DC Comics Overview
Hi, my name's Zeelee and I'll be introducing DC comics fandom and running the van for this month. *waves*
A note: This is *not* an overview of the whole DC universe. Rather, it’s an overview of the characters that appear the most in fic, and an overview of the fandom from a fic-writer’s point-of-view. If I gave even brief bios of *every* character in every comic, I would go insane. Therefore, these are just characters and events that are relevant to the fic I and others will be reccomending. Also, this overview covers *only* the comics, not the cartoons or the movies or any other spinoffs.
Note the second: DC comics canon is freakishly confusing. Continuity is constantly being retconned or changed or simply erased from existence; characters are often showing up in several different books simultaneously; and because so many different writers have taken a turn at writing these characters over the decades, fans often have many different versions of the characters to work with. Not to mention comics time, which, well-TPTB has tried and tried to make it make some modicum of sense, but safe to say that comics time moves slowly enough so that Batman will never turn forty, and that anyone who tries to wrap their brain around comics time will end up with a migraine, and leave it at that.
Still with me? Then let’s move on to the main attraction.
The Main Characters
The Batfamily
Batman aka Bruce Wayne
The grimmest of the grim, the bleakest of the bleak, Dark Knight and protector of Gotham City. When Bruce Wayne was only a child, his parents were gunned down in front of him in a dark alley. Bruce was raised by his butler, Alfred. Now he is a broody man who puts on a kevlar Batsuit and fights crime at night. By day, he is billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, who is so foolish no one could believe he is Batman. He works with many different heroes in Gotham City, especially Oracle, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman and Huntress; this convoluted community of heroes is known as the Batfamily.
Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon (Babs), formerly Batgirl I
Babs is the only daughter of police commissioner James Gordon. When she was nineteen, she became the first Batgirl, fighting crime alongside Batman and then-Robin Dick Grayson. After a few years of this, she was ambushed in her home by the Joker, who shot her to hurt her father. Babs lost the use of her legs. Instead of retiring and giving up, she became Oracle, serving as a coordination and a communication center for the heroes of Gotham. She runs a team of female vigilantes, called the Birds of Prey, which consists of Helena Bertinelli, aka Huntress, and her wife her best friend Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary (more on both of them later). She knows everything that happens in Gotham and pretty much anywhere else, and every hero who's ever worn spandex is in her address book. She and Dick Grayson are romantically entangled, and though they are currently separated, they're not likely to get over each other any time soon.
The Robins
A note from yours truly: The Robins can get complicated. In current comics canon, there have been four. Venturing further into this fandom can get confusing, as you’ll come across toon Robin, The Dark Knight Returns Robin, and probably other Robins that even I don’t know about, but for our purposes? There have only been four.
Robin I, aka Dick Grayson, currently Nightwing
Richard 'Dick' Grayson was born the son of two circus performers, and become a trapeze artist and acrobat himself. When Dick was young -- his exact age is unclear due to multiple retcons -- his parents were killed in front of him during a circus performance. Bruce Wayne happened to be in the audience, took pity on young Dick and took him in as his 'ward.' He became Robin not long afterward.
Sometime after Dick went to college and dropped out again, Bruce and Dick had a falling out. Dick stopped being Robin and left Gotham. He took on the name Nightwing instead, and fought crime on his own and with the Teen Titans. They have reconciled since then, though Nightwing mostly works in Bludhaven, generally described as an even worse city than Gotham.
Dick is a lifelong gymnast raised by a man who doesn't hug. Hence, he is beautiful and deeply emotionally needy. He does not, and possibly cannot, let anyone go, and he doesn't stop caring for people he has loved. His relationship with Batman/Bruce is best described as "sticky and hot," and that's canon.
Robin II, aka Jason Todd
After Dick left the Robin suit behind, Bruce missed him. Bruce met Jason when Jason, a young black-haired orphan, stole the tires of the Batmobile. Bruce took Jason home and and tied him to a chair. (No, really. That’s canon. And yeah, it was pretty much as porny as it sounds.) Bruce officially adopted Jason -- which he had not done with Dick -- and made him Robin. Jason, unlike Bruce and Dick, almost killed (or actually killed, depending on who you ask) several villains. When Bruce realized that there was a problem, he put Jason on probation. Jason ran away to look for his mother, who was not dead. She turned him over to the Joker, who then beat Jason bloody with a crowbar and blew him up, killing him.
Metatextually, he died because comic fans voted for that outcome. This has led to conflicting canon on what he was really like -- whether he was good enough to be Robin, or whether he, as a character, deserved it. Recently, in the Batman title, he has been resurrected as a villain (for the second time). Maybe.
Jason has a small but dedicated fanbase (including yours truly), and there’s a lot of excellent fic about him that I will definitely be reccing.
Robin III, aka Tim Drake
When he was four, Tim Drake's parents took him to see the circus. Young Timmy got to meet Dick Grayson, who grinned at him. Unfortunately, this was the same night that Dick's parents were gruesomely murdered.
Tim grew up idolizing Dick from afar. When he was nine, Tim deciphered the secret of Batman and Robin's secret identities. He started stalking Batman and especially Robin, taking pictures of them. His parents were often absent, in mind if not in body, and didn't prevent their young son from wandering the city.
Tim was thirteen when Jason Todd died and Batman was left without a Robin. He noticed that Batman was more reckless and got hurt more. He found Dick, who was off being Nightwing, and said, "Batman needs a Robin." When Dick said, "Not me, kid," Tim took on the role.
Tim’s mom died when he first became Robin, and his father died just recently. Tim is introverted and can seem a little cold, and he’s very smart and dedicated to being the best Robin he can be. He and Stephanie had a ‘We’re not straight we just love each other’ (quote from petronelle) romance going for a while, until Tim was forced to quit being Robin and Steph took over. Tim went back to the suit, though, shortly before his dad died. He’s a giant woobie and possibly the most-loved character in fandom.
Robin IV, aka Stephanie Brown, formerly known as Spoiler.
Stephanie is the daughter of a depressed, alcoholic mother and a father who is a thief with delusions of grandeur who called himself The Cluemaster. She made her crimefighting debut by turning her dad over to Batman and Robin and then showing up herself as the masked Spoiler to punch him a few times. Batman frequently discouraged her from continuing as a vigilante, but Steph refused to give up crimefighting. She and Robin started dating -- she didn't know his real name (Tim) until Batman told her. Eventually, Tim's dad forced him to stop being Robin, and Steph decided to take over.
Batman fired her after only a few months, and soon after she was gruesomely killed in something that was depicted as her fault, but which could have been prevented had Batman treated her with the respect and trust he gave the other Robins. She was best friends with Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, when she was alive, and Cass has been one of the only characters we have seen visibly grieving for Steph on panel. She’s been compared a lot with Jason, the other dead Robin, seeing as they share a lot of the same personality traits.
Batgirl II, aka Cassandra Cain
Cass was raised from birth by the legendary assassin, David Cain, who used only body language with her, rather than a spoken or sign language. Cass killed a man for her father when she was about six, and the shock and horror she felt at taking a life stayed with her until at age seventeen, she ran away from her father. Determined to make up for her sordid past, she became Batgirl. She's the most physically skilled of any in the Batfamily, at least as good as Batman himself. After she became Batgirl, her brain was magically reorganized to allow her to speak. She and Stephanie became very close, and before Steph died she was going to teach Cass how to read.
Presently, she is working in Bludhaven, more or less with Robin. She and Batman have an increasingly ambiguous relationship.
Huntress, aka Helena Bartinelli
Helena Bertinelli's father was a mob boss in Gotham. When she was a girl, her entire family was shot in front of her. She learned to use martial arts and weapons to protect herself, and she took on the name Huntress in order to track down her family's killers. That task over, she fought with the Justice League of America, then with the Batfamily. Robin immediately discovered her real name. Batman doesn't trust her. She had a one-night stand with Nightwing that made her relationship with him complicated, and her relationship with Oracle even more so. She's been part of the Birds of Prey for a while, where she works with Oracle and Black Canary.
Helena’s sort of the black sheep of the Batfamily. Though she’s constantly trying to live up to Batman’s strict standards, he’s never been at all welcoming to her; the only Gotham hero with whom she’s had a fairly consistent good relationship with is Tim.
Other Gotham folks who pop up every once in a while:
Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, former thief and now hero, on-and-off affair with Batman.
Jim Gordon, former police commissioner and Babs’ father; one of Batman’s oldest friends. Recently retired.
Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary, Bird of Prey and Babs’ best friend. She’s had an on-again, off-again relationship with Oliver Queen, Green Arrow; currently they’re off. She also has a motherly relationship with Roy.
Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce’s butler who raised him, and also raised Dick. He’s canonically the ‘mom’ of the Batfamily, and is awesome beyond words.
Catalina, aka Tarantula, anti-hero and Dick’s ex-girlfriend. Now in prison.
The Titans
Most of the fic out there focuses on the Batfamily and the various characters in the Teen Titans. Of course, not every Titan gets written about a lot, as there have probably been at least 30 Titans in the past few decades or so, but these are the ones that do. The current team of Titans consists of Robin, Superboy, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Speedy and Raven.
Arsenal, aka Roy Harper, formerly known as Speedy.
Roy used to be the sidekick to Green Arrow (Oliver Queen), and went by the name of Speedy. He was raised on an Indian reservation, ,and learned archery there, and Ollie took him in as a sidekick when he was about thirteen or so (canon is iffy on dates and ages, as always). Along with the first Robin (Dick), Wonder Girl I (Donna Troy), Kid Flash I (Wally West), and Aqualad (Garth), he founded the first team of Teen Titans.
Ollie was a really shitty mentor, and when Roy was seventeen or so he got addicted to heroin. He kicked the habit eventually, and soon after quit heroing for a while; then he picked up the name Arsenal, and used not just arrows as his weapons but a huge assortment of different projectile weapons. Along the way, he had a daughter (Lian) with Cheshire, a villainess who has tried to kill him on more than one occasion. Recently, he founded the Outsiders, a new team of relatively young heroes.
Roy is flirtatious, handsome, and deeply insecure. He has a pretty good relationship with Ollie, considering that Ollie neglected him enough to let him get hooked on heroin. Recently, he was shot five times in the chest, shaking his already-shaky confidence in himself even more. He looks to his parent-figures and to Nightwing/Dick for support.
The Flash, aka Wally West, formerly Kid Flash I
Wally grew up with kind of an asshole father, but other than that he had a normal childhood. He idolized the Flash as a kid, and didn’t know that his uncle, Barry Allen, *was* the Flash. While meeting with Barry in the same lab where a chemical accident turned Barry into the Flash, lightning struck and gave Wally speed powers, too.
Wally was one of the founding members of the Titans, back when he went by Kid Flash and was the original Flash’s sidekick. When Barry Allen, the Flash, died in the Crisis, he became the Flash. He’s joined and quit the Titans quite a lot, and is currently with the JLA. He has a wife named Linda, and is good friends with Dick and Roy. He’s also fanonically the “straightest Titan," which... isn’t saying much.
Superboy, aka Kon-el or Conner Kent
Kon’s origins are kind of messy and complicated, so I’ll summarize it. Kon is the cloned lovechild of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent.
I’m gonna say that again, in case anyone missed it: He is the canonical lovechild of Lex and Clark.
Kon was cloned and aged to sixteen by Cadmus Labs when Superman died (he got better). Eventually, he ran away to Hawaii to do his own thing. Clark would drop by every once in a while to keep up the pretense of being Superboy's mentor, but he and Kon were never really all that close. After some time, he named Superboy Kon-El, signifying that he welcomed Kon into the 'family' and giving him an identity (up until then Kon had only been going by Superboy).
Kon has always been flirtatious, though he had a long-term relationship with a reporter named Tana Moon until she was killed in front of him. He's also pretty cocky, though he's insecure underneath -- the task of being the next Superman is a lot to live up to, and since Kon found out about where the other half of his genes came from, he's had even more doubts about his own worthiness. Recently, Clark sent Kon to live with Mr. and Mrs. Kent in Smallville, and gave him the alias Conner Kent. Kon openly hates Smallville, especially Smallville High, and skips school and gets detention a lot, though he stays because he 'can't say no to Superman.' (That really is the canonical explanation.) On the weekends, he works with the present group of Teen Titans, including Robin (Tim), Kid Flash (Bart), and his girlfriend Wonder Girl (Cassie), whom he has kissed a few times.
Kid Flash, aka Bart Allen, formerly known as Impulse
Bart is from the future. He's the grandson of Barry Allen, the first Flash. When he was born there was something wrong with his metabolism: his speed was making him grow at an accelerated rate, so that by the time he was four his body looked sixteen. He was raised in a Virtual Reality environment, basically a giant video game, and he completely missed out on things like his own mortality, or learning the consequences of his actions. Thus, when his parents smuggled him to the current century in the hopes that Wally West, the current Flash, could stop his accelerated metabolism (he did), he was impulsive and rash and had no concept of the idea that he could die if he wasn't careful. Because of this, Batman named him Impulse.
Bart is technically about four years old, though mentally and physically he's fifteen or so; he behaves like someone with ADHD, very hyper and easily distractable, though he has improved over the years. Wally, the current Flash, doesn't think he's good enough to be the next Flash. Recently, he was shot in the knee, and had to get operated on without anaesthetic because his speedster metabolism processed it too fast to be at all effective. This made him grow up a little: he read the entire San Francisco library in an hour, realized that -- unlike previous Flashes -- he remembers everything he reads and thus has the potential to be really, amazingly smart, and changed his name to Kid Flash.
Wonder Girl II, aka Cassie Sandsmark
Cassie *used* to be a cool, ambitious tomboy who wanted to be the best hero ever someday and had a cute little fangirl crush on Superboy. She lead Young Justice for a while, and had cute snarky subtext with her best friend, Arrowette, but then she started dating Superboy. Sadly, it seems that her personality was a casualty of said relationship. (Although sources tell me that you can find Wonder Girl with a personality in the Wonder Woman comics, just not in Teen Titans.)
Cassie actually has a pretty normal background, unusual for teen superheroes: she was raised by her single mother, she does well in school, she has a pretty good relationship with her mom, and she asked Zeus for super-powers so she could be Wonder Woman’s sidekick. You know, the usual. Donna Troy, the original Wonder Girl, did most of her mentoring and training, and it hit Cassie pretty hard when Donna died. She’s best friends with Cissie aka Arrowette, and goes to an all-girls boarding school with Cissie (and there so needs to be more femslash porn about that situation. Just sayin’.).
Cissie King-Jones, formerly known as Arrowette
Cissie isn’t actually a Titan, but she was a founding member of Young Justice along with Robin, Wonder Girl, Impulse and Superboy. She was an archer, though unrelated to Green Arrow, and instantly befriended Cassie. She went into superheroing because her mother wanted to; she used to have a really bad relationship with her mother, feeling that her mom was forcing her into a life she didn’t want, and when she almost killed a man she quit superheroing. She still hung around with the Young Justice kids a lot, though, and that didn’t change when they became the Titans. She’s still very close with Bart, Tim, Cassie and Kon.
Mia Dearden, aka Speedy II
Mia was a teenaged prostitute that got... well, not so much ‘rescued’ by Green Arrow as she saw GA at work, connected him to Ollie Queen, and then ended up working for Ollie (not in *that* way) and living with him (not in that way, either). She’s smartmouthed, streetsmart and stubborn, and almost immediately started learning archery after Ollie took her in. She pestered and pestered him to let her be Speedy, but he said no; then she was diagnosesd with H.I.V., and he relented. She just barely joined the Teen Titans, and is still getting to know the team.
Starfire, aka Koriand’r (Kory)
Kory was on the latest Titans team until just recently, when she joined the Outsiders instead. Kory started out as the Sueiest Sue to ever Sue, which actually has made her kind of loveable. She is an alien (the last of her kind, oh angst!), and thus has all sorts of funny ideas about sex and love on this planet. She’s gorgeous, seven feet tall, has orange skin and great hair. She dated Dick for a long time and they almost got married, and she’s very strong-willed and quick to anger. She is the very definition of Mary Sue, but we love her anyway because she has alien flowers that can be used in sex pollen fics.
Beast Boy, aka Garfield Logan (Gar), and Cyborg, aka Victor Stone (Vic)
I mention these two together because they are practically canonically married. Gar is a green dude who can transform into any animal, and a former child actor (he’s a total attention ho); Vic is a former star athlete-turned-cyborg. They love each other lots and lots and lots.
Teams
The Justice League
While the members of the Justice League are probably the most central and important characters in the canon, most of them don’t get much fic. However, since they are important if you’re going to read the canon, I’ll spend some time on them here.
The most prominent (most written about) Leaguers:
Superman, aka Clark Kent-do I really need to give him a summary? He’s married to Lois Lane, he’s from Krypton, he loves Batman and lives in Metropolis. He’s from Smallville and has the World’s Best Parents.
Batman, aka Bruce Wayne
The Flash, aka Wally West
Wonder Woman, aka Diana-Diana is from Themyscira, an island of Amazons. She has superstrength and can fly, and is damn cool. She hangs out with Superman and Batman a lot.
