Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-436164-20180919233316/@comment-436164-20180920014950

I suppose I might be poking a wasp's nest here, but what I'm really angling for is something a little more... objective for incoming fans of Joker or Two-Face or whoever. Surely "relevant in their publication history" and chronological listing can go hand-in-hand?

Please note that when I say "chronological listing", I have no intention of listing all the stories a character's starred in, just ones that later stories - the further along, the better - call back to. So, my hypothetical Two-Face list would look something like:


 * "The Eye of the Beholder" and/or The Long Halloween, establishing his origin.
 * "Brothers in Arms" and/or Robin: Year One, which explain his special grudge against Dick Grayson.
 * "Prodigal", in which the grudge comes to a head.
 * "No Man's Land", which establishes his obsession with Renee Montoya.
 * "Half a Life", in which that obsession comes to a head.
 * "Hush", which is admittedly kind of a bit part, but pretty important background knowledge for...
 * "Face the Face", as well as...
 * "The Great Leap".

(There's a lot more to go, especially since what I know about the New 52 could fit into a thimble, but I hope I've made my general intention clear.)

It's a system that would focus more on "important" stories than "good" ones, but hell... I for one feel "A Death in the Family" is an utterly garbage story, but nobody would imagine leaving it off a Recommended Reading list for the Joker, now would they? Worse comes to worst, we can keep the "Single Issues" section and put all the interesting-but-irrelevant-to-wider-continuity stories (like Two-Face Strikes Twice! or Crime and Punishment) there.

(Two-Face is an especially interesting case study for a separate Origins/Reboot section. His origin is unusually rich even for a Batman villain - indeed, I've heard more than one person opine it's the only story about him worth telling - which gives us about five different takes on it between 1988 and 2008 alone. Not counting outside media.)