Countdown to The End of Time, Parts 2-4: Nominating Yourself

It is said that Dickens used to make up his stories by watching the flames dance in his fireplace and writing what he saw. It is also said that every time Michael Bay has tried to use the same technique, a bunch of pesky young scamps climb up on his roof and lob fireworks down the chimney.

Hello!

Welcome to the second part of Countdown to the End of Time, an attempt to review the grand finale of Doctor Who's 'Davies Era' before having seen it by discussing everything else in human culture and constantly harking back to one quote in which Davies may, or may not, "sound like a buffoon."

Here's the first part.

And here's tonight's. In which we'll be moving from here...

"I don't think a beginning-middle-and-an-end ever goes out, but I might be wrong. Because I would say that, because I'm clinging to that hope desperately. And maybe the fact that a video game, or a Second Life or a Sims situation never ends...maybe that's the shape." - Davies.

...to discuss British television's tenth season of Big Brother and DC Comics' Final Crisis. Mister Internet has already had plenty to say about both, but I think the connections between these two problematic summer events remain criminally under-explored.

What about The Sims though, eh? What's happening there?

Well, nothing. Nobody comes, nobody goes, it is terrible. I'm talking here about the first two games, as I've not yet played the third, but the really striking thing about them is the way that nothing actually happens in the game, but an awful lot seems to happen in your head when you play it.

The Sims, the most popular computer game franchise of all eternity, involves directing little pretend people to use the toilet and feed themselves as you immerse yourself in what you'll often hear described as "a virtual sitcom" or "a virtual soap." Except...none of the things that routinely happen in sitcoms or soaps can ever possibly happen in the game. No Sim will ever comically misunderstand something another Sim has said, leading to a wacky series of hijinks and social embarassment. No Sim will ever unexpectedly reveal herself to be another Sim's long lost sister. The game will track who's friends and enemies with who, and will stage little set pieces, but no stories can ever really happen within the game. You might get turned into a vampire or social services may take your kids away, but none of those 'plots' are going to develop. The best you'll get is "SimA is cheating on SimB with SimC. SimB discovers and is cross with SimsA&C" over and over again.

But...but...but...as anyone who's ever lost hours to a Sims game know, the above is a load of bobbins. All sorts of stories happen when you play it!

Here's a site where people have uploaded lots of the lovely little Sims they've made. And here's some of the things they've been saying about them...

Mia grew up in a strict christian family and was a very easy and kind child who loved playing the piano and dreamt about being a human rights attorney. It wasn't until she went to University and got new free spirited friends that she gave herself a total makeover, inside and out. She did study law for one semester but dropped out because she thought the level of education provided did not meet her needs. She then moved in with her boyfriend Leon who lived in the not-so-glamorous part of the city.

That's the story that Mia's creator experienced while playing The Sims. The exciting thing though, is that the computer she was playing it on had no idea. When Sonic the Hedgehog collects a magic ring or Pac-Man noms up a ghost then flags are flipped and variables altered so that the game 'knows' this has happened. But the game never knew that Mia wanted to be a human rights attorney or that her parents were Christians. The game doesn't even know what human rights attorneys or Christians are.

The Sims is so popular among people who don't play computer games because you don't play The Sims on a computer. You play The Sims in your imagination, where Mia has her dreams and her regrets, while staring blankly at a rather banal computer game in which Mia is making a sandwich. At least one acclaimed novelist, Fay Weldon, is a Sims addict and it's easy to imagine her sat there, projecting inner lives onto her Sims as real as those of Ruth Patchett or Praxis, or...okay, I've only ever read two Weldon novels. It's like your mind furnishing a mirage just to break the monotony of a desert. It's like Dickens, looking into his fire. And what different ideas he and Weldon would have about how to end Mia's story.

Now, on outing yourself as a Big Brother viewer, one of the first things that people who don't 'get' the show will say is, "I don't know you can watch a load of people sitting there doing nothing."

You can probably see where I'm going with this. So before we go there, lets take a moment to see what all this has to do with Final Crisis and Doctor Who season finales.

From the perspective of Grant Morrison, the writer of Final Crisis, then his work is adjacent to the Who finales. As he said of Season Four's finale (Journey's End), "what intrigues me most are the numerous, absolutely coincidental, similarities to my comic FINAL CRISIS [..]which leads me to believe that creative people, particularly those writing or recording with a mass or populist audience in mind, have all begun to tell a very similar [...] story."

But from Davies' perspective, Big Brother is (or rather was) adjacent, being just the sort of event television to which his Who finales aspire, as we discussed in the last part.

I love reality TV. I get pissed off when actors complain there's no drama on television. Big Brother is drama; it is crafted, it's a story well told.

- Davies, New Statesman.

Quite how directly Davies' finales can be linked to Big Brother we'll go into in a later article, but for now we're left with a sense of them as being 'flanked' by these two other texts. Final Crisis on one side, and Big Brother on the other.

Not that they make such strange companions. Final Crisis and Big Brother 10 have a couple of very important things in common. Firstly there're both successful failures...BB10 took the crafting of stories within reality TV to new heights, but managed to get the entire show sentanced to a lingering execution. Final Crisis managed to pull off the trick of providing a fitting conclusion to three incongruent epics, all of which have run for between twenty and forty years, while dramatising withing a superhero fight-book a shift from a Hegalian to a Derridian dialectic and possibly inventing an entirely new category of fiction... but it failed to bring its audience with it. They carried on buying it, unlike BB's audience who just switched off, but my god did they bitch.

The more interesting thing though is that they both began after they finished.

The tag-line for Final Crisis' advertising was 'The Day Evil Won'...but when in the story did this victory take place? Well, 'evil winning' here means the victory of Darkseid, a GOD OF EEEEVIL, who it turns out has defeated the GODS OF QUITE NICE in a final battle. After that nasty turn of events then the story is over and there's nothing left for the comic to show us except the superheroes coming to realise that the story is over, and then finding a way to jumpstart it.

Steven Grant once wrote that "Story in Final Crisis isn't story, as traditionally understood in western literature" and (although I couldn't disagree more with his 'apotheosis of mad ideas' reasoning for having said that) I think this is spot on. We're not reading a story in Final Crisis, we're seeing a dramatisation of what might happen to a fictional universe and its inhabitants after there isn't any story left.

In 2008, Deepak Chopra, did a panel at San Deigo with Morrison and came out with this...

"If you had only creativity and evolution, you would have no universe," he said. "If you had only destructive forces, the universe would dissipate into a black hole." Chopra clarified, "you need the tension between the two forces."
[...]
He said the message of the superhero is "keep winning, but don't win."

This is literally what Final Crisis depicts, right down to the black hole. Evil has won, the story has ended and the fictional universe in which it played out is now collapsing into a fictional black hole.

But again...when did Evil win? In the first issue? No. If it had actually happened there the series would have contained trace elements of story. More than trace elements really - having 'The Day Evil Won' anywhere in Final Crisis would have been like having a veal escalope anywhere in a vegan carrot cake. So Morrison had it happen in his 2005-6 Seven Soldiers series. And even there had it happen off-screen.

The story ended about three years before Final Crisis began. Evil won...but since a conclusive win for either good or evil leaves a fictional universe with nothing to do, then the victory was unsustainable. Darkseid, the GOD OF EVIL, began a slow fall down into a black hole, dragging the whole of Superheroland down after him.

The moral here is that if you live inside a story, it might not be a good idea to end that story.

So, if Final Crisis was over before it really began, what actually happens in its seven issues? Well, Superman saves us all, naturally. He couldn't do anything else. But this time he can't operate within the story - flying in to save the day - this time he has to rebuild it. Bolting together scraps of meaning and bleeding chunks of narative.

We'll come back to how he goes about this later on. Because now we've returned to "these fragments I have shored against my ruins" territory then it's time to enter the Big Brother house.

Big Brother is the purest form of reality TV. Grab a load of people, lock 'em in a house with Not Much to do, and let the public successively reject them. As Final Crisis argues that the figure of Superman can 'contain' all other superheroes, Big Brother can contain all other reality TV. But before its tenth UK season started, it had already finished.

Big Brother considered as 'cultural event' concluded with the Shilpa Shetty incident and the Passion of the Jade, that grizzly chain of events discussed in the previous article. At the height of that controversy, Davina opened a BB episode with the words, "Good evening. This is the news." and she was right. But this proved to have been the telos of the Big Brother phenomena, and Jade's death three month's before the start of the tenth season capped off the era in which Big Brother mattered.

Also broadcast before BB10 was the conclusion of Big Brother considered as 'drama' or 'story'. This took the form of Dead Set, a five part horror thriller that played out the ever-popular Zombie Apocalypse scenario from the perspective of those making a season of Big Brother and those locked in the house. With all the tropes of the show in place, and continuity with previous seasons established by cameos from previous housemates, then to all intents and purposes, Dead Set was the tenth season of Big Brother. And it came with a proper end - the logic of rejection and the power we attach to shouty ignorance (Big Brother's major themes) GET US ALL KILLED BY ZOMBIES. In its closing shots, Dead Set reached a conclusion that turned the nine previous seasons of Big Brother into a narative. "Here's what this show has said about people. Here's why, if we can't escape that, WE'LL ALL GET KILLED BY ZOMBIES." Viewed as one text, Big Brother and Dead Set make a very similar case to Cloud Atlas.

So, with Big Brother's narative concluded, the producers of BB10 were in the same situation as the heroes of Final Crisis - having to build a story out of scraps. But of course, that's what they do every year, innit? Film a load of people, give them a few paltry party games, edit it into a drama. That's the skill of making reality televison, the skill Davies applauds when talking about BGT's Susan Boyle moment...

"[T]he greatest piece of drama shown on television this year was Susan Boyle. [...] It's a story. They sold that package. [...] Whoever sat at a desk in Britain'sGotTalentLand and put together that package of Susan Boyle saying, 'I'm a virgin. I've never been kissed.' Walking on stage, the reactions from Simon Cowell. It's beautifully put together. It's put together like a script. And, y'know, the cutaways to the audience mocking her before she started singing, Amanda Holden's amazement as she started singing."

And BB10's producers rose to that challenge, turning incident into story like never before. This year the episodes weren't just themed around particular characters, with a clear trajectory across the hour...this year we had ongoing story-arcs. I'll never know how they managed this considering that they were transmitting these episodes only a day behind the events in the house, but they got thier stories to progress and develop.