The Martian Manhunter, aka J’onn Jonnz-J’onn is a green alien from Mars. He is a telepathic shapeshifter who is superstrong and can fly. He’s serious and has kind of a dry sense of humor, he likes oreos, and he is awesome.
Green Lantern-There have been a lot of Green Lanterns, and most of them have at least a little bit of fic to their name. Hal Jordan was the first GL, and he went evil (although it’s been retconned that no, he didn’t go evil, he was just inhabited by an intergalactic evil yellow bug-thing). He died (he got better), and the GL after him was Kyle Rayner, a regular guy artist-type with a great ass. John Stewart and Guy Gardner were GL’s around the same time Hal was, there to pick up the slack in case Hal couldn’t do his job anymore.
Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen-Ollie has been heroing for a long time. He was dead for a while, but he got better. He has an illegitimate son named Connor Hawke (who was *almost* made canonically gay before TPTB chickened out) who took on the name Green Arrow, and has a fairly good relationship with Roy at the moment. Just recently, he took on a new Speedy, Mia. He’s a horndog and can’t keep his dick in his pants, and was best friends with Hal Jordan.
Other JLA people:
Hawkman
Zatanna
Black Canary, occasionally
Fire
Ice (currently deceased)
Plastic Man
Aquaman
Elongated Man
The Atom
Vixen
Blue Beetle (currently deceased)
Booster Gold
Other Teams
The Outsiders, a team that Roy founded when the Titans broke up in the tpb Graduation Day. It consists of Arsenal, Nightwing, Shift, Grace, Thunder, Jade, Indigo, and Starfire.
Justice League Elite, an offshoot of the JLA that does mostly undercover and other slightly dirty work, composed mostly of reformed criminals, plus Green Arrow, Flash and Batgirl (who went undercover with them as Kasumi).
Young Justice, a team of sidekicks that Robin, Superboy and Impulse founded. They broke up in Graduation Day, and the founding members went on to be Teen Titans.
The Justice Society of America, or JSA, a huge team consisting mostly of the older, golden and silver age heroes.
The Legion of Super Heroes, a team from the 30th century. Their comic book takes place almost solely in the future, a universe almost completely different from the mainstream DCU, but there’s been a huge surge of renewed interest in them in the fandom lately, so I thought I’d mention them.
Recent Events
I’m not even going to try summarizing all the canon, so I’ll just sum up the most important recent events.
The Crisis-okay, actually, this isn’t a recent event at all, but it needs explaining, so. Back in the mid-80’s, DC realized that, whoa, they sure had written a whole lot of crack-tastic stuff through the decades, and that they had about four decades of continuity that their writers needed to keep up with. So they decided to erase all the continuity up to that point, and start over. There was some sort of plot that they used in the actual comics to explain it, and the old Supergirl and Barry Allen died in the Crisis, but to be truthful I don’t really understand what exactly happened, and I don’t think anyone does. All you need to know is that when someone talks about a pre-crisis something or other, they’re usually talking about the old, silver age comics version.
War Games-this was a big long plot arc that took place in Gotham and mostly affected the Batfamily. It wasn’t the best written arc ever, and the plot is pretty confusing, so here’s what you need to know: Stephanie was fired from being Robin, and then accidentally set off the events of the arc, and died when it was over; Tim went back to being Robin in the middle of it all; and Batman shoved pretty much everyone away from him but Dick, sending Batgirl and Robin off to Bludhaven and causing Oracle to storm off to Metropolis with Black Canary and Huntress. This all happened very, very recenly-according to canon, only a few weeks have passed since it all went down. Though, again, see the weirdness of comics time.
Identity Crisis-this was a seven-issue mini mostly starring the JLA. It centered around the big mystery of who was killing the family members of superheroes, and it was a very good, touching read and I highly reccomend it. The two biggest things that happened in this event were Tim’s dad being murdered, and the reveal that way back in the beginning of the Justice League, a bunch of Leaguers wiped Batman’s mind to keep him from discovering something horrific that they’d done to a villain.
DC Countdown-basically a gimic that DC pulled in an attempt to kick off this year’s Big! Important! Life-changing Event!, and pull in new readers. Important here mostly because it killed off Blue Beetle, pissing off a lot of fen. Well, supposedly it’s more important than that, but I have my doubts. It also doesn’t show up in fanfic much, so.
No Man’s Land-This event happened years ago, but it gets referred to a lot in fic, so I’ll explain it. Basically, Gotham City suffered from a devastating earthquake and a plague at the same time, and for a while turned into a very small third-world country, dubbed ‘No Man’s Land.’ It was like this for a while, and if you can get ahold of the trades chronicling No Man’s Land, they’re quite good.
The Titans’ Future-A few months ago (a few weeks ago in canon time, but-yeah), the Teen Titans were all stranded in the future. This was an incredibly bleak future, showing a grim, evil Tim who had become Batman and liked to kill people, a grim, evil Kon who had become Superman and called Lex Luthor ‘Dad,’ and so forth. They defeated the evil Titans, managed to get back to their present, and are determined never to let this future become reality.
The Villains
So many of DC’s villains are awesome enough to deserve their own section. They get a lot of play in canon (a cool series called Villains United just started), and a decent amount of fic, too.
Lex Luthor, Superman’s nemesis. Lex’s history gets retconned a *lot,* and in the Superman: Birthright miniseries it was established that yes, Clark and Lex were childhood friends, and yes, they split up due to a miscommunication on Clark’s part and Lex went evil. Lex was president for a long time, but then he got into a big fight with Superman and supposedly died, but not really. He is also one of the co-founders of Villains United, a sort of... ‘union for supervillains’. For Lex fans, I highly reccomend the Lex Luthor: Man of Steel miniseries that’s coming out right now, as it has gorgeous art and super slashiness between Lex and Clark and Lex and Bruce.
The Joker, the biggest bad in Gotham. The Joker is one of the oldest, most complex, most scary villain in Batman’s repertoire. He shot and crippled Babs when she was Batgirl, and he beat Jason Todd to death with a crowbar. He has kind of a disturbing, slashy relationship with Batman, though there’s not much fic about them because it’s just too icky. Evidence of the Joker’s creepy gay creepiness.
Two-face, another big bad in Gotham. Two-face was originally Harvey Dent, a big-time lawyer and one of Bruce Wayne’s best friends. However, he got in with the wrong crowd, and got acid splashed on his face and went insane. Batman has never forgiven himself for letting his friend down, and deep down still thinks he can save Harvey.
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, mentioned together because they’re practically married. Harley is kind of Joker’s sidekick/girlfriend-she was a nurse at Arkham when he stayed there once, and fell in love with him and went insane. Poison Ivy controls plants and can control men and women with pheromone powers. She and Harley are together almost all the time, and they’re adorable in their own evil, villainous way.
Deathstroke, one of the best assassins on Earth. He’s been mostly a Titans villain in the past, but lately he’s sort of become the Wolverine of DC-meaning that he’s guest-starring in every book all the time. He’s a bad-ass, sexy motherfucker, and has creepy bdsm-like slashy vibes with many of the Titans.
Lady Shiva, another one of the best assassins on Earth. She’s an insanely skilled ninja, and anyone with sense is afraid of her. When Tim was in Europe training himself in various martial arts in order to be a better Robin, he ran into her and she took him in, calling him ‘Little Bird’ and training him. Recently in the Batgirl book, Cass had a huge showdown with her and actually managed to beat her.
Predominant ‘Ships
Though there’s a lot of really good het and gen in this fandom, it’s mainly about the slash. (Because really, with canon like this, how can we not?) And people write pretty much any pairing imaginable, but for now, I’ll stick to the major and semi-major ones.
Bruce/Clark
This ‘ship is so canon, there is an actual ongoing comic book called Superman/Batman. They have their own logo, for pete’s sake. There isn’t a ton of fic, mostly because I think that there’s so much history behind the pairing that people find it daunting, but it’s commonly accepted that Bruce and Clark are married, married, married.
Bruce/Dick
People pair Bruce with all his Robins except for the female ones, but Bruce/Dick is the original, the most iconic, the most angsty and epic. Their relationship is almost always complicated and angsty and frustrating, but their love is pure and practically canon.
Bruce/Jason
Even though Jason wasn’t Robin for long, he wore the panties long enough to make Bruce fall in love with him. Jay was an angry young man, and he and Bruce fought a *lot,* but Bruce also recognized a lot of himself in Jason, and Bruce was pretty much all Jason had. Now that Jason is dead, Batman spends a lot of time angsting about Jason and how much he loved him, and plenty of villains have used the memory of him to attempt to cripple Bruce.
