Update 3-1-11 - Batman: Long Halloween, Streets of Gotham, Gotham City Sirens, Arkham Reborn

Thanks to everyone who's been waiting so patiently for a reading order update to the DC Universe Trade Paperback Timeline. I think the Bat-errific update has a lot of what you've been looking for.

First, Batman: The Long Halloween and its related books have finally made it to the timeline. Credit in no small part Tony Daniel's Batman: Life After Death -- some books have made vague references to Long Halloween before, but Daniel's is the first to completely summarize Long Halloween and Dark Victory's plots, and that brings those stories firmly into continuity.

I've placed them after Infinite Crisis, just before Batman: Face the Face, which itself makes a vague reference to Long Halloween. Why not just after Batman: Year One? Because, the way I conceive the timeline, you're reading these books the way they're meant to be understood, and Long Halloween, though it's set in the "Year One" era, is not a contemporary of Frank Miller's 1980s story. Dark Victory, for instance, specifically contradicts Batman: Prodigal and Robin: Year One for simple reasons, that Dark Victory wasn't written yet, so for the timeline I wouldn't recommend reading the Long Halloween books that early; that would just confuse things. But your results may vary.

The other item of note is that some major aspects of the "Batman Reborn" saga -- Streets of Gotham, Gotham City Sirens, the aforementioned Life After Death, and Batman: Arkham Reborn all now appear on the timeline. In short order the rest of "Batman Reborn" is on its way, mostly in line with what reviews you see on Collected Editions.

Other highlights include Ravager: Fresh Hell, Blue Beetle: Black and Blue, and some other minor gaps filled in.

Don't forget you can subscribe to the Collected Editions comments feed for all the latest chatter on the blog; there's also often timeline talk on our Facebook page and Twitter feed. See you around!

Update 2-3-08

In case you were wondering, the DC Trade Paperback Timeline is still being updated. Added today a couple more Birds of Prey trades, a Blue Beetle trade, Justice Society, and more. I think I have a pretty good idea of how things go leading in to the early part of Countdown, and then how thing's shake out from there ... I'm going to try to keep the timeline more continuously updated this year.

Question of the day: Anybody got early issues of Robin lying around? I know Robin started during the uncollected KnightsQuest section of Knightfall -- essentially, as DC has collected right now, the chronology is Knightfall 1, Knightfall 2, Robin: Flying Solo, and then Knightfall 3. But I'm trying to figure where Knightfall fits with the Death of Superman, and I distinctly remember a time where Robin was wearing a black Superman armband -- can anyone tell me in what issue the armband might've appeared? Thanks!