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

[oasis1313]

I'd just start with a newly orphaned Bruce Wayne seeing a bat fly into his house. Why not start from scratch? No Robins at all for a few years, then introduce them slowly if ever.

[JaggedFel]

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 5 Years is not enough time at all. 10 Years Minimum and that just gets me to start Damian as Robin. Tack on 2-3 for him to die. So really I am thinking Ideal is 15.

[Kingcrimsonprog]

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.

I like a lot of those ideas. Especially the Damian-is-not-a-test-tube-project idea.

[DurararaFTW]

Year 1: Bruce Wayne becomes Batman
Year 2: Dick Grayson becomes Robin, Damian Wayne is born
Year 3: Justice League is formed
Year 4: Teen Titans is formed
Year 5: Barbara Gordon becomes Batgirl
Year 8: Dick Grayson becomes Nightwing, Jason Todd becomes Robin, Batgirl is crippled
Year 10: Jason Todd dies
Year 11 (NOW): Tim Drake is introduced, Jason Todd is resurrected to train Damian

I'd likewise make Shiva, Cass and Cain an initially closer familyteam in more direct employ of the League of Assassins.

[CrazyOldHermit]

Agreed 5 Years is not enough time at all. 10 Years Minimum and that just gets me to start Damian as Robin. Tack on 2-3 for him to die. So really I am thinking Ideal is 15.

Having a Batman that old defeats the point of doing a reboot. With 25 years between reboots you're probably going to accumulate four or five years of history, making Bruce anywhere from 43 to 50 by the end.

Then again, keeping all of the old history also defeats the point of doing a reboot. Makes for crappy storytelling, but it also means DC can have half a dozen auxiliary books on the shelves. In five years Batman has had five sidekicks, all with their own books, while in that same five years Barry Allen never even met Wally West let alone had a Kid Flash. Hooray for crappy compromises!

[Ebon]

So, how SHOULD the Batman line have been rebooted to make sense, or at least as much sense as one can ask of a comic book?

As with all of the New 52, I'd have done a hard reboot. Start with a clean slate. Use the opportunity to clean house. I'm also in favor of a 'looser' continuity, so to speak.
First panel: Bang. Bang.

Batman: First year of the book takes Bruce from 10 years old to 20, when he puts on the costume for the first time. It covers and develops his relationship with Alfred, his training, is heavy on the foreshadowing, and how Bruce adjusts to the rise of superhumans. After that, it exists as a mostly one-off book of Batman solo and team adventures.

Detective: Starts with Batman's first night in Gotham and details his relationship with Gordan, the cops, the people of Gotham, etc. At the end of the first year, he takes on Dick as his partner and apprentice, and it shifts to go into the Bruce-Dick-Alfred dynamic. At the end of year two or so, Dick officially debuts as Robin for the first time so Detective becomes the default 'Batman and Robin' book. It would require we fool around with 'Comic Book Time' a bit, and keep the first two years of the comic, as it were, covering two actual years in the lives of Bruce and Dick, but then shift it into the normal '7-10 years == 1 real world year' norm. The next big arc would be the Mystery of Batgirl. At some point in the future, years and years from then, you do Jason and Tim. I would actually put Jason and Tim on parallel tracks; Jason is actually Nightwing's recommendation to fill his shoes when he sees - after he leaves - just how much Batman needs the balance he provide. Jason's tenure is cut very short, before he's even out of training, and he comes back later thanks to the Pit.

Batwoman: Just have her off in her own adventures, seldom interacting with the other Bat-peoples.
Batwing and others: Use them to show the effect Batman has on the world, that imitators would rise up and some of them would actually be good enough to become heroes in their own right. Maybe shift the focus around on Batwing, Nightrunner, Man-of-Bats and Raven Red, etc.

[John Venus]

If you are going to make a 5 year timeline, then have the balls to get ride of character who can't fit into that timeline. This means Batman Inc. Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown and Damian Wayne should be out. Finish off Batman Inc. in the old continuity. Have the rest of the Bat titles start off with a new continuity.

