Why is Long Halloween considered a Year One/Two story?

[Prince Vegeta]

Okay, I was reading the Wikipedia article on The Long Halloween and it reads, " It follows the events in a few months following Year One and examines an entire year of Batman's career as a crime fighter, so it could be considered a "Year One"/"Year Two".

This makes no sense. Assuming Year One starts on April (when he first becomes Batman in Year One), the first year would end on the April a few months before Long Halloween even starts. Long Halloween starts on June of year two and ends on October of year three. :confused:

I was also looking at the timeline of the DCU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_DC_Universe#c._.2213_Years_Ago.22) and it says, "Harvey Dent has acid splashed in his face by his assistant, who was bribed by a gangster. Dent's face is ruined, and his mind cracks in two, creating Two-Face." This actually happened in August of year three. :confused:

And than I can go on about how Dark Victory wasn't year three like that timeline states but I think you get my point.

I'm sure there's an explanation to this. Please help, my brother and I are arguing about this and we can't figure it out!

[Kristofer]

Well, wikipedia is altered by viewers, so maybe someone made a mistake and you're the first to find and/or acknowledge it....Don't take wikipedia as 100% truth, just pretty dang close to it.

[the goddamn batman]

Beccause it's post Year One and pre Robin. Robins introduction is generally associated with Year Three.

[Lorendiac]

I never call "The Long Halloween" a "Year One/Year Two" story. I just call it "a sequel to Year One." Calling it a sequel doesn't commit me to what "year" or "years" of Batman's career it supposedly happened in. Does that work better for you? :)

(P.S. The last couple of weeks I've been working, off-and-on, on a script for the first issue of what I would do if DC hired me to write a year-long sequel series meant to tie up some loose ends from "The Long Halloween" and "Dark Victory," while trying to maintain some of the same tone. One of these days I'll have something I'm not completely ashamed of, and then I just need to figure out where I'm going to post it so my fellow fans can gleefully tell me all the ways I went wrong in my literary efforts! :))

[DonC]

Applying real world time to the DCU is pretty much useless. Not every story is going to neatly fall into place with all the others. Just roll with it.

[PunkPoserStyle]

Well you have to consider "The Man Who Laughs"
then the Dark Moon Rising stuff (Monster Men and Mad Monk)
AND THEN the Four of a Kind stories
then we can see where TLH fits
but I just see it as whenever a story is set with Batman in his early years (no oval, no Robin) the Year One term is just a general one.

[Choppa]

Because it takes place after the events of Year One. The reason that it doesn't fit in with other stuff is because it isn't canon. Year Two is officially what happened in the "second year." Same thing with Dark Victory/Year Three.

[Brack360]

Because it takes place after the events of Year One. The reason that it doesn't fit in with other stuff is because it isn't canon. Year Two is officially what happened in the "second year." Same thing with Dark Victory/Year Three.

No, Year Two was removed from canon a long time ago, after Zero Hour. It has been explicitly contradicted several times since then (for example, in Batman #603 and #604). Year Three has since also been contradicted by Robin: Year One. Year Three has also never been collected in TPB and is now a rather obscure story arc; it has not been promoted as the "official" Robin origin in well over a decade.

Why do you think TLH and DV are non-canon, other than that they were published outside of the ongoing Batman titles and contradict minor, obscure things from long-ago Batman stories (which Batman and Tec do all the time)? Batman’s main backstory has always remained the same, but he is constantly being revised and given new interpretations by new writers. For example, Gordon being promoted to commissioner in DV but still a captain in Robin: Y1 is something that I try not to worry too much about and do not consider enough evidence to make an entire story arc non-canon. I don’t believe that there is any solid evidence that TLH and DV are out of continuity, nor is there necessarily any solid evidence that they are definitely in continuity either. I personally consider them in continuity because they are two of my favorite Batman stories of all time and they do not contradict any major Batman elements. Jeph Loeb even tried to insert them into continuity be including a subtle reference to TLH in Hush. If someone prefers Year Two and Year Three for their own personal continuity, that’s fine, but it doesn’t make TLH and DV non-canon.

[Lorendiac]

No, Year Two was removed from canon a long time ago, after Zero Hour. It has been explicitly contradicted several times since then (for example, in Batman #603 and #604). Year Three has since also been contradicted by Robin: Year One. Year Three has also never been collected in TPB and is now a rather obscure story arc; it has not been promoted as the "official" Robin origin in well over a decade.

I agree with all of that -- Year Two was definitely erased a long time ago and Year Three never got much respect from anyone else after Marv Wolfman wrote it.