And even, somehow, they managed to get in plot twists. We watched first creepy stalker Sree and then creepy stalker Marcus hound poor Noirin into the ground...until circumstances with Siavash pulled the rug out from under us and revealed how in control Noirin really had been all along. Filming a bunch of events, editing them to get out the next night and repeating this process every day for three months ought to result in the 'Sims or Second Life' scenario, in pages from the infinite book. But in Big Brother 10 it sustained a classical, beginning-middle-and-end structure for the whole summer.

Didn't help much though. Everybody stopped watching and Channel 4 chose not to bother renewing thier contract for the show. They've one more season they're obligated to make next year, then that's it.

So, why? Why did a "crafted drama, a well-told story" fail so badly?

I suspect it's because its viewers were happier playing The Sims - looking into the fire and seeing the Pickwick Papers, watching an animated lady make a sandwich and seeing a thwarted human rights attorney. The nightly Big Brother 'highlight shows' had always been directive and selective, but in previous years they'd existed as part of a Big Brother that was also made up of podcasts, psychology shows, all sorts of other nonsense and, most importantly, a live feed of footage from the house - a true chance to watch people sitting around doing nothing and imagine what might be the story there.

The live feed was, being unspeakably boring, the closest thing to playing The Sims or Dickens' fireplace, but even if you never watched it, just knowing it was there was a guarantee of the fact that other interpretations of what was going on in the house were not only possible but were part of the game of watching Big Brother. In the show's heyday it wasn't unlike Joss Whedon's idea of Firefly being, "a show about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things" except it was a show about Dermot O'Leary looking into a house and seeing gentle absurdism, Davina McCall looking into a house and seeing romantic comedy and Russell Brand looking into a house and seeing...well, this sort of thing...

Rosebud the Horse: Rosebud the Horse is a very polite and well-spoken character who allegedly lives with Brand in his home, in which he works as his slave and is often mistreated and forced to carry out perverted misdemeanours by members of the "Womanising Circuit" including Beppe di Marco, Dean Gaffney amd David Walliams. He dresses in the style of a country gent, with tweed jacket, smart shirt and tie. He is often treated badly by Brand; in one episode he slapped him in the face.

That's taken from a Wikipedia list of characters who appeared on different Big Brother shows. I hope it makes my point that much of the draw of the British Big Brother was how spacious it was. How much room it offered for interpretation, nonsense and making stuff up.

But by BB10 then it'd all folded up and closed down. Davina McCall now presented the show, did all the interviews and editorialised about it all on Big Brother's Big Mouth. Her opinions were the only ones you got to hear at any length, and her opinions were far from impartial; one memorable interview saw her explaining to an evicted housemate that she'd 'understand' what a horrible person she was when she got a chance to watch the tapes. No one %$%$ with the Judge of all Evil.

With nothing but a directive show and a monotone commentary, Big Brother finally stabilised as classical storytelling and came to rest. It tried to escape finality by embracing finitude, and it died.

But what died in Final Crisis?

The people putting together the hardback collection reckon it was Batman, and so they put a big sad ol' World's Finest Pieta on the cover. It's totally at odds with the roaring fury of the equivalent scene in the book, but makes a lot of sense if you're looking to shift some copies of the thing. "Here's the book in which Batman dies!" is a more obvious hook than anything I'm talking about tonight.

Though (spoilers!) Batman doesn't die at all. He's last seen alive and well, acompanied by a caption saying, "But the fire burns forever." Him being alive and well tends to go against the idea of him having died, and "But the fire burns forever" tends to go against the whole idea of 'dying'.

Because that's what really dies in Final Crisis. Endings.

The title's a joke, setting us up to think it's principally the end of DC's long-running sequence of 'Crisis' events, whereas in fact it's the Crisis of Finality. The death of finitude. The death of confinement.

We learn that story's really ending not so much because of the triumph of the GOD OF EEEVIL - no, that's just a symptom - but because the Monitors, those who stand outside of story and work to keep it neatly within its borders, have themselves been infected with story.

And since stories have ends...that means they're ending. And so is everything else.

Superman's solution is to find a happy ending. But there is only one.

Glen David Gold's novel Sunnyside sees Charlie Chaplin dealing with the same problem...

'How's the war movie?' Syd asked.

'How's the war?'

'It should be over by Christmas, they say.'

'Is that a fact?' Chaplin poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher he kept on the floor behind the desk. 'I was thinking. Comedies end with a marriage. What about tragedies?'

'Death?' Syd wished they weren't discussing tragedies. Tragedies made no money. He suspected his brother had no mind for them.

'No,' Chaplin said, 'Every story ends in death, if only you follow it long enough.'

'Every story is a tragedy, then. Can we just start rolling on the next picture? What's the setup?'

'No setup.' Chaplin was feeling a new vein of energy. 'No story ends happily. The happy ending is only about knowing where to end on a smile, at the very moment where fortune is still on the ascent. The open road. The wedding.'

'I guarantee you, when the war is over, we'll all be happy.'

'Something with come along to replace it.'

'There will be dancing in the street.'

'Until there isn't.'

Syd tugged at his nose, a habit he had developed in the last year or two of these conversations. 'Then something good will happen again. Eventually'.

P.315

'To be Continued...", the words Superman wants written on his gravestone, is the only happy ending we'll ever get. It's one that's superhero comics do very well, although that's normally seen as a bad thing.

"[O]ne of the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended. An essential quality of a legend is that the events in it are clearly defined in time; Robin Hood is driven to become an outlaw by the injustices of King John and his minions. That is his origin. He meets Little John, Friar Tuck and all the rest and forms the merry men. He wins the tournament in disguise, he falls in love with Maid Marian and thwarts the Sheriff of Nottingham. That is his career, including love interest, Major Villains and the formation of a superhero group that he is part of. He lives to see the return of Good King Richard and is finally killed by a woman, firing a last arrow to mark the place where he shall be buried. That is his resolution--you can apply the same paradigm to King Arthur, Davy Crockett or Sherlock Holmes with equal success. You cannot apply it to most comic book characters because, in order to meet the commercial demands of a continuing series, they can never have a resolution. Indeed, they find it difficult to embrace any of the changes in life that the passage of time brings about for these very same reasons, making them finally less than fully human as well as falling far short of true myth."

- Alan Moore, Twilight of the Superheroes pitch.

But in Final Crisis then the most despised shall be the most loved. The irresolvability of the superhero story is made into a virtue rather than a vice. That the Final Fate of the Batman is forever deferred becomes an emblem of the fact that as idea, Batman can go anywhere. Superman doesn't want "To be Continued..." on his gravestone because he's confident that he'll be ressurected. He wants "To be Continued..." on his gravestone because he's confident that his readers will continue the stuff he's stood for, be it truth, justice or the American way, and continue his story for him.

For Moore then Superhero stories' lack of fixity in time robs them of the chance of having a proper meaning, but for Morrison then that lack constitutes their meaning. Davies talks breathlesly of this with regard to Doctor Who, "Isn't that the best thing an idea can do, go anywhere, be anything, for anyone? [...] I think that's Doctor Who's greatest legacy - an imagination that goes way beyond the screen, and all the way into your head, where it's yours forever."

It's very much the same with Superman. Seagle's It's a Bird asks the question, "Can a fictional character save a real life in the real world?" and Morrison's All-Star Superman answers it definitively; the internet is lightly speckled with exchanges like this one...

jedidotflow : This is gonna sound a bit weird, but All-Star Superman #10 prevented me from committing suicide.

edosan: Not weird at all. Good to have you here.

Brian St. Claire : That isn't the least bit weird.

If Superman's not limited by the boundaries of his text, then why on earth should he, or any of his super-friends, be limited within the text by something as dull as a 'proper ending'? I'm not even sure about half of Moore's examples to be honest - Holmes comes back from his definitive resolution at Reichenbach, Arthur's return will be any day now, and most popular tellings of Robin Hood over the last fifty years have shown that the story works just fine with his death left out of the picture. Final Crisis argues that the endless form of the superhero story is perfectly fitted to its endless function.

The big showdown takes place between Superman and Mandraak...the Vampiric Lucifer figure that the Monitors' "self-assembling hyper-story" has concocted as a narative device with which to end itself. Here's everything that takes us up to that point in six sentances.

- There was an infinite and undifferentiated substance - the monad, the absolute, the monitor, the empty page.

- Then something appeared within that substance - the multiverse, the ink, the story.

- The empty page began to mimic its contents and adopt the condition of narative...it turned from an undifferentiated and impersonal 'entity' into a pantheon of Gods.

- These 'Monitors' work to limit, control and contain story, while all the time enacting thier own - a plot that ends with the return of Mandraak, the Monitor who hates that there is now something instead of nothing, and wants it all gone.

- The end of the Monitors' hyper-story causes the stories they contained to conclude also. In Superheroland this means the victory (then death) of Evil, Earth falling into a black hole and Superman left alone as the world and the story fall apart.

- Mandraak turns up to eat the universe.

And how does Superman defeat him? Well, it's not really with a fight, but with a show and tell session. Supes fends off finality by demonstrating that his story is infinite. With a "Look up in the sky" he calls forth an army of characters who've been inspired by or ripped off from Superman, or even inspired by or ripped off from characters who've been inspired by or ripped off from Superman. Proof that he can do the best thing an idea can do... go anywhere, be anything.

This signal is receieved and understood...if the Superman concept is that free of fixity then it can even effect and change the Monitors' hyper-story. One of the Monitors has become a superhero, and is retrofitted into having been Mandraak's son. Together he and Superman pull iteration after iteration of the superhero myth out of thier A-SS; Superhero bunny rabbits, Superhero angels, Superhero poodles.

"There is no limit to what I can do," says the freshly-minted storytelling superhero god, and Mandraak dies complaining that this can't be happening - he'd read to the end of the infinite book and so knew that evil was supposed to win. What he obviously didn't know though was what a stupid notion 'read to the end of the infinite book' is.

Superhero-Monitor returns to his pantheon of meta-godly editors/game keepers/plot-police and tells them its time for them to stop pretending that they are the story. It's time for them to to become undifferentiated again and return to being the empty page. An empty page across which, without them limiting it, story can now spread out as far as it likes...in whatever direction it likes...in whatever shape it likes. Narative is left free not just of the finality of having to have a conclusion but of the finite boundaries of traditional structures. All Superman wanted was a happy ending, and we know by now what that means. The fire burns forever. To Be Continued. What's the set-up for the next picture, Charlie?

