So, how SHOULD the BatVerse have been rebooted for the New 52?

[dropkickjake]

I'll go a two options route as well. In both options, Morrison's story ends in the old continuity.

Option 1: Batman first appeared 6 years ago and operated as an urban legend for roughly one year before the formation of the Justice League 5 years ago. Only active Batfamily vigilantes are Dick as Robin and Babs as Batgirl. Both would be either late teens or early twenties. We'd get roughly a year with Dick as Robin before he moves onto Nightwing. Killing joke happened or didn't happen as preferred.

Option 2: Batman started his crusade 10 years ago, operating as an urban legend for roughly 5 years until the formation of the Justice League.

Year 1: Batman begins his crusade at 22 years of age.
Year 2: Batman brings in a 14 year old, newly orphaned Dick Grayson.
Year 3: Babs begins operating as Batgirl (age 16).
Year 4
Year 5:
Year 6: Justice League forms. Dick goes to college. He leaves the Robin mantle to Jason when he takes up the mantle of Nightwing with some incarnation of the Titans.
Year 7: The Dark Year (Both Killing Joke and Death in the Family occur). Tim becomes Robin in the aftermath
Year 8: Bruce meets Damian. Under the Hood (Jason returns like in the animated movie, does not become the antihero we know in RHatO until the start of the n52.)
Year 9: Combination of Batman R.I.P. and Knightfall. Bruce "dies," and Dick takes over as Batman with Damian Robin
Year 10: Bruce returns.

This way, Dick has 4 years as Robin, Babs has 2-3 as Batgirl pre-paralyzation, Jason is something of a short-lived Robin, and Tim gets about two years as well. Cass and steph could have their origins around the time of Tim's tenure as Robin.

In either case, I'd have Huntress (Bertinelli) in Dick's orbit. She would be a strong character in her own right, but they make for nice foils; one primarily wants to punish the guilty (and protects the innocent as a function of that) while the other primarily wants to defend the innocent (and punishes the guilty as a function of that).

[Godlike13]

Given a 5 year time line (which i hate), ditch Drake, and maybe even Todd, and just start with Dick just becoming Nightwing, and Damian the next Robin. We don't really need 3 Nightwing's.

[MajorHoy]

Given a 5 year time line (which i hate), ditch Drake, and maybe even Todd, and just start with Dick just becoming Nightwing, and Damian the next Robin. We don't really need 3 Nightwing's.

I guess that was suppose to be "Robins", or do you know something I don't?

[Godlike13]

Well, what to me really marginalized Tim was

The entire Titan franchise has been marginalized. Its a almost a parody now. And quite frankly its Tim and his generation that marginalized it, not the other way around. They wanted Teen Titans to do for Tim and his generation what it did for Dick and his generation, but New 52 TT was just so bad, and TT has been bad for a while now, that Teen Titans itself has lost its credibility.

[Penguin Truth]

I'll come back and try do up an outline that's within PenguinTruths givens (which seem arbitrary and entirely unsatisfactory to to me :wink

Hey. 10 is a good number to standardize the timeline by.

[Godlike13]

I guess that was suppose to be "Robins", or do you know something I don't?

No, its suppose to be "Nightwings", no apostrophe. Red Robin and Red Hood are just Drake and Todd's respective Nightwing. In a general sense. Talk about another thing thats been marginalized. What Dick did with becoming Nightwing has now just become what all the Robins do when they get too old.

[MajorHoy]

The entire Titan franchise has been marginalized. Its a almost a parody now. And quite frankly its Tim and his generation that marginalized it, not the other way around. They wanted Teen Titans to do for Tim and his generation what it did for Dick and his generation, but New 52 TT was just so bad, and TT has been bad for a while now, that Teen Titans itself has lost its credibility.

But the reason I included the cover for the #0 issue was because that gave the New 52 origin of Tim as a Robin, and to me the character was so unrecognizable that there was no reason to care about him anymore.

I grew up with Dick as Robin, but still enjoyed Tim's tenure in that position when I was reading comic books in the early-to-mid 1990s. But if this was what they were going to do to him in the New 52, there was no point in keeping him around.

[Godlike13]

Fair enough.

[hunter_peterson]

The only issue with Batman is that they did not put thought into explaining how Batman acquired so many allies in such a short amount of time.