Why do you think TLH and DV are non-canon, other than that they were published outside of the ongoing Batman titles and contradict minor, obscure things from long-ago Batman stories (which Batman and Tec do all the time)? Batman’s main backstory has always remained the same, but he is constantly being revised and given new interpretations by new writers. For example, Gordon being promoted to commissioner in DV but still a captain in Robin: Y1 is something that I try not to worry too much about and do not consider enough evidence to make an entire story arc non-canon. I don’t believe that there is any solid evidence that TLH and DV are out of continuity, nor is there necessarily any solid evidence that they are definitely in continuity either. I personally consider them in continuity because they are two of my favorite Batman stories of all time and they do not contradict any major Batman elements. Jeph Loeb even tried to insert them into continuity be including a subtle reference to TLH in Hush. If someone prefers Year Two and Year Three for their own personal continuity, that’s fine, but it doesn’t make TLH and DV non-canon.

I have noticed before that the question of TLH and DV's relationship to "continuity" is a controversial point. Let me quote a relevant passage from my own Timeline of the Various Batman/Catwoman Romances (2nd Draft) (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=151368)

********** OLD PASSAGE BEGINS *********

Of course, I couldn't help noticing that the way Bruce and Selina were going to parties together as Bruce and Selina in The Long Halloween was a wild contradiction of the way they could bump into each other "for the very first time" in their civilian identities in "Knightfall," set several years later in more "modern" times. (Admittedly, Selina "knew" who Bruce was in "Knightfall," but only in the same sense that I "know" who Bill Gates is - from media coverage! I'm reasonably certain he's never heard of me!)

In a piece posted as a Bob Rozakis column, but actually written by John Wells, regarding The Canon of the Bat (http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/bobro/103887248221989.htm), we were told:

The Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale LONG HALLOWEEN/DARK VICTORY opus wasn't tied to mainstream continuity, allowing them the leeway to kill Year One-era characters (like Lieutenant Flass, who survived into the present in the core series' wedding of Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen) and portray a romantic relationship between Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne that post-Crisis continuity had prohibited. The revised history had declared that Catwoman had never been captured and that Selina had never met Bruce or Alfred (BATMAN #499 and others). That said, the aforementioned Ed Brubaker has included the Bruce-Selina romance as canon, anyway (in places like BATMAN #600, CATWOMAN (current) #10 and CATWOMAN SECRET FILES #1).

I tend to agree with the idea that Loeb's TLH/DV stories are set in their own little world that has no solid connection to any other Batman writer's work. I don't know exactly what John Wells's sources were, however.

********** OLD PASSAGE ENDS *********

Part of the problem there, as I noted at the end of that passage, is that John Wells never bothered to tell us exactly who had told him that TLH/DV were definitely not meant to be seen as tied to the mainstream continuity of the regular Batman titles. Maybe he heard it straight from Denny O'Neil when Denny was the editorial boss of all Batman's stuff in the 1990s. Maybe he heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who claimed to have heard it straight from Denny O'Neil, once upon a time! Who knows?

[Choppa]

No, Year Two was removed from canon a long time ago, after Zero Hour. It has been explicitly contradicted several times since then (for example, in Batman #603 and #604). Year Three has since also been contradicted by Robin: Year One. Year Three has also never been collected in TPB and is now a rather obscure story arc; it has not been promoted as the "official" Robin origin in well over a decade.


And then Infinite Crisis happened and in issue #7 Alex Luthor states that Chill did kill Bruce's parents. Since Year Two is the only story in which this happens, I assume that it's back in continuity. And contradictions in the comics (ie Batman #603) happened before IC.

As for LH/DV, there's no way to tell if it's in continuity based on the comics or not because there's always contradictions. For instance, before HUSH it had never been established that LH was canon, then Loeb made a reference to it in that story implying that it is canon.

The only concrete thing that can be relied on is the writers' comments, such as the ones that Lorendiac posted.

[yourverysilly]

No, Year Two was removed from canon a long time ago, after Zero Hour.

thats good, calling it year two seemed just like a marketing gimmick, seeing as its so different and inadequate to year one.

[Lorendiac]

And then Infinite Crisis happened and in issue #7 Alex Luthor states that Chill did kill Bruce's parents. Since Year Two is the only story in which this happens, I assume that it's back in continuity. And contradictions in the comics (ie Batman #603) happened before IC.

"The only story"? Actually, Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents in every story that ever named the killer in the decades prior to Zero Hour. Assuming that Joe Chill's reinstatement as the Official Killer of Batman's Parents constitutes an automatic restoration of "Year Two" (as opposed to any previous story that had him as the killer, but described his fate differently) is a real stretch.

In addition: It seems to me that if anything, Infinite Crisis actually confirmed that "Year Two" is still erased from continuity. The original Pre-Crisis version of Joe Chill's history said that he made a clean getaway after he killed the Waynes, with the police of that era never even figuring out who had done it, but Bruce memorized his face on the spot and was able to recognize him again many years later. I think "Year Two" rested on that same foundation -- Batman recognized Chill, but he'd never been formally charged with the murders of the Waynes; never stood trial; nothing like that. As with the Pre-Crisis version, the huge lack of "closure" in that case had been haunting Bruce ever since the night he was orphaned, until he finally caught up with the guy years later.