Around this time, the Bat Family should be:

Batman

Dick Grayson: Start him off as Robin and show him become Nightwing in the new continuity. Don't rehash Wolfman/Perez or the DCAU. Do something new.

Batgirl: Barbara Gordon has been around as Batgirl for quite some time. The Batgirl book should be light and fun. At the same time however, I don't want Babs to be the cutesy girl who makes cute mistakes and didn't do anything worthwhile until becoming Oracle. She should be more similar to the Bronze Age Congresswoman Barbara Gordon who is more of a Batwoman than a Batgirl except younger and with political aspirations.

Now that you've established the core Bat Family, you can look at characters from the old continuity you can bring in without much hassle.

Batwoman/Kate Kane: She's independent enough that you can slip her into the continuity without much issue and without changing anything from Eelgy or anything.

Black Bat/Cassandra Cain: Cass doesn't have to be Batgirl. She can be young, like 14 years old and live in Wayne Manor with Bruce. She and Dick can get into funny sibling rivalries with her being a better fighter than him at that age and team up with Babs as a Brains & Brawn duo.

Helena Bertenelli/Huntress: She's another character you can bring in without much hassle. Once again, try something new with the character instead of rehashing the previous continuity. One of the problems, I had with the previous version was how forced the whole Batman/Huntress conflict felt. The writers should try to avoid that. I think Helena works better in a team setting so she should be part of the new Birds of Prey.

You can also have her team up with Helena Wayne and get into hilarious awkward moments with each other. With the way DC handled bringing in Helena Wayne into the fold, they actually ended up pitting the fandoms of the Huntresses against each other. I want to avoid that and I think you can have both versions of Huntress together.

Bat Wing/Luke Fox: Luke Fox has interesting potential. Even without Batman Inc, I think it's possible to write an origin for him. Perhaps he inspired by the Bruce and fights crime with his gadgets. I would also start him off as back up feature in a title like 'Batman Family' before spinning him off into own title.

So there we go; a new Bat Family for a new era. I would keep Jason, Tim and Damian benched for a while and bring them in a few years later.

[Neowing]

I agree with above, remove stories and characters.

Do we also need DAMIAN? Hes just Jason 2.0 but Bruce son which is a element that is hurting Batman right now.

[RobinFan4880]

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!

I think the idea really works for the compressed timeline and helps explain how Bruce has so many sidekicks and why, as well as giving all of them more time to interact and grow with one another.

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.

From what I understand, Marvel was originally planning to use Age of Ultron to reboot their entire universe (i.e. copy Flashpoint) but they learned a valuable lesson from the New 52 - when you reboot, you invariably eliminate whole groups of money-making characters and anger established fans. Additionally, if you don't pull a hard reboot, you will generate endless issues with the new continuity (i.e. what happened with Green Lanterns and Batman) BUT if you botch the roll-out of a particular character, you will doom them for years to come. That is why Marvel NOW! was so fascinating and ingenious. It tricked new people into buying comics but rewarded old readers by maintaining the old continuity.

Had DC realized they could have just time skipped and made a whole bunch of new #1's, rather than a reboot, I am almost positive they would have gone that route.

[Flash Gordon]

Oh and BATWOMAN/Kate Kane would be exactly the same, just in her own corner.

[ABH]

I really feel like Dick deserved to (really) be Robin, for at least a year (real time), and then things could jump forward a bit after that.

He should have been Robin (and there), when Batman and Superman first meet, so that the New 52 could have had it's version of the old "World's Finest" stories. Teaming up with these two heroes, should be part of what makes Dick into the man he eventually becomes as Nightwing.

I love Damian, and he is my favorite Robin, but Dick Grayson is the iconic Robin, and DC should have used the reboot to re-establish that.

[SiegePerilous02]

I wouldn't nail down the timeline so specifically and leave things vague. Trying to squeeze events into such a short period of time has always been a hindrance.

