Cataclysm/No Man's Land Question

[SoulEmbraced]

I am a reader who gets only tpbs. I like being able to read a full story that takes some time. I picked up copies of Contagion/Legacy/Cataclysm when they were published, but never got No Man's Land. I finally was able to grab the entire set off of ebay, and have a question. Is there a storyline that occurs inbetween Cataclysm and No Man's Land b/c they refer to everybody "leaving Gotham". CAn anybody shed some light on this for me?

[Parallax48]

The stories were called Aftershock and the Road to No Man's Land.

I have no idea if they're collected.

[DEWLine]

Not yet, as I recall.

[Captain Jim]

You recall correctly. Aftershock was mostly one-shots, as I recall. Some pretty good, but it got redundant after a while. They were essentially stories that were a follow-up to the earthquake.

Road to NML, on the other hand, let pretty much direrctly into NML. Each of the 3 then-core books had its own 3-part story (as did Azrael). Batman was the most important. The stories were written by Chuck Dixon and were called "Mr. Wayne Goes to Washington." In them, BW tries (unsuccessfully) to convince the powers that be to rebuild Gotham. He is so distressed by his failure that he disappears into Europe during the first few months of NML. Detective was also written by Dixon and was pretty much the story of what Nightwing and Robin were doing at this time. Shadow of the Bat was written by Alan Grant and explained how the entire population of Arkham came to be loose in the streets of NML. Azrael was mostly about Jean Paul's battle with Nicholas Scratch (who also appeared in Batman, IIRC). It appeared initially that NS would be a big player in NML but such was not the case.

Road to NML had some nice stories that set things up for what followed, but reading it isn't really essential to understanding or enjoying NML. In any case, neither of these was ever released as a trade.

[dancj]

If you're going from Contagion/Legacy/Cataclysm to No Man's Land, you're in for a nice boost in quality!

Enjoy the ride

Dan

[SoulEmbraced]

Awesome guys, thanks for the replies. I am into Book 5 of No Man's Land now and still have Evolution and Broken City to go through also. No Man's Land is some of the best reading I have done in a while.

[The Shadow]

No Man's Land is some of the best reading I have done in a while.
IMO No Man's Land was THE BEST mega crossover. Ever. All the stories were fantastic (though with anything some were better than others)... but I loved anything related to Oracle and her network of spies and I am a HUGE Batgorl fan... so this was a sweeeeet series.

I wish current Bat-writers (WINNICK!) would read this and see what a quality story it is.

[Guts/Batman]

I wish current Bat-writers (WINNICK!) would read this and see what a quality story it is.

Of course that would require editors and writers to pay attention to and not ignore what happened Hush.

With the exception of Detective, almost every story has come spun from the pages of Hush. And War Games is best left ignored.

Just freakin horrible.

[dancj]

I read War Games the other day and quite enjoyed it. I think it would have suffered as individual issues when it came out, but reading through all three volumes (4 including War Drums) it's not that bad.

I think a big advantage that No Man's Land had was that it was made up of smaller arcs, which each had a stable team.

Dan