Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: 5g, catwoman, dan didio, Tom King

Tom King On How A Batman #100 Wedding Tied Into 5G & Death Of Catwoman

Tom King talks about how a Batman #100 wedding would have tied into 5G and the Death Of Catwoman

Two podcasts, separated by three years, but the first sent me on a deep dive to the second. Uncensored Nerds podcast We Got Issues With Tom King saw Tom King look back on some of  old comic book runs, namely Heroes In Crisis and Batman for DC Comics.

"I regret putting Wally West in" Heroes In Crisis

On the former, which saw Wally West cast in a time loop that saw him take responsibility for killing a number of superheroes and supervillains, Tom King says, "I regret casting Heroes in Crisis, a comic I'm proud of. I regret putting Wally West in that; he should not have been the star of that. The audience was not ready for that."

The plan for Batman to marry in #100

And then for the Batman/Catwoman wedding for Batman #50 that wasn't, he says, "I was not in charge of the marketing. The marketing people came to me and said, we're going to market this wedding. At that point, I should have been like, 'it's not a wedding. It's a will they, won't they', because I knew she was gonna leave him at the altar. And then the plan was, leaves him at the altar at 50, gets married at 100. That was always the plan. And I regret not changing the marketing on that."

So Batman was to marry Catwoman in #100. And that, presumably, was the big thing he needed to ask permission from Warner Bros bigwigs for, rather than the #50 fakeout that would, as he put it back then, change Batman for a generation. This is what he said back in 2019. "I've been talking to, not just DC, but Warner Brothers and AT&T. What we're going to do for the last 15 issues is something no one's ever seen for the character. It's something that's going to change the character for a generation, or maybe more. Maybe forever. I never thought we'd get this kind of stuff approved; when you're working with a corporate character, you think you're going to have to reset. But this is a change that's going to shake the world of Batman and it's going to leave my mark on the character." Well, it would have done that. Instead, he got the death of Alfred Pennyworth.

Three years ago when talking to Batman Book Club podcast, Tom King gave more details. "I always wanted Bane to be the big bad… Joker can match Batman on crazy, Riddler can match Batman on intelligence, Penguin can match Batman on planning but Bane matches Batman on willpower and I thought that's what Batman's real power is, his willpower is built to never give up… my Batman's gonna do not a lot of tech. After the first arc he only uses a batarang and a rope gun basically, he's, never a robot, he's never Iron Man, he's always Batman… I'm gonna do romance, that's the stuff that's missing because I've watched some old Batman 66 episodes,  the chemistry between Catwoman and Batman… it's goofy and silly but it's also sexy as hell, so I was like I'm gonna lean into that."

"A Back to Basics Batman with Bane as the big villain and a romance. The plan was this W shape where  get him to a place for the first 25 issues, here's Bane with all the characters on the board, that was at issue 24 which is the engagement and for the next 25 issues I raise him up  to
the highest point he's ever been in terms of happiness in terms of how much he likes being his life and that's the 50 where the wedding goes badly then he crashes down for 25 issues. That's when Bane's plan kicks in and Bane's kicking his ass, getting hit and hit and hit until he's like completely shattered and that's where 75 was. And then 75 to 100 was gonna be the climb back up to happiness  ending at 100 in the wedding, so that was
always the plan sort of the zigzag."

Still mad about how Batman #50 was marketed as the Batwedding

"They were very much supposed to get married and that was that was yanked away for me at the last second. I was obviously very mad and I'm still mad to this day how about Batman #50 was marketed,  they were never going to get married in Batman #50 and the DC marketed as if they were going to get married and I didn't object to that because I was two years into comics and didn't realize you could object to marketing… and that broke a lot of people's hearts. I brought them together and I my plan was to have this complete, and it  was ripped from me and ripped from the fans."

"It should be, will they get married or won't they get married, you've seen that in a thousand different sitcoms, that's what it should have been, and to all credit, Scott [Snyder] called me and said "Tom they're marketing this wrong, you're gonna get a lot of trouble." I should have known but if you look back, you'll never you won't find any tweet where I'm like" they're gonna get married". A lot of people are like "Oh you made us buy a bunch of crossovers." I did not promote those crossovers, they were not my ideas, Tim Seeley was a dear friend of mine and there was just four of them and they had very little to do with the wedding. Lord knows if I could take it back and do it differently, I would."

That New York Times spoiler

And then there was the New York Times. "It must have been the slowest news day of all time, the New York Times decided to do an article and I'd done an interview for it and they decided to title their article "Catwoman leaves Batman at the altar" or something like that and they did a push notification to their 10 million whatever phone subscribers so it popped up as like that thing on your phone, because nobody had read the issue they didn't know why she left, there's no context, you're just not emotionally prepared for the whole thing… that's when I got the death threats and had to get the bodyguard… if I had to go back I would market it differently because it just it's not worth making people that upset… As much as you fans were pushing for Batman and Catwoman to get married, I was pushing three times as hard. I very much wanted it to happen… at #50 it was still a no, and about issue #80 it was a yes… and then it dissipated."

How the Batman wedding would have led into 5G

And Tom King talks about then-publisher Dan DiDio's plans for 5G and how his Batman run would lead up to it. "Wonder Woman was not going to be Diana Prince and Superman was not going to be Clark Kent and Batman was not going to be Bruce Wayne, and he called me, and I was told this, and this would happen at issue 100. Batman will retire. At the time Lucius Fox's son was going to become Batman. The original plan was for City Of Bane to end in #85 and then to do 15 issues of Batman/Catwoman stories leading up to the wedding to 100. Just little two to three issue stories, Joel would do two issues,  Mikel would do a few issues, Clay would do a few issues, Mitch would do a few issues, Finch would do a few issues, just like regular stories, there's a caper in Rome or the Riddler hasn't solved something, like it's classic Batman stories and that would sort of lead them to the wedding. And Dan said gave me kind of a Sophie's choice, he's like, 'if you want, I can have you on the title, but the Batman title has to be dedicated to the setup of this new status quo, the book has to be about Lucius Fox and his son taking on the mantle. I was like, 'well no the book's about this leading to the wedding'. He's like 'how about this, I'll give you a deal' because again they had not agreed to the wedding,  'you can have them get married but you do a separate book that's the lead up to their marriage and you have the marriage in it, we call it Batman/Catwoman, we'll do a number one and then I'll bring in another writer and we'll do the build up to the 5G in the last 15… or they don't get married. You lead up to 5G, and you write those issues like I told you, and I'll give you whatever artist you want to do this.' This is how Tom King leaving Batman was reported at the time.

5G and the death of Catwoman

Bleeding Cool also reported the Batman 5G plans at the time as well, though the identity of the new Batman would shift to a different son of Lucius. But then how Dan DiDio's firing from DC Comics eventually killed all plans for a 5G generational legacy revamp of the entire line. And it looks like Dan Didio had major plans for Catwoman as soon as Tom King stepped aside. "He's like, well, 'I'm gonna get a new number one' and I was like 'I want to do it with Clay [Mann]. I'll do this series and we'll have the wedding at the end and you'll launch into 5G' and then I would leave the book. And Dan's plan was that Batman would retire, but the moment after, it was to kill off Catwoman basically immediately. But I was I wasn't going to be involved in that'.

The Death Of Catwoman for 5G? Blimey. He continues, "And that's what happened, I just I left the book at #85, I went into Batman/Catwoman and then chaos broke out. I wrote the issues I wrote for Clay but there was just some things in his life, it took him a year to get the first issue out, and then Dan's 5G plan fell apart, and Dan left the company and they brought on James [Tynion IV] and so James just ran in a completely different direction than the 5G plan, and by the time Clay and I caught up to our deadlines, we were well past all of these plans you know."

And by the time Batman/Catwoman came out and we saw the marriage, now a Bat-themed ceremony in Las Vegas with Superman and Lois Lane as their witnesses,  it was in a separate continuity, as the 5G legacy plans had been abandoned and Bruce Wayne continued to be The Unmarried Batman… and Catwoman lived another of her nine lives…

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