Has anyone else kind of "peaked" in terms of what you want from TV/movies?

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I don't think Frank Miller Batman is too "dark" at all. I think the "darkness" is just about right.

It's just that it's poorly written and far more pleased with itself, in spite of being poorly written, than it has any right to be.

And yes, I partially include "The Dark Knight Returns" in that. It is NOT anywhere near as good as people say it is. "Year One", however, is pretty much perfect. He did right with that one.

But it's not the tone that's the problem. It's that the writer is a narcissist who really, really wants you to agree with them that they're the first writer who ever had a good idea.

Sure. Year One is pretty good, however, tell that to Selina Kyle and Barbara Gordon. One is posing as a prostitute and the other conveniently forgotten to exist.

[Leo656]

I have no problem with Selina being a prostitute. She's a thief, she already is established as a woman with loose morals and she's always been heavily implied to be promiscuous anyway. It's not unconscionable that she's used her sexuality a time or two in order to get close to people in order to scam them and take their sh*t. Miller just made a point to say it out loud. She can be a prostitute, that's fine, I don't care about that.

I mean, "prostitute" is generally the first or second choice of women who don't wanna work a real job. Selina refuses to work a real job, that's why she's a thief. So I think it's kinda natural that she'd also be a stripper/prostitute as well. She'd clearly do anything to avoid working at Wendy's, so I don't see why her being a hooker is some big huge deal for some people. She probably sold drugs, too, at some point, they just didn't lampshade it.

The Barbara Gordon thing is a bit trickier to justify but we all know what Miller thinks about women in the first place so I'm not shocked he pretty much "forgot" her. Probably for the best, he's not good at writing females. He probably would have had her stripping in order to pay for librarian school. Like, the Batgirl costume would've been her stripper outfit, and it would've gone from there.

I don't know what role of importance she would've had in Year One anyway, though, to be perfectly honest. The point wasn't to touch on every single part of the mythos or anything.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

The Barbara Gordon thing is a bit trickier to justify but we all know what Miller thinks about women in the first place so I'm not shocked he pretty much "forgot" her. Probably for the best, he's not good at writing females. He probably would have had her stripping in order to pay for librarian school. Like, the Batgirl costume would've been her stripper outfit, and it would've gone from there.

Miller did end up writing Batgirl for the notorious All-Star title...but chose to use her as a very young and inexperienced teen who ends up getting caught by the police on one of her first goes, gets booked and unmasked.

[Leo656]

Yeah, I have it I just have fuzzy memories. That whole run I just read once, sighed and put it away. I find it best not to think about it too much.

[superstaff]

Originally Posted by Leo656

The Barbara Gordon thing is a bit trickier to justify but we all know what Miller thinks about women in the first place so I'm not shocked he pretty much "forgot" her. Probably for the best, he's not good at writing females. He probably would have had her stripping in order to pay for librarian school. Like, the Batgirl costume would've been her stripper outfit, and it would've gone from there.

I don't know what role of importance she would've had in Year One anyway, though, to be perfectly honest. The point wasn't to touch on every single part of the mythos or anything.

Not sure if they mean Babs the wife, or Babs the daughter.

Babs the wife is in Year One, isn't she? And she's pregnant. Presumably with Gordon's first child, which is usually a son. In a lot of incarnations, the Gordons have their son first, then Barbara (Jr) is their second child. It seems to align perfectly fine to me. And this is assuming Barbara is James' daughter, and not niece.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by superstaff

Not sure if they mean Babs the wife, or Babs the daughter.

Babs the wife is in Year One, isn't she? And she's pregnant. Presumably with Gordon's first child, which is usually a son. In a lot of incarnations, the Gordons have their son first, then Barbara (Jr) is their second child. It seems to align perfectly fine to me. And this is assuming Barbara is James' daughter, and not niece.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

The problem is that if Barbara Gordon has yet to be born she would not be old enough to become Batgirl. Tony Gordon later reimagined as James Gordon Jr is older than Barbara, however is depicted as a two year old in Year One. To overlook the fact Barbara should have been not only born, but around 12 years old and keep Year One fully in continuity she was made Commissioner Gordon's orphaned niece. Around 2000 it was implied that James Sr. had an affair with his sister-in-law and took Barbara in believing she was not his his niece but his biological daughter. Barbara would learn this through discovery of letters between them that she found. Later it's back to status quo.

