The Revelations of The Bat (and The Alien ;) )

Prior to the start of the nu52 we were told that Batman, before the formation of the Justice League ‘five years ago’, had been active ‘for around 5 years’.  Later, this was adjusted to ‘around a year’.

We were also told that most of this history and stories from pre-nu52 were being carried over – which was later amended to ‘carried over and compressed’.

For many readers, it’s been a mess.  For many others, they’re just in it for the stories and don’t really care about the chronology.

Personally, the ‘everything kicked off 5 or 6 years ago’ approach just doesn’t work for me, especially when Dick, Jason and Tim are brought into the picture and Dick is now (supposedly) 16 when Bruce took him in. 

Meh

So, my ‘basic timeline of the nu52’ for the ‘age of heroes’ is:

17 years ago: ‘Superboy’ flits around (he’s around 10)

15 years ago: ‘Superboy’ meets ‘the friends from the future’
12 years ago: Batman starts (he's around 20); 'Superboy' is a 'country legend' (he's around 17); death of the Kents
11.5 years ago: Death of the Graysons
11 years ago: Dick is recruited (he's 11) (still not comfortable with his age being so close to Kal's, though, or the 'small' gap between him and Bruce); Bruce and Talia tango (this is either when Damien was conceived or when the mingled genetic material was obtained...)
7 years ago: Superman goes public; Jason begins training
6 years and 4 months ago: Superman saves Metropolis from The Collector
6 years ago: Aquaman is revealed; Dick is now Nightwing and Jason is Robin (The Anti-Superman Army steals the engine of Kal's ship); Kal investigates the rumours of 'The Batman'
5 years and 5 months ago: Barry becomes The Flash; Aquaman and The Others team up; Aquaman rescues Oliver Queen
5 years and 2 months ago: Diana comes to Man's World and Hal becomes Earth's Green Lantern; Barry and Hal meet and encounter Grodd
5 years ago: JLA is formed, Batman is no longer an 'urban legend' and Darkseid is defeated (oh, and Vic becomes 'Cyborg')

4 years and 11 months ago: the JLA defeats Starro
4 years and 10 months ago: Clark Kent ‘dies’, ‘returns’ and joins The Daily Planet

4.5 years ago: J'onn joins the JLA
4 years ago: Jason dies; J'onn 'tests' the JLA and finds them lacking; Barbara becomes Batgirl; Lois discovers The Secret
3.5 years ago: Tim is recruited (Bruce isn't keen on this)
3 years ago: Tim is Robin; Barbara is shot
2.5 years ago: Jason returns
2 years ago: Damien seeks out Bruce
1.8 years ago: Superman 'dies'
1.5 years ago: Bruce 'dies' and Dick becomes Batman
1 year ago: Superman returns (this one is hard to place as the indications are that it's relatively recent but also that he only recently returned to Metropolis..and we don't yet know where he had been, so it may be that he came back from the dead and then left Metropolis for a while)
0.5 years ago: Bruce returns and starts up Inc; split with Tim
Couple of months ago: Superboy awakes; Tim is behind 'NuWikiLeaks'; Batman encounters No-Man; Damien kills No-Man; Joker has his face removed
1 month ago: New Daily Planet building is unveiled, 'alien attack' in Metropolis; Superboy hunts down the Teens; JLA fights Amazo; Green Arrow tries to join the JLA
A few weeks ago: second 'alien attack'; Superboy 'escapes'; Green Arrow is still trying to join the JLA; Batman is in the Labyrinth
A couple of weeks ago: Batman escapes, punches Dick; Court of Owls attacks Gotham, JLA lend a hand and Green Arrow is still trying to join them
Over the course of the past week: Kara lands on Earth, is attacked, attacks Kal, finds out Krypton is gone, is lured into a trap, exposed to Kryptonite, escapes, destroys a multi-billion dollar satellite and unwittingly leaves some of her blood behind, finds Argo, encounters Reign, is left for dead, returns to Earth and saves it from a team of (incompetent) Worldkillers, attacked by humans, meets Siobhan, flees with her, goes to a bar and 'meets' Siobhan's dad (insert parts yet untold); Superman is 'replaced' and starts exercising a firm hand on Metropolis; Kara spots Superboy, talks to him and then smacks him around a little, tells him he's going to be a killer, heads to Metropolis, catches McCoy and encounters doppelgänger of Kal-El, gets smacked around, is saved by the real Kal-El (insert parts yet untold)

Also, members of the Court of Owls are killed and a ‘secret’ is revealed
A couple of days ago: Clark agrees to pick up Lucy from the station on Lois' behalf and that Jimmy can stay at his place for a while, ends up tangoing with Helspont and getting in Lucy's bad book
Dr Sivana starts his hunt

I've left out the JLI and JLD stuff and it seems the Captain Ma...Shazam stuff hasn't happened yet as it's not yet Christmas...the recent ‘Culling’ is also left out and it’s unclear as to when Hal-using-a-ring-given-to-him-by-Sinestro occurs (at the moment).

Oh, and Knightfall (I'm not sure if that's still in continuity)

And people say ‘comic books are for kids’ ;)

But, here's the kicker:

We were also told that The Bat's continuity was to remain intact, just in a somewhat 'compressed' form (timeline-wise).  And then, 10 months in, they (apparently) threw a curve-ball.

Why 'apparently'?  Well, I'm still waiting for issue 11 to come out so that the 'revelation' put forward in issue 10 can be either 'cemented' or discarded (personally, I'm hoping for the latter).