing, than slowly hint that Jason’s returning and then finally have a confrontation between them during or after Under The Red Hood.

We got a few interesting first encounters between the Robins, but I’d argue that was one area where we didn’t really get a very controlled roll out of the idea, and we could have used it. Johns went with a very Johns-style story in Teen Titans between Jason and Tim thata didn’t really fit Winick’s style for Jason, and I think he and Dick’s first encounter after he was unmasked was in that regrettable OYL Nightwing book... which was probably the first time I realized I may have been too hasty in my judgement of Devin Grayson.

[gregpersons]

From Devin Grayson's site, I came across this blog post with some good recommendations from the post-NML period.

http://www.gothamcalling.com/great-p...-land-stories/

In addition to Gotham Knights and Rucka's work, it also recommends Batman 80-Page Giant #3 and Catwoman (v2) #78, which I don't think I've read yet but am seeking out now on the DCU app.

[jb681131]

From Devin Grayson's site, I came across this blog post with some good recommendations from the post-NML period.

http://www.gothamcalling.com/great-p...-land-stories/

In addition to Gotham Knights and Rucka's work, it also recommends Batman 80-Page Giant #3 and Catwoman (v2) #78, which I don't think I've read yet but am seeking out now on the DCU app.

Rucka's work is extraordinary.
For Catwoman, all of Brubaker's run is worth reading.