rpanons | <3

Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It depends on how deeply you want to get into the mythos, honestly. Some of the older stuff has been retconned or at the very least changed enough so that it's only relevant by virtue of being 'early Batman stuff.'

I'd say definitely read Batman: Year One. Whatever you do, don't read Year Two, haha. (Bruce uses a gun! And gets engaged to a woman who runs off to be a nun!) The Long Halloween is also fairly important, because it introduces most of the Rogues and establishes Bruce and Dick's dynamic. Then I'd say Batman: Son of the Demon. It's an Elseworlds story, but Grant Morrison uses it as canon later on to introduce the idea of Damian Wayne, so it's sort of... nebulously canon. After that you can kind of cherrypick your way through everything. Year Three's okay. A Death in the Family is very important, as is the follow-up where Tim becomes Robin (read New Titans #60 and then Batman #442).

My personal favourite storyline is Knightfall/Knightquest/Knight's End, which deals with Bane's introduction, Bruce's back being broken and Azrael/Jean-Paul Valley becoming Batman and ending up being corrupted by it (+various other extenuating circumstances). Knightfall is also set shortly after Jason dies, just after Tim becomes Robin I believe, and also falls during the time when Clark is dead, so it's a massively trying period in Bruce's life and I enjoy the way he's written since it's fairly obvious he's walking the knife's edge of 'almost about to lose it'.

Then I'd say probably Batman: Contagion, which is about a plague that severely affects the city, and then it leads into Cataclysm - that's the stuff that covers the quake that destroyed most of Gotham. It also introduces Cassandra Cain who eventually became Batgirl and who Bruce later adopts. Honestly, I'd also recommend reading Robin, Batgirl V2 and Nightwing as well, because although they focus on their respective characters, you get to see a lot more of how Bruce interacts with them and why they follow him than if you solely read Batman titles.

Bruce Wayne: Fugitive is another favourite storyline of mine, it involves one of Bruce's girlfriends being murdered in his house and ends up with him doing jailtime for it. Batman: Hush is pretty important to his characterization as well.

The entire Superman/Batman run - which is set from early on in their relationship until the reboot - is also worth reading, it often has stories that go beyond Gotham and show you how Bruce relates to the rest of the world, and it usually has a broader scope than just the Gotham Rogue of the Week. Plus, Clark and Bruce are bros.

After Fugitive and Hush, I'd say read Under the Red Hood, which reintroduces Jason Todd as a villain figure in Bruce's life. (It might actually be set before them, for some reason I always have a hard time placing UtRH in the timeline, oops) Then Batman and Son is super important, and introduces Damian Wayne. Batman: RIP and Final Crisis happen shortly after that, and I'd definitely recommend reading as much of the latter as you can to understand the impact Bruce's apparent 'death' has on the superhero community as a whole.

From there, Batman: the Return of Bruce Wayne details Bruce's time throughout history as he fights his way back to the present, and then The Return of Bruce Wayne. Batman Incorporated follows that, and you could also read Batman and Robin just to get a feel for Damian, which is also important to Bruce's characterization. And that... pretty much brings you up to the DCnU, on which I'm mostly canonblind.

Hope this helps, anon! If you need any further titles, feel free to drop me a PM.

Edited 2013-07-26 21:14 (UTC)

<3

Re: BATMAN COMIC RECS