"Infinite Crisis #7" told us, as I recall, that the killer of the Waynes was quickly identified and arrested after the double homicide (instead of vanishing into limbo for the next couple of decades). Doesn't that indicate that the version of Chill's background offered to us in "Year Two" is still dead and gone, totally irrelevant to the latest version of Modern Batman Continuity?

[GRANT!]

It picks up on threads from Year One. Specifically Falcone, Gordon and Harvey Dent.

[Choppa]

"The only story"? Actually, Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents in every story that ever named the killer in the decades prior to Zero Hour. Assuming that Joe Chill's reinstatement as the Official Killer of Batman's Parents constitutes an automatic restoration of "Year Two" (as opposed to any previous story that had him as the killer, but described his fate differently) is a real stretch.

In addition: It seems to me that if anything, Infinite Crisis actually confirmed that "Year Two" is still erased from continuity. The original Pre-Crisis version of Joe Chill's history said that he made a clean getaway after he killed the Waynes, with the police of that era never even figuring out who had done it, but Bruce memorized his face on the spot and was able to recognize him again many years later. I think "Year Two" rested on that same foundation -- Batman recognized Chill, but he'd never been formally charged with the murders of the Waynes; never stood trial; nothing like that. As with the Pre-Crisis version, the huge lack of "closure" in that case had been haunting Bruce ever since the night he was orphaned, until he finally caught up with the guy years later.

"Infinite Crisis #7" told us, as I recall, that the killer of the Waynes was quickly identified and arrested after the double homicide (instead of vanishing into limbo for the next couple of decades). Doesn't that indicate that the version of Chill's background offered to us in "Year Two" is still dead and gone, totally irrelevant to the latest version of Modern Batman Continuity?

When I say the only story, I'm talking about the first story that revealed Chill's involvement, not retellings that might have referenced it. And I still don't see how Alex's comments would imply that Y2 didn't happen. The fact is that we don't really know exactly what he was saying. But since 'New Earth' now apparently has elements of pre-ZH E1 and post, that's the only conclusion I can see until DC clarifies what happened.

The wikipedia article on it even says the same thing-

After the events of Infinite Crisis, Joe Chill's arrest has been restored into continuity.[1] The canonical status of this story arc is currently unknown.

[Lorendiac]

When I say the only story, I'm talking about the first story that revealed Chill's involvement, not retellings that might have referenced it.

I don't think I understand that sentence at all. At first glance, it looks as if, by "first story that revealed Chill's involvement," you mean to say: "Year Two was the first story DC ever published that clearly established the idea that Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents -- they had never told us that as a solid fact before." But I find it hard to believe that's what you mean (it would be wildly inaccurate) so I find myself suspecting that whatever you meant to say was not as clearly expressed as it could have been.

And I still don't see how Alex's comments would imply that Y2 didn't happen. The fact is that we don't really know exactly what he was saying. But since 'New Earth' now apparently has elements of pre-ZH E1 and post, that's the only conclusion I can see until DC clarifies what happened.

The wikipedia article on it even says the same thing-

Well, one way to look at it is this: I figure that Alex was basically saying (on behalf of Geoff Johns, who put the words in his mouth), "We've just created another Official Excuse for DC's writers and editors to use for any Shameless Retcons they want to make in the Post-Infinite Crisis era! I don't know what all those retcons will be, you don't know what all those retcons will be, the point is that any crazy retcon anybody comes up with will have this beautiful built-in Excuse to justify it!"

About the implications of his comments re: "Year Two", I figure it goes like this:

Pre-Zero Hour, Joe Chill was definitely guilty of the Wayne murders, but the police never knew that and never arrested him for it. In "Year Two" in the late 80s, he finally met Batman and then was killed by the Reaper. That was the only "punishment" he ever received for the murders -- long after the fact.

Post-Zero Hour, Joe Chill was probably not guilty. In any event, the police never identified a strong suspect and never arrested him for it.

Post-Infinite Crisis, Joe Chill was definitely guilty and the police definitely caught and arrested him, soon after the murders.

To me, that last retcon definitely "erases" at least some of the things we were "told" about Joe Chill in "Year Two." So why should I assume that the other bits and pieces of "Year Two" are being raised from the dead and shoehorned back into continuity?

Beyond that:

Quoting Wikipedia on something as nebulous as one contributing writer's musings regarding what might or might not be still "in continuity" doesn't really add much to your argument . . . but you made me curious, so I'm going to follow your example and do the same thing by quoting Wikipedia myself! :)

I looked up its article on "Joe Chill." Here's an excerpt:

In 2006's Infinite Crisis #6, another cosmic crisis reestablishing that Chill murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne and adding for the first time that he had been arrested on that same night for their murder. This change is consistent with the previous year's film Batman Begins, in which Chill was also caught shortly after murdering the Waynes. It would also make sense, given that in Batman: Year One, he is not mentioned or referred to after the shooting, presumably having been caught. The writers at DC Comics intend to show his final fate, which supposedly happened while Bruce was an adolescent, thus never giving him the chance to confront Chill, much like ]Begins.

