Batman (major?) retcon history?

[Restingvoice]

I was actually searching for information on this as I'm currently reading Batman and Robin Eternal. I haven't actually kept up with comics since I was younger and was catching up on some newer stuff.

Anyway, something I noticed. Bruce Wayne has amnesia. Dick, in his spy role, Tim as Red Robin, and Jason as Red Hood are working together on something. It's tied to the order of St. Dumas. For context, Cassandra is also there, along with Bluebird, so it's not some kind of "in the past" type of thing.

Well, they run into Bane and forge an alliance. They go in and meet Azrael in all his flaming sword glory. They are just finding out about him and have never seen him before.

So this would mean that Knightfall was retconned, as this means they never met Jean Paul and he never became Batman. Which means Bane never broke Batman's back. If this was a big retcon somewhere along the line, like I said, I've been away for quite a while.

That's the only explanation here, and I'm just wondering where along the line this major event from back in the day actually got wiped from Bat history......

Batman and Robin Eternal were part of New 52 and all of those are officially retcon starting from when Snyder made Zero Year. Before that, it was still up in the air if the Batfamily keeps their history or not.

That said, the impression I got from New 52 was Bane breaking Batman's back is canon but there was no Jean-Paul or Azrael. The Suit of Sorrow exists and worn by Michael Lane, but they only included them as a cameo in Batman Incorporated where he already retired and lived in seclusion.

Then when Batman and Robin Eternal happened, Jean-Paul appears as Azrael with no connection or mention to Michael Lane.

Jean-Paul acquired his old Knightquest costume in Rebirth Detective Comics, upgraded, but I don't remember if old continuity is back or not

[Scott Taylor]

Man reading through that list makes me miss the quality of the Batman stories of the 1990s. Such a great time for Batman!

[Chanfan304]

Batman and Robin Eternal were part of New 52 and all of those are officially retcon starting from when Snyder made Zero Year. Before that, it was still up in the air if the Batfamily keeps their history or not.

That said, the impression I got from New 52 was Bane breaking Batman's back is canon but there was no Jean-Paul or Azrael. The Suit of Sorrow exists and worn by Michael Lane, but they only included them as a cameo in Batman Incorporated where he already retired and lived in seclusion.

Then when Batman and Robin Eternal happened, Jean-Paul appears as Azrael with no connection or mention to Michael Lane.

Jean-Paul acquired his old Knightquest costume in Rebirth Detective Comics, upgraded, but I don't remember if old continuity is back or not

So what you're saying is that the New 52 retconned Knightfall, then Zero Year retconned New 52, and now anything before both is kind of up in the air?

I'm really not liking some of the newer Batman stuff, tbh. Too crazy. With the whole Nth Metal/bat-God/rip in the fabric of time/multiverse nonsense, to Joker being some kind of deux ex machina of the gods with multiple versions running amok, it's gotten kind of ridiculous. Too convoluted. I mean, good grief.

I did like the Justice League with Lobo in it, though. That was decent.

[Restingvoice]

So what you're saying is that the New 52 retconned Knightfall, then Zero Year retconned New 52, and now anything before both is kind of up in the air?

I'm really not liking some of the newer Batman stuff, tbh. Too crazy. With the whole Nth Metal/bat-God/rip in the fabric of time/multiverse nonsense, to Joker being some kind of deux ex machina of the gods with multiple versions running amok, it's gotten kind of ridiculous. Too convoluted. I mean, good grief.

I did like the Justice League with Lobo in it, though. That was decent.

At first, at the start of New 52, everything was up in the air. The assumption being that the Batman family keeps all their history, just the timeline is shortened to 5 years but everything that happened still happened.

Then Zero Year retcon Year One. After that people realize that we're firmly in the new continuity. New back story, new origin. Everything's still up in the air because aside from the origins, they don't tell us anything that changed and whatnot, but no one's pretending or hoping that the Batman family is untouched by the reboot. It's 99% new.

After Rebirth, they brought back elements from Pre-New 52, while keeping some elements from New 52, so everything... is still up in the air. It's just that this time they're running on the excuse that Dr. Manhattan is meddling with the timeline to do whatever they want.

[Tzigone]

Yeah, the Batman mythos, for the most part, have stayed pretty consistent. In fact, its more or less possible to view Batman's history from 1939 to the present-day as virtually one unbroken line (with a few cosmetic changes here and there) - which is in fact what Grant Morrison did. The fact that is relatively easy to reconcile all the different iterations of Batman is IMO one of the reasons why the Batman fanbase is also relatively more united than the Superman fanbase (where you have constant debates about different versions of Superman).

Over time, the major changes/additions to Batman continuity have been:

-A significant expansion of the Wayne family legacy and their significance to Gotham history. Originally, Thomas Wayne was just a wealthy doctor who happened to be the victim of an unfortunate crime alongside his wife. But over time, this has shifted to the point where the Wayne family were basically Gotham royalty, Thomas and Martha Wayne were philantrophists on a mission to save Gotham, and the Wayne industrial empire is worth billions. The idea that Bruce's activities as Batman are in some way a continuation of the Wayne family legacy (an idea that Snyder pretty explicity leaned into in Zero Year) stems from that. On a related point, originally Wayne Manor was just a house Bruce purchased well after becoming Batman, but now its not only Bruce's childhood home, but also the ancestral home of the Wayne family.

