Batman dead in 2008?

[Klaus]

I disagree. Seems like an overdue overhaul to me, rather than propping up the same characters for all of infinity. It's inorganic...plastic...stagnant. It's like some old computer that just keeps creeping along badly in need of a reboot, but everybody's afraid of what will happen if you try.

Superman doesn't have a worthy successor, granted, but Wonder Woman and Bats do. I wouldn't mind a less cosmic torch-passing (Batman the god? No thanks), with the originals sticking around mentoring their proteges, but since they've been permanently stuck around the age of thirty, that kind of transition doesn't work.

And I disagree with the forced advancing of the timeline. If the usual stand-alone Batman story follows him for a night or two, you can have 300 issues without needing to advance one year.

Look at Tim Drake and Conner Kent. They were introduced as kid sidekicks, but the way DC is steamrolling through its timeline, Tim should no longer be a minor, and Conner should be going by Superlad, at least (were him not dead), not Superboy.

 

[Felon]

And I disagree with the forced advancing of the timeline. If the usual stand-alone Batman story follows him for a night or two, you can have 300 issues without needing to advance one year.

LOL, sure, if the stories are told back-to-back without any intervening time. They're not. And all it takes is one story arc that spans the course of months to blow it all out of the water. Venom? Knightfall? No Man's Land? One Year Later?

Advancement is not forced. It's the natural order of things. Holding characters in stasis is forced. The universe wants to move forward!

 

[Klaus]

LOL, sure, if the stories are told back-to-back without any intervening time. They're not. And all it takes is one story arc that spans the course of months to blow it all out of the water. Venom? Knightfall? No Man's Land? One Year Later?

Advancement is not forced. It's the natural order of things. Holding characters in stasis is forced. The universe wants to move forward!

Even counting stuff like that, you'd only need to advance the timeline once every 5 years, or so.

Superman is now 39 (as inferred by the fact that his schoolmate Pete Ross could run for Vice-President), and Batman is about that age. Their heroic careers began about "11 years ago" (about age 28). That puts Dick Grayson at 24-26 (depending if he became Robin at 13-15), Jason Todd at 19-21 (he was about 5 years younger than Dick) and Tim is now 17 (he was 14 when he got the special permit to drive, back in his own series).

The current Superman debuted in 1986, so he aged 11 years in 20 years of comics. Sure, that seems like 2:1 ratio. But most of that aging happened in the past 4-5 years. Advancing the timeline this fast means burning through the characters too fast to explore them fully.

 

[Silver Moon]

Dead....I didn't even know he was sick!

Seriously though, I'm not surprised it got shelved by the higher ups, it was a bad idea from the get-go.

 

[Mistwell]

Rich Johnstone, who writes the Lying In The Gutters rumor-column at Comic Book Resources, aired the rumor that Bruce Wayne would die in Final Crisis and become one of the New Gods in the Fifth World (remember, Darkseid and Orion are Fourth World gods). Jason Todd would then pick up the Batman mantle.

That whole mess was axed by the high-up suits at Warner Bros. (DC's parent company).

Never before have corporate suits been more beloved by the general audience.

If you only knew...

-Mistwell "CBR's Attorney"

 

[Bront]

Again?

 

[Felon]

Even counting stuff like that, you'd only need to advance the timeline once every 5 years, or so.

Superman is now 39 (as inferred by the fact that his schoolmate Pete Ross could run for Vice-President), and Batman is about that age. Their heroic careers began about "11 years ago" (about age 28). That puts Dick Grayson at 24-26 (depending if he became Robin at 13-15), Jason Todd at 19-21 (he was about 5 years younger than Dick) and Tim is now 17 (he was 14 when he got the special permit to drive, back in his own series).

The current Superman debuted in 1986, so he aged 11 years in 20 years of comics. Sure, that seems like 2:1 ratio. But most of that aging happened in the past 4-5 years. Advancing the timeline this fast means burning through the characters too fast to explore them fully.

Sounds like you are on a completely different page than me. The characters have been "explored" for multiple generations--way more than twenty years (1986 has no real value as an official starting point, since Byrne's Man of Steel origin has been retconned away multiple times). Superman being 39 doesn't mean anything; we're not going to see him turn 40, then 45, then 50. Nobody's keeping track of the timeline like that. Nobody at DC cares about how long Batman spent addicted to drugs in the Venom storyline or how long he spent recovering from Bane. If they were, I'd have a completely different outlook.

The careers for iconic superheroes have always been stuck at the 10-15 year mark, and all other "facts" are pretty much in flux due to hypertime, the rebirth of the multiverse, or whatever the current raionale for incontinent continuity is. That stuff eventually gets so muddled that it's not even worth keeping track of. Thus the benefit of a periodic reboot. And apparently, just rebooting to a clean slate, "back-to-the-basics" version of a character doesn't cut it. All of the backstory that got wiped out eventually gets crammed back in.

 

[Felon]

If you only knew...

-Mistwell "CBR's Attorney"

Ah, good ol' CBR! As the federal department for revenue collection of Pakistan, the Central Board of Revenue has been a major influence on my love of comic books!

 

[Klaus]

If you only knew...

-Mistwell "CBR's Attorney"

Oh, yeah?!

Make me!

 

[megamania]

Another Bruce Wayne is dead.... Long live Batman. I wonder whom gets the keys to the mansion or will they level it?



then there is the Lazirus Pit....can any Bat-family member EVER die really?