SENYC Report: DC Comics – Batman 75th Anniversary Panel

DC really only had one big panel at SE: NYC but Batman’s 75^th anniversary is certainly nothing to scoff at. On Sunday, DC VP of Marketing John Cunningham hosted a panel with some of the most interesting voices currently writing in Gotham, providing hints about what’s coming for the Bat-family and an exploration of what makes Batman such a special property.

The panelists included Gail Simone, the definitive Batgirl writer in many minds; James Tynion IV, one of the key minds behind the flagship Batman: Eternal; Greg Pak, who writes Batman/Superman; and Francis Manapul, co-writer for Detective Comics.

Batman Eternal #6 – Review

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, John Layman, Ray Fawkes, Tim Seely (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: Even bats can be scared of ghosts—or, more specifically, spirits of vengeance.

The Review: Having stuck by this series for some weeks now, it’s become painfully clear that a weekly series really takes a bite out of your budget. You are talking about a quadruple (at times quintuple) investment than your typical monthly comic, so even if you want to, you have to think twice about a long-term commitment to spending that kind of money. Next to the bigger-impact Futures End (and upcoming World’s End), my bucks just don’t stretch as far with Batman Eternal.

I want to make it clear, however, that my decision has little to do with the actual quality of this series, which has been fine, if not spectacular thus far. It’s true that issues can vary wildly from week to week, depending on who’s charged with scripting duties, but everyone on this writing team pretty much stands on even ground. In fact, considering the number of cooks in the kitchen, it’s remarkable how the finished dish comes out tasting kind of the same each week, which is part of Eternal‘s problem.

Batman Eternal #5 – Review

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, John Layman, Ray Fawkes, Tim Seely (story), Andy Clarke (art), Blond (colors)

The Story: Red Robin and Batman briefly consider getting the band back together again.

The Review: Let’s review some Batman basics,* shall we? Great as the Dark Knight is, he’s still only one man struggling against a vicious city, which is why the Bat-family exists. But calling them a family gives an impression of a cohesive working unit when they’re actually more like a handful of government agencies. Their objectives and methods are different; they’re supposed to work in different spheres; and when they take jurisdiction over the same area, there tends to be more tension than collaboration.

Such is the way when you have obviously derivative characters trying to prove that they can stand on their own. Red Robin voices that conflict from the first page of this issue, rebelliously establishing his own data networks (his “Robin’s Nests“) in the city separate from Batman’s, declaring, “I don’t like people looking over my shoulder while I work.” Aside from that basic barrier to working with Batman, Tim reminds us of personal obstacles between them post-Death of the Family, Damian Wayne, and Dick Grayson. Gotham needs its heroes to stand together, but between Batgirl’s angry departure last week and Tim’s prickliness here, that’s going to be a very tall order.

C2E2 Report: Tim Seeley – Matters of Life and Death

Tim Seeley has been making waves for a long time with creator owned series like Hack/Slash and Revival but recently he’s begun commuting to Gotham City to write Batman: Eternal and Grayson for DC. A skilled writer and a talented illustrator, Seeley is a prolific creator, drawing covers for numerous companies and penning clever, often unsettling, scripts month after month.

With so many interesting projects on his plate, I knew it would be worth my while to seek Seeley out at C2E2, in his hometown of Chicago. Tim was kind enough to speak to me during his live sketching session, the results of which you can see in this article. Read on to hear about Seeley’s process, his thoughts on death and horror, and comics like Revival/Chew, “The Body”, and Grayson.

C2E2 Report: DC Comics – Batman

Saturday was a big day for this year’s C2E2, with a lot of DC and Marvel’s biggest panels taking place. Besides entry in the morning, the longest line I saw all weekend was for this panel. Hundreds of fans filed through the doors of the convention’s largest panel space, and with good reason.

