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marionjasper
Ito ang "tama"
Joined: 15 Jan 2009
Posts: 204
Location: Tandang Sora Ave, QC(for now)
Sun May 24, 2009 9:38 am |
 Post subject: Morrison's Batman and Robin Interview |
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Grant Morrison's New Batman and Robin
The man who "killed" Bruce Wayne discusses the new Dark Knight and Boy Wonder along with his plans to create new Gotham-based villains.
by Dan Phillips
May 22, 2009 - When Grant Morrison's name was last featured on a Batman comic book, the world of the Dark Knight was a very different place. For one thing, Bruce Wayne was still an active member of the DC Universe. Wayne's fate, of course, was handled by Morrison himself in the final moments of DC's Final Crisis event. Though many casual fans are under the impression Wayne died, the final moments of Crisis revealed that he was simply trapped in the distant past.
Since that time, the battle for Batman's cowl began, and earlier this week, fans discovered who would become the new Dynamic Duo. The revealed pair – Dick Grayson, formerly Nightwing, and Damian Wayne, the punk child of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul.
With Battle of the Cowl closed, all eyes are now turning back to Morrison as he helms a new series, Batman and Robin, which will become the flagship book of the franchise. Teamed with Frank Quitely for his first three-issue arc, Morrison has plenty of details that he can discuss now that Cowl has concluded. IGN tracked down the infamous writer for plenty of Gotham-related chatter. Read on for his thoughts on the characters, his approach to the series, the artists working alongside him and much, much more.
IGN Comics: So the wait is over and now fans know the identities of the new Batman and Robin – Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne. Before we get into specifics though, I'd like to talk about the big picture. You've made no secret of the fact that this is all part of a greater, long ranging story that you're telling. How does Batman and Robin fit alongside your recent Batman work?
Morrison: It's pretty simple. It comes in straight chronological order after the recent stuff. This is the sequel to Batman RIP, which is why the first arc is called 'Batman Reborn.' It builds directly off of it, and there are threads we pick up from before. As I've said before, the main villain in the first arc has already been seen in Batman #666, which had the potential future for Gotham City in it. So it's a straight continuation and the next part in the long running story from 'Batman and Son' onwards. We'll be picking up threads from that first book as well.
IGN Comics: You described Batman RIP as Batman fighting the greatest evil he's ever come up against. How would you describe the "tagline," so to speak, for Batman and Robin and 'Batman Reborn?'
Morrison: Basically, I suppose it's 'Can the a whole new Batman and Robin team cut it in the wild world of Gotham City 21st century?'. The only way I can explain the tone is that I had this idea of recapitulating the television show in a certain way. I wanted to do something different with that kind of format – the short, punchy serial format. Because obviously I looked at a lot of the Batman fifties stories when I was doing RIP and the stuff leading up to it. I've kind of always had this notion of looking at the dark and dusty corners of any character. If there's a long running character, there are almost always certain parts of their history that no one wants to talk about because everyone's embarrassed by it.
So with Batman, there's that kind of fifties era with weird modernist aliens and paranoid stories where Robin's constantly breaking down in tears because he thinks Batman is going to leave him. That era was something that people didn't like at all because it obviously just did not fit the tone of modern stories. That was a time in the fifties when the comics code stopped Batman from being able to fight crime or deal with anything realistic at all. Those stories really didn't fit the character, but I tried to bring them back in and give them a new slant and freshen them up. Because it was an area of inspiration that nobody had really gone to. It was kind of an untapped well.
So with Batman and Robin, it was the same thing. I was thinking of what other aspects of Batman are completely out of favor - that people tend to hate and don't seem to work anymore. The Batman 60s TV show was one of those. Obviously it was camp and a product of its time. But when I was a kid I thought it was really serious. [laughs] So I wanted to take some of that bizarre, psychedelic feel. I wanted to take the idea of very short, punchy stories that just kind of existed on their own terms. Rather than Batman RIP, which was a big, epic story that had a lot of secret subtext and hidden meanings and stuff, these are just crazy stories that are pretty upfront.
It was taking that aspect of the Batman TV show and then trying it in with David Lynch and Twin Peaks. [laughs] And creepy European cartoons and marionettes and stuff like that. That bad dreamlike feeling of a Marilyn Manson video in the '90s, or like Chris Cunningham's video for 'Windowlicker'. [laughs] Again, it was about trying to fuse those two things together into a bad trip, Lewis Carroll kind of world. I realize I give a massive, long answer every time we speak, Dan. But that was kind of what obsessed me about Batman and Robin going into it – to take these weird elements and marry them together to see what we could get.
