Well, what the hell. Somebody's got to do it.

--G.
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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.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

I was goin' for more of a Call of Cthulhu thing. Far as I know, the only crazy bitch with a whip in New Gotham these days is Lena. :)

--G.
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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.

Isn't the whole point of the Lovecraftian monstrous realms that no humanly comprehensible concept of space and time can describe them?

--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.

Or any club 'Lise Fleming is deejaying at.

--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.

Or New Jersey.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support, Escapee from NJ.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

It's at the bottom of the ocean on _every_ planet.

Including the ones that don't _have_ oceans.

Who lives in his foul city under the sea?
Dread Cthulhu!

--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.

Horrid and squamous and eldritch is he!

Well, be fair, I'd always liked Steph - hell, somewhere around here I have the issue of Detective Comics she first appeared in. It's just that I'd been out of the room for so long before you clued me in that the last time I saw her, she was still Spoiler and guest-starring occasionally in Cassie's book.

I always thought she'd have been a good fit for the original Young Justice, actually. She could totally have topped the rest of them in the "we've been through all this and Robin still won't tell me his name" running gag they had going on back in the day. :)

--G.
Not that she would have. I'm just saying she totes could've.
-><-
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.

Oh man, she could've made life so VERY interesting for Tim there...

Steph: "There we were at my Lamaze classes, and I still only knew him as 'Alvin'."
YJ: "WHAT?!"
Secret: *Implodes*

Man, I miss Greta... No, it's for the best. She's a normal girl now and Geoff Johns has completely forgotten she exists. If she came back now, to DC-Pretending-To-Be-90's-Marvel-But-Lamer... Yeah, let's not even go there.

In other news, I love the title. Super Secret Triple Encrypted Batmail. You can tell Terry and Helena did that, earning the usual glare-and-growl when Bruce logged on :lol

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

It would've been a long goddam way to go for a joke, admittedly, but Steph's always been about doing stuff the hard way. :)

>Man, I miss Greta... No, it's for the best. She's a normal girl now
>and Geoff Johns has completely forgotten she exists. If she came back
>now, to DC-Pretending-To-Be-90's-Marvel-But-Lamer... Yeah, let's not
>even go there.

I was a little annoyed they ultimately explained her, for the admittedly selfish reason that I had my own notion and was disappointed, in my not very secret inner nerd place, that I could no longer pretend I was right. (This is as opposed to the reason I've never much cottoned to Wolverine Origin, which is just that I think some stuff is better if it's always mysterious.)

Which means if she does ever appear in UF it's going to be one of those "you think you know what the deal is with this character, but you so don't" things, like Darth Vader, that can be interpreted as a creative rethinking or as me completely missing the point depending on how much slack you're willing to cut me. :)

>In other news, I love the title. Super Secret Triple Encrypted
>Batmail. You can tell Terry and Helena did that, earning the usual
>glare-and-growl when Bruce logged on :lol

That's more or less why I figured Steph would be a good fit for the McGinnis Bat Cave: Like Terry, she's clued into the importance of what they're doing but congenitally incapable of taking it entirely seriously. I mean, yes, the stakes are often life-and-death and there's the whole saving-the-city thing and a lot of the time it hurts and stuff, but at the end of the day, they're dressing up as giant animals and fighting crime, am I right? :)

--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.

--------------
Lime2K
The One True Evil Overlord
whose mental voice reads that line as Dr. Wierd every time...

�They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.�
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

Hang on, let me check my files...

Yup, that is indeed one of the episodes in the giant backlog on my TiVo. (A couple fell off the top of the stack before I told it "no, you know what, just keep all of those, it's not like I'm using the disk space for anything else.")

--G.
-><-
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Then I'm glad I was vague in my phrasing of what occurred.

�They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.�
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

I got to that one this afternoon. I'm sort of in awe of the way they managed to make Harm suck even more. I didn't think that could actually be done.

--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.

On another note, is there already a list on the forums of who-all has been in the Batman, Robin, and Batgirl identities, in UF? Right now, I'm thinking Gryphon was Batman I, with Bruce maybe being Robin I (which he was in the Silver Age, though with an uncostumed mentor), and then being Batman II. Dick seems to have been Robin I or II (contemporary with Barbara being Batgirl I?), and then Batman III. Then someone else (Bruce, again?), who trained Tim and Cass, and was kind of a dick, and then Terry is either Batman IV or V. Is that about right?