[superstaff]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

The problem is that if Barbara Gordon has yet to be born she would not be old enough to become Batgirl. Tony Gordon later reimagined as James Gordon Jr is older than Barbara, however is depicted as a two year old in Year One. To overlook the fact Barbara should have been not only born, but around 12 years old and keep Year One fully in continuity she was made Commissioner Gordon's orphaned niece. Around 2000 it was implied that James Sr. had an affair with his sister-in-law and took Barbara in believing she was not his his niece but his biological daughter. Barbara would learn this through discovery of letters between them that she found. Later it's back to status quo.

That whole convoluted backstory was ridiculous.

[CyberCubed]

Honestly the whole "never-aging" rule really doesn't work for Batman. Batman can't be say 35 years old forever if he has like 4+ Robin's, 3+ Batgirls, and all of this to still make sense.

I mean how do all these Robin's also age up from like 10-12 when they start age to adults as well? I forgot how old Dick was when he first became Robin but wasn't he around that age?

[superstaff]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Honestly the whole "never-aging" rule really doesn't work for Batman. Batman can't be say 35 years old forever if he has like 4+ Robin's, 3+ Batgirls, and all of this to still make sense.

I mean how do all these Robin's also age up from like 10-12 when they start age to adults as well? I forgot how old Dick was when he first became Robin but wasn't he around that age?

Bruce is currently in his mid-40s, according to comics fandom 'bean counters'.

Not all the Robins start off at 10-12 either. Dick was around 12, Jason was about 14-15 roughly, Tim was about 13-14, Steph was about 16-17, and Damian started at 10 and is now 14 years old. These are, more or less, rough estimates. In the DCU, time goes by slowly, but years do pass. Apparently it's been about 14 or 15 years since Bruce began, post-nu52 anyway. But things have been pretty messy timeline-wise.

[sdp]

To add to that some characters don't work in modern settings, I'm sorry but Batman works best in a much older world. This is why I liked BTAS, it didn't seem to take place in the 90s but in the past and it works with the characters.

And even then the limit should be the 90s , this includes the TMNT, in an age of easily accessible internet and smartphones it makes no sense that superheroes wouldn't be hunted down easily. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. TMNT works well in the 80s and 90s because it's when it was created, but not so much in the 2020s. Same why the superheroes work better in the decade they were created in. The 2020s need their own heroes that already have the context of the current technology into their origin because adding smartphones to a Superman show just becomes ridiculous.

I mean if we're going to reboot something like if we get a new TMNT movie or show I'd rather it take place in the 90s than in the 2020s for example. King Kong 2005 works better because it takes place at the time the original story was written in unlike the 80s version which makes less sense.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Honestly the whole "never-aging" rule really doesn't work for Batman. Batman can't be say 35 years old forever if he has like 4+ Robin's, 3+ Batgirls, and all of this to still make sense.

This is why I gave up on the comics, I guess this was always a problem but I tried to pretend it could work. In the 00s when I started reading DC and Batman, I thought that batman was really in his mid 40s in the current timeline of comics to make it work but then we got a couple of more reboots and more batgirls and robins and now it makes absolutely no sense. So I guess I can enjoy the stories since I'm not thinking too much about continuity but because I don't think too much of continuity I'm not attached to any of their books or comics, I'll just read whatever is recommended as really good, otherwise it's just trash that'll be retconned sooner or later.

Comics being on a sliding timeline is the stupidest **** ever, they should conclude stories and do a hard reboot for new generations, But they didn't and now comics are a dying industry while Manga is as big as it's always been.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by superstaff

Tim was about 13-14

That can't be right, can it? Not when he became Robin. I remember in the Robin comics he got his driver's license and all.

[Leo656]

It works fine if you don't let yourself become overly pedantic and anal about things that aren't even f*cking real. It's easy enough to just say Superman and Batman showed up "a while ago" and keep the passing of time intentionally vague. The stories aren't about how long ago things happened but rather What's Happening Right Now.

The only thing that ever really messed with it was the insistence on doing Halloween and Christmas-themed stories every single year, just like The Simpsons. Without that, keeping things "loose" works just fine.

I'd ague that Marvel has a bigger a problem with it than DC since some of their characters are tied to specific real-world events, like Captain America being inextricably linked to WWII, and The Punisher's trauma not simply being tied to being a soldier, but a soldier of the Vietnam War, specifically. I know some stories shifted it to be the first Gulf War, but it works less well since it was specifically the circumstances of Vietnam, rather than just "war in general", that made Frank Castle who he is. You'd have to have actually spoken to veterans of either conflict to "get it", but there's a world of difference between the two wars and how messed up the people coming home were in either case. Saying that it doesn't matter which war Castle was in, so long as he comes home damaged kind of misses the point and oversimplifies the character, to a degree. Rogers, you can almost work around it by just having him stay frozen longer, but it still doesn't explain that time he fought Nixon, for example.

