Dueling Justice League Teams? Or Dueling Batmen?

DC has seemed to pride themselves on consistency of editorial message with their relaunch. There's supposed to be great continuity.

Of course, that's questionable, as Justice League's opening arc, set five years ago, appears to conflict with other titles running at the same point in the timeline. But that's the sort of thing that can get overlooked.

Titles that are in the same line try to keep a pretty tight relationship. We've had Frankenstein and OMAC crossover, while Swamp Thing and Animal Man have been swapping background info in prep for their crossover. The Bat family is crossing over shortly. For some reason, Stormwatch, Grifter and Superman are all going to throw their lot in together on a Daemonite arc.

But the one place we don't seem to have continuity is in the Justice League franchise.

In the top right, you'll see a page from Justice League International, where Batman is clearly shown to be a member of the team. He's been in the whole time and rather publicly, too.

So why did Geoff Johns write the following exchange into Justice League?


He's a member of the team he calls a joke. It has only ever existed with him as a member in the current continuity. In fact, he's had chances where he could have let it crumble on its own, but he fought to keep them together. There's no one else as Batman in the current continuity and, even if there were, it'd seem silly for him to have one of his incorporated bunch on the team, but still deride the whole function.

So what's the deal? Johns and his editor can't really be that ignorant of the character's membership on the team he's actually shitting on, can they? I mean, he's on covers, for fuck's sake.