We assume Batman started crime fighting in year -6. Soon after he first encounters Ra's and Talia, leading to the latter secretly creating Damian.

Dick rises in year -5, with Batgirl appearing soon after as an independent vigilante (soon brought under Bruce's wing).

In year -4, other kids try to become vigilantes as well, the most prominent of ones are Jason and Tim. Bruce takes both kids in. Robin becomes a shared mantle between the three boys, depending on who gets to go out crime fighting with Bruce (i.e. Monday its Dick, Tuesday its Jason, etc.). Barbara is shot by the Joker.

Jason is killed by the Joker in year -3. Dick leaves because he blames Bruce for letting Jason die. Dick becomes Nightwing. Tim sticks around but changes his super hero identity to Red Robin so as to honor Jason.

Batwoman first appears in year -2.

In year -1 Damian is revealed, Bruce dies, Dick becomes Batman, Tim leaves the manor, Damian becomes Robin, Jason reveals himself to the world as the Red Hood.

A few months before the the start of Batman #1 Bruce returns to life, takes back the Batman mantle and founds Batman Inc. Dick becomes Nightwing again. Barbara has surgery and is able to fight crime once more as Batgirl.

You know, I think this is the first time somebody suggested a team of Robins and I think that idea is actually really great! It would make the boys have a close relationship with each other, give Bruce a longer time to get to know them all and also use developments for all of them as part of their collective story. A really great idea!

[Captain Jim]

For ground rules, let's take it as a given that Morrison's run should somehow have been finished in the old continuity.

I agree with this. And that way the New 52 could have started with a new Damian who's alive and well.

The only scenario that reasonably preserves Tim Drake as Robin at the dawn of the New 52 is to go the route if the DCAU and eliminate Jason Todd from continuity altogether.

I know this will get some people's dander up, but I strongly agree with this. Face it, in the old DCU, Jason had a relatively brief tenure as Robin in which he was generally disliked. Then he was dead for what seemed like eons. He was brought back in a pretty good Under the Hood storyline, but once it was over, no one seemed to know what to do with him. In contrast to this, Tim had a long tenure as Robin, which included a long-running solo title, followed by the Red Robin title. Jason has a lot more fans now in the DCnU (because of the Outlaws title) than he ever had in the old universe, either dead or alive.

if they were going to go with Barbara as Batgirl, don't shoehorn The Killing Joke into her history if she was never Oracle. Just let her be Batgirl.

I strongly agree with this as well.

[Flash Gordon]

BATMAN INC closes the old continuity. Now for my (sort of) hard reboot.

BATMAN would take place in the present, DETECTIVE COMICS would be set in Batman's early days ala ACTION COMICS.

Batman has been around for 10 or so years. Richard Grayson was Robin for about 7 years. He was a cop on Gordon's squad, who discovered Batman's ID and joined his crusade. His ID would be Bruce Wayne's bodyguard. They would be rather close in age, and more like brothers. No circus, though it would be mentioned that he comes from a family of performers. Eventually they'd have a falling out when Bruce decides to take in a kid named Jason Todd. Richard doesn't want kids involved, he takes off and becomes Nightwing. Nightwing would be the "poor man's Batman".

Jason is trained by Batman for about a year, but goes too far and begins getting more and more ruthless. He's beaten badly by the Joker, but survives and goes out after the Joker to kill him. Batman stops him, and kicks him to the curb. He goes off on his own, and eventually becomes the murderous vigilante known as the Red Hood. Maybe he doesn't even know Batman's ID and only ever saw the Cave. He would pop up eventually, but not right away. We'd just have mention that Bruce did have a second Robin for a few months but it failed completely.

Batman goes solo for about a year before meeting Cassandra Cain, who beats him in hand to hand combat. He decides to let her operate as his "agent" BATGIRL, but not a sidekick. Eventually he'd adopt her. This would be seen to the public as just another rich guy taking in foreign orphans.

Damian would come in later on, maybe in year two or three of the NEW 52. His origin wouldn't involve test tubes, and he'd be born and raised the good ole fashioned way.

Not sure how I'd fit Barbara Gordon in. I'd like her to be Oracle, but I'd ditch the BATGIRL stuff most likely. She could run the BIRDS OF PREY with Cass Cain (Batgirl), Black Canary, and Huntress. She'd also have a on/off relationship with Richard.