Bruce/Tim
Bruce and Tim have a complicated relationship. Tim is a lot like Bruce, and probably the least Robin-like of all the Robins. (Robin’s purpose is supposedly to keep Batman from becoming too grim, and, well... we love Timmy, but he’s not exactly cheerfulness and light.) He and Batman tend to clash a lot, especially over whether or not Tim is going to become the next Batman. There’s a lot of fic.
Tim/Dick
Tim has idolized Dick since he was four, made his whole purpose in life about Dick, stalked Dick for years, and now automatically looks to Dick for guidance in just about everything he does, yet supposedly they’re ‘like brothers.’ Um... sure, DC, go right ahead and keep thinking that...
Roy/Dick
Roy and Dick are old friends, and while they bicker a lot in the pages of Outsiders, they are clearly having sex off panel. Grace Choi, Roy’s casual sex buddy on the team, says of them (and I swear this is a direct quote): ‘I always thought you boys would make a swell couple in an erotic Butch and Sundance kind of way’. Which, yeah, sums up their relationship pretty well.
Tim/Kon
And this is where I admit to being horribly, shamelessly biased: Tim/Kon is far and away my OTP in this fandom--it’s what got me into this fandom in the first place. This is because Tim/Kon is practically canon in all sorts of wonderful, beautiful ways. They’re best friends, they’re polar opposites, they have long, intense conversations and snark at each other, and they tell each other secrets. (Tim knew about half of Kon’s DNA being from Luthor before anyone else did.) Geoff Johns, the current writer of Teen Titans, has a tendency to ignore all the other characters in order to prove to the readers how pure and true the love of Tim and Kon is. This is one of the most popular pairings in fandom, and there’s a ton of great fic.
Kon/Bart
Kon and Bart have a lot in common, and in Young Justice they were always hanging out together and being cute and slashy and getting into tons of trouble. They’re really good friends, though in the current Titans book their friendship has been played down to emphasize Tim and Kon’s friendship. There’s a lot of fic.
Bart/Tim
Tim and Bart are even more polar opposites than Tim and Kon are. When Tim led Young Justice, he was always losing his temper with Bart and Bart’s impulsiveness, but they become very good friends. Kon/Bart/Tim also gets written a lot (OT3! OT3!).
Steph/Cass
Steph was pretty much Cass’s only real friend. They were really close, and Cass started training Steph to fight better in return for Steph teaching her how to read. They were really, really, really in love, and then Steph tragically died, devastating poor Cass.
Babs/Dinah
Babs and Dinah are best friends, and as you can see from the picture above, there’s a *lot* of subtext there. They act married all the time, and I could really write a whole ship_manifesto on them, but I’ll stop there.
Kon/Clark
Okay, fine, so there’s not a *lot* of Kon/Clark out there, but the fic that *is* out there is really, really good. (And they’re one of my favorite pairings, so.) Kon and Clark have kind of a weird relationship, because even though they’re genetically related and Clark has been sorta/kinda trying to be Kon’s father lately, there’s really nothing paternal about their relationship. Kon alternates between fanboying Clark and feeling resentful of him, and Clark pretty much has no idea *what* to do with the teenaged boy that was dropped into his life. A quote from one of Kon’s inner monologues: ‘No one can say no to Superman. Not even... me?’
Het ‘ships
I admit up front that I don’t really read much het fic, or follow the main ‘ships, but they are out there.
Babs/Dick-possibly the most popular het ‘ship in fandom. Babs and Dick have a long, complex relationship that is way too complicated to get into fully here. She was Batgirl and he was Robin, they were very good friends for a long time, and for the past several years they’ve had a pretty passionate romantic relationship. Babs broke it off, though, saying that Dick was becoming too much like Batman. They’ve been broken up for a while, but the likelihood that they’ll get back together is high.
Tim/Steph-Steph got Tim to go out with her basically by stalking him and kissing him at inopportune moments until he took her on a date. They were really, really cute together, even though Tim still seemed like he was only interested in girls academically, and Steph spent half the time flirting with Batgirl.
Tim/Cass-They worked in Bludhaven together after Steph’s death. They’re both scarily competent and scarily Battish, and they both have serious daddy issues and communicate best through kicking the shit out of something. They were both in love with Steph, and in a weird, fucked-up way they’d be perfect for each other.
Bruce/Selina-Bruce and Selina have had an on-again, off-again relationship, most recently during War Games, I believe. It’s obvious that they both really care about each other, but neither is the type to settle down and accept the other’s lifestyle.
Bruce/Diana-They work really well together, they have chemistry and Diana refuses to put up with Bruce’s shit. They’re cute.
Lois/Clark-what’s there to say? They’re married, they love each other lots, they’re cool when canon actually remembers that Clark is married to Lois, not Bruce.
Dick/Kory-they loved each other lots, and almost got married. Kory got Dick to loosen up and was there for him when Batman dumped him (no, there really is no other word for what happened). She canonically believes in polyamory, which has been shamelessly used as an excuse for threesome fic.
How To Get Started
If you’ve made it through the mess above, I congratulate you, and I promise you that getting into the canon is not as complicated or hard as it probably seems. (That is, if you’re getting into it for fic purposes. If you’re bent on reading all the canon there is, I wish you good luck; you’ll be reading back issues till the day you die.) DC is pretty good about putting most of their stuff out in trade paperbacks, which you can either find in the graphic novels section of your bookstore, in any comic book store, or online.
Good trades to start out with:
--Teen Titans: A Kid’s Game. It collects the first seven issues of the most recent Teen Titans series, and it’s what hooked me into this fandom. It’s *incredibly* slashy, has fantastic art, will have you falling in love with Tim, Bart and Kon, and you don’t need to have read anything else to understand the plots.
--Bruce Wayne: Murderer is a great introduction to the Batfamily. The plot is that Bruce Wayne has been framed for murder, and all the Bats have to work together to prove him innocent.
--Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds is great if you like femslashy subtext. It focuses on Oracle, Black Canary, and Huntress, and again, you don’t need to know much continuity to enjoy it.
--Graduation Day is a short mini that’s the precursor to the current Teen Titans book. It’s a great look at the main characters in the Titans and Young Justice teams.
--Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, also known as the Gayest Comic Book In All Existence. Public Enemies chronicles the first eight issues or so, and has some pretty screwy plots, but we don’t care about the plots because Batman and Superman practically have sex on panel. If you like slash, I highly reccomend picking up this trade and every issue of Superman/Batman that you can find.
--Pretty much anything by: Gail Simone, Devin Grayson, Judd Winick, Greg Rucka, Joe Kelly or Mark Waid.
Online Fandom
On LJ:
dcfic_index, the lifesaver of every fan. An archive listing all the DC fic posted to livejournal. To find the fic, click on the memories; fics are sorted by pairing and character.
titans_together, a community for discussion, fanart and fic featuring any of the past or present Titans.
batfic, a community for fic about, you guessed it, the Batfamily.
dc_clocktower, a place where fans can post links to DC comics meta and reviews.
comics_fanart, a place for any and all comics fanart, but a lot of DC stuff gets posted there.
dc_flashfiction, a flashfic community.
scans_daily, fans post comic book scans. A lot of DC stuff and a lot of slashy stuff gets posted there.
comics_genfic, a community for all comics gen fic that has a lot of DC stuff.
The Newbie Guide to the DC fandom.
The DC Comics Ship Manifesto’s, all of the DC comics manifestos posted to ship_manifesto. There’s a ton of good stuff there, including lengthy manifestos on the biggest het pairings and most of the big slash pairings.
Websites and Mailing Lists:
From what I can tell, the fandom is mostly concentrated on Livejournal these days, but there are still some fic archives and active mailing lists.
Offpanel.net, a huge site hosting the works of many different authors. A lot of slash, a lot of het, a lot of gen.
One-nine-hundred, a Jason fansite with fic, fanart, and detailed background on the character.
Spoiler Space, a Stephanie fansite with fic, fanart, and detailed background on the character.
The DC section of comicfic.net. Comicfic.net is mostly an X-men fic archive, but there’s a big chunk of Vertigo and DC fic there, too.
The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe, a useful tool for anyone getting familiar with the canon.
Titans Tower, a source for all things Titans, with character summaries, timelines, e.t.c.
Thundercrack!, an older archive that houses quite a few different authors. No longer active, but a good place to find old-school fic.
Newsarama, a good site for comic news and creator interviews.
Outside the Lines, the master mailing list for all comics fic.
Second Bananas, a mailing list for fic of secondary, more obscure characters.
DCcomicslash, a mailing list for, you guessed it, DC coimcs slash.
Huge, *huge* thanks to petronelle, evadne_, caia_comica, sageness and anyone else who listened to me bitch, held my hand or kept me from waxing *too* prolific during the course of writing this overview.
