Anyone who’s seen my various on-line posts, or ever talked to me for more than five minutes, knows that I have an enormous capacity for trivia. A lot of that trivia (although by no means all of it) is related to comic books. People always bugged me to write more of it down, which led to the following pages:

• The Golden Age Batman Chronology: One of my favorite comic book subjects is the saga of the Golden Age Batman. In the sixties DC established that the original, forties Batman -- consigned to an alternate world called Earth-Two -- eventually retired and started a family, ultimately dying in 1979, forty years after the beginning of his heroic career. Batman was the first and foremost of my childhood heroes, and I’ve always been fascinated with the notion of a Batman who lived and died in real time. This is a chronological history of his life and times, including the ultimate fates of his family and friends, all annotated so that you can, if you’re so inclined, look up the original stories in which these events took place.

• The Pocket Universe Primer: A complete (and, I hope, coherent) explanation of how the Legion of Super-Heroes was inspired by the adventures of Superboy -- Superman as a boy -- when current Superman continuity says that Superman didn’t don his costume, or even gain his full powers, until he was an adult. This saga became so convoluted that in 1994 DC decided to completely scrap the 35-year history of the Legion and start over, but it’s all explained here, annotated, foot-noted, and cross-referenced to hell and gone. If all of the above is Greek to you, check it out anyway: it’s lots of fun, especially if you’re a fan of alternate timeline stories.

• The Spear of Destiny: Back in the early eighties, DC came up with a clever explanation of why the various superheroes of the Golden Age didn’t use their powers to end World War Two in an afternoon: a mystic barrier created by Adolf Hitler using a mystic artifact called the Spear of Destiny -- the spear that allegedly pierced the side of Christ as he hung on the cross. Amazingly enough, Hitler (whose fascination with the occult is well documented) really did have an artifact that he believed to be the Spear of Destiny, a remarkable story in itself. This page explains both the real-world legend of the Spear and the influence the Spear has played in the history of the DC Universe.

• Back Issue Bin Bonanza: A few suggestions of interesting back issues that are worth a look if you need a (reasonably) cheap comics fix.