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

The old "Team Batman" BPGD file comes closest. I've actually got a whole UF Bat Family timeline stashed in the development area, but it's not written to be what we used to call "customer-facing" when I was in tech support; it's just an author reference document.

Roughly, though, and without the dates, it goes like this:

New Gotham Generation "0"
Gryphon (alias Bruce Wayne)	Batman 0
New Gotham Generation 1
Bruce Wayne	Batman 1
Dick Grayson	Robin 1
New Gotham Generation 2
Dick Grayson	Batman 2
Barbara Gordon	Batgirl 1
Jason Todd	Robin 2
New Gotham Generation 3 a/o 6/2411		New Avalon Generation 1 a/o 6/2411
Terry McGinnis	Batman 3	Tim Drake	Robin 3 -> Red Robin 1
Stephanie Brown	Batgirl 3	Cassandra Cain	Robin 4 -> Batgirl 2

To address one of your other points, Terry's been Batman since 2398. He recruited Tim and Cassie (well, technically Tim sort of recruited himself) and was responsible for most of their training, which is why Bruce's interference with both of their careers was so roundly resented by all three.

Y'know what, hell with it, it's not the prettiest presentation, but here's a trimmed version of the timeline without the secret in-development parts:

2316
- Bruce Wayne born

2324
- Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered (not by anyone we know)

2330
- Bruce Wayne (age 14) leaves Kane's World
- Dick Grayson born

2336
- Gryphon arrives on Kane's World, assumes Wayne's identity, begins operating as Batman

2340
- Bruce Wayne (24) returns to Kane's World, switches places with Gryphon, and becomes the second Batman (later Bat Cave historians, for which read "Lena", would declare him "Batman 1" and nickname Gryphon's version "Batman 0" or "Batman Prime")
- Gryphon leaves Kane's World

2342
- Dick Grayson (age 12) becomes Robin

2342-2370
- Stuff happens

2370
- Barbara Gordon born

2371
- Jason Todd born

2375
- Bruce Wayne (59) retires
- Dick Grayson (45) becomes Batman 2

2376
- Selina Kyle (?) leaves Bruce, moves to an undisclosed location on some other planet

2377
- Helena Kyle born

2380
- Terry McGinnis born

2382
- The Joker dies

2383
- Barbara Gordon (age 13) becomes Batgirl

2384
- Jason Todd (age 13) becomes the second Robin
- Dick (53) loses an argument with a Lazarus Pit

2386
- Dick (55, but now physically more like 20) retires due to injuries
- Bruce (70) shuts down the Bat Cave
- Barbara (16) calls it quits gracefully
- Jason (15)... does not, leaving Kane's to take up a new and rather more violent career as Deadpool's sidekick, Redpool
- Bruce is not amused

2387
- James Gordon is tapped to be New Avalon's first permanent Commissioner of Police; he and Barbara relocate there when she graduates from Gotham High. Shortly after, Gordon offers Dick a job on the NAPD, which he accepts

2391
- Tim Drake born

2393
- Rose Wilson born, immediately goes on the road with Deadpool & Redpool, commencing the most screwed-up dysfunctional totally happy childhood in the history of history

2394
- Cassandra Cain born. She isn't as lucky as Rosie in the childhood department, though to an outside observer the difference may be somewhat academic

2398
- Terry McGinnis (age 18) becomes Batman 3, initially somewhat against Bruce's will and/or better judgment

2402
- Selina Kyle may or may not die (Schrödinger's Catwoman?); Helena (25) discovers her father's identity and moves to New Gotham, begins operating as the second Catwoman

2403
- Tim Drake (age 12) becomes the third Robin

2404
- Bruce acknowledges paternity of Helena and adopts her

2405
- Tim (14) meets the Cluemaster's daughter Stephanie Brown (15), deduces that girls are different (how he managed to avoid noticing this before with Lena around, no one has any idea)

2406
- Tim (15) fleesrelocates to New Avalon, founds the Titans

2408
- Terry (28) recruits Cassie Cain (14) as the new Robin; when Bruce (92) horns in and insists that she has to take the title from Tim by force, she defects to the Titans and becomes the second Batgirl instead
- Bruce disappears

2410
- Stephanie (20) becomes the third Batgirl, despite the fact that the second is still operating, 'cause that's how Terry rolls

2411
- Tim (20) revises his costume and starts going by "Red Robin"
- Tim revises his costume again so people will stop mistaking him for Dr. Mid-Nite

As you see there and in the table above it, as of mid-2411 the post of Robin is vacant (as such) and there are two Batgirls, one in each city.