A note: This is *not* an overview of the whole DC universe. Rather, it’s an overview of the characters that appear the most in fic, and an overview of the fandom from a fic-writer’s point-of-view. If I gave even brief bios of *every* character in every comic, I would go insane. Therefore, these are just characters and events that are relevant to the fic I and others will be reccomending. Also, this overview covers *only* the comics, not the cartoons or the movies or any other spinoffs.
Note the second: DC comics canon is freakishly confusing. Continuity is constantly being retconned or changed or simply erased from existence; characters are often showing up in several different books simultaneously; and because so many different writers have taken a turn at writing these characters over the decades, fans often have many different versions of the characters to work with. Not to mention comics time, which, well-TPTB has tried and tried to make it make some modicum of sense, but safe to say that comics time moves slowly enough so that Batman will never turn forty, and that anyone who tries to wrap their brain around comics time will end up with a migraine, and leave it at that.
Still with me? Then let’s move on to the main attraction.
The Main Characters
The Batfamily
Batman aka Bruce Wayne
The grimmest of the grim, the bleakest of the bleak, Dark Knight and protector of Gotham City. When Bruce Wayne was only a child, his parents were gunned down in front of him in a dark alley. Bruce was raised by his butler, Alfred. Now he is a broody man who puts on a kevlar Batsuit and fights crime at night. By day, he is billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, who is so foolish no one could believe he is Batman. He works with many different heroes in Gotham City, especially Oracle, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman and Huntress; this convoluted community of heroes is known as the Batfamily.
Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon (Babs), formerly Batgirl I
Babs is the only daughter of police commissioner James Gordon. When she was nineteen, she became the first Batgirl, fighting crime alongside Batman and then-Robin Dick Grayson. After a few years of this, she was ambushed in her home by the Joker, who shot her to hurt her father. Babs lost the use of her legs. Instead of retiring and giving up, she became Oracle, serving as a coordination and a communication center for the heroes of Gotham. She runs a team of female vigilantes, called the Birds of Prey, which consists of Helena Bertinelli, aka Huntress, and her wife her best friend Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary (more on both of them later). She knows everything that happens in Gotham and pretty much anywhere else, and every hero who's ever worn spandex is in her address book. She and Dick Grayson are romantically entangled, and though they are currently separated, they're not likely to get over each other any time soon.
The Robins
A note from yours truly: The Robins can get complicated. In current comics canon, there have been four. Venturing further into this fandom can get confusing, as you’ll come across toon Robin, The Dark Knight Returns Robin, and probably other Robins that even I don’t know about, but for our purposes? There have only been four.
Robin I, aka Dick Grayson, currently Nightwing
Richard 'Dick' Grayson was born the son of two circus performers, and become a trapeze artist and acrobat himself. When Dick was young -- his exact age is unclear due to multiple retcons -- his parents were killed in front of him during a circus performance. Bruce Wayne happened to be in the audience, took pity on young Dick and took him in as his 'ward.' He became Robin not long afterward.
Sometime after Dick went to college and dropped out again, Bruce and Dick had a falling out. Dick stopped being Robin and left Gotham. He took on the name Nightwing instead, and fought crime on his own and with the Teen Titans. They have reconciled since then, though Nightwing mostly works in Bludhaven, generally described as an even worse city than Gotham.
Dick is a lifelong gymnast raised by a man who doesn't hug. Hence, he is beautiful and deeply emotionally needy. He does not, and possibly cannot, let anyone go, and he doesn't stop caring for people he has loved. His relationship with Batman/Bruce is best described as "sticky and hot," and that's canon.
Robin II, aka Jason Todd
After Dick left the Robin suit behind, Bruce missed him. Bruce met Jason when Jason, a young black-haired orphan, stole the tires of the Batmobile. Bruce took Jason home and and tied him to a chair. (No, really. That’s canon. And yeah, it was pretty much as porny as it sounds.) Bruce officially adopted Jason -- which he had not done with Dick -- and made him Robin. Jason, unlike Bruce and Dick, almost killed (or actually killed, depending on who you ask) several villains. When Bruce realized that there was a problem, he put Jason on probation. Jason ran away to look for his mother, who was not dead. She turned him over to the Joker, who then beat Jason bloody with a crowbar and blew him up, killing him.
Metatextually, he died because comic fans voted for that outcome. This has led to conflicting canon on what he was really like -- whether he was good enough to be Robin, or whether he, as a character, deserved it. Recently, in the Batman title, he has been resurrected as a villain (for the second time). Maybe.
Jason has a small but dedicated fanbase (including yours truly), and there’s a lot of excellent fic about him that I will definitely be reccing.
Robin III, aka Tim Drake
When he was four, Tim Drake's parents took him to see the circus. Young Timmy got to meet Dick Grayson, who grinned at him. Unfortunately, this was the same night that Dick's parents were gruesomely murdered.
Tim grew up idolizing Dick from afar. When he was nine, Tim deciphered the secret of Batman and Robin's secret identities. He started stalking Batman and especially Robin, taking pictures of them. His parents were often absent, in mind if not in body, and didn't prevent their young son from wandering the city.
Tim was thirteen when Jason Todd died and Batman was left without a Robin. He noticed that Batman was more reckless and got hurt more. He found Dick, who was off being Nightwing, and said, "Batman needs a Robin." When Dick said, "Not me, kid," Tim took on the role.
Tim’s mom died when he first became Robin, and his father died just recently. Tim is introverted and can seem a little cold, and he’s very smart and dedicated to being the best Robin he can be. He and Stephanie had a ‘We’re not straight we just love each other’ (quote from petronelle) romance going for a while, until Tim was forced to quit being Robin and Steph took over. Tim went back to the suit, though, shortly before his dad died. He’s a giant woobie and possibly the most-loved character in fandom.
Robin IV, aka Stephanie Brown, formerly known as Spoiler.
Stephanie is the daughter of a depressed, alcoholic mother and a father who is a thief with delusions of grandeur who called himself The Cluemaster. She made her crimefighting debut by turning her dad over to Batman and Robin and then showing up herself as the masked Spoiler to punch him a few times. Batman frequently discouraged her from continuing as a vigilante, but Steph refused to give up crimefighting. She and Robin started dating -- she didn't know his real name (Tim) until Batman told her. Eventually, Tim's dad forced him to stop being Robin, and Steph decided to take over.
Batman fired her after only a few months, and soon after she was gruesomely killed in something that was depicted as her fault, but which could have been prevented had Batman treated her with the respect and trust he gave the other Robins. She was best friends with Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, when she was alive, and Cass has been one of the only characters we have seen visibly grieving for Steph on panel. She’s been compared a lot with Jason, the other dead Robin, seeing as they share a lot of the same personality traits.
Batgirl II, aka Cassandra Cain
Cass was raised from birth by the legendary assassin, David Cain, who used only body language with her, rather than a spoken or sign language. Cass killed a man for her father when she was about six, and the shock and horror she felt at taking a life stayed with her until at age seventeen, she ran away from her father. Determined to make up for her sordid past, she became Batgirl. She's the most physically skilled of any in the Batfamily, at least as good as Batman himself. After she became Batgirl, her brain was magically reorganized to allow her to speak. She and Stephanie became very close, and before Steph died she was going to teach Cass how to read.
Presently, she is working in Bludhaven, more or less with Robin. She and Batman have an increasingly ambiguous relationship.
Huntress, aka Helena Bartinelli
Helena Bertinelli's father was a mob boss in Gotham. When she was a girl, her entire family was shot in front of her. She learned to use martial arts and weapons to protect herself, and she took on the name Huntress in order to track down her family's killers. That task over, she fought with the Justice League of America, then with the Batfamily. Robin immediately discovered her real name. Batman doesn't trust her. She had a one-night stand with Nightwing that made her relationship with him complicated, and her relationship with Oracle even more so. She's been part of the Birds of Prey for a while, where she works with Oracle and Black Canary.
Helena’s sort of the black sheep of the Batfamily. Though she’s constantly trying to live up to Batman’s strict standards, he’s never been at all welcoming to her; the only Gotham hero with whom she’s had a fairly consistent good relationship with is Tim.
Other Gotham folks who pop up every once in a while:
Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, former thief and now hero, on-and-off affair with Batman.
Jim Gordon, former police commissioner and Babs’ father; one of Batman’s oldest friends. Recently retired.
Dinah Lance, aka Black Canary, Bird of Prey and Babs’ best friend. She’s had an on-again, off-again relationship with Oliver Queen, Green Arrow; currently they’re off. She also has a motherly relationship with Roy.
Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce’s butler who raised him, and also raised Dick. He’s canonically the ‘mom’ of the Batfamily, and is awesome beyond words.
