Conversely, a lot of complaints are levelled here about the lack of consistency in Batman in recent decades, when that is a character who has not been in the public domain.

I was thinking about Wizard of Oz recently. It didn't take long for there to be non-LFB written Oz stories, but the stories written by Baum didn't have much internal consistency either. Most people think of the Garland movie as the "real" Oz.  Though it differs greatly from the original novel, it was loosely based on the stage play adaptations Baum had help write.

But now there's Wicked, which I couldn't even get through. It seems so popular a world today, yet seems to have fallen so far...

But only the core Batman material will be available right at the start - Bruce Wayne, Gotham, Commissioner Gordon, etc. So creators will have to focus on the fundamentals of the character if they want their stories to feel "real".

It's going to take a while, but I think we may end up with a genuine meritocracy in comics publishing - yes, there will be cheap cash-ins, but there will also be stories produced with real love and care. Not just for Batman, of course, but for Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Captain Marvel, etc. 

I think that, with the passing of time, people will ultimately stop thinking of Superman and Batman as "DC characters" entirely, in the same way we don't think of Sherlock Holmes as a "George Newnes Ltd" character or Dracula as an "Archibald Constable & Company" character. 

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I've been wondering that myself. And of course, will DC decide to start publishing Captain America stories?

Ultimately, it won't matter. When a new Dracula or Sherlock Holmes novel comes out, nobody asks who's publishing it – people just want to know if it's any good.