IGN Comics: With Batman more so than any other superhero character, fans seem to have a firm idea of what constitutes a Batman story. There's that sense of pseudo-realism, that dark undertone and all those recognizable tropes they expect to see. The Dark Knight movie and its massive success seemed to reaffirm those tropes further for the mainstream. Here you seem to be going almost the opposite direction. It sounds like that's very deliberate on your part. Do you think it's important to try and get Batman away from familiar territory, and what everyone expects from the character?
Morrison: Yeah, to that extent of it. But at that same time, what made the Dark Knight great and a lot of the recent Batman stuff great was that edginess. It was that modernity. I don't want to lose that. What I want to do is bring out a slightly creepier twist on that same feeling. If anything, Batman and Robin is more like the Dark Knight. It's a lot more realistic and gritty. When you see the fight scenes that Frank Quitely has done, it's just hardcore, bone-crunching, teeth-breaking, brutal stuff.
My point in trying to play with all these things is to see how many of these influences we can push together. To take something and make it feel modern and progressive, but adding some of the elements that maybe have been forgotten – those spices and ingredients – and make it seem new.
IGN Comics: So let's talk about the new team of Dick Grayson and Damian. What's their dynamic like?
Morrison: There's just real friction between them. Damian doesn't respect Dick Grayson at all, and Dick Grayson is kind of this consummate superhero. The guy has been Batman's partner since he was a kid, he's led the Teen Titans, and he's trained with everybody in the DC Universe. So he's a very different kind of Batman. He's a lot easier; He's a lot looser and more relaxed. At the same time Damian is pretty hard to deal with. The characters are just amazing fun to write. Sparks fly all around them.
IGN Comics: You've said this is all part of the greater Batman story you're telling. I'm assuming you knew you wanted to bring Dick and Damian in once you took Bruce Wayne off the map with RIP and Final Crisis. I think some fans are wondering why you didn't want to tell the story of how Dick assumed the mantel of the Bat?
Morrison: I wanted to just come in – I know some fans don't like this approach – but I like to just come in when the story is underway and the fun has started. I thought that background stuff could be taken as read. Tony Daniel's dealing with those details in Battle for the Cowl, and the basics have been laid down. Apart from that, everything you need to know about the intervening time and how Dick and Damian got together gets explained over the next year of Batman and Robin anyway. It's all in the story. I just didn't want to front load it with expository material, because I wanted to jump straight into action with the characters, to be honest.
IGN Comics: It sounds like that goes back to what you were trying to do with Final Crisis, where you cut out all the quieter moments and just got down to "the drums and the bass", as you called it – the meat of the story.
Morrison: Yeah. I went to see Crank: High Voltage when we were in Los Angeles. I had just watched that, and I thought everything else just looks like slow motion, really. I wanted to get that effect into the comics as well. To me that was just a great action film, and every action film after is going to have to try and move at that speed. I really wanted to get that into Batman and Robin. Again, the stories are really easy. There aren't big multi-layered Gnostic parables this time around. Like I said, it's like a really bad trip cartoon. [laughs]
IGN Comics: You introduced Damian back in your first arc, Batman and Son, so I think his inclusion as the new Robin makes a lot of sense to fans. But as much as Dick Grayson is the most logical successor to Bruce Wayne, you sort of kept him on the sidelines for most of your run. Was that deliberate?
Morrison: It wasn't so much deliberate; it was that I wanted to get to him later. I had him in RIP so I could flag him up a little for people who were coming to this stuff fresh. But I kind of thought, while starting up Batman and Robin, that it was a really simple high concept. The guy who used to be Robin is now Batman, and Batman's evil son is now Robin. You can explain that to any person on the street and they're going to get it. It was that simple. Everyone can understand that Robin has now grown up to be Batman. Having just heard our advance orders for the first printing are the highest DC's had in the last few years, it's important for me to keep this material accessible - and everyone knows Dick Grayson.
IGN Comics: There are two very different father-son relationships at work between Bruce and Dick and Bruce and Damian. Are you going to be dealing with both character's quest to "become" their father?