Catalina, aka Tarantula, anti-hero and Dick’s ex-girlfriend. Now in prison.
The Titans
Most of the fic out there focuses on the Batfamily and the various characters in the Teen Titans. Of course, not every Titan gets written about a lot, as there have probably been at least 30 Titans in the past few decades or so, but these are the ones that do. The current team of Titans consists of Robin, Superboy, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Speedy and Raven.
Arsenal, aka Roy Harper, formerly known as Speedy.
Roy used to be the sidekick to Green Arrow (Oliver Queen), and went by the name of Speedy. He was raised on an Indian reservation, ,and learned archery there, and Ollie took him in as a sidekick when he was about thirteen or so (canon is iffy on dates and ages, as always). Along with the first Robin (Dick), Wonder Girl I (Donna Troy), Kid Flash I (Wally West), and Aqualad (Garth), he founded the first team of Teen Titans.
Ollie was a really shitty mentor, and when Roy was seventeen or so he got addicted to heroin. He kicked the habit eventually, and soon after quit heroing for a while; then he picked up the name Arsenal, and used not just arrows as his weapons but a huge assortment of different projectile weapons. Along the way, he had a daughter (Lian) with Cheshire, a villainess who has tried to kill him on more than one occasion. Recently, he founded the Outsiders, a new team of relatively young heroes.
Roy is flirtatious, handsome, and deeply insecure. He has a pretty good relationship with Ollie, considering that Ollie neglected him enough to let him get hooked on heroin. Recently, he was shot five times in the chest, shaking his already-shaky confidence in himself even more. He looks to his parent-figures and to Nightwing/Dick for support.
The Flash, aka Wally West, formerly Kid Flash I
Wally grew up with kind of an asshole father, but other than that he had a normal childhood. He idolized the Flash as a kid, and didn’t know that his uncle, Barry Allen, *was* the Flash. While meeting with Barry in the same lab where a chemical accident turned Barry into the Flash, lightning struck and gave Wally speed powers, too.
Wally was one of the founding members of the Titans, back when he went by Kid Flash and was the original Flash’s sidekick. When Barry Allen, the Flash, died in the Crisis, he became the Flash. He’s joined and quit the Titans quite a lot, and is currently with the JLA. He has a wife named Linda, and is good friends with Dick and Roy. He’s also fanonically the “straightest Titan," which... isn’t saying much.
Superboy, aka Kon-el or Conner Kent
Kon’s origins are kind of messy and complicated, so I’ll summarize it. Kon is the cloned lovechild of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent.
I’m gonna say that again, in case anyone missed it: He is the canonical lovechild of Lex and Clark.
Kon was cloned and aged to sixteen by Cadmus Labs when Superman died (he got better). Eventually, he ran away to Hawaii to do his own thing. Clark would drop by every once in a while to keep up the pretense of being Superboy's mentor, but he and Kon were never really all that close. After some time, he named Superboy Kon-El, signifying that he welcomed Kon into the 'family' and giving him an identity (up until then Kon had only been going by Superboy).
Kon has always been flirtatious, though he had a long-term relationship with a reporter named Tana Moon until she was killed in front of him. He's also pretty cocky, though he's insecure underneath -- the task of being the next Superman is a lot to live up to, and since Kon found out about where the other half of his genes came from, he's had even more doubts about his own worthiness. Recently, Clark sent Kon to live with Mr. and Mrs. Kent in Smallville, and gave him the alias Conner Kent. Kon openly hates Smallville, especially Smallville High, and skips school and gets detention a lot, though he stays because he 'can't say no to Superman.' (That really is the canonical explanation.) On the weekends, he works with the present group of Teen Titans, including Robin (Tim), Kid Flash (Bart), and his girlfriend Wonder Girl (Cassie), whom he has kissed a few times.
Kid Flash, aka Bart Allen, formerly known as Impulse
Bart is from the future. He's the grandson of Barry Allen, the first Flash. When he was born there was something wrong with his metabolism: his speed was making him grow at an accelerated rate, so that by the time he was four his body looked sixteen. He was raised in a Virtual Reality environment, basically a giant video game, and he completely missed out on things like his own mortality, or learning the consequences of his actions. Thus, when his parents smuggled him to the current century in the hopes that Wally West, the current Flash, could stop his accelerated metabolism (he did), he was impulsive and rash and had no concept of the idea that he could die if he wasn't careful. Because of this, Batman named him Impulse.
Bart is technically about four years old, though mentally and physically he's fifteen or so; he behaves like someone with ADHD, very hyper and easily distractable, though he has improved over the years. Wally, the current Flash, doesn't think he's good enough to be the next Flash. Recently, he was shot in the knee, and had to get operated on without anaesthetic because his speedster metabolism processed it too fast to be at all effective. This made him grow up a little: he read the entire San Francisco library in an hour, realized that -- unlike previous Flashes -- he remembers everything he reads and thus has the potential to be really, amazingly smart, and changed his name to Kid Flash.
Wonder Girl II, aka Cassie Sandsmark
Cassie *used* to be a cool, ambitious tomboy who wanted to be the best hero ever someday and had a cute little fangirl crush on Superboy. She lead Young Justice for a while, and had cute snarky subtext with her best friend, Arrowette, but then she started dating Superboy. Sadly, it seems that her personality was a casualty of said relationship. (Although sources tell me that you can find Wonder Girl with a personality in the Wonder Woman comics, just not in Teen Titans.)
Cassie actually has a pretty normal background, unusual for teen superheroes: she was raised by her single mother, she does well in school, she has a pretty good relationship with her mom, and she asked Zeus for super-powers so she could be Wonder Woman’s sidekick. You know, the usual. Donna Troy, the original Wonder Girl, did most of her mentoring and training, and it hit Cassie pretty hard when Donna died. She’s best friends with Cissie aka Arrowette, and goes to an all-girls boarding school with Cissie (and there so needs to be more femslash porn about that situation. Just sayin’.).
Cissie King-Jones, formerly known as Arrowette
Cissie isn’t actually a Titan, but she was a founding member of Young Justice along with Robin, Wonder Girl, Impulse and Superboy. She was an archer, though unrelated to Green Arrow, and instantly befriended Cassie. She went into superheroing because her mother wanted to; she used to have a really bad relationship with her mother, feeling that her mom was forcing her into a life she didn’t want, and when she almost killed a man she quit superheroing. She still hung around with the Young Justice kids a lot, though, and that didn’t change when they became the Titans. She’s still very close with Bart, Tim, Cassie and Kon.
Mia Dearden, aka Speedy II
Mia was a teenaged prostitute that got... well, not so much ‘rescued’ by Green Arrow as she saw GA at work, connected him to Ollie Queen, and then ended up working for Ollie (not in *that* way) and living with him (not in that way, either). She’s smartmouthed, streetsmart and stubborn, and almost immediately started learning archery after Ollie took her in. She pestered and pestered him to let her be Speedy, but he said no; then she was diagnosesd with H.I.V., and he relented. She just barely joined the Teen Titans, and is still getting to know the team.
Starfire, aka Koriand’r (Kory)
Kory was on the latest Titans team until just recently, when she joined the Outsiders instead. Kory started out as the Sueiest Sue to ever Sue, which actually has made her kind of loveable. She is an alien (the last of her kind, oh angst!), and thus has all sorts of funny ideas about sex and love on this planet. She’s gorgeous, seven feet tall, has orange skin and great hair. She dated Dick for a long time and they almost got married, and she’s very strong-willed and quick to anger. She is the very definition of Mary Sue, but we love her anyway because she has alien flowers that can be used in sex pollen fics.
Beast Boy, aka Garfield Logan (Gar), and Cyborg, aka Victor Stone (Vic)
I mention these two together because they are practically canonically married. Gar is a green dude who can transform into any animal, and a former child actor (he’s a total attention ho); Vic is a former star athlete-turned-cyborg. They love each other lots and lots and lots.
Teams
The Justice League
While the members of the Justice League are probably the most central and important characters in the canon, most of them don’t get much fic. However, since they are important if you’re going to read the canon, I’ll spend some time on them here.
The most prominent (most written about) Leaguers:
Superman, aka Clark Kent-do I really need to give him a summary? He’s married to Lois Lane, he’s from Krypton, he loves Batman and lives in Metropolis. He’s from Smallville and has the World’s Best Parents.
Batman, aka Bruce Wayne
The Flash, aka Wally West
Wonder Woman, aka Diana-Diana is from Themyscira, an island of Amazons. She has superstrength and can fly, and is damn cool. She hangs out with Superman and Batman a lot.