As things got started, John Cunningham, DC’s Marketing VP, introduced us to our panelists: James Tynion IV, former writer of Red Hood and the Outlaws and Talon and an architect of Batman: Eternal; Scott Snyder, writer for Batman, lead writer for Batman: Eternal, and all-around Batman superfan; Jason Fabok and Dustin Nguyen, the two artists for Batman: Eternal; Patrick Gleason and Peter Tomasi, the artist and writer, respectively, on Batman and _____; and Jim Chadwick, an editor with DC’s digital division who works on Batman ‘66, among others.

Cunningham started by reminding us that this year is the 75^th anniversary of Batman and promised a slew of celebration, most clearly embodied in a “Batman Day” sometime this July. He also mentioned the two animated shorts commissioned for the anniversary and, as a thank you, revealed that we’d be screening them before the panel began.

Unfortunately there was some technical trouble, kicking off a friendly rivalry between Cunningham and the people running the projector.

Unable to resolve the problem immediately, we turned to the comics.

The first book mentioned was Grayson, which received a warm reception, but just as quickly as it was brought up, Cunningham informed us that he couldn’t talk about it yet. Instead Scott Snyder took the opportunity to enlist the audience in a campaign to make sure that DC used the slogan that he and the other writers had come to love, “You think you know Nightwing, but you don’t know Dick.” It seemed to take off with the fans. DC had actually published the line in the Grayson #1 solicit a few days earlier, but after this panel I’m sure they were pleased that they went ahead with it.

Next on the docket was Batman and Scott Snyder’s “Zero Year” storyline, which has just entered its final phase, “Savage City”. Snyder, ever eager to share with the fans had thrown in a couple of extra slides into the presentation as a thank you. “You guys are our bosses,” he said, quoting a sentiment that drives he and Greg Capullo’s work on the title.

Batman Eternal #4 – Review

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, John Layman, Ray Fawkes, Tim Seely (story), Dustin Nguyen (pencils), Derek Fridolfs (inks), John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Never get between a girl and her dad.

The Review: The downside to a weekly comic is the same as its upside: getting four (or five, depending on the month) comics a month. You’re talking about a quad-/quintuple investment than your ordinary monthly comic. So it had better be good! I don’t mind if one issue is slower or less substantial than another, but I won’t be able to abide a weekly series if it’s badly or even just blandly written. Contrary to the impression I give on this site, I am not made of money.

That’s why I’m a little iffy about the multiple-writer situation on Batman Eternal. While I have the utmost confidence in Snyder’s plotting, I have less when it comes to his co-writers’ abilities to execute it. Having read the superhero works of Tynion (Talon), Layman (Detective Comics), Fawkes (Constantine), and having unceremoniously Dropped them after relatively brief periods of time, I’m naturally wary about the idea of reading them week after week. Unfortunately, this Layman-scripted issue does little to alleviate that concern.

Batman Eternal #3 – Review

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes, John Layman, Tim Seely (story), Jason Fabok (art), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: When your dad spoils your fun, it’s only proper to spoil his back.

The Review: And now the moment of Batman Eternal I’ve been waiting for: the return of Stephanie Brown, a.k.a. the last pre-relaunch Batgirl. Of course, part of the charm that made her so popular (and thus her exclusion from the DCnU so reviled) was Bryan Q. Miller’s specific take on her, which was taking Buffy Summers, removing the angst, and tweaking up the playfulness. In a comic book world of increasing grimness, Stephanie was unbeatably upbeat—which made her special, damn it.

Excited as I am, I’m also a little apprehensive as to how she will fare under another writer’s pen. Right now, it’s difficult to say. What we see in this issue is not the confident, put-together Stephanie who wore the Batgirl mantle, but a Stephanie predating her more annoying Spoiler days. As such, much of her sparkling wit is replaced by your commonplace teenage sarcasm, both withering and not a little mean-spirited. Blowing off her mom’s concern about dropping in unexpectedly on her dad: “Oh, no! I’m going to spoil his puzzle night with his loser friends!”