One problem there is that no source is specifically cited for the statement that DC's writers currently intend to show Chill dying somehow before Bruce had launched his career as "Batman." So I can't say if that's true or not -- but if it turns out to be true, that will definitely leave "Year Two" still dead and buried, its entire plot far removed from anything that "still happened" in the latest version of Batman's "modern continuity."

[Choppa]

I don't think I understand that sentence at all. At first glance, it looks as if, by "first story that revealed Chill's involvement," you mean to say: "Year Two was the first story DC ever published that clearly established the idea that Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents -- they had never told us that as a solid fact before." But I find it hard to believe that's what you mean (it would be wildly inaccurate) so I find myself suspecting that whatever you meant to say was not as clearly expressed as it could have been.

What I'm saying is that Year Two was the first comic that was intended to be the definitive story of who shot Bruce's parents, akin to how Year One was intended to be the official first year of Batman's career.


To me, that last retcon definitely "erases" at least some of the things we were "told" about Joe Chill in "Year Two." So why should I assume that the other bits and pieces of "Year Two" are being raised from the dead and shoehorned back into continuity?

Why would you assume that the other elements haven't been brought back? There's really no proof to say if just Chill's existence or the whole story has been brought back into continuity. To me it makes more sense that it's the whole story because just introducing the character's existence makes things even more complicated as to what happened.

I never presented the wikipedia article as fact, it's only to show that the general opinion is that no one actually knows for sure whether it's in or not.

[Beacon]

What I'm saying is that Year Two was the first comic that was intended to be the definitive story of who shot Bruce's parents

But it isn't. They named Joe as the killer all the way back in the late 40s.

[Slortex]

This right here is why continuity is just a big waste of time. Maybe if its done right, it could be cool, but coordinating hundreds of writers over several titles over the course of several decades is far too daunting a task, at least for the editorial staff at DC. I say just take each book as its own continuity, or pick and choose whichever ones you like. In the end it doesn't really matter, and it'll probably be made irrelevant by the next ultra-mega crossover deluxe, so why try to make sense of things? Its like trying to build a structure during an earthquake.

[Buried Alien]

I agree with all of that -- Year Two was definitely erased a long time ago and Year Three never got much respect from anyone else after Marv Wolfman wrote it.

In defense of BATMAN YEAR THREE, however, it was the story arc in which Tim Drake made his first appearance in the Batman mythos.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Mutate]

Tim Drakes first apperance was Robin 1's origin in the 40s - he was in the circus crowd! (i'm joking)

[Choppa]

But it isn't. They named Joe as the killer all the way back in the late 40s.

I don't get your point. What effect does that have on the modern continuity?

[Beacon]

I don't get your point. What effect does that have on the modern continuity?

You mean other than the fact that Post-Crisis DC is pretty much assumed to be the same as Pre-Crisis DC unless something was expressly contradicted (as Zero Hour did even though Year Two had already confirmed his existence in Post-Crisis)? Nothing, I guess.

What does your last question have to do with me refuting your previous (and false) statement about Year Two being the first Joe Chill story? If you take the long* view of things then his first (named) mention was nearly sixty years ago. If you take the short** view then it was last year.

*Everything is the same from reboot to reboot unless otherwise stated.

**Every reboot means a blank slate.

[Damo]

I think the overall lesson to take away from this is that since O'Neil left as editor of the Batman books, there's been basically no official attempts to keep track of what's canon and what isn't. It's basically become multiple choice, with editorial apparently telling writers "go nuts, you can do whatever you want with the past".

I can't say I care for it.

[Ungoliantschilde]

If you read the back-up interviews with Loeb and Sale about their work on the Long Halloween, it's clear that their intentions were to not necessarily write a sequel, per se, but more like a self-contained Batman story that took place very soon after the events of Miller's Year One. They wanted to do stories involving Batman when he was just getting started. Not quite as green as he was in Year One, but still pretty new. The chronology of them goes as follows:

1. Batman: the Long Halloween.
2. Catwoman: When in Rome
3. Batman: Dark Victory

When in Rome makes specific reference to the fact that Catwoman disappeared for a while during the Long Halloween. That disappearance is explained by the When in Rome mini. She went to Italy to try and find out if the Roman really was her father... and he was. She is the daughter of Carmine "the Roman" Falcone and the sister of Sophia Gigante. Her mother is a "Nun" in an Italian Convent. By "Nun" I mean that she isn't exactly the mostly Godly woman in the convent... more like a mob-boss acting like one.

Anyways, the long story short is this: The Loeb/Sale collaborations are meant to be set in the same time period as Year One, but not to be sequels. More like... "... oh, and then THIS happened..."

[Buried Alien]

Tim Drakes first apperance was Robin 1's origin in the 40s - he was in the circus crowd! (i'm joking)

If Earth-Two had a Tim Drake, you could be right. :)

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Choppa]

You mean other than the fact that Post-Crisis DC is pretty much assumed to be the same as Pre-Crisis DC unless something was expressly contradicted (as Zero Hour did even though Year Two had already confirmed his existence in Post-Crisis)? Nothing, I guess.