So we'd have Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Oracle, Red Hood, and eventually Damien as Robin.

[Ginkasa]

I agree with this. And that way the New 52 could have started with a new Damian who's alive and well.

I can see it now. Damien dies in the old continuity in the pages of Inc. Batman #1 hits release, and so far it hasn't been revealed yet what has changed with the new continuity. Half the issues goes by with no mention of Damien (dead or alive). Then, surprise reveal, Damien never died in the continuity and here he is fighting along with Batman!

It could have been neat.

[Arnoldoaad]

I'll come back and try do up an outline that's within PenguinTruths givens (which seem arbitrary and entirely unsatisfactory to to me :wink however my first thought is: why reboot at all? Indeed my ideal reboot would be to renumber, relaunch, fresh story arcs etc yet leave everything that came before available for the picking.

I think the greater number of new readers are attracted to Batman's rich history more than anything, and what the New 52 did is actually leave the backlog more confusing than ever. Achieving the opposite of what DC intended - so yeah, high five!

I agree with this and it not only applies to Batman but most of DC.

I think the 5 years compression of Batman´s timeline is the biggest problem
specially if you even consider that half the stuff that Morrison did is still in continuity somehow

[bat39]

I agree with this and it not only applies to Batman but most of DC.

I think the 5 years compression of Batman´s timeline is the biggest problem
specially if you even consider that half the stuff that Morrison did is still in continuity somehow

Agreed.

The way I'd have gone about it, is to have it be a 10 year timeline. Bruce became Batman 10 years ago. Dick became Robin around 9 years ago, at the age of 15 (making him around 24 in the present, which is the ideal age for him); and he became Nightwing around 5 years ago (the same time Jason became Robin). The timeline would actually be something like this-

Year 1: Bruce becomes Batman
Year 2: Dick becomes Robin
Year 3: Barbara becomes Batgirl
Year 6: Dick becomes Nightwing; Jason becomes Robin
Year 7: Jason dies; Barbara is crippled; Tim becomes Robin
Year 10: Damian becomes Robin

And we'd currently be on Year 11.

By this timeline, Bruce would be 35; Dick and Barbara would be 24; Jason would be about 21ish; Tim would be 18-19ish; and Damian would have been around 10 at the time of his death), having been conceived in the first year of Batman's career.

[nepenthes]

It's not only a 5yr timeline that causes problems - it's this is idea that you need baby new readers by making comics more "entry level" for them, or that continuity should be seen as any kind of complexity at all. It leads to the situation where new readers are led to assume that prior lore is more important than it actually is, to the point where you get farcical questions like "What do I need to read before the New 52?" (oh the irony), or even better "I want to get into Batman so I need to read every issue ever published - where do I start?". Goodness me. And it's not that the people asking these questions are stupid, at all - this is simply a natural outcome of a new reader encountering comic fans or comics culture for the first time, and witnessing a minutia of continuity picked apart like it's real history you can objectively pin down and study.

Look at the some of most accessible and top-selling stories of all time - Long Halloween, Killing Joke, Hush - they heavily reference yet do not RELY on anything previous, and that is the key. Any story is capable of this.

In fact nothing in the success of the Court of Owls required a continuity wipe - you could take away the New 52 branding and all that it says about a "new starts", market it as just another Batman story and it would not have made one iota of difference to the actual content and STILL a legion of new readers would have loved it. Where DC missed the opportunity is by pushing the line that it was all a "new start" and then assuming they had to actually follow through with it.

What they should have done is this: just lie! Promise a new start ("it will be all be so easy to understand now guys); take advantage of the fresh attention and interest and PR to market a new line-up of very accessible, very mainstream-appeal #1's from top shelf creators; pick up a crap ton of new readers; and then continue on like nothing ever changed, just telling great stories! Put out some arcs that retread key under-served "forgotten" periods of the lore like the Grayson Robin years or Jason Todd years, so new readers feel like they're getting in on the ground floor and old readers are rewarded by seeing previous continuity reinforced and reinterpreted.

Or, put some proper effort into the DC website and trade dress - instead of leaving to fans to answer basic questions on forums or maintain giant arse sticky threads etc that they should be handling themselves online.