So, on one hand we've got Big Brother 10, which dealt with coming after its conclusion by clinging to the finite, and on the other we've got Final Crisis which actively rejected the finite and prised wide the infinite book.

And then, this December, we'll have The End of Time.

If Davies equates his finales with those of Pop Idol, and is modelling his drama on the SENSATIONAL MEDIA EVENT then something interesting's just happened...

And the tension when it was between Will Young and Gareth Gates was enormous and I was in a house full of like twenty people. All of us voting, all of us excited. [...] Raising the stakes until you get a finale until you don't know what's going to happen and you're at fever pitch. [...] That's drama. That was brilliant. So I remember right from the start of Doctor Who saying, 'That's what we need to hit. That's Saturday night.'

Because in Pop Idol terms then we do know what's going to happen.

Who's our winner? Will Young? Gareth Gates? Leona Lewis? Stacey Solomon?

No.

It's Matt Smith.

The little Confidential special that they put out revealing him as the Eleventh Doctor was, in a very low-key way, more like the end of a series of Pop Idol/X-Factor than the actual drama can be. Considered as a media event then 'Matt Smith becomes our new Doctor/Pop Idol' is the end of the story, but considered as a media event then that's already happened.

The End of Time is going out after its conclusion.

And if it's going to satisfy, it'll have to find a crowd-pleasing way of doing what Final Crisis attempted. It will have to end time.

To Be Continued...

Calendar Man strikes again.

Hello, hello. I seem to be alternating between right-brain and left-brain posts, so before the next part of Countdown to the End of Time let's have some more Bat-chronologising.

The first part's here.
The second part's here.
The third part's here.

And this would be the fourth.

Since it's come up though, let's have some disclaimers first...

This is an attempt to generate a plausible chronology for a bunch of recent Batman stories.

This is not important. Playing this sort of game teaches you as much about how stories work as playing The Sims teaches you about raising families and making friends. It's a decadent, mechanical amusement.

This is not an attempt to generate a reading order. I do not propose you wait until after Batman and Robin#3 to read the first page of RIP.

This is not an attempt to find out what order these stories 'really happened in'. As they just made them all up. The scoundrels!

This is not an attempt to find out DC's secret masterplan. Most of the time editorial seem appropriately (see "This is not important") disinterested in this sort of thing, and when they do have a go at it have a tendancy to overcomplicate things unhelpfully. This project treats the published comics as the only primary sources.

This is not exhaustive. The only comics considered in this project are those listed in this project. So it's entirely possible that some detail from, say, Cry for Justice could stuff the whole thing up. I'll sleep.

This is not impartial. Let's say you've got two different stories in which Mary comes to terms with the death of her little lamb, and nothing to indicate which of them happened first. When someone producing a chronology of those stories puts them in order, they're making a decision as to which saw Mary really come to terms with the death of her little lamb. A certain amount of subjective privileging of The Stories I Like is unavoidable.

This is not very interesting. My workings are shown below for transparency rather than with the expectation that they'll offer a riveting read. You might want to just scroll down to the actual chronology at the bottom of the post.

Okay, that out of the way, here we go. And we're into the Reborn era now, which should be a dizzying whirl as everyone's gone non-linear on us. Winnick's jumping between three four different time periods in one issue of Batman, Yost's having flashbacks within flashbacks in Red Robin, and Morrison's now catching up with his flashforwards from last year. We may end up doing this more by the page than by the issue.

Batman #687 then, which is variously set 'YEARS AGO', 'TODAY', 'FOUR WEEKS AGO' and 'TWO WEEKS LATER'. The 'YEARS AGO' section is a long-range flashback to a young Dick and a yellow-ovaled Bruce training and anticipating the day when Dick'll be in the cowl. It's somewhat outside the bounds of this project, so we'll leave it where it is. The 'TODAY' section is set post-Battle for the Cowl, with a Dick who's accepted that he's now Batman, but not accepted accepted it. He's still wearing the Nightwing costume and not getting out of the Batmobile (which is not yet the flying model). Damien's dressed as Robin, but not in his final costume. The section concludes with the move to the penthouse.

'FOUR WEEKS AGO' takes us back to a time when Tim was Robin and shows Superman and Wonder Woman returneing Bruce's cowl. A service is held for Bruce, quiet except for Dick having a little shout about the need to conceal Batman's death from the world at large. This obviously has to go somewhere between Final Crisis and Battle for the Cowl, and I'm inclined to place it quite early after Dick's return to Gotham in Nightwing #152-3. It sits well there for Alfred too, before the Outsiders special. 'TWO WEEKS LATER' takes us to a sample adventure of the new, wisecracking Dick Grayson Batman, as he (presumably) stops the Scarecrow from doing something nasty involving a bridge. Gordon and the GCPD are around, but don't interact with Batman or express any expectation of his involvement one way or the other, so it's hard to judge how much contact they've had with him by this point.

Batman #688 goes easier on us. There're just two time-frames 'THREE WEEKS FROM NOW' and 'NOW', with 'THREE WEEKS FROM NOW' being unambiguously the follow-on from the end of #690.

The 'NOW' sequence may give us trouble though - Gordon's seen using the Bat-Signal in a peculiar way for "the fourth time in ten days"...turning it on then off again after five minutes "to let him know we're here". The implication seems to be that he's not yet used it properly to summon DickBats. However we do see it used fully in Batman and Robin's first arc...which would seem to happen before events here; The 'NOW' section of Batman #688 is very concerned with Batman's very visible public profile since coming back in force, but by the end of B&R#3 then Batman's return is still a rumour. We'll see how this plays out when we look at Batman and Robin #1-3, but it's possible that we're either going to have to go against the grain of the Gordon scene here or the Le Bossu scene there.

#689 carries on from there, though not without the possibility of other adventures inbetween. Dick says he's lately been occupied with catching Arkham escappes and a separate wave of organised crime head by He Knows Not Who. The flying batmobile makes it out of the garage this issue, which we'd not seen it do in Batman previously, and we're told that the hover-tech's been working fine for weeks. #690's a direct continuation from here, and clearly establishes Penguin's new working relationship with the Black Mask, which would seem to place it before Batman and Robin's second arc.

Well, we'll have to stop there with Batman for a while, as we don't get the last part of this arc till next week and I've not got the sense to wait. So far it's looking like this...

Batman #687 - Four weeks ago sequences.
[...lots of stuff..]
Batman#687 - Today sequences.
[...probably B&R #1-3...]
Batman#687 - Two weeks later sequences.
Batman#688 - 'now' sequence.
[possible gap]
Batman#689-90
Batman #688's Three weeks from now sequence.

What shall we do next? Streets of Gotham I think.

"The signal goes on and he shows up. That's the way it's been, that's the way it will be." says Gordon, so by Streets #1 then we're after B&R#2's "It's been a long time..." The Harley scene also works as a prelude to Gotham City Sirens #1. It'd be nice to place this issue after Batman #689 and assume that the foam gun used here is a small-scale application of the tech first tested in that issue, but there's nothing compelling us to. The issue leads directly into #2.

Streets #2 is where Hush escapes, so we're before all further references to his antics as FakeBruce in Sirens and B&R and whathaveyou. We're in a new Batmobile, but it's not the flying one. Dick encounters Black mask, but is given no reason to suspect that he's at the top of the new food chain, so we could still be before Batman #689 if we need to be. Kate Spencer is DA by this point, which we'll have to remember when we come to build the Second Features in. The JLA appear to be Firestorm, Zee, Vixen, John Stewart and Doctor Light at the time, should that later turn out to be relevant, and R'as is watching events with amusement.

Streets #3 is set long enough after the preceeding issue for Hush's reign of Benevolance to have built up a head of steam. Penguin references the events of Batman #690, so we're after that. Dick and Damien are able to call on the League and the Outsiders. Zsasz rebrands himself. Hush is under the Bat-family's thumb by the end of the issue.

Streets #4 shows enough time has passed since the last issue for both the Bat-family's arangement with Hush and Zsasz's new operation to have become established. Dick references the events of Sirens #1. He also mentions Two-face being at large, which might turn out to be a problem if Batman #691 ends with him captured, since Penguin's monologue in Streets#2 puts us after that story. Looking at solicits, it seems that this story won't be picked up on again until Streets #7.

Makes sense to do Sirens next, since Dini bounces a few characters between the books, and the first issue opens with Selina telling us it's two months on from Battle for the Cowl. We're explictly after Streets#1 and before Streets#4.

Sirens #2 follows on directly from the first issue...well, alright, except for a 'THREE YEARS EARLIER' sequence, but I'm not fussing about with that. Hush has gone public with his stimulus package, and his level of autonomy suggests we're between Streets #2 and #3.

Sirens #3's a fill-in, which picks up where #2 left off ("Harley's been taken!") and then follows the Riddler rather than the main cast. Dick's involved, but there's nothing to tie it to any particular events in his life. By the end to picks up the ongoing plot where it found it.

Sirens #4 picks up directly after #3...the Joker (or possibly 'the Joker') is watching the same broadcast as the Riddler. The reference to Hush having moved into the Elliot estate, and being free at Batman's leisure shows we're actually after Streets #3.

So the Diniverse chronology is quite straightforward...

Streets #1-3
Sirens #1-4
Streets #4

...and appears, from the Black Mask references and Dick's relationship with Gordon, to be set entirely after what Winnick's up to.

Lets do the first arc of Batman and Robin next. It features...
...the widespread assumption that Batman's dead, placing it before the media blitz of Batman #688.
...possibly the first field use of the flying Batmobile ("Told you it would work")
...scenes of Dick decamping from the Batcave.
...Alfred saying, "And so begins in earnest your first week as Batman"
...Dick's (facetious?) comment that he could offer Tim his old job back.
...The first time in months that Batman responds to the Bat-signal.
...The timeframe catching up with RIP's flashforwards.

Other than the fact that it makes Gordon's fooling around with the Bat-Signal in Batman #688 look a little strange, this fits perfectly before that issue. And since there's nowhere else that Batman's 'first week' can go, there we have it.

So as things stand...

Batman #687 - Four weeks ago sequences.
[...lots of stuff..]
Batman#687 - The 'TODAY' sequences.
Batman and Robin #1-3
Batman #681 and #676's 'SIX MONTHS LATER' sequences (concurent with the conclusion of the above)
Batman#687 - The 'TWO WEEKS LATER' sequences.
Batman#688 - The 'NOW' sequence.
Batman#689-90
Batman #688 - The 'THREE WEEKS FROM NOW' sequence.
Streets of Gotham #1-3
Gotham City Sirens #1-4
Streets of Gotham #4

Red Robin #1 and, arriving in Madrid, Tim needs to work out the aggression of "the last few weeks".

