Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Absolute Batman, Chip Zdarsdky, flash, mad

When Chip Zdarsky Dressed Up In A Flash Costume To Take Some MAD Abuse

When Chip Zdarsky dressed up in his old Flash costume to take some MAD abuse about his writing of Batman...

Bleeding Cool loves a good creator stunt, and Chip Zdarsky delivered one for the ages with his self-starred, self-deprecating promo trailer for MAD About DC, the 64-page April one-shot he guest-edited. I talked a bit with Chip about the issue in question. He found it harder to get British creators involved in this. We generally didn't grow up with MAD; we had Viz Comic, which has an entirely different approach and aesthetic. If anyone at DC wants to do a VIZ About DC comic, get in touch, obviously. You might even get Alan Moore back if you asked him to write Batman And Robin as The Drunk Bakers. Thought Mad About DC did a good job of doing Absolute Batman…

And so MAD About DC was a very fun, star-studded, comic book comedy anthology with a strong US base, but the promo trailer, the job of which was basically to name every creator in the comic, is also a thing of beauty. Just over five minutes long, it sees Chip in a decade-old Flash costume, handcuffed in an interrogation room, chased through Toronto streets at 2 am, while dodging copyright lawyers, drunks and his own dignity.

The promo, directed by longtime collaborator Sean McLeod, started very differently. Chip Zdarsky told David Harper of Sketchd about how it began while talking to DC EIC Marie Javins. "We started just talking, Marie and myself, about how to promote this because it's a one-shot, so you got one shot at it, right? … I'd previously done those Chip Class videos with my Substack, I really pushed to be like, 'Let me just do it. Just give me a little bit of money and I'll go make something and it'll be fun. Trust me.' … Marie's the best. She managed to cobble together money from different departments … it's a very modest budget for a promo video."

The original pitch was even wilder, with an even smaller budget. He says "My original idea was it was just going to be me getting an Alfred E. Neuman tattoo on my ass. It was just going to be me talking about it, lying down. I'm going to get this tattoo while I talk about it. And every time they come close to me with a needle, I just shriek. So it's mostly just me running around pantsless trying not to get the tattoo as I talk about the MAD About DC special."

When that didn't fly, he provided one of the main props himself. "I've got this Flash costume that I bought back in Lucca, Italy, ten years ago. We should maybe just do something like that so we can lean into the DC side of it … I soft-pitched that to DC and Matt, and they were like, 'Yeah, that sounds good.' … I ain't showing you a script. I'm just gonna write it … I'm just gonna make it and hope that they don't ask for any changes."

"We did all the stuff with me running around Toronto, which was a little wild. I kind of realize I'm too old to do this cuz I'm like 50 years old, kind of running through tunnels, running down streets, getting really tired, and also it's two in the morning and all the drunks are being let out of the bar. So we're just like, 'Oh my god.' People yelling, 'Flash Gordon, get over here.' … Even if I wanted to run away, I couldn't at this point because my legs were rubber. Yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot."

The physical comedy was deliberate and brutally honest. Zdarsky insisted on keeping the unflattering footage: "I knew I wanted to make it funny obviously … I puffed up my chest and my belly and did this whole thing and still running as fast as I can sadly … They showed me some of the footage. I was like, 'Oh god, I look horrible. Like, this suit is not flattering when you stick out your gut, and you start running, and you got no ass.' … There was a point where I felt really bad cuz Sean did all the effects on it, too. He stayed up all night doing flash lightning bolt effects … I saw it and I was just like, 'Oh, those bolts are covering up how bad my body is.' My ego wants the bolts to stay, but the guy who wants it to be funny has to have the bolts taken away."

"There was a lot of debate over the legal line about me being copyright Matt Fraction if that's something they could sign on for … They allowed it … Before we shot it, they really stressed that I have to state that I'm not the Flash. Like, I have to make sure that people understand that I'm not the Flash. And I'm like … I was sending them photos of me in the costume. No one's going to be like, 'Is this the Flash?' First of all, the Flash isn't real."

"DC and MAD were just extremely happy with it. Thank God. There were only a couple small little tweaks … It was so much fun. I want to do more stuff like that."

Will he be allowed to? He can always just speak in front of a terrible camera with a PowerPoint presentation. I mean, that also worked…

"We got actors, and we found the set for the interrogation room, which was awesome because it was like an hour out of town in this kind of abandoned schoolhouse … a guy bought this old schoolhouse and just filled it with sets. There was a whole police station in there. There's a hospital in there. There were two planes in this building, a couple of courtrooms. Like it was wild." And we even got Chip taking on fan criticism for his own Batman run…

You know, the one that didn't have Batman and Catwoman as a couple much… not until the end at least.

So, yeah, clearly he's qualified to write Spider-Man again… You can see what I thought about its Absolute coverage at the time…

MAD About DC #1 by Tini Howard, Jim Zub, Mark Waid, Gail Simone, Mattie Lubchansky, Steve Lieber, Ty Templeton, Joe Quinones 
Chip Zdarsky is a funny guy. Remember when he made that whole April Fools' gag comic with rub 'n' smell farts? Oh, wait, that was me, DC Comics E-I-C Marie Javins. Chip was the one saying, "I'd turn back if I were you," but he couldn't stop me. Editors are a self-destructive lot. Which is why this year, I said, "I give up, you do it, Chip, you are so much funnier and prettier and also better with cats than I am." And look, he went and did it. Chip demoted himself to "editor." Chip is turning the DC universe on its ear and bringingyou savage mockery of all we hold dear, and he is assisted in this brutal task by Matt Fraction, Gail Simone, Skottie Young, and many, many more. Next year? Back to farts. Includes MAD favorite Sergio Aragonés with "A MAD Look at Comic Book Stores," "Guy vs. Spy" by Jim Zub and Ramon Perez, and a DC Fold-In by Charles Soule and Ryan Browne. Plus a slew of MAD-style parodies of all DC Comics you hold dear, and some you've always hated anyway. MAD About DC #1 will fulfill your every comic book dream, or at least three or four of them.

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