Continuity
The All Star titles are self-contained story arcs existing outside of official DC Comics continuity. Despite sharing a label with Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman, All Star Batman and Robin exists in its own continuity unrelated to other books in the All Star imprint.
Frank Miller has also stated that All Star Batman and Robin does exist in the same continuity as the other storylines in his "Dark Knight Universe". This consists of Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, its sequel Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Batman: Year One and the Frank Miller/Todd McFarlane collaboration on Spawn/Batman. Of these, only Year One is considered canonical to the mainstream DC Universe. However, this has been proven difficult as The Dark Knight Returns is set during the Cold War with an older Batman while All Star Batman and Robin features a younger Batman in a more modern setting, specifically 2008. An additional story, titled Holy Terror, Batman!, was also to be included within the same continuity. However, in 2010, Miller stated that he was no longer working on the project. He later clarified his statement by explaining that it would feature a new character called The Fixer rather than Batman, and not be published by DC. In 2007, Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Universe" was officially designated as Earth-31 within the new DC Comics Multiverse composed of 52 alternate universes.
Morrison himself has admitted to being uncertain whether his Superman and the version featured in All Star Batman and Robin are the same due to the dramatic time differences between the two books: "I don’t know if it would have worked. For me, I guess I do see it all taking place in the same world even though they seem like very different characters. Frank Miller is doing Batman at the beginning of his career and I am doing Superman at the very end of his life, in the years beyond All Star Batman. But it could be the same character as far as I am concerned. That’s where they may have ended up."
Read more about this topic: All Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder
Famous quotes containing the word continuity:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Only the family, society’s smallest unit, can change and yet maintain enough continuity to rear children who will not be “strangers in a strange land,” who will be rooted firmly enough to grow and adapt.”
—Salvador Minuchin (20th century)