Posted in: Batman, Comics | Tagged: Batman, dc comics, defund batman, james tynion iv, mcm, metaverse, NYCC, Punchline

James Tynion IV On How And Why Batman Has To Change

James Tynion IV has been talking to Scott Snyder and Marie Javins about the upcoming plans for Batman at the NYCC/MCM/Metaverse event. Javins asked them to be careful about spoilers, clearly inspired by Scott Snyder's blabbermouth, he decided to throw a few in there. And some seem to tie right in with what Bleeding Cool has been reporting as "Defund Batman"…

You know I've done so much in Gotham but getting a chance to take the wheels and show the Gotham I think there's a lot of potential to build right now, is incredibly exciting. Because this was one of those things where I remember right when I was first taking on the job. I knew that Alfred was going to be heading into my run and then we were doing interesting things with Jim Gordon, so Gordon was no longer the Police Commissioner. And all of a sudden, all of these classic pieces of the Batman methods are changed. And it's not that they're they're gone forever or anything, but it's interesting to write the character where – and this is something I point to in issue 101, he remembers like you know how good it felt the days in which he was like you know Alfred was in his ear back at the Batcave and Jim Gordon would light up the Bat Signal and he'd land on the roof and swing into action with a Robin at his side. And all those core iconic elements of Batman, they're still such a part of him but now like but they're in his past. And now he needs to figure out in this moment how can he be Batman today, knowing that the city is growing more and more dangerous. The key thing with Joker War was, basically, to set off a whole bunch of change in Gotham City and it's going to deeply affect the status quo. To the point that Batman needs to change his approach. He's going to need to change his base of operations. He's going to need to change how he's interacting with crime in the city. And this is something that is scary on one front but it's also really exciting because Batman loves building things.

You know that's why he has the big crazy bat cave with the giant T-Rex and for all that he is a builder, he is a thinker. He likes figuring out how all these pieces com. So building these kind of new characters, they're each meant to kind of challenge him and push him in new directions. With a character like Punchline – we're starting to see in the same way that he has his own legacy and his own second generation of characters. Now his villains have their own legacies and their own second generation of characters we're entering a new era of crime in Gotham City that has evolved out of his own peak era. And he needs to learn to fight it, because these are the children of the Gotham that he's been fighting ot fighting for, for all this time.

And then at the same time, you have something like Clownhunter, this is a kid who is an indictment of Batman in some way because he wasn't able to save this kid and now this kid's taking it into his own hands and it's all about trying to kind of challenge him and challenge his perspective. Do it in new ways and take advantage of the fact that we live in a world where there are there are so many great Batman stories being told. This is the exciting thing about this moment of DC Comics where you have books coming out through Black Label that can lean into the pure classic iconic elements of the Batman mythos and that it almost requires the the mainline to take the next step forward.  And actually allow there to be consequences, story to story to story, that build on each other and and allow the city to evolve to be something so exciting and different. That this is this is an experience you can only get reading the main Batman book at DC Comics. You can't get it in a video game, you can't get it in a movie or of one of the Black Label books. You can only get it in this title and so that's sort of the priority that I wanted to bring into it.

You can see the whole panel here, talking Death Metal, Batman and more…

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