LEMME NERD-OUT ON YOU FOR A MINUTE FOREVER: Dick Grayson, the first Robin, was the first character in superhero comics to grow up. His lifetime was how you could measure how much time had passed in DCU continuity.

If you put him at ten years old when he became Robin (about a year or so into Batman’s bat-career), a teenager when he co-founds the Teen Titans, in his early twenties by the time he gets to Bludhaven, and in his mid-to-late twenties when he briefly takes on Batman’s mantle while Bruce was presumed dead, then you could comfortably say between 15 and 20 years had passed since Batman and Superman arrived on the scene. All of this was completely sensible, with Dick Grayson’s lifetime functioning as the most reliable measure of story-time in the DCU.

So, if you think of Batman and Superman starting their adventures in their early twenties, then we must assume that pre-New 52, they were in their late thirties. Perfectly sensible for characters with such lengthy adventuring careers, adopted and biological children, etc., but even pre-reboot, the brass at DC made it clear that they wanted Bruce and Clark to be portrayed as under 30, which made no sense. How could Bruce be 28 if that’s how old Dick Grayson was being portrayed? (In my re-fitted view of the Robins’ history, Jason would’ve joined Batman at age 12, Tim at 14, Steph at 18, and Damian at 10, though I realize that some of that fudges numbers that actually appeared in the books. You have to do the same for presidents and dates when looking to make sense of 70+ years of fictional superhero time.)

Anyway, it was just a useful thing. In New 52 continuity, Dick Grayson didn’t become Robin until in his mid-to-late teens, which throws the whole universe out of whack when you think about when each Robin’s career was supposed to have taken place.

This shouldn’t really bother anyone, I guess, and I certainly will trade whatever issues I have with this kind of time-meddling for Scott Snyder’s and Peter Tomasi’s Batman titles, which are excellent.