For fans of continuity...

[lawman]

Hi! Just a quick self-serving post to announce that I've finished and gone live with a comprehensive update to my "Unauthorized Chronology of the DC Universe" site.

One of the more obvious changes is the new, more memorable domain name -- the site can now be found at www.dcutimeline.com (http://www.dcutimeline.com)! (Although the old subdomain dcu.smartmemes.com will still work as well, if you have it linked or bookmarked.)

There's a whole lot beyond that, though, as I've been promising for a while, enough to excite and tantalize those who enjoy continuity and puzzle the bejesus out of those who don't. For instance, content-wise, every single section has been updated to reflect post-Infinite Crisis, “New Earth” continuity... including not only new information from recent stories, but numerous tweaks to the past. (There are also scads of corrections discovered since the last update. Nobody's perfect, after all.) I've sorted out all the details from52, One Year Later, and even Countdown (pity me); incorporated the latest information about the revised backstories of Superman and Batman; and far, far more. There's new color-coding to denote matters of questionable canonicity, and I've also added a table summarizing DC's own "official" timelines, for purposes of comparison.

I've also improved navigation, with a more attractive menu, pop-up submenus, and more internal links on the timeline to keep everything cross-referenced.

I admit I've waited longer than I had planned to put any new material on the site. It's been over two years since my last real update, and it's taken six months of work to get this one ready. For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing, though, I hope it'll prove to have been worth the wait! It's a labor of love. Let me (and others!) know what you think.

[Inverted]

Thank you so much for the wonderful post, and link. Some people might not be fans of continuity. But there are those like me who love to see how a character develop into what they are now. I find continutiy to be a fascinating thing, and while it is cool to read things which are considered apocrypha, its always good to get a better understanding of these stories.

Thanks for all your hard work. I will definitly save this to favorites, and tell others about it.

[longshot3]

Wow, that site is completely awesome, thanks for that. I too will be saving that to my favorites.

[HaroldAllnut]

WELL DONE. Period.

[lawman]

Thanks, everyone! It's always nice to be reminded that I'm not the only one who finds this stuff interesting.

[Adamantium_Avatar]

This looks absolutely fantastic, but unfortunately I cannot get it to scroll down?! :confused:

Anyone got any tips?

[lawman]

This looks absolutely fantastic, but unfortunately I cannot get it to scroll down?! :confused:

Anyone got any tips?
Hmm. Give me some more details here: what browser are you using, and what operating system? I've tested it on every browser available to me, and run the code through the W3C validator, so it should work fine for almost everyone. But if there are any glitches (and an inability to scroll the main content area would be a big one!), I'd certainly like to know about them, and see what I can do...

[Metamorpho]

Let me chime in and congratulate you on the awesomeness of your site and thank you for all the work that you have put into it.

[Ghost Shark]

A lot of hard work and devotion went into that site and it shows. Well done, indeed!

[Adamantium_Avatar]

Hmm. Give me some more details here: what browser are you using, and what operating system? I've tested it on every browser available to me, and run the code through the W3C validator, so it should work fine for almost everyone. But if there are any glitches (and an inability to scroll the main content area would be a big one!), I'd certainly like to know about them, and see what I can do...

It seems to work from home.. So I guess it's the work system...

[lawman]

It seems to work from home.. So I guess it's the work system...
Okay. How's your work system configured, and how's your home one different? Honestly, I'd like to do what I can to make the site as usable as possible for everyone...

Edited to add: I've learned now that it has rendering problems in at least some installations of Internet Explorer 6 -- which I honestly don't know how to help, as versions of IE before 7.0 are notoriously glitchy. I can only urge frustrated visitors to upgrade their browsers. I've also been alerted to a bad link under the "Home" button, which I've already corrected.

[Batman Fan 31593]

First, let me say, that is a VERY detailed timeline. Good job.

However, I take issue with the length of the timeline. Tim Drake is not 22 years old, and he hasn't been Robin for 9 years. He's 17, maybe 18 at the absolute oldest.

I think one of the main problems that DC has is all of the real time references. Greg Rucka is particularly guilty of this. No Man's Land was really where it started. Then Rucka's run on Detective Comics, then Gotham Central, then 52, then Checkmate. Real time does not not belong in comics IMO.

I personally find it's best to ignore all of the real time references and just enjoy the stories.

My personal formula for figuring out roughly how long ago something happened in "comic book time", is that four years real time = one year comic book time. This puts COIE almost six years ago, Zero Hour about 3 and a half years ago, and Infinite Crisis slightly less than a year ago.

This formula works well for Tim's age, also. It's been almost 20 years since he was introduced at age 13 in 1989. 20 divided by 4 = 5 comic book years later, Tim is almost 18.