Morrison: Completely. Also, it reverses the original Batman and Robin dynamic. Originally we had the big, grim Batman, and this little bright kid comes in and teaches him a lesson about being human. In this story you have the really good guy and great superhero, and then this little manga by Kazushi Hagiwara!! comes in, and again, they both end up teaching each other a lesson. That's just a classic, great story.
That's going to play across the whole twelve issues –betrayal and loss and the whole thing. It's the original Batman dynamic turned on its head. And that's the great thing about the character. He's been raised by monsters and fiends, but inside he's really a good person because he's the son of Batman and that's who he really wants to be. So you'll be kind of watching that growth happen.
IGN Comics: Like you said, a lot of the villains first seen in Batman #666 will play into your upcoming run. In the past decade or so, for whatever reason, we haven't seen many prolific writers come in and churn out new villainous characters for Batman. Is that one of your goals on Batman – to introduce new characters and rogues into the mythos?
Morrison: Definitely. I think every writer who is on Batman for any amount of time should try and add a few new villains in there and see if any of them stick. It's quite easy to create Batman villains. There are certain themes that they tend to follow, and it's fun to play with and make them up. I'm trying to come up with a bunch of new ones, even if I'm sure some will be forgotten.
IGN Comics: What do you think makes a great a Batman villain?
Morrison: A gimmick. Creepiness. A distinctive look. Basically, you just have to pick something - like I did with the Club of Villains characters – you look at something that works in the Batman mythos, like the evil clown, obviously. You can play with different version of that, so we had the killer mime in the Club of Villains. Or you can have another take on it, like you can play up the grinning death mask aspect and do a 'Mexican Day of the Dead' villain. You kind of evolve those themes into new forms. Batman fights people who dress or behave like animals – Catwoman, Killer Croc, Penguin, Man-Bat - sometimes, so you can create your own lizard girls or serpent ladies or guys like my upcoming Flamingo. Then there are the 'game' or 'puzzle' villains like the Joker, and the Riddler, and there are the 'Dick Tracy'-style 'face' villains like Two-Face, No-Face, etc. Like I said, there's a set of ingredients that you can play around with to create a Batman villain.
With this story, again, I'm going for the 'creepy' end of the villain spectrum, where characters like the Scarecrow, Mad Hatter and the kind of 'Doom Patrol'-ish, weird puppet guys who stalk around on strings live. The really demented, broken, Prague-animation type characters! I think the villain Professor Pyg, particularly when he gets to rant a bit in issue #3, is one of the weirdest, most insane characters that's ever been in Batman. We hear a lot about Batman facing crazy villains but we tried to make this guy seem genuinely disturbed and disconnected.
IGN Comics: You've mentioned Professor Pyg. What can you tell us about the Circus of Strange, who will also be playing into this first three-issue arc?
Morrison: They're a bunch of classic circus freaks. There's one guy - Siam - who is three men put together in a kind of Siamese triplets arrangement. Frank Quitely designed this whole thing, and the guy does his own version of kung fu with six legs, six arms and three heads. [laughs] Watching him fight Batman and Robin in issue #2 is unbelievable. There's never been anything like it. There's a huge, fat character called Big Top who is this immense, eight hundred pound bearded 'lady', who looks the fattest man in the universe wearing a tutu. [laughs] We have this sort of genteel Englishman, whose head is on fire, named Phosphorus Rex. They're a nasty bunch of deviants.
We wanted issue #2 to be a massive fight scene, and like I said, Quitely's delivered one of the best brawls I've ever seen in comics. The Circus of Strange is working for Professor Pyg, and the whole thing expands into a much bigger mystery, involving a character called the Domino Killer…which is what I like to do in these longer running stories. The main villain for the second arc is a character I've wanted to work with for a long time and I think we've come up with a cool new take on his M.O.
IGN Comics: You've said that Frank's style in Batman and Robin will be a lot looser than his work in All Star Superman. How else would you describe it? Will we see the cinematic layouts he's been known for, or are you going for something completely different?