I don't understand what you're saying. Year Two was Post-Crisis wasn't it? So that makes it the official story on who murdered Bruce's parents in the Post-Crisis world until Zero Hour.



What does your last question have to do with me refuting your previous (and false) statement about Year Two being the first Joe Chill story? If you take the long* view of things then his first (named) mention was nearly sixty years ago. If you take the short** view then it was last year.

*Everything is the same from reboot to reboot unless otherwise stated.

**Every reboot means a blank slate.

As I already said, I didn't say that Year Two was the first Joe Chill story, it's the first story that was intended to be the official story on who killed Bruce's Parents, similar to how Year One was the official story on Bruce's first year as Batman.

[Mutate]

I read that Year Two was going to be called "Batman 1980" untill year one came out, ie it was planned long before they heard of year one but they changedthe name to cash in. I read it on the urban legends column on this site in "comics should be good".

[Lorendiac]

This right here is why continuity is just a big waste of time. Maybe if its done right, it could be cool, but coordinating hundreds of writers over several titles over the course of several decades is far too daunting a task, at least for the editorial staff at DC. I say just take each book as its own continuity, or pick and choose whichever ones you like.

I've been known to express similar sentiments about how, in this day and age, after decades of old stories, it can get downright ridiculous to expect each new writer to have a perfect grasp of what has gone before, and to then expect him to care enough to never, ever, contradict any detail of any previous story by some other writer who worked on the same characters 10 years ago (or 20, or 30, or 40, or whatever).

A couple of years ago I offered a hypothetical example here on the CBR forums (but it looks like the thread in question has been erased already, so I'll have to reconstruct my argument from memory).

My example went something like this:

Suppose that tomorrow morning an editor at DC suddenly offers me the chance to write a monthly Batman title for at least one year -- let's say a minimum of 12 issues guaranteed, with an option to renew the agreement my mutual consent at the end of my first year if the customers seem happy with my work. My first reaction? I'd be delighted, of course!

But suppose he added: "We've recently imposed a strict rule in order to reduce continuity glitches in the Bat-books. Before you can submit any scripts to me, you've got to go through our archives and read (or re-read even if you've read a lot of it before) every single issue of any 'Batman-related' title that we've published in the last 20 years or so; i.e. his entire 'Post-Crisis' continuity. Batman, Detective Comics, Shadow of the Bat, Gotham Knights, Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Legends of the Dark Knight, lots of cute little miniseries and graphic novels, whatever!"

At that point, the honeymoon would be over. I'd dig in my heels and say, "Wait a minute -- after 20 years, all of the Post-Crisis stories about Batman and his various sidekicks, etc., must add up to what, a couple of thousand separate issues of one thing or another? Do you know how long it would take me to read all that in order to 'brush up' on previous Bat-continuity? Is DC planning to pay me a daily wage for the next couple of months while I'm wading my way through all that old continuity? Because it sure sounds like just reading the stuff is going to amount to a full-time job before I'm even allowed to write and submit any scripts for your approval, much less get paid for them!"

That scenario is very different from what would be involved if I were hired to help write a new Star Wars movie. I'd only have to go back and watch, what, six previous films to remind myself of who's who and what they've previously done to each other in past encounters? (Since the various novels and comic books and stuff largely get ignored by the movies and don't really count as rock-solid official continuity?) Six films, at two hours per, would mean I could brush up on all the essential details in a mere twelve hours of nonstop watching of DVDs or videotapes. (I might pace myself and only watch two or three films a day, but it still wouldn't take very long.)

Those considerations were probably on my mind several months later when I wrote, as an April Fool's Day stunt, a possible glimpse at how Marvel might be handling Spider-Man's "continuity" in the year 2037:

Notes from the Future: Spidey's 75th Anniversary (http://www.geocities.com/lwhomer.geo/LorendiacSuperheroWritings/NotesFutureSpidey.html)

In a nutshell, my suggestion was that Marvel would long since have officially abandoned the crazy idea that "practically every issue of every title fits into the same Universal Continuity of any other issue ever published in any other title" in favor of the much simpler idea: "Each ongoing series can do its own thing and gleefully ignore any other series about Marvel's characters. If one title has Spidey married to Mary Jane, and another title has him divorced from Mary Jane, and another title has him as a carefree bachelor who's never been married, and another title has him grieving over the death of his beloved wife Mary Jane, then that's fine as long as each series tells a self-consistent story that doesn't require you to know or care what any other Spider-Man title is doing at the same time!" :)

It was posted on April Fool's Day, but I think there's real merit in the idea. In a small way, Marvel already does some of this in different titles! The Peter Parker of "Amazing Spider-Man" does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of "Ultimate Spider-Man", who in turn does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of "The Amazing Spider-Girl", who in turn does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of "Spider-Man loves Mary Jane", who in turn does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of the comic book adaptations of the movies . . . you get the idea! I was just suggesting extending the same "freedom" and "flexibility" to any writer working on any Marvel title so that he isn't "chained down" by what a hundred other writers have done in the past or are doing right now in separate titles! :)

[jesse_custer]

Applying real world time to the DCU is pretty much useless. Not every story is going to neatly fall into place with all the others. Just roll with it.