I believe in a recent Grant Morrison interview, he stated that in his view Bruce has been Batman for 15 years now. This would currently put us in Year 16 with Year 1 being "15 years ago". My "four real years = one comic book year" formula can actually be used to place events on the timeline going back to the beginning of the silver age. 1956 was 52 real years ago, which using my formula would be 13 comic book years ago. This leaves a couple years at the beginning of the timline to place stories from early in Superman and Batman's career, for example, before the other heroes started showing up and the JLA formed.

[lawman]

First, let me say, that is a VERY detailed timeline. Good job.

However, I take issue with the length of the timeline. Tim Drake is not 22 years old, and he hasn't been Robin for 9 years. He's 17, maybe 18 at the absolute oldest.
Thanks for the compliment. And you're not the first one to raise this basic objection (http://www.comicbloc.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1312060&postcount=121), but I'll stand by my reasoning. To quote myself (http://www.comicbloc.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1311266&postcount=114) from that ComicBloc thread,
...there's just no way Tim is only 17 years old. Way too much water has passed under the bridge in the DCU since he was first introduced (at age 13) in 1989.

Consider: since then there were five years of published stories before Zero Hour, then another four years afterward (so at least a couple years of DCU time)... then "No Man's Land" (presented as a year-long story at the time)... then the four years of Lex Luthor's / Pete Ross's / Jonathan Horne's term as president (ending in the election depicted in Jimmy and Justin's first Uncle Sam mini, presumably the same election seen in 52)... then the OYL travels and the return from same... and all the events since then (covering quite a few months of story time at this point). Honestly, by just about any logic (except "sheer editorial whim") he must have passed 20 some time ago.

(Just consider one random bit of corroborating evidence: GA/BC #12 just revealed that Ollie's son Robert -- born virtually contemporary with Tim's debut -- was eight years old by the time of Ollie and Dinah's recent wedding. If he aged that much, so did Tim; there's no way around it.)

And in light of all that, the poor guy really needs to get out of high school already. (Willingham took him out, but then the next writer pushed him back in!) Tim's been in high school for 18 years of publishing time -- that's longer than the Silver Age Dick Grayson (and his fellow original Titans) spent there. It's longer than Peter Parker spent in college, ferheavensake. Tim has attended no less than five schools so far (his original suburban one, then in Keystone after the quake, then the boarding school, then the one in Gotham until "War Games," and now yet another). I suppose one can kinda sorta rationalize him still being there by imagining all the classes (or entire semesters!) he's missed with various travels and adventures, and the need to make them up... but IMHO it's really, really time to let him move on. There's nothing to be gained from turning him into a super-hero Archie Andrews.

...Real time does not not belong in comics IMO.

I personally find it's best to ignore all of the real time references and just enjoy the stories.
Well, obviously we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I think it's worked great in any number of comics, from Tom Strong to Astro City to Hellblazer, and IMHO it could work just fine in the DCU too. However, if you read my timeline, you'll see that real time isn't even what I'm arguing for there -- I'm merely pointing out the passage of time in the DCU as it's actually happened in the stories.

The logical part of my brain stays on even when I'm looking for entertainment; I can't just ignore this stuff. If a given amount of time has passed for Character X, it's passed for Character Y as well. Simple as that.

My personal formula for figuring out roughly how long ago something happened in "comic book time", is that four years real time = one year comic book time. This puts COIE almost six years ago, Zero Hour about 3 and a half years ago, and Infinite Crisis slightly less than a year ago.
There really is no consistent ratio; never has been. That approach would completely fail, for instance, to account for an in-story jump like "one year later." There's no substitute for analyzing the details of the stories themselves -- the approach pioneered by George Olshevsky in his classic Marvel Index series.

I believe in a recent Grant Morrison interview, he stated that in his view Bruce has been Batman for 15 years now.
Well, Grant Morrison's view of Batman (among other things) is more than a little quixotic. :rolleyes: He's also on the record (as his recent stories make clear) of treating every story back to 1939 as part of Bruce's history, in some fashion, no matter how awkward the fit with current continuity.

Honesty, if you want to argue with the reasoning of my chronology, feel free. Could be interesting. Just please take the trouble to read the logic first (the Section Introductions cover it in some depth). For instance, I discuss in some detail why it's impossible for the original Crisis to be only five or six years ago, as a few recent stories (*cough* Geoff Johns *cough*) have implied.

Most people who object to my conclusions just seem to boil it down to wanting to keep some character or other at an age that "feels right" to them... which is ultimately impossible to debate about. Potato, potahto, you know?

[Thok]

One observation, and I don't know if it helps, but you seem to be assuming that Senate elections always occur at the same time Presidential elections occur. This isn't the case (senators are in office for six years, and every two years 1/3 of the Senate is up for election.) This allows you to move the present to 2008.

I don't envy this task, however.