You know the story I never need to read again? It’s the one where some vigilante comes to Gotham City and says, “I’m going to use guns and kill criminals. ‘Cause I’m a bad-ass and I’ve got the guts to do what Batman can’t.” And then, ya know, something goes wrong: A kid or a cop gets caught in the crossfire. It turns out the “criminal” was actually innocent. Commissioner Gordon won’t stand for it. Batman says, “Stop being a dick.” Whatever.

Throw in a quote about “staring into the abyss” if you want to get really “edgy” about it.

(And, no, changing it to a flaming sword doesn’t make it “fresh and exciting”. Cut it out.)

This story has been D.O.A. for awhile now, but the recent Battle for the Cowl mega-plot in the Batman comics uses this plot (I kid you not) three different times.

What really cements the creative bankruptcy involved here, however, is that Battle for the Cowl exists specifically because Batman is missing. And Batman is missing specifically because he broke his own rule and fired a gun. Which means that there was actually an opportunity here to take this tired, weary story and breathe a little fresh, legitimate life into it by using it to explore and comment on the decision that Batman had made.

Unfortunately, all three of the writers involved were too busy beating this dead horse to notice the opportunity that was passing them by.

Step 1: I have just read some interesting things about recent DC continuity and would like to check it out.

Step 2: Let’s try Infinite Crisis.

Step 3: Ah, there’s a Countdown to Infinite Crisis. I should read that first.

Step 4: Hmm… Apparently this ties into a bunch of mini-series leading up to Infinite Crisis. Some googling reveals The OMAC Project, Rann-Thanagar War, Days of Vengeance, Villains United, and The Return of Donna Troy.

Step 5: And some more googling tells me what order I should read them in. Also, I seem to have missed a Prelude to Infinite Crisis…

Step 6: … and these mini-series wrap-up in several specials. When should I read those?

Step 7: Oh. Intermixed semi-randomly between the seven issues of Infinite Crisis.

Step 8: Okay, now I can start reading.

Step 9: Three issues into The OMAC Project and apparently the “story continues” with Superman: Sacrifice. Can I just skip that and keep reading this series? … Nope. Nothing makes sense. (In fact, it turns out that Superman: Sacrifice contains the event which arguably triggers the entire Infinite Crisis.)

Step 10: … and Superman: Sacrifice is split across three different Superman comics and a random issue of Wonder Woman.

Step 11: Okay. Tracked those down. I’ll continue reading…

Step 12: And then Infinite Crisis sucked.

(Some of the mini-series were pretty decent, though.)

Why is DC Comics asking me to do this much homework in order to simply read their books?

Admittedly, only some of this material was actually crucial for understanding and appreciating Infinite Crisis (insofar as that drek could appreciated on any level). But that doesn’t actually help, because I had absolutely no way of figuring out which bits weren’t essential until after I’d read them. (And it’s not as if I tried to seek out every issue of DC that crossed over with Infinite Crisis. These are just the major backbones of the event.)

If Marvel and DC really feel it’s important to create this kind of convoluted, multi-title, overlapping continuity, I say more power to them. But, if so, then it would really behoove them to put together reading lists so that readers who are interested in their comics can trivially figure out what they need to read.

Having cleared Infinite Crisis, I proceeded to 52 — which was delightfully straight-forward, except for the bit where you read issues #1 thru #50, then stop and read World War III #1-4, before finishing with 52 #51-52. (This problem, at least, is cleared up in the collections.)

But now I’m trying to figure out Countdown to Final Crisis and, as far as I can tell, it is literally impossible to put together a reading order for its penumbra of narrative. (In fact, all I can find online are people saying, “I dunno.”)

Below the “Read More” barrier, however, I have included my reading order for the first chunk of the modern crisis era at DC Comics (for anyone who might find it useful). I have included my personal grades for each story in parentheses after each title.

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While some ivory scraps can be scavenged from the tusks of beasts, most ivory is mined. In an age long lost, behemoths trampled the land beneath feet which could crush the metropoli of this modern era. Their cylcopean corpses, buried now in vast elephantine graveyards beneath the surface of the earth, have left behind vast deposits of ivory.

The mines themselves are fantastical, but so are the crafts which this mined ivory allows. In the real world, one cannot find slabs of ivory as tall as a man (or taller). One cannot pave royal throne rooms with it. One cannot carve life-size statues from it. Nor can one marvel at the Ivory Palaces of the Seven Island Caliphates.

For Christmas I got a copy of Betrayal at House on the Hill. It’s a great little game. I don’t really have much to say about it at the moment, but I bring it up because the game ships with eight 6-sided dice which are marked as 1d3-1 (generating results of 0, 1, or 2 pips). At one point during the holidays we had the game half set-up when everyone got distracted by some other bit of family business, which left a couple of people mucking about with the dice.

In the process, I was struck with the idea for a silly little dice game that proved amusing enough that I present it here:

1. The first player rolls all 8 dice from Betrayal at House on the Hill.
2. The target number is 6. If you fail to roll 6 pips on your dice, you have lost and the other player scores a point.
3. If you have rolled more than 6 pips, you are allowed to remove a number of dice from the pool equal to the number of extra pips you rolled. (Example: If you roll an 8, you can remove 2 dice from the pool.)
4. Hand the remaining dice to the other player to roll. The target number remains 6.
5. When a player scores a point, the other player rolls all 8 dice and play continues.

We either played to 6 points or swapped in new players in a tag-team style.

Not exactly a high-strategy game, but a strangely satisfying combination of Horse with the random rote of War. Plus dice. (Dice are cool.)

Video games are the only medium in which longer length became an inherent selling point. Is it any wonder that even their best narratives are generally bloated, flaccid, and poorly paced? And then combined with bland, repetitive grinding gameplay activities?

You can see a similar pattern in the serialized novels of the 19th century: When authors are paid by the word, they have an incentive to produce more words. But this impulse, at least, was counteracted by the fact that their readers still wanted a good story and weren’t particularly concerned with length.

Only in video games do you see media consumers focusing on length-of-play as an important feature in and of itself.

A couple years ago I thought this trend might actually be reversing itself as Final Fantasy XIII came under criticism for being too long. But it doesn’t seem to be sticking yet.