Batman Eternal #2 – Review

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes, John Layman, Tim Seely (story), Jason Fabok (art), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Who knew it would only take a scarred mafia man to freak out Batman?

The Review: I’ve never reviewed a weekly series before, but I must say, I’m really liking the pace of it. My biggest gripe about monthlies is how insubstantial they seem when spread against a month (or more) of waiting until the next installment. In the cost-benefit calculation, monthly comics are kind of a raw deal, falling short of the satisfaction you get from a TV show or movie. With a weekly comic, even if a single issue doesn’t have much to it, you know you have more coming in just six days.

This allows Snyder-Tynion time to play out an event in much greater depth than they normally would be able to. Had Batman Eternal been a typical monthly, the first five pages of this issue would probably have been reduced to a single page of reactions from all the relevant Gothamites. You might not have lost the point of the sequence, but the impact of what happened to Gordon would’ve been diminished. Seeing in detail how each character takes in the event—Vicki Vale’s reluctance to publish the story and “destroy a good man’s life”; the Bat-family’s varying degrees of shock (it even elicits a “Damn…” from Jason Todd); Mayor Hady’s bewilderment of the situation, despite his corruption—gives you a better sense of Gordon’s position as one of Gotham’s most important pillars.

Batman Eternal #1 – Review

By: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Ray Fawkes, John Layman, Tim Seely (story), Jason Fabok (art), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: As if the Gotham underground doesn’t experience enough delays.

The Review: In a comic book world that already seems overpopulated with people following the bat standard, did we really need another ongoing Bat-series, and a weekly one at that? I’ve made this complaint before (and again before that), but surely there’s got to be a limit to how many titles one franchise can creatively support at one time before they all start blurring together. Batman Eternal can’t get by on just being a decent title; it has to set itself apart from a family of eerily similar siblings.

This issue alone doesn’t do it, even if Snyder-Tynion* start things off by coming at the story from an appreciably different angle. It’s not exactly common for people to talk about Gotham and emphasize its light and brightness, after all. As a metaphor, this talk about light suggests that hope springs eternal in the darkest corner of the DCU, but that idea runs counter to the apocalyptic Gotham that greets us on the issue’s opening page. Gotham’s light may be a more sinister thing in this world, an electric lamp that lures good people like GCPD cop Jason Bard to perish in the city’s dispassionate maw.

My NYCC Experience Pt. 3

After a full day of panels I returned to whence I began, Empire Stage, for another big one, this time presented by the distinguished competition.

Gone were the charming advertisements – apparently someone thought better of them – and now we simply waited, glancing occasionally to the silent screen which informed us that we were sitting in DC Comics – Batman.

John Cunningham, a DC marketing VP, took the podium and introduced us to our guests. At the far left of the table was the beloved creative team behind DC’s relaunched Batman, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. Beside them was James Tynion IV, who writes Talon and Red Hood and the Outlaws. Next came Marc Andreyko, the controversially incoming writer on Batwoman. Beyond him was Kyle Higgins, who writes Nightwing, and Ann Nocenti, who pens Selina Kyle’s adventures in Catwoman. On the far end were John Layman, the surprisingly mild-mannered-looking man behind the current run of Detective Comics, and Peter Tomasi, writer for Batman and Robin.

As in nearly all things DC, this was largely Snyder’s show. Cunningham gave Snyder every opportunity to discuss last week’s Batman #24 (review here), but Snyder, in classic form, really just wanted to talk about how honored he was.

Snyder opened with a heartfelt thank you to the fans for not only letting him tell his stories, but supporting him in doing so. He waged charming, unassuming war on the notion that he did not respect the power and responsibility given to him in writing Batman’s origin story. Snyder called “Zero Year” his favorite story ever and seemingly could not help but show off some of the tricks that he brought to the table. Though he’s never been shy about it and his writing reeks of love for the character, Snyder put his status as a massive Batman fan on full display for this panel.