In the flashback sequence then Tim's discussing Damien's role as Robin with Dick. Damien's seen in his final costume during this, which could place us after Batman #687, as could Dick being Bat-suited up. We've not moved out of the Batcave yet and The Batgirl costume is still available.

It took Tim 'a few days' to get out of Gotham and 'a few more to figure out where to start'. As of the end of the issue he's been in Europe over seven days. That'd seem to put the present of this narative roughly contemporary with Batman #688's 'TWO WEEKS LATER'.

#2's flashback takes place the day after the first issue's. It also appears to show Harper still in Gotham, which I'll have to remember in case I ever decide to sych all this up with the Superman books. The narative in the present continues on directly from the previous issue.

#3's flashback seems to be, given the failure of Cassie's earlier attempts to contact Tim, a sequel to the flashback in the previous issue. Through Cassie's call to Dick it then leads into the flashback in the next issue. Dick's got the flying Batmobile in #4's flashback, but there's nothing to suggest it's flown yet.

Obviously, Tim's European/Middle Eastern adventures in the present of Red Robin take place over an extended period of time, so I'll just put them as starting round about the same time as the end of Batman #687 and note that much of what follows occurs concurrently.

Right! What's left?
Well, there's Outsiders (which I've not caught up on yet, and I've a terrifying feeling is going to make me have to think about incorportating FC: Revelations).

Batgirl (with which I'll wait until there's a few more issues out before thinking about).

Detective Comics (which I'm not sure what I want to do with yet, since its placement is so intentionally vauge). The Second Features (which I can't be bothered with this afternoon)

The new Batman and Robin arc (which I'll leave 'til its done) and Blackest Night/Blackest Night: Batman (which I'll also leave until the monthlies have caught up with it).

I think that's it for today then. And that the new chronology looks like this...

PART ONE - BATMAN BEATS THE DEVIL.

• DCU #0
  
• Detective Comics #846-50 ('Heart of Hush')
  
• Batman #676-8 ('RIP' parts 1-3)
  
• Robin #175-6
  
• Batman #679-681 ('RIP' parts 4-6)

PART TWO - BATMAN'S MISSING FOR A BIT AND EVERYONE OVER-REACTS.

• Batman and the Outsiders #11-14
• Nightwing #147-151 ('The Great Leap') - concurrent with early chapters of 'Search for a Hero'
  
• Robin #177-82 ('Search for a Hero')
• Dectective #851, Batman #684 ('The Last Days of Gotham') - concurrent with later chapters of 'Search for a Hero'

PART THREE - BATMAN KILLS GOD.

• That flashback sequence from #683
• Final Crisis #1-3
• Superman Beyond #1-2
• Final Crisis #4
  
• Batman #682-3
• Final Crisis #5-7

PART FOUR - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER?

• Batman #686
• Detective Comics #853

PART FIVE - BATMAN APPEARS DEAD FOR A BIT AND EVERYONE OVER-REACTS.

• Nightwing #152-3
• Batman #687 (the 'FOUR WEEKS AGO' sequence)
  
• Detective #852, Batman #685 ('Reconstruction/Catspaw')
• Batman and the Outsiders Special #1
• The Outsiders #15-20 ('The Deep') - provisional placement.
• Robin #183

PART SIX - EVERYONE BATTLES OVER CAWL, A TRADITIONAL WELSH LAMB AND LEEK STEW.

• Oracle: The Cure #1-3
• Secret Six #9
• Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?
• Battle for the Cowl #1
• Man-Bat #1, Commissioner Gordon #1 and Azrael: Death's Dark Knight #1-3 (all concurrent with the above)
• Battle for the Cowl #2
• The Underground #1/The Network #1
• Battle for the Cowl #3
• Arkham Asylum #1
  
• Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive!
  

PART SEVEN - YOU'RE WRONG! BATMAN AND ROBIN WILL NEVER DIE!

• Batman #687 - The 'TODAY' sequences
• Red Robin #1-4 - The 'BEFORE' sequences
• Batman & Robin #1-3 ('Batman Reborn')
• Batman #681 and 676's 'SIX MONTHS LATER' sequences - concurrent with the conclusion of the above.
  
• Red Robin #1-4 - The 'NOW' sequences - concurrent with much that follows.
• Batman #687 - The 'TWO WEEKS LATER' sequences.
• Batman #688 - The 'NOW' sequence.
• Batman #689-90
• Batman #688 - The 'THREE WEEKS FROM NOW' sequence.
  
• Streets of Gotham #1-3
• Gotham City Sirens #1-4
• Streets of Gotham #4
  

Countdown to The End of Time, Part 1: Mister Saturday Night meets the Endless Story

"It is said that in the final days of Planet Earth, everyone had a cameo."

Someone in work yesterday said that the Jordan and Peter thing had gone on too long, and it started me thinking about how much Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who has meant to me.

By early 2005, Who had settled into a comfy bit of my brainspace where it sat on a big cushion, quietly informing Everything I Think About Fiction and Everything I Think About What It Might Be Like To Be A Good Person, but not really showing much signs of movement except for giving a little shove with its elbow when 'That Time I Broke The Potted Plant' or some other formative experience tried to take up too much space on the cushion. Who as something that mattered directly had finished for me round about The Ancestor Cell.

But then, suddenly, Doctor Who wasn't this deep-rooted multimedia myth that informed Everything I Think About Blah Blah Blah...it was just this really good tellybox show that I was into. Forty-five minutes every Saturday. And somehow that seemed more important.

I'm not sure I've ever been comfortable with Davies' version of Doctor Who, but most of the time it's been the discomfort of the rollercoaster rather than the discomfort of dentistry. I've bloody loved it.

And it's ending. Ending ending. Ending ending in an end so endy that it's called The End of Time. That's the endiest ending title ever!

We once thought The Parting of the Ways sounded quite endy, but now we look back we notice that if ways part then that's at least doubling the amount of continuance, so it's the opposite of endy. And while Doomsday and Journey's End sound pretty damn endy, that's nothing compared with The End of Time! If Time's ending then that precludes any subsequent beginnings! If time's ending then that means that nothing ever started! THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE FINAL CRISIS! I know it's over, and it never really began.

Quiet Mozza2! Quiet Mozza1! Back on the cushion!

Let's hear what Davies has to say about endings...

"I think it's terrifying for traditional writers like me who just have a beginning, middle and end because [...] the greatest piece of drama shown on television this year was Susan Boyle. [...] It's a story. They sold that package. [...] Whoever sat at a desk in Britain'sGotTalentLand and put together that package of Susan Boyle saying, 'I'm a virgin. I've never been kissed.' Walking on stage, the reactions from Simon Cowell. It's beautifully put together. It's put together like a script. And, y'know, the cutaways to the audience mocking her before she started singing, Amanda Holden's amazement as she started singing.

[...]

I think [Dennis Potter] would be worried by Britain's Got Talent if he was alive today. I think we all should be. Because... name me the drama that's had that effect!

And that's why we build Doctor Who up to such huge heights sometimes, because it's such a vivid and sensational and sensual show that it can have the feeling of a Saturday night finale. We we get to our finales, they are done like other people's finals. Like a Pop Idol final. And that was something I said right from the start, before I even wrote the first episode. I said, the one thing people are gathering to watch on a Saturday night was [...] the Pop Idol final. And the tension when it was between Will Young and Gareth Gates was enormous and I was in a house full of like twenty people. All of us voting, all of us excited. That's drama. That was brilliant. So I remember right from the start of Doctor Who saying, 'That's what we need to hit. That's Saturday night.'

[...]

Raising the stakes until you get a finale until you don't know what's going to happen and you're at fever pitch. [...] Not every story can be like that but these sort of fantasy epic adventure stories should be like that, and you get it very rarely these days. I remember sitting in the cinema watching the last half hour of Back to the Future when that first came out and it was just joyous. And you get that very rarely off blockbusters now. I can tell you now that Transformers won't do that when that comes out, because a lot of skills have been lost I think in terms of good old-fashioned adventure climaxes. So I do that really deliberately on Doctor Who. They're bigger every year. They're madder every year. And every year the ratings have gone up and find me another drama that's done that.

[...]

I'm 46 and there should be, any day now, a wave of programmes that leaves me confounded and gobsmacked and saying, 'It wasn't like that in my day and I don't like this.' I should be as uncomfortable as my dad watching Boy George on Top of the Pops. [...] The writer Brian Elsley spoke very brilliantly about this a good few years ago, before he set up Skins, actually. [...] Saying, 'We are a generation that's passing, those of us writing in out forties. And people growing up come from a gaming background and a user generated content background and it is going to fundamentally alter the way things are told'.

I think it was visible in The Phantom Menace, where an entire generation said, 'That's rubbish.' And we hated it. We'd literally look at classical story shapes and say, 'Where have they gone? Where have they gone in The Phantom Menace? Where's that simple structure of Star Wars gone?' And I think the most important thing you have to remember is that George Lucas has got teenage sons. And, as ever, probably ahead of the market, because that was a huge success. It was huge with children. And it doesn't satisfy us, that film. [...] It's a sort of rolling, complicated, bitty narrative. It's bitty. [...] We feel, at our age, there's a lack of coherence to it, a lack of satisfaction. But obviously kids get it. [...]

Interviewer: So are those classical structures then, on the way out?

Well, maybe they're being joined by something. I don't think a beginning-middle-and-an-end ever goes out, but I might be wrong. Because I would say that, because I'm clinging to that hope desperately. And maybe the fact that a video game, or a Second Life or a Sims situation never ends...maybe that's the shape. Maybe that's why Susan Boyle becomes the ultimate story. Because that's never going to end. My God, we'll be having updates on her in twenty years time whether she likes it or not. Y'know, it's going to go on and on. So maybe you're looking at the Endless Story now."

- Interviewed on Night Waves, 23rd June 2009.

It's going to take a while to unpack that. It's probably going to take a series of twelve themed blog posts counting down to The End of Time. Here's one.

We've got the Ultimate Ending coming our way, with the full knowledge that it won't really end anything at all, and with the demand that it provides us with a satisfying ending. It's written by a chap who's "clinging desperately" to the idea of beginnings-middles-and-endings, while suspecting that a large portion of his audience has outgrown them, and looking to Britain's Got Talent both as a fulfilment of classical storytelling and as a way past it... out and into the Infinite Book.

