When it comes it to comic book continuity, it always seems like a touchy subject. It's difficult to really nail down a timeline. Something tangible for those who are lost and need to find an entry point or maybe for the completionist at heart? Either way, it comes down to two things, I've found. There's subjectivity in mapping universes, yes, but there are constants. Smaller details are changed, yet the essence of the story stays the same. This is my thought process when it comes to the deluge of comics between the big two, Marvel and DC Comics. There are things that need to be, like Dick Grayson becoming Bruce Wayne's ward or the Kryptonian rocket ship landing in Kansas. From there, it follows familiar territory yet carving new dynamics. It's not rocket science: Do the same.....but different.
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| Crime Alley is an absolute in the multiverse... |
Some folks have
Batman '89 as their groundwork and some folks have
Batman The Animated Series. the beginning. There are differences, but somehow the character is distilled and made clear to the audience. Meanwhile,
Batman Begins follows the same origin we know, but throwing new details in the mix. There aren't drastic changes to who the character is at the core. Comic veterans would know those stories to be elseworld type tales that serve as "What if ?" scenarios for the DC universe. While those are great stories, they aren't main DC continuity or widely known to the general public. With the
Elseworlds aside, pop culture has a knowledge for who these characters are. Each adaptation has to remain faithful to certain respects because those details are so ingrained. We have Frank Miller's
The Dark Knight Returns, a literal animated adaptation of that story and
Batman V Superman. These all exist, yet there is a "foundation", for lack of a better term, which is made up of all the history and previous stories. When you think about it, it's a gigantic Russian doll. That leads me to my point. My "mission" if you will...
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| The universe would never be the same... |
There is a gargantuan amount of comics and there's no way I could read them all, to discern a method to the madness would be next to impossible. However, I'm going to read what is available to me at the moment. Thankfully, the DC Universe app is at my disposal as well as my collection of trades/floppies, so the journey is laid out. As I read along, different interpretations will be discussed and analyzed in the context of it's source material. Personally, I believe every DC creation has something to offer character wise with all this history behind them. It's only fair to count all of it, as much as I possibly can.
The journey itself seems rather difficult from this point, I'll be completely honest. Even though in reality I'm not physically going on a trip, I am sinking my teeth into a world that's vast and has many facets. Comics, movies, shows and not to mention to background on each project. Normally I'd be worried, but this multiverse is something I adore. There's so much to admire about it because of its size. That means this project will match its breadth. It's going to be big, to say the least. But, more often than not, big things have small beginnings...