The Martian Manhunter, aka J’onn Jonnz-J’onn is a green alien from Mars. He is a telepathic shapeshifter who is superstrong and can fly. He’s serious and has kind of a dry sense of humor, he likes oreos, and he is awesome.
Green Lantern-There have been a lot of Green Lanterns, and most of them have at least a little bit of fic to their name. Hal Jordan was the first GL, and he went evil (although it’s been retconned that no, he didn’t go evil, he was just inhabited by an intergalactic evil yellow bug-thing). He died (he got better), and the GL after him was Kyle Rayner, a regular guy artist-type with a great ass. John Stewart and Guy Gardner were GL’s around the same time Hal was, there to pick up the slack in case Hal couldn’t do his job anymore.
Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen-Ollie has been heroing for a long time. He was dead for a while, but he got better. He has an illegitimate son named Connor Hawke (who was *almost* made canonically gay before TPTB chickened out) who took on the name Green Arrow, and has a fairly good relationship with Roy at the moment. Just recently, he took on a new Speedy, Mia. He’s a horndog and can’t keep his dick in his pants, and was best friends with Hal Jordan.
Other JLA people:
Hawkman
Zatanna
Black Canary, occasionally
Fire
Ice (currently deceased)
Plastic Man
Aquaman
Elongated Man
The Atom
Vixen
Blue Beetle (currently deceased)
Booster Gold
Other Teams
The Outsiders, a team that Roy founded when the Titans broke up in the tpb Graduation Day. It consists of Arsenal, Nightwing, Shift, Grace, Thunder, Jade, Indigo, and Starfire.
Justice League Elite, an offshoot of the JLA that does mostly undercover and other slightly dirty work, composed mostly of reformed criminals, plus Green Arrow, Flash and Batgirl (who went undercover with them as Kasumi).
Young Justice, a team of sidekicks that Robin, Superboy and Impulse founded. They broke up in Graduation Day, and the founding members went on to be Teen Titans.
The Justice Society of America, or JSA, a huge team consisting mostly of the older, golden and silver age heroes.
The Legion of Super Heroes, a team from the 30th century. Their comic book takes place almost solely in the future, a universe almost completely different from the mainstream DCU, but there’s been a huge surge of renewed interest in them in the fandom lately, so I thought I’d mention them.
Recent Events
I’m not even going to try summarizing all the canon, so I’ll just sum up the most important recent events.
The Crisis-okay, actually, this isn’t a recent event at all, but it needs explaining, so. Back in the mid-80’s, DC realized that, whoa, they sure had written a whole lot of crack-tastic stuff through the decades, and that they had about four decades of continuity that their writers needed to keep up with. So they decided to erase all the continuity up to that point, and start over. There was some sort of plot that they used in the actual comics to explain it, and the old Supergirl and Barry Allen died in the Crisis, but to be truthful I don’t really understand what exactly happened, and I don’t think anyone does. All you need to know is that when someone talks about a pre-crisis something or other, they’re usually talking about the old, silver age comics version.
War Games-this was a big long plot arc that took place in Gotham and mostly affected the Batfamily. It wasn’t the best written arc ever, and the plot is pretty confusing, so here’s what you need to know: Stephanie was fired from being Robin, and then accidentally set off the events of the arc, and died when it was over; Tim went back to being Robin in the middle of it all; and Batman shoved pretty much everyone away from him but Dick, sending Batgirl and Robin off to Bludhaven and causing Oracle to storm off to Metropolis with Black Canary and Huntress. This all happened very, very recenly-according to canon, only a few weeks have passed since it all went down. Though, again, see the weirdness of comics time.
Identity Crisis-this was a seven-issue mini mostly starring the JLA. It centered around the big mystery of who was killing the family members of superheroes, and it was a very good, touching read and I highly reccomend it. The two biggest things that happened in this event were Tim’s dad being murdered, and the reveal that way back in the beginning of the Justice League, a bunch of Leaguers wiped Batman’s mind to keep him from discovering something horrific that they’d done to a villain.
DC Countdown-basically a gimic that DC pulled in an attempt to kick off this year’s Big! Important! Life-changing Event!, and pull in new readers. Important here mostly because it killed off Blue Beetle, pissing off a lot of fen. Well, supposedly it’s more important than that, but I have my doubts. It also doesn’t show up in fanfic much, so.
No Man’s Land-This event happened years ago, but it gets referred to a lot in fic, so I’ll explain it. Basically, Gotham City suffered from a devastating earthquake and a plague at the same time, and for a while turned into a very small third-world country, dubbed ‘No Man’s Land.’ It was like this for a while, and if you can get ahold of the trades chronicling No Man’s Land, they’re quite good.
The Titans’ Future-A few months ago (a few weeks ago in canon time, but-yeah), the Teen Titans were all stranded in the future. This was an incredibly bleak future, showing a grim, evil Tim who had become Batman and liked to kill people, a grim, evil Kon who had become Superman and called Lex Luthor ‘Dad,’ and so forth. They defeated the evil Titans, managed to get back to their present, and are determined never to let this future become reality.
The Villains
So many of DC’s villains are awesome enough to deserve their own section. They get a lot of play in canon (a cool series called Villains United just started), and a decent amount of fic, too.
Lex Luthor, Superman’s nemesis. Lex’s history gets retconned a *lot,* and in the Superman: Birthright miniseries it was established that yes, Clark and Lex were childhood friends, and yes, they split up due to a miscommunication on Clark’s part and Lex went evil. Lex was president for a long time, but then he got into a big fight with Superman and supposedly died, but not really. He is also one of the co-founders of Villains United, a sort of... ‘union for supervillains’. For Lex fans, I highly reccomend the Lex Luthor: Man of Steel miniseries that’s coming out right now, as it has gorgeous art and super slashiness between Lex and Clark and Lex and Bruce.
The Joker, the biggest bad in Gotham. The Joker is one of the oldest, most complex, most scary villain in Batman’s repertoire. He shot and crippled Babs when she was Batgirl, and he beat Jason Todd to death with a crowbar. He has kind of a disturbing, slashy relationship with Batman, though there’s not much fic about them because it’s just too icky. Evidence of the Joker’s creepy gay creepiness.
Two-face, another big bad in Gotham. Two-face was originally Harvey Dent, a big-time lawyer and one of Bruce Wayne’s best friends. However, he got in with the wrong crowd, and got acid splashed on his face and went insane. Batman has never forgiven himself for letting his friend down, and deep down still thinks he can save Harvey.
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, mentioned together because they’re practically married. Harley is kind of Joker’s sidekick/girlfriend-she was a nurse at Arkham when he stayed there once, and fell in love with him and went insane. Poison Ivy controls plants and can control men and women with pheromone powers. She and Harley are together almost all the time, and they’re adorable in their own evil, villainous way.
Deathstroke, one of the best assassins on Earth. He’s been mostly a Titans villain in the past, but lately he’s sort of become the Wolverine of DC-meaning that he’s guest-starring in every book all the time. He’s a bad-ass, sexy motherfucker, and has creepy bdsm-like slashy vibes with many of the Titans.
Lady Shiva, another one of the best assassins on Earth. She’s an insanely skilled ninja, and anyone with sense is afraid of her. When Tim was in Europe training himself in various martial arts in order to be a better Robin, he ran into her and she took him in, calling him ‘Little Bird’ and training him. Recently in the Batgirl book, Cass had a huge showdown with her and actually managed to beat her.
Predominant ‘Ships
Though there’s a lot of really good het and gen in this fandom, it’s mainly about the slash. (Because really, with canon like this, how can we not?) And people write pretty much any pairing imaginable, but for now, I’ll stick to the major and semi-major ones.
Bruce/Clark
This ‘ship is so canon, there is an actual ongoing comic book called Superman/Batman. They have their own logo, for pete’s sake. There isn’t a ton of fic, mostly because I think that there’s so much history behind the pairing that people find it daunting, but it’s commonly accepted that Bruce and Clark are married, married, married.
Bruce/Dick
People pair Bruce with all his Robins except for the female ones, but Bruce/Dick is the original, the most iconic, the most angsty and epic. Their relationship is almost always complicated and angsty and frustrating, but their love is pure and practically canon.
Bruce/Jason
Even though Jason wasn’t Robin for long, he wore the panties long enough to make Bruce fall in love with him. Jay was an angry young man, and he and Bruce fought a *lot,* but Bruce also recognized a lot of himself in Jason, and Bruce was pretty much all Jason had. Now that Jason is dead, Batman spends a lot of time angsting about Jason and how much he loved him, and plenty of villains have used the memory of him to attempt to cripple Bruce.