Morrison: There's a bit of that. We wanted big action pages. Again, I've seen most of issue #2, and there's a shot of Batman and Robin diving down a stairwell at police headquarters, and it's this perspective shot of them flying past. It's just amazing. The fight scenes are very jagged and fast moving, and Frank's given them this sense of impact and weight and bone breaking. He's using a lot more panels than in the Superman stuff. I set up the fight scenes like I wanted, but tended to break down the action a lot less detail than I normally do. I let Frank choreograph the fights in his own way and the results are incredible. All Star Superman is quite staged and formal, with repeated wide panels and an emphasis on plot rather than action. This one is very fast moving, with that kinetic hand-held camera feel. It's great. I wish you could see it.
IGN Comics: From the little we've seen, it looks phenomenal.
Morrison: Yeah, and as usual, issue #1 is really good, but as issue #2 comes in I'm like, "okay, I get it now. Quitely's just moved to the next level."
IGN Comics: Quitely's known for his weird, bizarre visuals. Again, this goes back to what we were talking about regarding fans expectations – how they like Batman grounded in a realistic world mostly devoid of the supernatural. Having Quitely on board seems like another way to subvert those expectations.
Morrison: I'm always trying to have my cake and eat it too. I recognize this too, and I like stuff that's convincing and I like the same pop-culture Batman as everyone else. I like to see movies and shows that seem believable and feel like they could almost happen. We need that in Batman. Batman has a certain amount of street-level and real life elements to it that we can't forget. These guys still have to eat to do their jobs. They still get their costumes messed up and have their bones broken. There's a lot of that in here. But we musn't also forget that Batman fought the Monk and has encountered numerous vampires, werewolves, ghosts and monsters in the course of his career. I just wanted to push it towards, like I said, to the David Lynch approach. Because the real world we live in is also very strange and inexplicable, and there are a lot of really demented people who have strange ideas about the way things work. And those are the kinds of characters Batman and Robin come up against all the time.
It's very much the 'real' world overlapping with the world of schizophrenia, paranoia and heavy drug use, which is of course a world just as real as anything else we can experience. That's the world that Batman and Robin are dealing with – the eerie, creepy, mentally-ill dark corners of life. I think that gives us the sense of the supernatural in the story even if these guys aren't supernatural. Professor Pyg isn't from another world; he's from here, but he's very, very sick. He sees the world as almost supernatural in that it's unnatural and threatening in every way. It's more of that sort of thing.
I think people will be surprised, because these are very realistic, bones-will-break kinds of stories too. Although there's a lot of color and UV and sound effects, these are not fantastical stories in that kind of Joel Schumacher 90s Batman way. It's quite gritty. It's quite hardcore. It's noir, but it's a psychedelic noir. I've talked to you about this sort of thing before. This is the Batman version of that dark, psychedelic noir. I might not be describing it that well because we're trying to combine two quite different approaches into one. Readers will see what I mean shortly.
IGN Comics: So we're going to be seeing more of that psychological thriller, nightmarish atmosphere we saw in RIP?
Morrison: Mostly with the villains. But because we have Dick and Damian in it, there's a lot of up-beat fun as well. It's not quite as grim as the Bruce Wayne Batman. There's a lot more room for humor and banter in this one. It's kind of a more well-rounded team. These guys take you from one extreme emotion to the next.
IGN Comics: Speaking of Bruce Wayne – there are a lot of dangling plot threads and questions left from RIP and Final Crisis, specifically with Bruce in the past. How much of that will you be tackling in this twelve-issue run?
Morrison: Everything about that will be tied up by the end. Everything that's happening with Bruce and Bruce's world will be revealed in detail and resolved by the end of Batman and Robin's first year.
IGN Comics: How about Dr. Hurt and some of the other villains featured in RIP. Will they play into this run?
Morrison: Yeah. These guys are still out there. And Bruce Wayne's parents have still been accused of being drug addicts and all kinds of things, so we haven't dealt with the fallout of RIP, and the new Batman and Robin are kind of caught in the middle of a lot of that stuff as well. And if people want to check back to Batman #666 and read about Damian selling his soul to the devil, you might get an idea of how some upcoming events might play out.
IGN Comics: Is Batman #666 a possible future that can be prevented? Is that one of the questions you're dealing with?
Morrison: There are certain events in #666 that form the basis for the final three-issue arc of year one of Batman and Robin. I realize that's a vague answer…
IGN Comics: How about the Joker? Will we see him show up?
Morrison: Like I said before, I think we all want to see Frank Quitely draw the Joker. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with him, but I'll make sure Quitely gets to draw him somehow.