--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.

2) The "Bruce acknowledges paternity and adopts" seems a little... redundant? Like, "Yes this is my daughter, now let me go through all the really obnoxious paperwork involved with adoption" as opposed to "This is my daughter, here's a lab test proving it, we're going home now."
--
-Pasha
What was that feeling again?
Oh yes.
-Rage-

Pretty much, yeah. Love and expectations.

>2) The "Bruce acknowledges paternity and adopts" seems a little...
>redundant? Like, "Yes this is my daughter, now let me go through all
>the really obnoxious paperwork involved with adoption" as opposed to
>"This is my daughter, here's a lab test proving it, we're going home
>now."

It's more the difference between a mere acknowledgement (not necessarily that binding under the Kane's World legal system in matters like, for instance, inheritance) and making her an actual part of the family (such that her name's now Wayne, she has a seat on the Wayne Industries board, and she'll automatically inherit his stuff if and when he dies without a lot of awkward faffing around in probate court). Helena was an adult at the time, so it wasn't as though there was anything to do with custody or seeing that she went to school or anything involved.

--G.
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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.

Adding in what Gryph said, in a lot of jurisdictions in the real world, if the father is not on the birth certificate (or a different person is, for convenience's sake) then the only way for the whole thing to work out is to go through the adoption process. That gives a defining legal situation, everyone's covered up. Sometimes, even if there's no good legal reason, it happens. (Go read back on Wil Wheaton's blog where one of his stepsons asked Wil to legally adopt him, which goes into some details on the situation.)

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

Well, funny story, really.

That hadn't happened yet when I devised the UF version of the current Bat crew, including Catwoman II, and set them up in their present semidomestic situation.

As such, if it did happen, that means Terry's going steady with his half-sister and neither of them knows it.

As such, I can only hope that it is not the case. I mean, that's the way it is in some families around here, but at least the participants knew in advance. Talk about your buzzkills.

Anyway, the UF universe already has such a character, in that Laura Kinney is sort-of-the-clone-daughter of the evil parallel-dimension Dark Claw. :)

--G.
Come on, who remembers Dark Claw Adventures?
-><-
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.

Until I moved, I had the trades with both of his adventures in them.

(I had to cut my book collection radically for a cross-country move, but they went to a reasonably good home.)

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

And yes, I remember DCA. Wasn't that one of the titles that lampshaded that Tim and Jubilee's costumes, as well as roles, were damn near identical at the time?

Yeah, part of the great crossover event leaving to Amalgam Comics, which was a thing of hilarity...

...except for the bit where Tim and Jubilee ended up hanging out, including a scene of them in a gondola in Venice kissing, and the obvious 'this sucks' moment at the end when they undo the universal contact, which was one of the great scenes of that whole event.

(one of the other great scenes is Batman and Captain America staring at each other for an entire page ending with them deciding fighting each other is both useless and counterproductive, so they should figure out what's really going on here.)

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

I never thought there was much to lampshade there, actually. I mean, it's not like the writers of Uncanny ever really pretended Jubilee wasn't dressing like Robin on purpose to tweak Logan. Her '90s costume was a deliberate reference in-story, which I always thought was rather charming. I like to believe she was specifically referencing the old TV show, and inwardly lamenting that Sabretooth did not resemble Cesar Romero.

That said, yes. The Dark Claw Adventures, specifically, was from the second round of Amalgam titles, and was an adventure of the Dark Claw - who had appeared in the first round as a serious combination of Wolverine and Batman - presented in the Bruce Timm-inspired style of the tie-in comic to Batman: The Animated Series, which was genius. For my money, that slightly mindbending concept - a notional issue of a comic tie-in to an animated series that didn't exist about one of the first-round Amalgam characters - was the single best idea anyone involved in the Amalgam Comics experiment ever had. Better than the Dark Claw himself, better than Bruce Wayne Agent of SHIELD, even better than Iron Lantern.

--G.
"Nananananananana nananananananana Dark Claw!"
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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.