Sliding timelines work generally fine as long as you don't get too tied into reflecting Real World Events or insisting upon celebrating milestones like holidays or characters' Birthdays. And there's no real reason to do that in the first place.

If you hard-reboot a super-hero every decade you only have time to tell a handful of stories with them before things have to "reset" and now all that stuff people clearly just read and got emotionally invested in "never happened." That's retarded.

Western comics are hurting because they needlessly cost $4+ per issue in a country where nobody except a millionaire can afford a house anymore, therefore they've become a needless extravagance to most people who'd just as soon stay home and watch cartoons for free or pay to watch a movie once every few years and get their fix that way. It has nothing to do with the storytelling (except for the fact that in the last ten years they've all gone woke and nobody wants that crap from their super-hero comics). It has everything to do with the fact that during their peak of popularity, anyone from an adult to a small child could dig a dime or a quarter out of the couch cushions, go to the corner store and buy a comic book; now nobody can afford them. Distribution is another factor. Direct-market distribution and the rise of comic stores was great for super-nerds, but it murdered the mass-market retail system on which comics had thrived since their inception. 7-11s and drug stores don't even carry comics anymore, but as recently as 30 years ago that was still where MOST people, especially kids, bought comic books, NOT dedicated comic book stores.

So no, Western comics aren't suffering compared to manga because of the differences in storytelling. Only someone who knows nothing about the medium or how it operated for almost a century would say or think that. It's because it used to be an art form that catered to all age groups and tastes, and now strictly caters to middle-aged men with an excess of disposable income, and absolutely no one else. People used to get into comics as kids, going down to the corner store to buy a stack of books for a dollar, and as they got older and their tastes grew more sophisticated, there were other books that were more geared to them as they grew. Now, there simply aren't many comics designed to attract young readers at all, and even if there were, they couldn't afford them and they'd have to go 30-40 minutes away to buy them.

It's a matter of economics and distribution, not storytelling. The fact that the stories being put out presently are all terrible certainly does not help, but that wasn't a factor in the 1950s and 60s; the stuff being printed Then was arguably a lot worse (or at least more dumb) than the stuff being printed Now, but comics still sold ten times what they sell Now anyway so a person can't even try to claim that quality of stories or readers' tastes is a factor. It isn't. It's all because the business is just too insular and has no way of replacing an aging readership because their kids can't buy the books. Any medium that can't replenish itself with each new generation simply won't survive.

[Coola Yagami]

The New 52 condensed Batman's history pre-JL to 5 years. All the major stories happened but I believe No Man's Land didn't. In that continuity only Dick, Jason and Damian were Robins. At first so was Tim but then they retconned it so he was Red Robin from the start. Babs was the only Batgirl, Steph was only ever Spoiler and Cass was a new hero named Orphan. Also whenever Lex was looking into how Batman knew Nightwing, newspaper clippings imply Batman had fought the Joker and Harley Quinn in the old days alongside Dick-Robin.

Not sure if DC Rebirth changed any of that or how. I know Rebirth somehow replaced New 52 Superman with classic Superman.... Somehow. Like reality dimensional shenanigans but I forgot if that rippled into Batman's lore in any way.

[Andrew NDB]

I don't know why that's so jarring. Again, you read about 5 years worth of any comic like Superman or Batman or X-Men or whatever... each issue (and month) is only giving you like 20 minutes of their life/adventures. You lay it all out and barring time jumps barely any time is actually passing in-story.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I don't know why that's so jarring. Again, you read about 5 years worth of any comic like Superman or Batman or X-Men or whatever... each issue (and month) is only giving you like 20 minutes of their life/adventures. You lay it all out and barring time jumps barely any time is actually passing in-story.

That's true. A story can be a 10-parter, which is almost a full a year in real time, but only a week within the actual storyline

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Not sure if DC Rebirth changed any of that or how. I know Rebirth somehow replaced New 52 Superman with classic Superman.... Somehow. Like reality dimensional shenanigans but I forgot if that rippled into Batman's lore in any way.

