Posted in: Batman, Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics | Tagged: jorge jimenez, matt fraction

"It Doesn't Rain In Gotham, Anymore" – Matt Fraction On Writing Batman

"It Doesn't Rain In Gotham, Anymore" - Matt Fraction on returning to DC and to comic books to write Batman #1

After Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb conclude their first half of Batman Hush 2 later this year (with Batman Hush 2.5 coming sometime in 2026) Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez will relaunch the title for DC Comics with a new Batman #1 in September 2025. Or rather, Batman Vol 4 #1 for those still counting.

Recently, Fraction appeared on Off Panel: A Comics Interview Podcast, where he briefly talked about the new series and what he hopes to achieve with it. We learn that his first comics were Batman, specifically Batman #316 from Len Wein's 1989 run, which was where he started reading comics. We learned that at one point, he was meant to take over Detective Comics, but that it didn't work out. And even though the relaunch only starts in September, he has already written eight or nine issues and is way ahead of schedule. (Even more than Ryan North on Fantastic Four, who is nine months ahead, but that's on the issue published this month!)

He says that the first issue out in September is entirely done, that Jorge Jimenez is currently working on the second issue out in October. And that he had already written the fourth issue by the time that Jorge had finished his last issue written by Chip Zdarsky, before the Batman Hush 2 interlude. He recalled that at a DC Comics editorial retreat earlier in the year, he had to stop talking because when everyone was talking about their plans for May, as he had been talking about the next May.

One thing he says you might notice is that he won't be having it rain in Gotham City. "No rain. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't rain in Gotham anymore". The stories are still mostly at night, but it doesn't need to be raining all the time, and he's not really interested in sad superheroes standing in the dark rain. So no, no Riddler weather machine here either. He wants to write Batman comics that makes people fall in love with comics the way that Batman made him fall in love with comics… Fraction says he has noted the lack of fun in a lot of superhero comics these days but that's not something he wants to tack towards, quite the opposite.

He talked about coming back to comic books after working for TV so much recently, and how he "thought about Brian K Vaughan a little bit when he had gone away to do Lost and Under The Dome, that made me feel like there's at least precedent for something like this. That you can go home again. Brian is proof of that and I was loading the deck by making it Batman."

Just a small sliver of all he talked about…

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