News Batman Prequel ‘Pennyworth’ gets series order At Epix
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The whole Batman mythos has a fluid time period.
(And not to single it out, but hell that the classic superhero comics in general. Hell Spiderman's 'Aunt may' should be anywhere from 110 to 130 years old by now; and Peter himself in his late 60ies.
-- Hell, the original 'Batman' was a contemporary back in the time of WWII.)
The whole Batman mythos has a fluid time period.
(And not to single it out, but hell that the classic superhero comics in general. Hell Spiderman's 'Aunt may' should be anywhere from 110 to 130 years old by now; and Peter himself in his late 60ies.
Yeah, but DC basically reinvents its continuity every decade or two so that the hero origins are retold in the present. The whole Earth-One/Earth-Two multiverse idea was predicated on the premise that the heroes had existed 20-some years earlier on Earth-Two, and Alan Brennert's classic "To Kill A Legend" posited another Earth 20 years behind Earth-One where young Bruce's parents were about to be killed and our Batman had the chance to prevent it. Marvel, on the other hand, pretends that everything from 1961 onward is a single continuity spanning only about 10-15 years, even as it continually rewrites and updates the origin stories when it revisits them in flashbacks and the like. So each of the individual, distinct DC continuities tends to have a somewhat more consistent chronology than the single sprawling Marvel continuity.
(Well, with some exceptions. There was the bizarre case of the Brave and the Bold crossovers with Batman and Sgt. Rock in the early '70s, where the stories were explicitly set in the '70s and yet posited that Batman had been active in WWII and had somehow not aged while Sgt. Rock had grown old. No time travel involved, no magic de-aging formulas, just the random craziness of Bob Haney's writing.)
Plus, of course, each screen adaptation is a separate reality of its own and has its own separate chronology -- for instance, Kal-El explicitly arrived on Earth in 1966 in Lois & Clark, 1989 in Smallville, and 1979 in Supergirl (which came out later but featured an older Superman). Each universe has its own consistent timeline even if it disagrees with other interpretations.
So the fact that the Gotham/Pennyworth universe (if it really is a shared universe) has a more ambiguous, era-blending chronology is a creative choice in that particular continuity, unrelated to any others (although it's presumably inspired by the similar era-blending aesthetic of the Burton movies and B:TAS). It just happens to be an alternate reality whose cultural and technological development proceeded at a different pace than ours, or from other Batman/DC screen adaptations' universes. It's a similar kind of chronological mashup to steampunk fiction, which is set in alternate pasts where anachronistically advanced technology exists in an 18th- or 19th-century setting.
I'd watch a series about May and her room-mate Millie pursuing modeling careers in a Mad Men inspired 60's New York, with an on-again off-again double dating arrangement with the Parker brothers.
Yet another Mirror Universe, ladies and gentlemen.
Evil Fascist Britain c.1960s, public executions, London policemen running around with Schmeissers; the fucking Reich still rules Europe; a mixture between "1984", "V for Vendetta" and "Richard the Third" from 1995.
I'm on it.
Evil Fascist Britain c.1960s, public executions, London policemen running around with Schmeissers; the fucking Reich still rules Europe; a mixture between "1984", "V for Vendetta" and "Richard the Third" from 1995.
I'm on it.
So far it sounds like Alfred's own show has been given reasonable treatment, and in a way that adds to continuity without trampling on it. In Batman 66 and the 90s movies, we all think he's just a butler and tailor - but didn't know he was doing all this engaging spy genre stuff. If they're not heavyhanded with Batman/Bruce as a crutch, much less "callback/easter egg/nudge nudge wink wink" garbage for that matter, and leaving enough open for interpretation, then it might actually be worth it. This is indeed refreshing news, thanks to all who contributed in spoiler-free mini-reviews/summaries!!
I've watched the first six episodes, and it's really, really good. I enjoy the weird alternate universe 60s setting, Jack Bannon does a great impression of young Michael Caine, and I absolutely love that theme tune.
Consuidering it takes place a few years after WWII - if you believe it's set in a version of the 1960ies, they missed the mark.
You should get in touch with the writers and correct them because they also think it's set in the 1960s.
Yup. Like Gotham, it's apparently a deliberate amalgam of different eras, not corresponding to the real past.
It is 1968. Alternate history a la "Man in the High Castle"......with the addition of the occult in the past two episodes this thing has got me hooked.