IGN Comics: Batman and Robin is the spine of the Batman universe moving forward, with no less than seven other books building off of what you're doing. For whatever reason, there have been some difficulties in the past building off of some of the crazy concepts you've introduced. We saw some of those difficulties pop up with Countdown and Death of the New Gods. Are you guys taking any steps to make sure Batman and Robin and the rest of the Batman books share a more seamless relationship?
Morrison: I'm working pretty far in advance of everyone else – I sent in a 13-issue breakdown for the whole series last year, so everyone has that and knows what's coming up, which means they can use as much or as little of it as they choose. There won't be any actual crossovers between the books but they can reflect one another's continuity so you at least know that they're living in the same place, and that Alfred is carrying the same kind of trays. [laughs] That sort of thing.
IGN Comics: How would you describe Batman and Robin's relationship with the other books? It sounds like you'll be going with big, crazy stories while the other titles will flesh out some of the specifics?
Morrison: Yes on the crazy stories but I think the other books are doing a lot more than just fleshing out specifics. I'm carrying the main, "Here's what happens after RIP" storyline. For me this is the latest chapter in the Batman story I've been telling since #655 and I've known since then where the story was headed. But obviously Greg's doing Batwoman over in Detective Comics, and her story doesn't really touch on what we're doing here. That's a really high class book, beautiful art work and a great character. Judd is doing the new Batman fighting alone, with internal monologues and a more close up look at how he feels about all of this, so that'll be the book that's most likely to take cues from Batman and Robin. Paul Dini is doing a couple of projects set in Gotham and dealing with characters who don't come into my book.
Everyone's got their own angle and I'm sure they'll have some big, crazy stories of their own to tell. One thing I've suggested to everyone is they shouldn't be frightened to use Damian, because I think some of them have been nervous to play with what may appear to be 'my' toy. But I think he has a lot of great potential next year, because he's developing into a really cool character. He's kind of like a little Wolverine for me, and I think the fans are going to like the character against their will.
IGN Comics: So Frank is handling the first three-issue arc, and then you have Philip Tan handing the second three-issue arc…
Morrison: Philip is doing the second arc, and then we're still negotiating the artist for the third arc. And then Frank will be back for the end.
IGN Comics: Will you be changing your style up at all for Philip Tan and the other artist coming in?
Morrison: Completely. I'm trying to write all these arcs individually for the artists and push them to do the best stuff they can do. Each one has been tailored specifically for the guy who's going to draw it. I'm having fun with it, and it also keeps the books fresh by changing their styles around a little bit.
IGN Comics: With Bruce Wayne out of the picture, is this greater story ultimately about how nobody but Bruce Wayne could possibly be Batman?
Morrison: When I started out I had that in mind, and I thought we'd finally prove that nobody else could be Batman. But I do believe certain aspects of RIP were about how nobody but this guy could be Batman. I think with this, it's fun to start by seeing what happens when someone else tries. Sometimes it goes wrong, and sometimes it goes really well. Some of the things these guys do are things that Bruce Wayne would never have thought to do.
IGN Comics: Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you what you thought of Neil Gaiman's recent two-part story?
Morrison: I really enjoyed it. I just read the second one a few days ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it hit a lot of depths that I haven't really seen anyone capture. There are a lot of great comments on the cyclical structure of myths and the many different portrayals of Batman over the years.
IGN Comics: A lot of fans are wondering how much of that was a figurative love letter and how much, if at all, it can be read as a literal continuation of what you're doing with the character.
Morrison: That was purely Neil Gaiman thinking about Batman. It was Neil's take on the classic Batman story – the beginning, end, death, life and different versions and opinions of the character. I don't think it was part of the continuity. It was purely a statement by Neil and Andy.
IGN Comics: I ask that because I think some fans are looking at it as Batman experiencing all these different lives and deaths much in the same Mister Miracle did when he was hit with the Omega Beam.
Morrison: Well you can read it like that because the story is big enough where it can be read a number of different ways. And it can actually be seen as maybe that's what Batman saw when he was sinking underwater after the helicopter exploded, or maybe that's what Batman saw in the seconds after Darkseid hit him with the Omega Beam. There's all this room in the continuity where you can fit things, but I think you can also read it as this self-contained story that says all of what Neil wanted to say about Batman.
IGN Comics: Grant, it's always fascinating talking to you. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Morrison: Good talking to you, Dan. |
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