I completely agree.

[Sparvid]

Well you have to consider "The Man Who Laughs"Directly after Year One (I'm referring to the storyline, not the calender year)
then the Dark Moon Rising stuff (Monster Men and Mad Monk)During Year One. There are quite many holes between scenes. A whole calender month neatly between #406 and #407, even!
AND THEN the Four of a Kind stories
Sometime after the previously mentioned stories, but before Long Halloween and the eventual introduction of Robin.


But it's not easy to fit everything together, Gordon met Robin for the first time in two different ways, for example! (Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet, from '97 and Batman: Turning Points #2, from '01)

[Punch]

I read that Year Two was going to be called "Batman 1980" untill year one came out, ie it was planned long before they heard of year one but they changedthe name to cash in. I read it on the urban legends column on this site in "comics should be good".
yeah I think what happened was that Mike Barr wrote a proposal to revamp Batman's origin, to bring it up to date. This was Batman 1980 and it was never accepted for whatever reason. Then independently Miller did Year One, and Barr took his 1980 story and used whatever didn't directly contradict Year One and made it Year Two.

What I want to know is how much time passed between the publications of year One and Two? I think I read somewhere that they appeared almost at the same time.

[dancj]

They were back to back IIRC, so Year Two part one came out in the month following Batman Year 1. It was probably actually 2 or 6 weeks because one was in Batman and one was in Detective

[Carter Hall]

Personally, I didn't care for TLH/DV as much as most did because it showed EVERY major Batman rogue existing and established. The supposed months between Year One and these books must've been pretty dense for Batman to have all the major Bat-villains come out of nowhere. It didn't make much sense to me for this story to be in the early days of Batman's career, but more like a Hush type story- a romp through the Rogue's gallery. The fact that these books were Loeb/Sale's origins of Two-Face and Robin doesn't make it canon.

If anyone wants to read a good sequel to Batman:Year One, read the early Legends of the Dark Knight stuff- especially Prey, with Hugo Strange, which was written to take place immediately following Year One. I personally take those as canon.

[Punch]

^yeah Shaman was also great and very much like Year One

[Lorendiac]

yeah I think what happened was that Mike Barr wrote a proposal to revamp Batman's origin, to bring it up to date. This was Batman 1980 and it was never accepted for whatever reason. Then independently Miller did Year One, and Barr took his 1980 story and used whatever didn't directly contradict Year One and made it Year Two.

To the best of my recollection: I never heard that story before. Interesting!

What I want to know is how much time passed between the publications of year One and Two? I think I read somewhere that they appeared almost at the same time.

When I want to answer questions about original publication dates and the like, I run over to www.comics.org

In this case: "Year One" first ran in the Batman title, #'s 404-407. According to comics.org., those were cover-dated February, March, April, and May 1987.

"Year Two" was in the Detective Comics title, #'s 575-578. Cover-dates: June, July, August, and September of 1987.

(If memory serves -- cover-dates were usually about three months ahead of reality in those days, but that hardly matters.)

So it looks like "Year Two" started running the month after "Year One" was wrapped up! I didn't realize they came quite so close together!

[dancj]

I didn't much like Shaman but Prey is very good. In fact it has the joint honour of being the only time I've liked Doug Moench's writing and the only time I've nearly liked Paul Gulacy's art.

Other good LOTDK stories are Gothic, Faces and Blades

[Carter Hall]

I didn't much like Shaman but Prey is very good. In fact it has the joint honour of being the only time I've liked Doug Moench's writing and the only time I've nearly liked Paul Gulacy's art.

Other good LOTDK stories are Gothic, Faces and Blades

I didn't like Shaman as much, either, but I still appreciated it as an early Batman story. As for the other LOTDK stories, I didn't like Gothic or Faces AS much, although I thought they were still pretty good, but I LOVED Prey, Blades, and Venom.

[lawman]

No, Year Two was removed from canon a long time ago, after Zero Hour. It has been explicitly contradicted several times since then (for example, in Batman #603 and #604).
I think you rather overstate the case. Brubaker's story in these issues establish that Batman in the present (but pre-IC) regarded the Wayne murders as still unsolved, but that's not to say that in the past (i.e., the Year Two era, long before Zero Month gave him cause to doubt) he didn't think that Joe Chill was the shooter.

Year Three has since also been contradicted by Robin: Year One. Year Three has also never been collected in TPB and is now a rather obscure story arc; it has not been promoted as the "official" Robin origin in well over a decade.
"Contradicted" how? There are some minor inconsistencies, but nothing to prevent the stories from being reconciled with one another. Don't forget the 1994 Robin Annual, either; that was a Year One story for him as well.