At the start of the New 52, I would dial back the main Bat-Family to just Bruce, Dick and Barbara. Dick has been Robin for a number of years, and would remain so for the first few years or so of the reboot before setting up his transition to Nightwing. After that, he is replaced by a second Robin: either Jason, Tim, the DCAU Tim/Jason fusion, or Damian. The ones not chosen would be benched for the time being until a proper plan could be worked out. The classic Titans (Donna, Wally, Cyborg and the rest) are all Dick's contemporaries as well, and he has strong relationships with all of them.

"The Killing Joke" is excised entirely from continuity, and Barbara is the one and only Batgirl. She is roughly the same age as Dick, maybe a year or two older. She may adopt some Oracle-type characteristics, but largely operate in costume.

Like others have said, Kate (along with Bette) and Bertinelli are independent enough that they can be brought back in with little fuss. And I think "Eternal" is doing great with bringing Steph back in. Whatever their possible plans are for Cass, I'm sure it will be equally good. So those two are covered.

I would also do a major culling of the Rogues Gallery. With the exceptions of Bane, the Ventriloquist (WESKER!!) and Morrison's villains, it would consist of of the pre-Crisis rogues. Let's take the opportunity to dump losers like Hush, Gearhead, Orca and the rest from canon. The classic foes like Joker, Two-Face, etc. would resemble their Bronze Age/DCAU counterparts. No Leatherface Joker crap, or that mess with the Mad Hatter.

[Claude]

Tim Drake origin story. Open with Batman in a bad place just after the death of Jason Todd - unaware that he's actually still alive/been brought back in whatever book DC wanted to give him - Dick has been Nightwing for a little while now (Maybe he also took up a post on the new JLI, against Bruce's wishes?), and Bruce is feeling a bit alone. Tim Drake becomes Robin and the first twelve issues or so are a rough Court of Owls styled thing where Batman's increased awareness of himself and his city involves him taking on another Robin. First arc becomes a big build-up to the "New Batman And Robin!" moment.

At which point, having welcomed Tim into his life, Bruce discovers that he has a son. Tomasi gets to write a new Damien Origin, making the essential differences in how he and Synder write him compared to Morrison pretty irrelevant. The cuddlier Damien is now simply the New 52 Damien.


Problem is, if you're launching with four Batman titles, it's hard to get an essential establishing narrative going.

[Flash Gordon]

I like a lot of those ideas. Especially the Damian-is-not-a-test-tube-project idea.

Thanks man.

I think once you start having Jason Todd rising from the dead and Damian grown in a test tube, it looses the human element of BATMAN.

So Bruce and Talia conceived of Damian the fun way, and he grew up with his mother, and Jason never died. He was just "the bad seed" of the Bat-family.

I like the diversity of age too, and not having Bruce just hang out with preteen boys. Richard Grayson is around the same age as Bruce, maybe a bit younger. More of a Watson, to Batman's Holmes. Jason is a street kid, he's young. When he resurfaces as the Red Hood, he'll be in his late teens/early 20s.

Cassandra is around 16, Damian would be 9 or 10. Barbara Gordon would be Richard's age, so she wouldn't be a "Batgirl". She'd be their intel.

[John Venus]

I would also do a major culling of the Rogues Gallery. With the exceptions of Bane, the Ventriloquist (WESKER!!) and Morrison's villains, it would consist of of the pre-Crisis rogues. Let's take the opportunity to dump losers like Hush, Gearhead, Orca and the rest from canon. The classic foes like Joker, Two-Face, etc. would resemble their Bronze Age/DCAU counterparts. No Leatherface Joker crap, or that mess with the Mad Hatter.

I don't quite agree with this idea except for the Leatherface Joker part. Every villain can be great under the right writer.

If I was running the show, I would enact a 'No New Rouges' rules and force the writers to use existing ones. I would bring back Wesker but also keep Peyton and the Simone version wouldn't even exist. The first few years would focus on re-establishing the classic Rogues Gallery and then going forward from there to make the crappy ones viable as characters. Batman has so many villains he doesn't need any new ones.