Why would you do this?

This is a random entry I’ll admit (and a tad bit late to be topical...). But I was looking at the Bat Family one shots for Bruce Wayne the Road Home which came out in October and something just bothers me.

Check out the covers. They are pretty amazing and I like how they all link together and like even more that the only one I’m not getting is on the end so it won’t mess up the flow (and since that is the book I constantly wonder why they even still group it with the Bat books, I wonder if this was done on purpose).

But if you look at the order you are supposed to read the issues in, then things get difficult. According to a recent interview with Fabian Nicieza, who coordinated the event, the proper reading order is Batman and Robin, Red Robin, Outsiders, Batgirl, Catwoman, Gordon, Oracle, Ra’s al Ghul.

That’s a completely different order! Parts are the same, yes, but the simple fact is that they will not read in the order that the covers connect in. This just seems like a strange choice. Did they not have the order set when they asked the cover artist to make these covers? Did the order change at some point? Or was there just a mix up of some kind?

I know it’s a little thing, but I can’t be the only one who doesn’t visit my comic shop every single week. I’ll get all these books together in a week or so. If I hadn’t read this article then I would have just tried to read them in cover order and would have gotten pretty confused when I tried to read the last chapter fourth. I’m hoping that they will make the reading order clear in the comics themselves. It still just really seems like an odd choice to me.

They are awfully pretty covers though, so I’ll let this one slide.