Over the next twelve weeks we're going to examine ALL HUMAN CULTURE (by which I mean whatever random stuff I've been reading, watching or listening to) in light of that Davies quote in order to definitively identify 2009's expectations of story structure (by which I mean whether or not The End of Time is going to be satisfying or not).

We're going to take Susan Boyle up Greek Street. We're going to recruit new Sugababes from The Sims. We're going to Unwrite Mr Toppit. We're going to solve the mystery of what happened in Bristol on September the 18th. We're going to stand the kids from Skins by Superman's grave and ask them why Big Brother's been cancelled. We're going to mention a number of cute things my daughter's said recently. We're going to hear an awful lot about Jordan and Peter's divorce.

Which won't suit everyone. Someone in work yesterday said that the Jordan and Peter thing had gone on too long. It was being strung out. I think it was the Mirror she had in her hand, and she was glaring at the thing in such a way as to make her exact feelings quite clear. She'd been enjoying the Jordan and Peter thing, but...she didn't like the way the story was being told any longer. The outrage in her voice was the same as that you hear when you talk to people who didn't like the end of Battlestar Galactica - "I liked that story, but now the people telling it have RUINED IT! Who do they think they are?"

Jordan/Katie Price (a dichotomy we'll probably have to come back during this Countdown) met Peter Andre on a reality TV show called I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Their union blessed in magazine deals and tabloid exclusives, they settled into a married life in the reality TV series When Jordan Met Peter, Jordan and Peter: Laid Bare and Jordan and Peter: Marriage and Mayhem, before reproducing for our pleasure in Jordan and Peter: The Baby Diaries. Their lives continued in Katie and Peter: The Next Chapter, Katie and Peter: Unleashed and Katie and Peter: Stateside.

Following the split, Jordan's story continued in HER reality TV series, What Katie Did Next, and Peter's in HIS, Peter Andre: Going it Alone. As Henry Miller and Anais Nin battled to control their lives and relationships by competing to see who could best transform their lovers into prose, Jordan and Peter battle to control their lives by competing to see who can best transform their family into reality TV. Forged in the fires of just the right sort of Saturday night, twenty people round your house all fighting for the phone, spectacle, Katie and Peter have become a truly endless story.

But there's a weird conflict of expectations there...because we want to know the end. We've got a new form, endless, 'bitty' story...one that couldn't exist as anything else...and we're still expecting it to fit the classical storytelling structure.

The Death of Jade Goody was probably the most desperate example of this. Perhaps because her story fooled us into thinking it was playing by the old rules. It seemed to have a perfect beginning, middle and end.

Beginning - Jade goes on Big Brother. Says comically ignorant things. Becomes a national joke.

Middle - Jade goes on Celebrity Big Brother. Does some racist bullying. Becomes a national hate figure.

End - Jade goes on Big Brother: India. Is diagnosed with cervical cancer during the filming. Becomes a national saint.

Jade in the hospital, brave and serene, was a powerful image. That she allowed the cameras and newspapers access to areas of a dying woman's life that are normally shrouded in privacy meant both that the story could play out in full before us, and meant that we could justify her narratively necessary redemption. For the story to work, we needed some reason why Jade was suddenly a saint now, and that reason became the way she was sacrificing her own dignity in death in order to accumulate cash for her kids. Jade was the Good Mother. It all worked perfectly. Someone's bitty, unsatisfying, incohesive life had been turned into good, old-fashioned storytelling.

Every tabloid had JADE NEAR DEATH as its front page every day. But there was one problem... she wasn't dying quite fast enough. In and out of the hospice she went. JADE HAS HOURS LEFT we're told on Monday. JADE'S LAST GOODBYE we're shown on Thursday. On and on it went. Every tabloid wanted to have a Dying Jade cover on the day Jade died, but nobody knew which day that'd be. George V's doctors famously finished him off with cocaine and morphine so that his death would make the Times, but since they couldn't go that route, the storytellers were left trying to manufacture any number of last minute dramas to fill the space - nonsense about a heroic struggle to be christened before death, all sorts of hoo-hah. Watching Jade die in the media we saw many things, but one of them was the ultimate stubborness of a human life to fit into a neat story.

But if the advent of the Endless Story has left us with mixed feelings about the duration of a narrative, I think it's left us even more confused about its boundaries.

On September the 17th in Bristol, a bunch of anti-capitalists went on a bit of a spree around the financial sector. You know the sort of thing, slogans and scuffles and smashing things up and what have you, and you probably know what you think of this sort of behaviour (me, I mostly feel a sense of jealousy that anyone this century can still manage to be so earnest). But what the Bristol Evening Post wasn't sure about was how much this had to do with the Jordan and Peter thing.

Now, the Co-mutiny guys who were behind all these direct action hijinks list thier concerns as being to do with "Freedom of movement, climate justice, anti-militarism, food, work, financial, collapse and autonomous spaces." What Katie Did Next is notably absent from that list. And, to be fair, the Jordan and Peter thing isn't mentioned in the Evening Post's coverage of the dust-up on page 3. Nor does page 4's account of Peter Andre's visit to Bristol mention anti-militarism or autonomous spaces.

But the front page of September 19th's Evening Post is very clear...these two things are somehow one story.

The cover shows two photos. One is of a small crowd of very, very bored looking girls standing in Asda and the other is of a small crowd of boys and girls jostling with the police.

"IDOL," says the first caption, "Hundreds wait for the chance to see Peter Andre."

"IDLE," says the second, "Group of 70 anarchists march to stir up trouble in city centre."

It seems there's two Bristols (do your own Jordan joke here if you must), and the story is the contrast. Beyond that the logic breaks down altogether. 'Idle'? Really? Look at 'em go! They're giving it some welly. Regardless of how intellectually lazy anti-capitalist direct action may be, how can planning for months, sticking posters up all over the city, marching about and occupying buildings be considered an act of idleness WHEN MEASURED AGAINST STANDING IN ASDA FOR HOURS?

Also...ARE THESE REALLY MY FUCKING OPTIONS? If those idle protestors are Bad Bristol then does that mean those bored girls are Good Bristol? Is this what the world offers me as my reward for not smashing stuff up in the name of climate justice? The chance to stand in line for hours in the UK's least characterful supermarket giant hoping to catch a glimpse of the bloke who sang 'Mysterious Girl'. If so, then start the riot. So much does the front page sell the protesters' notion that they offer an alternative to a banal prison that you have to wonder if the Evening Post's been infiltrated and is running recruitment.

But no, all that's happened is a botched, half-grasped understanding of how story is changing has splatted out of the presses. Because if the Peter and Jordan story is infinite then that must mean it can contain all other stories. Perhaps it does, and perhaps whoever put that cover together intuited that but failed to work out exactly how it can contain an anarchist demo.

The big twist in Susan Boyle's story is that she didn't win Britain's Got Talent, as a classical story structure would have had her do. Instead, Britain voted for Diversity (a multi-ethnic urban dance troupe). Britain did this in the same week that they used the European and Local Elections to vote the BNP (a racist and fascist organisation who probably can't dance at all) into office.

That's one story.





To Be Continued...

Five Books of Forever: When Novels Overlap.

Grant Morrison's writing a Batman novel, or at least a narative project - extending across several different comic titles - that can be analogously understood as a novel. This much we know.

We know less than we assume we do about its structure though, which is odd as Morrison's always very keen to make interesting and specific claims about structure. Many writers will be happy to tell us that they see their extended run on a title "as a novel." Mozza's the guy who'll tell us that he sees a run as a three volume novel with a fractal structure, unless you read it alongside two of his other works, in which case its best thought of as a hologram. Fair doos.

But what's he up to here? Is this project best understood as a novel, a series of novels, a big bundle of comics, or something else? And how's this attempt to create a cohesive work weathered the storm of in-continuity shared universe storytelling while using characters appearing in oodles of other books and being at the centre of a number of crossover Events? Are we in its final stages or about halfway through?

I decided to do an exhaustive textual survey of the entire run in order to find out.

Then I decided not to bother, to watch tonight's X-Factor instead, and then google a load of old interview quotes from shill sites.

There follows the result of my scaled-down ambition.

14th Nov 2006
Newsarama

This seems to be the earliest mention I've seen of the run as a 'novel'...

"Damian and Talia's comeback [...] now forms a major strand of this 15-part Bat-novel I'm planning."

Though there's no indiction of whether 'part' means issue, arc, collected edition or something else.

22nd Feb 2008
Newsarama.

A year and a bit later and (assuming 'part'='chapter') then the tale's grown in the telling...

"My run on Batman is a 25-chapter novel that reaches its climax in “RIP”

We're also told a little about what's coming next...

"[I see myself writing the book] Indefinitely! I’m having a great time. I’ve got huge plans for the book after “RIP” and Final Crisis, and I want to stay on and take the characters to the next level of the story. Having almost completed the long-form run that’s been “Batman and Son” through to “Batman RIP,” I’ve decided to be kinder to my patient readers and the new stuff after “RIP” will be more in the vein of single-issue or at most two-issue stories with lots of new villains and new situations."

So, at this point we're encouraged to understand the run from Batman and Son to Batman RIP as a 'novel'. This certainly fits the reading experience as (putting aside quibbles about whether the story truly begins in 52, the Black Casebook material, Infinite Crisis' "What do you deserve?" panel or in Detective Comics #27) those issues collected in the Batman and Son, Black Glove and RIP trades form a naratively and thematically complete unit in a way that none of those trades do individually. Together the comics that form that run make up a cohesive something, and you might as well call that something a novel as anything else.

We're also told that the work which follows will be a move away from long-form storytelling, but, even as he's telling us this, lets slip that he still sees this all as one story comprised of 'levels'.

3rd FEB 2009
IGN

A year later, and things have changed. Bruce has failed to die in both RIP and Final Crisis, while two Batman issues branded as 'Last Rites' have joined the dots between the two non-deaths, while serving as a coda to the themes of the Batman&SonToBatmanRIP novelthing and as a plot point to Final Crisis. IGN asked Grant how he thought about the connection between "these three stories."