Why do you think TLH and DV are non-canon, other than that they were published outside of the ongoing Batman titles and contradict minor, obscure things from long-ago Batman stories (which Batman and Tec do all the time)?
Actually, TLH and DV contradict a lot of things. Most significantly, if you take their internal timelines at face value, they leave us with Two-Face not debuting until Year Three (contrary to a great many other stories), and Robin not appearing until Year Five. My sense of it is that the only way to retain any story elements from them is (A) to condense TLH down into a shorter timeframe, making the killer's crimes holiday-themed without occupying an actual calendar year, and then (B) excise all of the Robin-origin scenes (which were excruciating anyway) from DV.

Plus, of course, they were offshoots from LODK, a series which was always explicitly "iffy" about its stories' canonical status (e.g., Denny's version of Robin's origin in #100), and which should therefore take a backseat if and when conflicts arise.

[QUOTE=Lorendiac;5087552]I agree with all of that -- Year Two was definitely erased a long time ago and Year Three never got much respect from anyone else after Marv Wolfman wrote it.
How do you figure? At the very least, it was the lead-in to Tim's first appearance in "Lonely Place of Dying," which remains canonical and has been reprinted in TPB.

Granted neither Y2 nor Y3 was a story to write home about, but that alone is hardly enough for them to deserve being Mopeed.

"Infinite Crisis #7" told us, as I recall, that the killer of the Waynes was quickly identified and arrested after the double homicide (instead of vanishing into limbo for the next couple of decades). Doesn't that indicate that the version of Chill's background offered to us in "Year Two" is still dead and gone, totally irrelevant to the latest version of Modern Batman Continuity?
Not quite. The headline (and later dialogue) in IC told us that Chill was caught and convicted, but provided no details about when or how. I hope (without conviction) that we may get the full current version of that story someday, but until then it remains ambiguous. My impression at the time was that the change was motivated mainly by the desire to dovetail with the film version from Batman Begins.

[lawman]

In the end it doesn't really matter, and it'll probably be made irrelevant by the next ultra-mega crossover deluxe, so why try to make sense of things?
Well, then, gee... why bother to read comics at all? Much less bother discussing them online like this. We should all go find some entertainment that does make sense, instead!

[lawman]

In a small way, Marvel already does some of this in different titles! The Peter Parker of "Amazing Spider-Man" does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of "Ultimate Spider-Man", who in turn does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of "The Amazing Spider-Girl", who in turn does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of "Spider-Man loves Mary Jane", who in turn does not live in the same continuity as the Peter Parker of the comic book adaptations of the movies . . . you get the idea!
What continuity does "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane" take place in? I've never read an issue, as I don't seem to be the target audience, but I confess I'm curious... :p

[Supermancho]

Jeph Loeb even tried to insert them into continuity be including a subtle reference to TLH in Hush. .

:eek: What chapter? I'll have to re-read Hush. back to the batcave....

[Lorendiac]

:eek: What chapter? I'll have to re-read Hush. back to the batcave....

It was at the very end of one of the later issues, after the shooting of Tommy Elliot. As I recall, all through the arc we've been seeing a Mysterious Bandaged Trenchcoat Guy running around in the shadows, never meeting Batman until the very end. But after Batman beat the tar out of the Joker when he found him standing over Tommy's body, the Joker was sent back to Arkham Asylum. While he's there, a Mysterious Bandaged Trenchcoat Guy walks up to him and starts talking. This guy mentions a time on Christmas Eve when Joker broke into the guy's house and beat him up in front of his wife, or something along those lines. (This happened to the Dents in The Long Halloween, of course.) Then the guy takes off his bandages to reveal his bald (shaved for surgery) head and says "Harvey Dent is back." Then that scene -- and that issue -- ends. That might have been around Part 9 of 12? (Part 10 ended, as I recall, with yet another Mysterious Bandaged Trenchcoat Guy unbandaging himself to reveal the face of "Jason Todd" in that graveyard scene.)

On the other hand: I only interpret that vague reference to a scene from TLH as meaning that "The Long Halloween -- written by Jeph Loeb -- is definitely in Batman's continuity in Jeph Loeb's opinion when he writes other Batman story arcs." He would have an obvious bias on the subject, of course! :)

[Slortex]

Well, then, gee... why bother to read comics at all? Much less bother discussing them online like this. We should all go find some entertainment that does make sense, instead!

Sarcasm aside, all I was saying is that its futile to figure this stuff out since it changes on a whim. I'm all for reading comics and discussing the content of them, but figuring out where precisely stories fit is usually a futile endeavor. See Lorendiac's post on the previous page, he explains things far better than I.

