The Tease of Things I Don't Need

DC confirms "ultimatum" to fans

With the announcement that Frank Miller will be writing All-Star Batman & Robin, with Jim Lee providing the artwork, I've finally become aware that DC could no longer ignore the sales figures Marvel has (unfortunately, IMHO) been scoring with their Ultimate line, and has more or less decided to follow suit. At least Marvel's Ultimate line, which re-imagined heroes and villains of the Marvel universe in contemporary settings -- essentially restarting them in the here and now -- wears the idea that it's its own, separate universe on its sleeve. Over at DC they're playing it weak by on the one hand saying (according to Newsarama) it " isn’t to spin the characters into a new timeline, a new universe, or a new continuity," but rather, that "the creators are telling stories set in a contemporary period that both builds on the histories of the respective characters, while remaining fresh and as timeless as possible."

Well, look. That's bullshit.

They're essentially saying that each of these titles -- and for all we know, each of the arcs in each title, if these become ongoing projects -- exists in its own, unique universe. When we're being told that it's both "contemporary" and yet we'll be seeing stories with Batman fighting alongside a Robin who's Dick Grayson - a character who gave that up long enough ago that two successors have taken on the role - what are we to make of that? Yeah, I know. As Alan Moore (at least I believe it was him) reminded us, "they're all 'imaginary stories.'"

As with the Ultimate line these are stories intended to play on the reputations (and accompanying buzz surrounding) of high profile comics creators to push the characters as product. They'll play at continuity, but in the long term it won't mean anything. The press releases will likely use "iconic" a lot. All-Star Superman will have the team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, btw.

Eh. It has no real impact on me directly, though it will impact the comics market itself somewhat. Warren Ellis (via his badsignal emailings -- which is what brought this to my attention in the first place) said:

Today it broke that Frank Miller and Jim Lee are teaming to produce ALL-STAR BATMAN & ROBIN, All-Star being DC's response to Marvel's Ultimate line. This follows good old Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely taking on ALL-STAR SUPERMAN.

That's the top end of the sales charts, such as they are, taken care of. Half the comics stores in the direct market now have what they want. Half of those will have to weight guaranteed All-Star/Ultimate/X sales against possible midlist and indie sales, and many of them will go for the certain sale. Can't blame them. The superhero midlist will probably take the brunt of that.

This was introduced with the statement: "Well, the shape of commercial comics has been decided for this year," and went on to declare this both The Year of Everyone For Themselves" (sic) and that 2005 is looking to be " a pivotal year, like 2000, where the state of commercial comics will be decided for the next few years."

In an attempt to be fair to the other side on these All-Stars projets, here's a piece where Grant Morrison gets to talk about the upcoming All-Star Superman.

Loose tangent add-on: In the comments thread for this Tim and Handsome both wonder whether or not Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight was established to showcase alternate, non-canonical stories about the character or not. My dim (and this could well be in more than one sense of the term) recollection was that it was created to provide what were essentially "untold" stories of Batman's early years, so that the main Bat-titles could continue to occur in the present. I thought that it was their way of allowing writers to establish the backstory for the character so that he could be considered to have a long, rich past -- but have most of it as yet unrevealed to the reader. Now, I can't recall the last issue of the series I read -- it could have been something in the early to mid-90s - indeed, looking at the covers in the last of the links below, I know I stopped picking it up as a regular item after issue #20 - so I can't fully trust my recollection. Besides, Tim is far and away better grounded in the DC universe than I am.

I'm adding this here because I had a few links to toss in, and it's easier for me to do this out here.

A quick search by the title led me to a few pieces. One site that's essentially just a shill site for subscriptions says “This series was introduced in 1989 and was used to tell stories about Batman and his supporting cast. Most of these stories were set before the current time line in the DC Universe.“

over at Silver Bullet I came across a review of an issue of the series where reviewer David Kozlowski shows that he, also, is at least under the same impression as I am when he writes:

“I assume Batman records these at a later time, which fits the historical nature of ‘Legends of the Dark Knight’. “

...and over at a site called gottawiz (where they also provide thumbnails of the covers of the first 150 or so issues) we see this overview comment on the series:

“These stories are either from early in Batman's career (some say during the first three years, or just the first year), or in the future (although this has been rare). They are not, per se, Elseworlds titles.”

Now, none of that is at all conclusive, but at worst I don't feel alone in my possible delusion. Maybe the mission statement for the series took a different turn more recently?