Where does the post Crisis continuity start for Batman and Detective Comics?
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The Legends crossover issues, which are also Dennis O’Neil’s first issues as editor, taking over after Len Wein.
These would be Batman #401 and Detective Comics #568.
Batman also appears in Man of Steel #3 in a story that takes place just prior to Batman #401. Both books were released on the same day and feature Batman vs. Magpie.
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COIE ended in March 1986, but the legends issue for Batman for instance didn’t start until October 1986. Why would there be a six month delay for the new continuity and what marks that as the beginning of the new Batman era?
Maybe you are right. I just haven’t heard that.
DC Comics was in a flux between the end of Crisis and Man of Steel #1.
Mainly because they acquired John Byrne and Frank Miller from Marvel near the end of Crisis.
And when Byrne requested a clean slate for Superman, a lot of the things that did survive Crisis got wiped, anyway, for Byrne.
In particular, Superman had never been Superboy, Supergirl had never existed and the Kents never died. And he never met or joined the Legion.
This had a domino effect on the DCU, retconning away even some recent post-Crisis stories, such as Superman’s appearance in Booster Gold.
And Frank Miller also decided he wanted to make some changes to Batman and his world with his ‘Year One’ story that started in Batman #404. The most noticeable being his change for Catwoman, who had just appeared in Batman #400.
Meanwhile, Wonder Woman was already planned to have a ‘rebirth’ by Perez, and all three came about at the same time and coincided with Legends.
Mikes’s Amazing World of Comics also lists Batman #401 as the first post-Crisis appearance of Batman.
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/comic.php?comicid=3935
Here are a couple of handy lists-
This one is a list of Post-Crisis Batman appearances in publication order:
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/character.php?page=appearances&characterid=579
This one is a list of his appearances in chronological order (in the order they happened in the comic world):
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/chronology.php?page=chronology&universe=Post-Crisis&characterid=579
click the >> by the ‘1’ at the center top to advance to the next page.
There’s also another website that had a reading order for the post-Crisis Batman:
https://www.therealbatmanchronologyproject.com/the-modern-age/years-1-10/
A lot of people also start with Batman #404 because it’s Year One and becomes Batman’s origin story for Post-Crisis.
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DC Database marks the first appearance of Post-Crisis Batman as Detective Comics #567 from October of '86. Batman #401 from November is his first appearance in an issue of Batman. The November issues of Batman and Detective Comics are the two Legends tie-ins, so LeonardoMyst is basically right.
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Thanks for the info. I knew all the characters had those relaunches but I didn’t realize they didn’t correspond with the end of COIE. I just assumed.
Those lists are supposed to be the best attempt at a complete chronological order of all Batman appearances? That’s insane. I’ve done that with Knightfall era Batman books, Robin and Catwoman for my own personal amusement and it was a bit of a conundrum. A complete arrangement of the timeline must have taken hundreds of hours.
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Batman’s continuity is confusing as hell largely because of the characters historical popularity. Whenever DC decides to reboot their universe they tend to leave what’s working alone and Batman is persistently their best selling title. Because of this the character has never gotten a full out reboot.
This has led to inconsistencies as patches to the structure will remove later continuity while keeping earlier stuff intact.
Cases in point: Jason Todd got a revised post Crisis origin which added the part about him trying to lift the tires from the Batmobile while the first appearances of major bronze age villains like Ras al Ghul and Manbat stayed the same.
Add to that the fact that canon stories ( like Englehart and Rogers excellent Detective Comics run from the 1970s) would go back and reference early issues from the golden age while simultaneously establishing Deadshot’s modern version.
Ultimately the best thing to do with Batman (and pretty much all of the rest of the DCU for that matter) is to just read the good stuff (Englehart and Rogers, Morrison, Grant and Breyfogle, O’Neill and Adams, most of Miller and Snyder) and just not worry about how it fits together
I mean, it helps if you don’t think about it too hard, but basically, any time there’s a reboot, anything from before is probably broad-strokes canon unless explicitly contradicted. Batman continuity builds on itself and references older stories a lot, so I actually think just taking Post-Crisis Batman in order is as solid an idea as anything. At some point in the future, I might actually try to read all of the Bat-Books from the Post-Crisis timeline in publication order just for fun. I’ve already kind of been doing that, except I started at Knightfall rather than Legends and I’ve been ignoring titles I’m less interested in.
I’ve read all of Robin. Otherwise, I’ve never read a complete run of a series with more than fifty or so issues.
I was considering doing Detective Comics sometime soon, but with access to all the Rebirth stuff, I might focus more on modern runs. I’m trying to get a pull list for Revieth. Really enjoyed King and Tynion’s runs on Batman and Detective.
I’ve read all of Robin. Otherwise, I’ve never read a complete run of a series with more than fifty or so issues.
I was considering doing Detective Comics sometime soon, but with access to all the Rebirth stuff, I might focus more on modern runs. I’m trying to get a pull list for Revieth. Really enjoyed King and Tynion’s runs on Batman and Detective.