[Lorendiac]

Looking back through this thread, I'm reminded that last month I made the following promise in here:

(P.S. The last couple of weeks I've been working, off-and-on, on a script for the first issue of what I would do if DC hired me to write a year-long sequel series meant to tie up some loose ends from "The Long Halloween" and "Dark Victory," while trying to maintain some of the same tone. One of these days I'll have something I'm not completely ashamed of, and then I just need to figure out where I'm going to post it so my fellow fans can gleefully tell me all the ways I went wrong in my literary efforts! :))

Just on the off chance that anyone has been holding his breath waiting to see if I would put my money where my mouth was and ever actually get around to posting some of my effort at an Unofficial Sequel . . . I actually did post a bit of it last week. I call the project "Batman: Double Dealing" and I posted the script for Pages 1-24 over on our Never Ending Forum at: Double Dealing #1 (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=185423).

(Now I'm waiting for someone to offer some feedback on what I did right or wrong in my efforts to follow in Jeph Loeb's footsteps. Meanwhile, I'm trying to whip into shape my current draft of the next 24 pages, which will, of course, include the first in a long series of murders.)

[Supermancho]

It was at the very end of one of the later issues, after the shooting of Tommy Elliot. As I recall, all through the arc we've been seeing a Mysterious Bandaged Trenchcoat Guy running around in the shadows, never meeting Batman until the very end. But after Batman beat the tar out of the Joker when he found him standing over Tommy's body, the Joker was sent back to Arkham Asylum. While he's there, a Mysterious Bandaged Trenchcoat Guy walks up to him and starts talking. This guy mentions a time on Christmas Eve when Joker broke into the guy's house and beat him up in front of his wife, or something along those lines. (This happened to the Dents in The Long Halloween, of course.) Then the guy takes off his bandages to reveal his bald (shaved for surgery) head and says "Harvey Dent is back." Then that scene -- and that issue -- ends. That might have been around Part 9 of 12? (Part 10 ended, as I recall, with yet another Mysterious Bandaged Trenchcoat Guy unbandaging himself to reveal the face of "Jason Todd" in that graveyard scene.)

On the other hand: I only interpret that vague reference to a scene from TLH as meaning that "The Long Halloween -- written by Jeph Loeb -- is definitely in Batman's continuity in Jeph Loeb's opinion when he writes other Batman story arcs." He would have an obvious bias on the subject, of course! :)

Back from the batcave. You are totally right. Hush, part 8. TLH part 3.
Nice connection:cool: . Thanks for the tip.

[Lorendiac]

What continuity does "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane" take place in? I've never read an issue, as I don't seem to be the target audience, but I confess I'm curious... :p

First, a warning. I've never read any of it either! :)

Now, having established that I don't really know what I'm talking about, I'll go right ahead and talk about it for a moment! :)

From what I've heard online: the series is set in its own little world, totally separate from any continuity in any other comic book Marvel has ever published.

In it: the main characters are still high school students. Mary Jane, Peter, Harry Osborn, etc., all go to the same high school. They have various sitcom-style misunderstandings, feuds, romantic rivalries, etc.

(As I understand it: In the 616 timeline of the main Marvel universe, Peter Parker never even met Mary Jane or Harry until after he had graduated from high school, and they never seriously dated each other until after his girlfriend Gwen Stacy had died, a few years later.)

What I was talking about, in the post you responded to, was that this sort of thing could be the best way to go as a matter of general Marvel policy from now on. If any talented writer is offered a chance to play around with the iconic characters of Peter Parker and Mary Jane, but he says he doesn't want to be tied down to writing about them in a world where they've been married for ages and tragically lost a baby a while back (mid-90s), then let him do a series that rearranges things any way he sees fit as part of its own little world, and let the readers vote with their wallets to tell Marvel whether or not they think the material is enjoyable even though it's not surgically attached to a couple of thousand previously published issues that featured Spider-Man in other titles over the past few decades! :)

[lawman]

What I was talking about, in the post you responded to, was that this sort of thing could be the best way to go as a matter of general Marvel policy from now on. If any talented writer is offered a chance to play around with the iconic characters of Peter Parker and Mary Jane, but he says he doesn't want to be tied down to writing about them in a world where they've been married for ages and tragically lost a baby a while back (mid-90s), then let him do a series that rearranges things any way he sees fit as part of its own little world, and let the readers vote with their wallets to tell Marvel whether or not they think the material is enjoyable even though it's not surgically attached to a couple of thousand previously published issues that featured Spider-Man in other titles over the past few decades! :)
Yeah, I read your parody piece along those lines awhile back, too. It's sort of an extrapolation-to-absurdity of the course Marvel's already taking right now. I don't actually object to it on principle -- it's no skin off my nose if some tween out there enjoys reading the Mary Jane title in its isolated glory -- so long as titles doing this are kept distinct, although a real proliferation of them could get pretty confusing. I think problems would only arise when mutually contradictory titles both try to intersect other events in the Marvel (or, naturally, DC) universe.

(Which may sound absurd on its face, but that's more-or-less the situation we're facing WRT Long Halloween/Dark Victory that prompted this whole thread in the first place...)

IOW, I don't mind multiple versions of canon (or even fanon), so long as each one is identifiably coherent within its own self-identified rules... and so long as something stands out identifiably as the "core" canon at the end of the day.