>"That's MY idea!"

Quite a bit less preposterously formal (even when Grant has good ideas, which isn't that often, he then tends to implement them in unsatisfactory ways), but the underlying concept is at least broadly similar, yes. There's also a little less of the Batmen of All Nations flavor going on. I love the goofy surreality of the Batmen of All Nations in, say, The Brave and the Bold, but perhaps not quite so much in a setting that's trying to be at least partly serious. :)

That said, the gang around the McGinnis Bat Cave does sometimes refer to even the currently extant Tim/Cassie New Avalon operation as an "expansion franchise" (which was one of the working titles of this piece), when they're not calling it, as in Terry's salutation over in "Triple-Encrypted Batmail", the Avalon branch office.

Terry probably tried to convince Tim to become the Avalon Batman first, but...

Anyway, this mini is stage one of a "told you that story to tell you this one" knot that's at least three layers deep, and it's all about repositioning the whole Batman gang for New Frontier. This is not, I own, exactly the highest-priority piece of NF prep in the canon, and could probably stand to wait until S5 and CR are finished, but I've found to my annoyance over the years that these things happen in the order in which they happen, and if I try to defer them I usually just break them, so this is what you get. Sigh...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.