"For me it was always one story. The thing that became "Last Rites" – that's just one of these names that gets slapped on there by editorial to give it branding across the line. For me, there's a Batman story that I started in issue #655 with Andy Kubert, and the whole story is that Batman is up against the ultimate diabolical mastermind – and by that, I mean it quite literally. And it's about how he cheats him. And that leads into the next phase of Batman, which I'm starting in the summer. The whole thing should wind up as five book collections that tell one, big story. So I kind of just thought that you could read this big Batman story without even seeing Final Crisis. But we wanted this big Death of Batman moment to happen in Final Crisis, so I just made the two things coincide. But Batman's story in RIP was always meant to lead into the next chapter of my Batman story. I'll be picking up threads from Final Crisis, of course, but you won't need to have read it to get up to speed. "

Right, so we know we can treat Final Crisis as 'detachable' from all this, and that Batman and Son/The Black Glove/Batman RIP still comprise a unit of story. But now they're also part of something bigger - "Five book collections that tell one, big story"

Unless he's thinking far into the distant future, when everything from #655- 683 will be in one Omnibus and comprise one 'book collection', this seems to suggest that he thinks he's 3/5ths through the "one, big story" and that it'll be complete in twelve more issues or thereabouts, the number of comics it'd take to generate two more collections.


So as things stand... Final Crisis is a side-story, while Batman and Son, The Black Glove and Batman RIP make up both a three-volume novel and the first part of a five-part novel.

11 MAR 2009

This comes up again at IGN the following month...

IGN Comics: We've chatted at length with you in the past about your plans for Batman and how you view your work on the series as a long novel. Despite this being a new series, do you view this as a direct continuation of the previous work or would you consider this the beginning of a new novel?

Morrison: This is the next book in what will be a 5-volume series beginning 'Batman & Son' but it can be read on its own too. 'Batman and Robin' welcomes new readers!

[...]

IGN Comics: Do you consider Batman & Robin, despite featuring new people under the mask, yet another lens on the life of Bruce Wayne?

Morrison: No, this isn't about Bruce Wayne at all, except in as much as it deals with his absence.

It's a bit tricky by this stage to know what he means when he says 'book'. Does he mean book as in 'collection' or as in 'narative unit'?

After all, The Invisibles is structured as a three-volume novel, but is collected in seven trades. While Seven Soldiers is collected in four trades but is made up of seven 'books', which when combined with the two issues, build into one 'novel'.

So when he says Batman and Robin is the next book of five, it's not obvious if he means that the two collections it'll generate will make up books four and five of the "one, big story" or if he's thinking of all twelve issues of Batman and Robin as book four.

If it's the former, and the "one, big story" comprises...

Batman and Son

The Black Glove

Batman RIP

'Batman and Robin vol1'

'Batman and Robin vol2'

...and if Batman and Robin doesn't deal with Bruce at all, then Morrison's "one, big story" unexpectedly doesn't include Bruce's return.

But wait! What's this...

22nd MAY 2009

IGN

IGN Comics: Speaking of Bruce Wayne – there are a lot of dangling plot threads and questions left from RIP and Final Crisis, specifically with Bruce in the past. How much of that will you be tackling in this twelve-issue run?

Morrison: Everything about that will be tied up by the end. Everything that's happening with Bruce and Bruce's world will be revealed in detail and resolved by the end of Batman and Robin's first year.

It may be worth noting for later that there's a possible dodge there. He says it'll all be tied up by the end of Batman and Robin's first year, but doesn't actually say that'll happen in Batman and Robin.

1st July 2009
io9

Here we learn that yes, Batman and Robin's twelve issues was to have been the end of the Morrison Uber-Bat Epic, but that things may be changing...

io9: You've talked before about how the first year of the series works out, with artist Frank Quitely drawing the first and last three issues. What happens after the first year of the book? Are you planning on sticking around with Batman as a character, or will you be finished with Gotham for awhile once #13 rolls around?

Morrison: That was the original plan but I can't seem to stop coming up with ideas for Batman, so we'll see how it goes.

24th JULY 2009.
Newsarama

By the end of the month, then we've seen how things are going, as Dan Didio's telling us this...

Batman & Robin is an ongoing series. It's not finite. So regardless of what people think...uh...this story has a beginning and middle and an end... The series of Batman & Robin, as written by Grant Morrison, will continue... It's something that he has a few years worth of stories already thought out. [...] He's created a fantastic new dyanmic between Dick Grayson and young Damien Wayne and we're really going to get a chance to explore both those characters.

Beyond, "Mozza's still on the book after #12", it's not easy to parse, "regardless of what people think...uh...this story has a beginning and middle and an end... The series of Batman & Robin, as written by Grant Morrison, will continue..."

Does he mean that regardless of people thinking this story has a structure...it doesn't?
Or that regardless of people thinking this story doesn't have a structure...it does, and that involves its being continued?
Or does he simply mean that regardless of people thinking Morrison was only doing twelve issues, he's doing more ?(with the "this story has a bginning and middle and an end" claim just being a stray thought that popped up in the middle of the wrong sentence).

Whatever it means, it no longer looks like Batman and Robin #12 will be the conclusion of a five-volume novel that ends with "Everything that's happening with Bruce [...] resolved."

So what is going on? Is Morrison pushing back the conclusion of his "one, big story" in order to extend the run? Or is he finishing his story as planned and then starting another one?

28th AUG 2009
Bleeding Cool

Sayeth Rich Johnston...

It took a long and winding path to get to this story. But here we go.

The Search For Bruce Wayne.

The Return of Batman.

Two series by Grant Morrison kicking off from Summer 2010. After his apparent death (twice) and revelation that Bruce Wayne is stuck somewhen in the past (possibly crossing the spirit path of Captain America, I dunno) word is that DC will be bringing their world’s greatest detective in rubber back in a series of series, the details of which are completely unknown (to me, I mean) save for their working titles (which may be old) and that it’s all part of the Big Grant Morrison Batplan for 2010.

If all this is true, then 2010 will see a hell of a lot of Morrison material on the shelves.
Joe the Barbarian and SeaGuy Eternal are confirmed from VERTIGO, he's staying on Batman and Robin, and then there's Multiversity.

It makes me wonder if maybe 'Search for Bruce Wayne' and 'Return of Batman' aren't series but rather perhaps story arcs that'll be told simultaneously in Batman and Robin and Batman. I could easily see DC wanting Morrison to Bendis-up and write both titles and, as everyone's noted, Batman will reach #700 at round about the time Batman and Robin reaches #12, the issue Morrision originally planned to finish with. It'd be a terrible shame if that book were still running Winnick filler in it's 700th issue.

For People Who Won't Like Waters.

Canon and Sheep Shit: Why We Fight.

I hate the Doctor Who canon like Dawkins hates God.

Like him, I'm convinced the target of my animus doesn't exist, but that doesn't stop me spending half my life writing about how dreadful it is.

There's a bit of a difference though; the existence or otherwise of God is fundamentally irresolvable within the bounds of human knowledge, while the non-existence of a Doctor Who canon is bloody obvious to anyone with half a brain. After all, I know loads of people who reckon they've met God, and hardly any who reckon they've met Dawkins, so from where I'm sitting then his existence sounds on shakier grounds (There's a book I keep seeing in Christian bookshops called The Dawkins Delusion. I bet it's a crap set of 'proofs' of God, but I'd buy a copy tomorrow if I thought its authors were wheeling out some kind of Baudrillard logic to disprove the reality of Richard Dawkins).

But a Doctor Who canon? There's demonstrably no such thing.

Canon isn't "what most people think is canon" (otherwise the Buffy comics, unheard of by most of the millions who watched the show, couldn't be Buffyverse canon. Which they are) .

Canon isn't "what the majority of the fanbase would prefer was canon" (otherwise Han shot first).

Canon is what the people running the franchise tell you it is. It's not a democratic thing. Star Trek fans didn't have the option of outvoting Gene Roddenbury when he wanted something stricken from the record.

Of course, people are, in these free-spirited and post-structuralist times, quite capable of thinking for themselves and saying, "Well The Animated Series is certainly part of my Star Trek", but what they're doing there isn't changing the canon, or establishing a new and individual canon; It's a rejection of the idea of canon itself. A denial of the franchise owner's authority to tell you how to conceptualise the components of that franchise.

But there isn't a canon to reject or deny in Doctor Who. In some ways that's a shame, as I'd enjoy rejecting and denying one if there was, but nobody with the authority to define a Doctor Who canon has ever done so, so I'm cruelly denied that anarchic thrill.

Here's what the BBC had to say about Doctor Who canon during the lifespan of the English Series...

*Insert Echoing Sound Effect Evocative Of Infinite Hollow Nothingness Here. The Silence Beyond Silence of a Thought Never Formed*

That's right. Not a whisper.

If that seems suprising to you, that's because you're assuming a British mass-audience show from 1963 would work like American cult-audience show from the Nineties. Nobody at the BBC back then would have had a concept of canon in its modern, fannish sense.

So they never defined one. So one never existed. And the television show just chugged along fine without one, merrily incorporating information from the comics, the novelisations and even the Find Your Fate game books as they went along.

Here's what Russell T. Davies had to say about Doctor Who canon during his time as showrunner.

That canon "is a word which has never been used in the production office, not once, not ever" (DWM #356).

That he was "usually happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands." (DWM #356)

That thinking of the audios as being 'non-canonical' is boring and idiotic. (The Writer's Tale)

That "I'm just the writer [...] I've got no more authority over the text than you!" (DWM #388)

We've moved from a canon which didn't exist because nobody got round to establishing one, to a canon which doesn't exist because the only person who could establish one himself rejects both the idea and the very logic of writerly authority on which it stands.

While this is going on, the TV series itself is making direct and explict reference to events, concepts, continuity points, planets, companies and foodstuffs from the novels and comics while establishing that Time is in flux (The Unquiet Dead) and that stable facts aren't meant to exist (Utopia). Which means that if there was a Doctor Who canon (and assuming the Welsh Series was part of it) then it would paradoxically include the fact that there was no Doctor Who canon.

Which brings us to Steven Moffat, the new showrunner and so the only person who could now be plausibly considered to have the authority to rule on what is and isn't canonical. Will he do so?

No, he won't.

"It is impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time traveller to have a canon."

- Steven Moffat, San Diego, 2008.

So, in summary...

Canon is a matter of authority.

At first the guys in charge didn't define a canon because it didn't occur to anyone back then that that was the sort of thing programme-makers did.

Then the guy in charge didn't define a canon because he believes that it's up to us to use our own imaginations.

Now the current guy in charge believes that a Doctor Who canon is actually an imposibility.

At no point has there ever been a Doctor Who canon. Anyone who thinks there is has got 'canon' mixed up with something else...maybe with 'Consensus', with 'Majority Opinion', with 'The Stuff I Personally Count', with 'The Condition of Being On Telly', with 'That Which has Been Offically Licensed', or with half a dozen other things that don't mean 'canon'.

