BATMAN AND THE ART OF CONTINUITY MAINTENANCE

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The Real Batman Chronology Project is a study of serialized storytelling in superhero comics. More specifically, the Real Batman Chronology Project tracks the narrative continuity of DC Comics via the lens of Batman, plotting each of his appearances into detailed timelines. To most folks, simple questions arise: “Doesn’t one just read the comics in the order they are published? Why does there need to be a project dedicated to ordering comics? If it is so difficult to figure out a reading order, surely there must be a lot of similar projects online, right?” Ultimately, we get to the bigger question: “Why is my site necessary?”

These questions (which I will answer, don’t worry!) speak to something broader than just Batman (we’ll get to Batman in a minute, don’t worry!)—they speak to the complexity of superhero comics in general. Beyond the already layered intricacy of writing and reading sequential art, the very nature of superhero comics is unique compared to other forms of media. When you read (or create) serialized superhero comic book narratives, you are engaging in a perceptive (or artistic) process that is quite unlike any other. My site, using Batman as a primary case study, serves to analyze and catalogue this phenomenon.

The unique narrative complexity of superhero comics consists primarily of a few key things. First, superhero universes exist in comics as a vast collections of interconnected serialized fiction—authored by hundreds of different people, including writers, pencilers, colorists, inkers, letterers, editors, publishers, and more—over the span of decades. Beyond this (and because of this), much of the superhero genre is hermeneutic—open to both reader interoperation and authorial interpretation of previous authorship. Every week, dozens of new titles come out continuing the story from the previous week’s batch of titles. And all of these titles—week to week, month to month, and so on—tell an ongoing über-story in which the events and characters of said titles all exist in the same shared world, directly influencing each other. (To show how many ongoing titles are released, we can look at a mainstream comic shop selection of publications from a random Wednesday in 2015: Dark Horse put out 10 comics, DC put out 25, IDW put out 10, Image put out 15, Marvel put out 20, and various indie companies combined to put out 30. An article from The Atlantic notes that, as of May 2017, “Marvel publishes around 75 ongoing [monthly] series, along with miniseries and single-issue specials. DC, for comparison, […] publishes around 50 [monthly] ongoing series.”) That’s a lot of material, and DC and Marvel[ ] don’t tell you in what order to read them or how to organize them. Now, to be clear, the Big Two (Marvel and DC) do publish trade paperbacks and their issues are all numbered and can be read in some sort of an order. But when it comes to stitching every title together to make the über-story that tells the whole tale, that is not a task that either company really gets bogged down in. If we look solely at DC, for example, we are talking about literally hundreds of creators working together to create a “shared universe”—essentially one single unified story. How can all these titles (and creators) possibly exist and function cohesively? How can there be a coherent story, both visually and narratively? Holistically, the comics form a puzzle and it’s how the pieces fit together that really interests me.

But why Batman? Why is he so important? Well, he’s not just an awesome character. He’s quite popular, in case you didn’t know—he shows up in almost every DC title at some point or another. Batman is the primary lens through which DC Comics has been able to tell a consistent narrative for the past 75 years-plus. Technically, in the DC Universe, everything kind of revolves around the Holy Trinity of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman—but the Dark Knight of Gotham City seems to be prominently featured a tad more than the others. Therefore, sticking with Batman appearances allows for the easiest opportunity to determine passage of time, character age, where events occur, where things need to be rearranged, how things come together, or how things fail to come together for the entire DC Universe. Of course, a ton of variables have to be considered and the process gets complicated. This is the reason why there are so few attempts at what I’ve done. The few attempts that exist—in niche areas of the Internet and in a few rare books—have either been quickly abandoned or left incomplete. Because Batman’s past is so richly complicated, it has not been successfully evaluated and analyzed from the narratological perspective of serial-continuity. I’m sort of a masochist for continuing such a Sisyphean project with such diligence! But I do so because of a desire to prove certain theses: one, continuity equals congruity (meaning that, contrary to what a lot of folks think, continuity isn’t supposed to over-complicate or make texts feel exclusive—it actually helps us understand narrative more easily); two, serialized multi-authored narratives utilize truly unique forms of storytelling; and, three, a cohesive superhero universe is the result of a collaborative interpretive process undertaken by both creators and readers alike. To verify this list, my foundational focus has always revolved heavily around respect for the concept of fictional canon and knowledge of DC’s line-wide reboots. It is because of this dual focus that the Real Batman Chronology Project has been so successful and has remained the preeminent source of comic book continuity information on the Internet.

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Please click on the following link to continue reading the next part: Fictional Canon: What Counts?

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ABOUT THE SITE CREATOR/PROJECT MANAGER:

Collin Colsher, the creator of The Real Batman Chronology Project and disCONTINUITY, is a writer, filmmaker, teacher, and comic book historian that currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He has lectured at various universities, libraries, and book fairs. Collin has also served on the jury for the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, which is sponsored by the US Library of Congress.

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