-Alfred's importance in Bruce's life is a major retcon that has resonated through all contemporary adaptations of the Batman mythos. Originally, Alfred was the son of the Wayne family's former butler, who, per his father's dying wish, entered Bruce's employ long after Bruce and Dick were well-established as Batman and Robin. Alfred, while he was a valuable ally to Bruce, was never as close to him as Dick was. But now, Alfred has not only been with the Wayne's since Bruce was a child (if not before his birth), but he practically raised Bruce and is basically a surrogate father to him. He's also Bruce's very first ally, and his closest confidant.

-Gotham City has fundamentally changed in many ways. Originally, it was a standard fictional city, a faux-NYC with a fairly 'normal' crime rate. At some point in the 70's, and certainly after Miller's Year One it was re-characterized as this cesspool of crime and corruption that was virtually beyond hope. This has, to a large extent, changed the nature of Batman's mission as well. Originally, his parent's death was simply a crime, and he wanted to spend his life "warring against all criminals". While that is still technically true, in the current context, the Wayne murders have become a symptom of the rot that infests Gotham, and so Batman's mission (or rather obsession) is about warring against the darkness of Gotham - or at least keeping it at bay. Batman's not just a crime-fighter anymore, he's someone trying to save his city.

These are the really big ones. There are tons of smaller, superficial changes. For instance, was Joe Chill a hitman or a mugger (and was the murderer Joe Chill at all?) Where did Bruce get trained to become Batman? At what age did Dick Grayson become Robin? How did Jim Gordon get allied to Batman? But the three I've mentioned above are the fundamental changes that have really reshaped the mythos over the last 30-40 years.

Is it sad that, in hindsight, I like the original better on all of these? I can take or leave the Waynes being richer and more important (though not nearly as rich as Bruce is now), but the rest of it is stuff that the more I actually think about, the more problem it presents to me.

[Jim Kelly]

The "New Look" in DETECTIVE COMICS 327 & BATMAN 164 didn't actually change any history. All the details were the same--it was the aesthetic that changed. Just like in DETECTIVE COMICS 394 & BATMAN 217 no history was thrown out, but there was a change in how Bruce did things and the aesthetic started to change.

'TEC 327 did have Batman using a gun (this issue was supposed to come out after BM 164, but because of scheduling it ended up being the first "New Look" issue). Julius Schwartz said that was a mistake--and this is to be expected with new creators, they make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't be considered retcons.

So when I read BATMAN 404 - 407, I didn't take it seriously at the time. Frank Miller had clearly made some mistakes--but that's no problem, I was sure those errors would be ignored. We all knew that Barbara Gordon was James W. Gordon's daughter (who had to be born before the events of Year One) and leaving her out was a clear goof. It's not like Miller's other major Batman story was considered in-continuity.

It was actually BATMAN 408, with its complete retcon of Jason Todd that seemed more serious to me back then. That wasn't a goof. It was deliberate and effectively wiped out the previous four years of continuity. Later on, when Year One was referenced to such a large degree, its changes registered with me as retcons and not easily ignored errors. I think if other writers hadn't paid so much attention to Year One, it wouldn't be the big deal it became--it would just be a nicely illustrated one-off.

[bat39]

The "New Look" in DETECTIVE COMICS 327 & BATMAN 164 didn't actually change any history. All the details were the same--it was the aesthetic that changed. Just like in DETECTIVE COMICS 394 & BATMAN 217 no history was thrown out, but there was a change in how Bruce did things and the aesthetic started to change.

'TEC 327 did have Batman using a gun (this issue was supposed to come out after BM 164, but because of scheduling it ended up being the first "New Look" issue). Julius Schwartz said that was a mistake--and this is to be expected with new creators, they make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't be considered retcons.

So when I read BATMAN 404 - 407, I didn't take it seriously at the time. Frank Miller had clearly made some mistakes--but that's no problem, I was sure those errors would be ignored. We all knew that Barbara Gordon was James W. Gordon's daughter (who had to be born before the events of Year One) and leaving her out was a clear goof. It's not like Miller's other major Batman story was considered in-continuity.

It was actually BATMAN 408, with its complete retcon of Jason Todd that seemed more serious to me back then. That wasn't a goof. It was deliberate and effectively wiped out the previous four years of continuity. Later on, when Year One was referenced to such a large degree, its changes registered with me as retcons and not easily ignored errors. I think if other writers hadn't paid so much attention to Year One, it wouldn't be the big deal it became--it would just be a nicely illustrated one-off.

So the question of YEAR ONE's origins (pun intended, kinda) always fascinated me. A while back, I read some interviews with Frank Miller and Dennis O'Neil. The gist of it is that Miller was apparently working on YEAR ONE, or some version of it, as a standalone limited series like DKR. But Batman needed to be reinvented after COIE, so O'Neil asked Miller to do YEAR ONE as part of the regular Batman title, promising him that he would have full creative freedom since continuity was in flux anyway.

But yeah, I can understand why the Jason Todd retcon would have seemed like a bigger deal back then, since it affected current continuity in a far more direct sense than YEAR ONE did.

[batnbreakfast]

Year One has so much emotional weight behind it. Its changes are very welcome.

[Gaius]

Wayne Enterprises being introduced in the late-1970s and being used to explain where Batman gets the resources and tech whereas before he was just from an Old Money WASP family.