So, back to the introspection, why does 'Doctor Who canon' bother me so much? Why do I get drawn into, and fascinated by, debates over this non-existent thingy? Why don't I just roll my eyes, post something like this, roll my eyes and go find some nice sensible flame war about the merits of Grant Morrison's writing or something like that instead?

Those who assume there's a Who canon are wrong, but what's so wrong with them being wrong that it gets on my tits to the extent that it does? Where did I pick up this Dawkins-esque zeal to spread the joyous news of the non-existence of something, like a Bizzaro evangelist? I shall now shut myself in a floatation tank and instruct my staff not to release me until I've either worked out what it is that bugs me so much or until I'm so thickly encrusted with salt that I could be sold at Pizza Hut.

Ah. That's better.

Right then. Make a cup of tea. Put a record on. Scroll down to 'It's Evil' if you're getting bored.

Here's why I hate canon so much.

It's Frustrating.

See all the above. It's the ultimate Someone Is Wrong On The Internet.

As Paul Cornell says...

"I can’t think of any other fandom that assumes they have a canon when nobody has ever told them that they do. Especially since our show itself declares that it doesn’t now have, and probably never did have, a canon."

Many, probably most, people who find their way to Doctor Who fandom are convinced that its continuity is regulated by something that doesn't exist. For those invested in sanity, such widespread and overwhelming wrongness is annoying.


It's Just So Common.

Look, just because every other geektext has a canon, doesn't mean ours needs one.

It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.

It's Not Very Doctor Who-ish.

Stability, certainty, order, the exclusion of difficult twiddly bits. These are the virtues of a canon.

Do they sound much like virtues the Doctor would be keen to champion?

Paul Magrs puts this very well in his afterword to Time and Relative Dissertations in Space...

So...this is important: Doctor Who is never complete.

It is about a lack. A need. A hunger.

And it is unending. There's that old cliche about the elasticity and infinitude of its format. which is kind of true, but its truer that its consumers don't half enjoy repetition and recurrent patterns. Like the Arabian Nights. Arabesques of infintie variety. Fulfillment of the design being infinitely deferred. Stories opening out into other, further stories... The nights of prevarication and story telling go on and on and on. Just as the Doctor always finds a new companion, a new incarnation, a new adventure to have.

But as we go on, the audience, the reader, the fan-consumer is always aware that we are missing something. We all always vaguely remember that there was an old Doctor. Now he's long gone. And there were others before him. They're all in our memories like family members who died or went abroad when we were small. And one day, maybe, they will come back...

[...]

Some of the fans want to complete the narrative. They construct continuity guides and canons. They want to plug the gaps. The completist wants to collect, restore, arbitrate on hefty canonical debates. They catalogue things, rather like Time Lords.

No, my impulse is always to further complicate matters.

The idea of 'completism' terrifies me. What happens when its all complete? What goes on then? Where do you go? It sounds a bit dull to me. (Remember when the Doctor eventually got to The Eye of Orion? His much-vaunted 'most peaceful place in the universe'? It was rubbish. It was boring and you could tell he was only pretending to enjoy it. It was wet and there was sheep shit everywhere.)

[...]

Its a curious irony, I think, in a series with a rabble rouser as a hero, and in a narrative about multiverses, alternities and possibilities, that the fans of this very show want to close possibilities down. Sometimes its as if fans want reality dictated to them- definitively. Canonically. They want parameters setting and concretising around them. Maybe they want a stable universe after all...



Well, they can't have one. They've got Doctor Who and they can bloody well learn to like it.



He was there, just ahead of her. Half clambered on a unicorn, clinging to its mane to keep from falling any further off. That mad coat flapping behind him. She could see his eyes ablaze with the fun of it all. Not just being swept along by the Hunt, but riding with it, leading it, celebrating it.

She kept her eyes locked on him. It was hard to focus - he was a dazzling blur. Where he was, even his face and body, nothing stayed fixed long enough for her to be sure of it. The possibilities and details of his past thrashing around like mad, shifting and overlapping. He was every single Doctor you could ever imagine at once.

But he was still there. Even without a fixed face or name or body, even if his past contradicted itself from moment to moment, that didn't matter. There was still something there, not just un-pinned-down but impossible to pin down. Something that even revelled in the fact that he couldn't be easily understood. That said more things were possible than a simple explaination would allow.

Something laughing.

- Unnatural History, Jon Blum and Kate Orman.

It's INSANE.

Some made-up stories are realer than other ones? Get away with you.

In a ideal world, every series' canon would have died of embarassment after the first panel of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

It Sounds Like A Lot Of Work.

46 years in, and Doctor Who seems to be surviving without one, doesn't it?

Unless you reckon it'd never have gone off the air in 1989 if only we'd had a definative statement on the status of Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma and on whether or not Disney Time is an official lead-in to Terror of the Zygons.

Other fandoms seem to think we have a hard old time of it... listen to what The Transformers Wikia reckons...

The BBC, owners of Doctor Who, have no canon policy. Indeed so little attention is paid to it that the franchise is riddled with countless irreconcilable continuity clashes despite being presented as a single continuous story, even in the TV movie and continuing television series that were made many years after the original series was cancelled.

Irreconcilable? Back over to the Moff to reconcile the lot of them in eighteen words...

"The audience just hasn't seen the adventure when the Doctor goes back in time and changes that detail."

- Steven Moffat, San Deigo, 2008.

That certainly sounds more elegant to me than, well, than this sort of thing...

G-canon is absolute canon; the movies (their most recent release), the scripts, the novelizations of the movies, the radio plays, and any statements by George Lucas himself. G-canon overrides the lower levels of canon when there is a contradiction. Within G-canon, many fans follow an unofficial progression of canonicity where the movies are the highest canon, followed by the scripts, the novelizations, and then the radio plays.

T-canon refers to the canon level comprising only the two television shows: Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the Star Wars live-action TV series. Its precedence over C-Level canon was confirmed by Chee.

C-canon is primarily composed of elements from the Expanded Universe including books, comics, and games bearing the label of Star Wars. Games and RPG sourcebooks are a special case; the stories and general background information are themselves fully C-canon, but the other elements such as character/item statistics and gameplay are, with few exceptions, N-canon.

S-canon is secondary canon; the story itself is considered non-continuity, but the non-contradicting elements are still a canon part of the Star Wars universe. This includes things like the online roleplaying game Star Wars: Galaxies and certain elements of a few N-canon stories.

N-canon is non-canon. "What-if" stories (such as stories published under the Star Wars: Infinities label), crossover appearances (such as the Star Wars character appearances in Soulcalibur IV), game statistics, and anything else directly contradicted by higher canon ends up here. N-canon is the only level that is not considered official canon by Lucasfilm. A significant amount of material that was previously C-canon was rendered N-canon by the release of Episodes I-III.

- Wikipedia on Star Wars canon.

It Frightens Me!

Look, I'm a child of the Great Who Diaspora of the 1990s. I came into the full bloom of my fandom during the New Adventures years. If there ever was a Doctor Who canon then... well, then a lot of the Doctor Who stories I care about deeply probably wouldn't make it in.

Had Davies ever been the one to issue a canon then, going on things like his Meet the Doctor article and his desire to have had the Eight-to-Nine regeneration in the DWM comic strip, we might imagine that the novels, audios, comics...all that sort of thing would have made it in. Though we'd probably have been, based on the fact that he was issuing a canon at all, more interested in who was holding a gun to his head.

But even then, even with a very broad canon, it'd still leave something out. Something that matters to someone would now OFFICIALLY NOT COUNT. And that'd be both sad and pointless.

It ROTS YOUR BRAIN!

Over in Batman right now, we're in the late stages of a big five-volume serialised 'novel' that Grant Morrison's been writing since 2006. It's been mentioned occasionally on this blog.

Very early in the run, it had a LOST-style flashforward to a gloomy future. Since then almost every significant piece of information revealed in that story has played out in the present of the narative. With two exceptions - the death of Dick Grayson and the damnation of Damien Wayne.

As the story creeps forwards, the presence of that flashforward works as a device to make us anxious about Dick's life and Damien's soul. It's supposed to make us worry, "Hang on...if all that other stuff happened, does that mean...?"

So anyway, the other day I was chatting away about all this when someone took me by surprise by saying that the flashforward issue (#666) had nothing to do with the current storyline.

I explained how it worked. I quoted Grant Morrison explaining how it worked. I invented an entire 20 volume swords'n'sorcery Fantasy Epic in order to draw out a complex analogy which would explain how it worked.... I'm not sure how I could have been more helpful.

But to each of my points the guy kept coming back with, "Batman #666 isn't canon."

Over
And over
And over
Again.

Which is, as it happens, perfectly true. The DC universe has a canon and Batman #666 isn't in it.
But that's got nothing to do with the fact that it's part of the story and the way the story's being told. Because stories work by allusion, and reference, and intertextuality and all sorts of other sexy things that're the antithesis of fencing off fictions into approved lists of things that matter.

This particular Someone Wrong On The Internet had been locked into a real rigidity of thought by the importance he placed on canon. Because that's all canon is - an obstacle to understanding stories.

It's Evil.

Here's what prompted this article.

Last week Bleeding Cool reported that Tom Baker is returning to Doctor Who to play the Doctor for the first time since he left (other than hissing some nonsense into a microphone for a link sequence in Dimensions in Time).

Tom Baker. Playing the Doctor. In FIVE new plays.

The third post in the coments section was to say that, no he's not. This doesn't count because it's not canonical.

Posts follow saying that even though they're not canon, the audios are still pretty good. Or that people shouldn't worry too much about canon. Or that they can be thought of as canon until the TV series contradicts them.

These are all reasonable responses, but they miss the rather crucial fact that this whole "They're not canon" business is just something the third poster made up.

Fair enough he's not interested in them. Fair enough they're not part of 'his Doctor Who'. But not canonical?

Well, he's right. Of course they're not. They can't be. There's no canon so they can't be canonical.

Gridlock isn't canonical.
The Doctor Dances isn't canonical.
The Chimes of Midnight isn't canonical.
Lungbarrow isn't canonical.
Once Upon a Time Lord isn't canonical.
Kinda isn't canonical.
These five new Tom Baker plays aren't canonical.
Carnival of Monsters isn't canonical.
The War Games isn't canonical.
An Unearthly Child isn't canonical (neither version).