Bruce/Tim
Bruce and Tim have a complicated relationship. Tim is a lot like Bruce, and probably the least Robin-like of all the Robins. (Robin’s purpose is supposedly to keep Batman from becoming too grim, and, well... we love Timmy, but he’s not exactly cheerfulness and light.) He and Batman tend to clash a lot, especially over whether or not Tim is going to become the next Batman. There’s a lot of fic.
Tim/Dick
Tim has idolized Dick since he was four, made his whole purpose in life about Dick, stalked Dick for years, and now automatically looks to Dick for guidance in just about everything he does, yet supposedly they’re ‘like brothers.’ Um... sure, DC, go right ahead and keep thinking that...
Roy/Dick
Roy and Dick are old friends, and while they bicker a lot in the pages of Outsiders, they are clearly having sex off panel. Grace Choi, Roy’s casual sex buddy on the team, says of them (and I swear this is a direct quote): ‘I always thought you boys would make a swell couple in an erotic Butch and Sundance kind of way’. Which, yeah, sums up their relationship pretty well.
Tim/Kon
And this is where I admit to being horribly, shamelessly biased: Tim/Kon is far and away my OTP in this fandom--it’s what got me into this fandom in the first place. This is because Tim/Kon is practically canon in all sorts of wonderful, beautiful ways. They’re best friends, they’re polar opposites, they have long, intense conversations and snark at each other, and they tell each other secrets. (Tim knew about half of Kon’s DNA being from Luthor before anyone else did.) Geoff Johns, the current writer of Teen Titans, has a tendency to ignore all the other characters in order to prove to the readers how pure and true the love of Tim and Kon is. This is one of the most popular pairings in fandom, and there’s a ton of great fic.
Kon/Bart
Kon and Bart have a lot in common, and in Young Justice they were always hanging out together and being cute and slashy and getting into tons of trouble. They’re really good friends, though in the current Titans book their friendship has been played down to emphasize Tim and Kon’s friendship. There’s a lot of fic.
Bart/Tim
Tim and Bart are even more polar opposites than Tim and Kon are. When Tim led Young Justice, he was always losing his temper with Bart and Bart’s impulsiveness, but they become very good friends. Kon/Bart/Tim also gets written a lot (OT3! OT3!).
Steph/Cass
Steph was pretty much Cass’s only real friend. They were really close, and Cass started training Steph to fight better in return for Steph teaching her how to read. They were really, really, really in love, and then Steph tragically died, devastating poor Cass.
Babs/Dinah
Babs and Dinah are best friends, and as you can see from the picture above, there’s a *lot* of subtext there. They act married all the time, and I could really write a whole ship_manifesto on them, but I’ll stop there.
Kon/Clark
Okay, fine, so there’s not a *lot* of Kon/Clark out there, but the fic that *is* out there is really, really good. (And they’re one of my favorite pairings, so.) Kon and Clark have kind of a weird relationship, because even though they’re genetically related and Clark has been sorta/kinda trying to be Kon’s father lately, there’s really nothing paternal about their relationship. Kon alternates between fanboying Clark and feeling resentful of him, and Clark pretty much has no idea *what* to do with the teenaged boy that was dropped into his life. A quote from one of Kon’s inner monologues: ‘No one can say no to Superman. Not even... me?’
Het ‘ships
I admit up front that I don’t really read much het fic, or follow the main ‘ships, but they are out there.
Babs/Dick-possibly the most popular het ‘ship in fandom. Babs and Dick have a long, complex relationship that is way too complicated to get into fully here. She was Batgirl and he was Robin, they were very good friends for a long time, and for the past several years they’ve had a pretty passionate romantic relationship. Babs broke it off, though, saying that Dick was becoming too much like Batman. They’ve been broken up for a while, but the likelihood that they’ll get back together is high.
Tim/Steph-Steph got Tim to go out with her basically by stalking him and kissing him at inopportune moments until he took her on a date. They were really, really cute together, even though Tim still seemed like he was only interested in girls academically, and Steph spent half the time flirting with Batgirl.
Tim/Cass-They worked in Bludhaven together after Steph’s death. They’re both scarily competent and scarily Battish, and they both have serious daddy issues and communicate best through kicking the shit out of something. They were both in love with Steph, and in a weird, fucked-up way they’d be perfect for each other.
Bruce/Selina-Bruce and Selina have had an on-again, off-again relationship, most recently during War Games, I believe. It’s obvious that they both really care about each other, but neither is the type to settle down and accept the other’s lifestyle.
Bruce/Diana-They work really well together, they have chemistry and Diana refuses to put up with Bruce’s shit. They’re cute.
Lois/Clark-what’s there to say? They’re married, they love each other lots, they’re cool when canon actually remembers that Clark is married to Lois, not Bruce.
Dick/Kory-they loved each other lots, and almost got married. Kory got Dick to loosen up and was there for him when Batman dumped him (no, there really is no other word for what happened). She canonically believes in polyamory, which has been shamelessly used as an excuse for threesome fic.
How To Get Started
If you’ve made it through the mess above, I congratulate you, and I promise you that getting into the canon is not as complicated or hard as it probably seems. (That is, if you’re getting into it for fic purposes. If you’re bent on reading all the canon there is, I wish you good luck; you’ll be reading back issues till the day you die.) DC is pretty good about putting most of their stuff out in trade paperbacks, which you can either find in the graphic novels section of your bookstore, in any comic book store, or online.
Good trades to start out with:
--Teen Titans: A Kid’s Game. It collects the first seven issues of the most recent Teen Titans series, and it’s what hooked me into this fandom. It’s *incredibly* slashy, has fantastic art, will have you falling in love with Tim, Bart and Kon, and you don’t need to have read anything else to understand the plots.
--Bruce Wayne: Murderer is a great introduction to the Batfamily. The plot is that Bruce Wayne has been framed for murder, and all the Bats have to work together to prove him innocent.
--Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds is great if you like femslashy subtext. It focuses on Oracle, Black Canary, and Huntress, and again, you don’t need to know much continuity to enjoy it.
--Graduation Day is a short mini that’s the precursor to the current Teen Titans book. It’s a great look at the main characters in the Titans and Young Justice teams.
--Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, also known as the Gayest Comic Book In All Existence. Public Enemies chronicles the first eight issues or so, and has some pretty screwy plots, but we don’t care about the plots because Batman and Superman practically have sex on panel. If you like slash, I highly reccomend picking up this trade and every issue of Superman/Batman that you can find.
--Pretty much anything by: Gail Simone, Devin Grayson, Judd Winick, Greg Rucka, Joe Kelly or Mark Waid.
Online Fandom
On LJ:
dcfic_index, the lifesaver of every fan. An archive listing all the DC fic posted to livejournal. To find the fic, click on the memories; fics are sorted by pairing and character.
titans_together, a community for discussion, fanart and fic featuring any of the past or present Titans.
batfic, a community for fic about, you guessed it, the Batfamily.
dc_clocktower, a place where fans can post links to DC comics meta and reviews.
comics_fanart, a place for any and all comics fanart, but a lot of DC stuff gets posted there.
dc_flashfiction, a flashfic community.
scans_daily, fans post comic book scans. A lot of DC stuff and a lot of slashy stuff gets posted there.
comics_genfic, a community for all comics gen fic that has a lot of DC stuff.
The Newbie Guide to the DC fandom.
The DC Comics Ship Manifesto’s, all of the DC comics manifestos posted to ship_manifesto. There’s a ton of good stuff there, including lengthy manifestos on the biggest het pairings and most of the big slash pairings.
Websites and Mailing Lists:
From what I can tell, the fandom is mostly concentrated on Livejournal these days, but there are still some fic archives and active mailing lists.
Offpanel.net, a huge site hosting the works of many different authors. A lot of slash, a lot of het, a lot of gen.
One-nine-hundred, a Jason fansite with fic, fanart, and detailed background on the character.
Spoiler Space, a Stephanie fansite with fic, fanart, and detailed background on the character.
The DC section of comicfic.net. Comicfic.net is mostly an X-men fic archive, but there’s a big chunk of Vertigo and DC fic there, too.
The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe, a useful tool for anyone getting familiar with the canon.
Titans Tower, a source for all things Titans, with character summaries, timelines, e.t.c.
Thundercrack!, an older archive that houses quite a few different authors. No longer active, but a good place to find old-school fic.
Newsarama, a good site for comic news and creator interviews.
Outside the Lines, the master mailing list for all comics fic.
Second Bananas, a mailing list for fic of secondary, more obscure characters.
DCcomicslash, a mailing list for, you guessed it, DC coimcs slash.
Huge, *huge* thanks to petronelle, evadne_, caia_comica, sageness and anyone else who listened to me bitch, held my hand or kept me from waxing *too* prolific during the course of writing this overview.