Rebirth did away with the Nu52's "five years" thing, Superman had been split in two and they merged again shortly before Rebirth ended, although all of New 52 Superman's history was erased in the process.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Rebirth did away with the Nu52's "five years" thing, Superman had been split in two and they merged again shortly before Rebirth ended, although all of New 52 Superman's history was erased in the process.

So what happened with Batman and his continuity? Was Tim Robin again? Are Cass and Steph back as former Batgirls?

[Leo656]

New 52 was just an all-around mistake. Not so much the idea of a "housecleaning reboot", those happen every so often as a matter of course, but it was botched.

Part One of the problem was, "Nothing you've ever read before Right Now ever happened... except for our two highest-selling books, Batman and Green Lantern. In that case, EVERYTHING happened, because we don't want to upset the readers of those books since they actually sell well. Everyone else gets a blank slate, but those guys keep all their history." Well, you kind of need to commit to One or The Other or else the entire exercise falls apart.

DC ought to have known this would be a problem, as they had the exact same problem with Crisis on Infinite Earths, with characters like Superman and Wonder Woman getting a complete do-over from scratch while Batman and Green Lantern were left mostly-intact and Flash kept 100% of the character's previous history. This directly led to Zero Hour only about 5 or 6 years later, to clean up all the loose ends from Crisis.

The next problem with the New 52 was simple ageism. For decades, regardless of when the characters had been specifically presented as appearing or how long they'd been operating in-canon, characters like Superman and Batman were written as perpetually being "about 33-35 years old". When Zero Hour printed its comprehensive timeline of the DCU, they had the debut of Superman and Batman listed as "10 Years Ago", without pinning it down to a specific year. Thus, no matter whether the stories in-print were hitting the rack in 1993 or 2003, Superman was always about 33 and he always first appeared "about ten years ago". You can easily get away with this since comics don't play out in real-time; a story that takes months or years to hit newsstands generally only depicts the events of a single day within the story itself; that 12-part Batman story that took a year to buy all the issues of, only depicts One or Two Days of the character's actual life within the story itself. So you can totally get away with having a vague, sliding timeline as long as you don't tether yourself to a specific "real life" time.

BUT, one mandate of the New 52 was "Nobody can be older than 30 and nobody's been around more than 5 years." So now everything's f*cked, just from that. 10 years, for example, is plenty of time for Batman to have raised Dick, had Dick grow up and become Nightwing, had Jason be Robin and get killed within a year or so of "comic book time", and then have Tim replace him about a year later and then have been Robin ever since. You can do all that with a fictional "10-year timeline"; you can't do it in 5, and also, Batman is only 29.

That's really the thing that ruined everything, with the New 52. "Nobody can be older than 30, and every story only happened within the last 5 years." Like, Batman was "forever 35" for 70 years, why is it NOW a problem and he suddenly "has" to be 29 or 30? That's stupid.

As I understand it, with Rebirth a lot of that all went away and things were restored to how they used to be, more or less. But that still doesn't change or fix the problem of the New 52 existing at all, and then Convergence having happened in order to "fix" that, and then "Rebirth" needing to be done to in turn fix THAT whole mess.

It's not that you can't do reboots or "tidying-up" events. They're mandatory. Crisis begat Zero Hour in 1993, which begat Infinite Crisis in 2005, but that's still only one "hard reboot" over a 20-year span of time and two much smaller "pruning" events that didn't reboot or reset anything so much as trimmed a little fat and retconned a few inconsistencies away. That's all they ever NEEDED to do, and if they'd simply kept doing that once every decade their continuity wouldn't be the complete mess it is now. They've had THREE "reboot events" - Flashpoint/New 52, Convergence, and Rebirth - within just over ten years, which is ridiculous... and all because the New 52 simply wasn't very well-planned or thought-out in the first place. It was so sloppy they've spent ALL their time since then trying to "fix" it, and trying to win back all the people who walked away over what a complete mess it was.

They tried to fix a leaky boat by pouring concrete over the hole, and in turn they sank the boat.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

So what happened with Batman and his continuity? Was Tim Robin again? Are Cass and Steph back as former Batgirls?

Yes, Cass and Steph now remember they were Batgirls and Tim has largely gone back to being Robin.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Yes, Cass and Steph now remember they were Batgirls and Tim has largely gone back to being Robin.

Rofl. They suddenly just remembered. Oh DC...

What is Damian's status nowadays. He still Robin? It always confusing cause Tim never officially stepped down did he? Damian kinda just came in and was like '**** you, I'm Robin now'.