This is where Cornell's right that 'canon' is just a bullying word.

Because when you say ‘the books just aren’t “canon!”’ or ‘the books “happened” and the TV show can’t ignore them!’ you’re not saying something like ‘for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction’, you’re saying something like ‘the South will never surrender’. You’re yelling a battle cry, not stating the truth. Because there is no truth here to find. There was never and now cannot be any authority to rule on matters of canonicity in a tale that has allowed, or at the very least accepted, the rewriting of its own continuity. And you’re using the fact that discussions of canonicity are all about authority to try to assume an authority that you do not have.

In the end, you’re just bullying people.

- Cornell. This blog.

But it's one that bullies people who fall into using it as much as those it's directed at. The poor chap on that Bleeding Cool thread was just trying to say he didn't personally count non-tellybox Who (an entirely reasonable thing to do). He didn't seem to be in persuit of any power that would set him up amongst the gods - observe his IMHO and his awareness that others will think differently - but using the 'c' word puts him into exactly that position of assuming authority he doesn't have.

It is not a good word.

I Know I'm Lying.

Oh, alright then. There is a Doctor Who canon.

The Doctor defined it in The Gallifrey Chronicles...

"Sherlock Holmes solved the case before I could, as I recall."

"Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character," Trix pointed out.

The Doctor grinned. "My dear, one of the things you'll learn is that it's all real. Every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip."

"But that's just not possible. I mean some books contradict other ones and -"

The Doctor was ignoring her.

Lance Parkin, The Gallifrey Chronicles.

He later refined it in The Unicorn and the Wasp when he told Donna that there is no Noddy.

So Doctor Who canon looks like this...

My daughter grasped this the other day in a conversation we had on the bus. She said, "There's three ways of getting to all the different lands. The Faraway Tree, whirlwinds, and Doctor Who's little house."

THIS ONE'S FOR CHEESE-FIEND!

Regular readers of this blog, were the existence of such people not made impossible by this blog not being regularly written, would know that I've been putting together a chronology of the current rum goings on round Batman's way.

The first part's here.
And the second part's here.

You're reading the third part now. I'd link to it as well, but that'd trap you in an endless circle from which you'd never escape, so I shall not. Great is my mercy.

Not so great, however, that I'm prepared to extend it to myself and skip over Battle for the Cowl, the subject of today's installment. Though I'd strongly advise that most readers do.

Where Morrison left the matter of the Bat-succession in the last issue of RIP, Dick Grayson was holding the cape and cowl and taking up a whole page in order to look resolute and accepting of what must come. When Morrison returned to the matter of the Bat-succession in Batman and Robin, Dick Grayson had become Batman, commenting that he's always known this day would come. Inbetween these two "DICK GRAYSON IS THE NEW BATMAN!" moments, DC decided to publish a seventeen-issue event asking the question "WHO IS THE NEW BATMAN?"

It's those seventeen issues (two of which are pretty good) we're concerned with today, so enough with the hatin' and on to the uber-geeky pedantry which, by my very engagement with, robs me of any claim to be able to make critical judgements in the first place. Tally ho!

Right, lets start with the core mini - Battle for the Cowl #1-3 and the natural assumption that they occur in that order. Later on we might find ourselves in the position of wondering which pages from Cowl#2 take place before the final scenes of Cowl#1, but lets try and put that off as long as possible.

The two Gotham Gazette bookends are nice and clear too. Batman Dead? starts us off before any of the events of the main mini (Arkham's in disarry from the events of RIP but not yet exploded) and Batman Alive! wraps things up at the end.

Then there's a couple of stories which are only very losely related to the rest of the story... Secret Six#9 is set in a Gotham that's unprotected and in need of a Batman. There's no exploding Arkhams, burning cities or Jason Todds to tie us into any timeframe from the main series. It seems to make sense to me to place this before the main series.

Battle for the Cowl: Oracle: The Cure is notable for a number of things, among them the revelation that the Anti-Life Equation is good for you if you put it inside diamonds and that pixellated pug piss can return the dead to life. It's also notable for having no narative connection to Battle for the Cowl, other than Jim Gordon mumbling something about the situation at Arkham. This 'situation' can't be the explosion of the place that occurs in Cowl#1, since Barbara here has just moved back to Gotham as is getting little catch-up answerphone messages from Dick, rather than yet working with him to orchestrate a Network of urban superheroes. So the 'situation' has to be the one alluded to in Batman Dead? - that, following the Joker/Black Glove's occupation of Arkham, it's out of service while its inhabitants are all driven randomly around the city in poorly guarded buses.

So with Secret Six and Oracle both occuring before the main event. I propse we place Oracle first. that way if anyone ever does read the issues in the order we're generating here, they'll have the Secret Six issue to take away the taste of the Oracle mini and perhaps give them the strength to continue with their day.

Both are going before Batman Dead? in a shocking and controversial move that callously ruins its bookendyness, but has to be done in order to keep the scenes of Bullock and Harper's investigation close to the events of Azreal (That investigation also explictly places the entirity of Battle for the Cowl before Harper's involvement in the current Superman books, but that's data for a bigger project) .

There's another colon-heavy three issue mini to slot in, Battle for the Cowl: Azrael: Death's Dark Night, and it's quite eager to help. Issue three tells us that the whole mini takes place over one night, and that that night is Thursday. Issue one shows us the moment from Cowl#1 where the Batsignal is lit with the letters 'R.I.P' scratched into the middle of it. Nice and simple.

There's one little problem though...Barbara and Dick have a conversation about whether or not Jason Todd might be this story's killer, when in Battle for the Cowl Dick doesn't yet know that Jason is active. This problem goes away though when you notice that at no point in Azrael do they talk about 'The Jason Todd Batman' or anything, just the possibility that Jason Todd was the killer. So it still fits with Dick not knowing Jason is BadBats.

Lets stop a minute and see where we've got to...

• Oracle: The Cure 1-3
• Secret Six #9
• Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?
• Battle for the Cowl #1
• MEANWHILE....Azrael: Death's Dark Knight #1-3
• Battle for the Cowl #2
• Battle for the Cowl #3
• Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive?

Right, just the one-shots now, of which there are several. The Commissioner Gordon one sees Jimbo held captive by Mister Freeze in a clearly marked Cyronics lab where the GCPD don't think to look despite it being the most prominent building visible from the windows of their offices. Freeze is determined to teach Gordon a lesson about how one bad day can change a person's life. This story, which they somehow restrained themselves from calling 'The Chilling Joke', is referenced in Cowl #2 but is subsequent to the Arkham explosion in Cowl #1, so has to occur between the pages of that first issue.

The Man-Bat one-shot in which...oh I don't care... in which Man-Bat does things, also takes place the night that the RIP-marked Batsignal is lit, so takes place alongside events in Cowl #1 and Azrael.

The Arkham Asylum one-shot takes place an indeterminate amount of time after the place has been blown up. The fires are out and it's safe to walk around in there. Since this is, along with Secret Six #9, one of the two good comics in the whole event, I'm sticking it right at the end for similar reasons to why I put Secret Six after Oracle.

Ha! One two one-shots to fit in now! What couple possibly go wrong?

Here's how events play out in Battle for the Cowl #2...

Two Face and Penguin are oblivious to the return of the Black Mask, blaming each other for their misfortunes.

This is happening at the same time as Dick is figuring out that BadBats is Jason.

Later, Tim in the Bat-costume discovers Jason's BadBatcave.

Catwoman shows up and figures out he's not Batman. She doesn't however know who BatBats is.
BadBats turns up, pistol whips her, and ends her involvement in Battle for the Cowl.

Here's how events play out in The Underground #1...

Penguin knows all about Black Mask's involvement and has hired the Riddler to find him.
Selina runs into BadBats.

"He's trying to kill me," she accurately observes, "It's not Robin. He was wearing a different suit when I ran into him yesterday."

BadBats kicks her in the vagina (there's a familiar theme emerging here), ending her involvement in The Underground.

This can just about work. On meeting BadBats, she talks about having met Tim Bats yesterday...but the only time we see her meet TimBats in Cowl is during a fight with BadBats.

That seemed to have been the historic first team-up between Selina and TimBats, and ends with Tim 'fatally stabbed' with a batarang and Selina unconcious. Fortunately, Jason hit her from behind so it still works that she sees his costume as being unfamiliar in Underground. All we've got to do is suppose that she somehow escapes from having been knocked out in the middle of the lair of a torturer who starves his victims to death, without learning who he was or giving much thought to him until a chance meeting the following day.

The Network one-shot occurs simulateously with The Underground, as we see Oracle monitoring its events.

There we go then. And here's the full updated chronology...

PART ONE - BATMAN BEATS THE DEVIL.

• DCU #0
  
• Detective Comics #846-50 ('Heart of Hush')
  
• Batman #676-8 ('RIP' parts 1-3)
  
• Robin #175-6
  
• Batman #679-681 ('RIP' parts 4-6)

PART TWO - BATMAN'S MISSING FOR A BIT AND EVERYONE OVER-REACTS.

• Batman and the Outsiders #11-14
• Nightwing #147-151 ('The Great Leap') - concurrent with early chapters of 'Search for a Hero'
  
• Robin #177-82 ('Search for a Hero')
• Dectective #851, Batman #684 ('The Last Days of Gotham') - concurrent with later chapters of 'Search for a Hero'

PART THREE - BATMAN KILLS GOD.

• That flashback sequence from #683
• Final Crisis #1-3
• Superman Beyond #1-2
• Final Crisis #4
  
• Batman #682-3
• Final Crisis #5-7

PART FOUR - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER?

• Batman #686
• Detective Comics #853

PART FIVE - BATMAN APPEARS DEAD FOR A BIT AND EVERYONE OVER-REACTS.

• Nightwing #152-3
• Detective #852, Batman #685 ('Reconstruction/Catspaw')
• Batman and the Outsiders Special #1
• The Outsiders #15-20 ('The Deep') - provisional placement.
• Robin #183

PART SIX - EVERYONE BATTLES OVER CAWL, A TRADITIONAL WELSH LAMB AND LEEK STEW.

• Oracle: The Cure #1-3
• Secret Six #9
• Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?
• Battle for the Cowl #1
• Man-Bat #1, Commissioner Gordon #1 and Azrael: Death's Dark Knight #1-3 (all concurrent with the above)
• Battle for the Cowl #2
• The Underground #1/The Network #1
• Battle for the Cowl #3
• Arkham Asylum #1
  
• Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive!