Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: all star batman, All-Star Batman And Robin the boy wonder, frank miller, jim lee, Tom King

Tom King Was To Finish Frank Miller And Jim Lee's All Star Batman

Tom King planned to finish Frank Miller's run with Jim Lee on All Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder but it never happened...

I mentioned this earlier, but it probably deserves a headline of its own.  On the Word Balloon podcast with John Siuntres yesterday, Tom King discussed all the times he had almost worked with Jim Lee but didn't, as he saw Rob Williams, Brian Bendis, James Tynion IV, Scott Snyder, and others do so instead. But it turns out there was a very big chance that didn't happen for undisclosed reasons, taking over from Frank Miller on an infamous project. Tom King said, "Very early in my career, they had hired me for all of one day to finish All-Star Batman and Robin, which I think went eight or nine issues and was supposed to go 12, and they never… And I think both Frank and Jim, who are both friends of mine, would agree that that is a crazy series. If you read it, it is a roller coaster ride."

And he especially recalls one scene in which "Batman paints the room yellow… For Green Lantern… I'm gonna name drop here, and I apologise because I was talking to Kyle Chandler, who plays Hal Jordan in the Lanterns TV show… he was talking about being vulnerable to Yellow, and I told him about that scene, and he just couldn't stop laughing. He thought it was very funny."

And then Tom King and John Siuntres move on to talk about Superman/Spider-Man. But come on John! Come on Tom! You were about to talk about finishing All Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder, replacing Frank Miller, but only for a day…. and then you both got distracted! What happened? Who asked you? Why was it only a day? Would Jim Lee have drawn all of it? Was anything finished? Come on, don't leave us hanging! A year ago, he told the Comic Pop podcast, "When I'm more drunk, ask me about how about my adventure trying to write the last four issues. I was hired to do that at one point in my career" but that was it… Right, I am going to write to Tom King and try and get some clarity on this… even if I have to FedEx him some industrial-strength whisky to get it out of him.

To recap, All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder was a controversial comic book series published by DC Comics under their All-Star imprint, which aimed to let top creators tell standalone stories with iconic characters outside the main continuity. Written by Frank Miller of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One and Sin City, and drawn by Jim Lee of Batman: Hush, X-Men and WildCATS and now DC Publisher, President and CCO, the series ran sporadically from 2005 to 2008, producing ten issues. It retells the origin of Dick Grayson becoming Robin, the Boy Wonder, in a very loose, alternate take on Batman's early days. Batman here is extremely abrasive, arrogant, and violent, famously declaring repeatedly "I'm the goddamn Batman" and issue #1 was the top-selling comic of 2005. The series was never fully completed as originally planned, and delays plagued it, with only one issue published in 2006, and a planned continuation/conclusion as Dark Knight: Boy Wonder for the remaining issues never materialised. And it looks like at some point a Tom King/Jim Lee conclusion was in the works but never happened…

Okay, I am going to do a little digging, I think. Moving on…

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