All your apostrophes are coming out garbled in my browser (I’m running Firefox on Linux). Are you by any chance copying and pasting from Microsoft Word? If so, you might try turning off “smart” quotes (a very badly misnamed feature), or writing your posts in a plain-text editor.

In the case of the stories where Batman took a more active role – smashing the Joker’s face with a Batarang or whatnot – presumably the new reality doesn’t take into account what the Batman replacement WOULD HAVE done under the same circumstances, but just plops them into Batman’s place and says “Green Arrow shot him in the face with a boomerang arrow” or something.

That’s more likely. The Tarot reading is good, but it’s not exactly radio. It was never our intent that the Metropolis chapter and the Opal chapter were happening simultaneously.

>> I thought there was no Joker in the altered timeline, since there would have been no Batman to create him (or, for that matter, to give his life meaning).>>

No, there’s a Joker, but he must have a different backstory. This version of reality isn’t strictly causal — take out the Trinity and see how the dominoes fall — it’s something of a patchwork mess, as Firestorm noted. Some things are changed, some are eliminated, some still exist but have had different rationales wadded into their backgrounds.

>> I can just picture the Trinity introducing themselves:
“Hi, I’m Kal-El.”
“Hello. I am Diana.”
“I’m Batman.”>>

But he had a mouthful of corn chips at the time, so it came out, “I’m Atmahn”…

kdb

“Hi, I’m Kal-El.”

“Hello. I am Diana.”

“I’m Batman.”

No, they’ve definitely drawn them before.