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The Goddamn
Insert Your Expletive Here!
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
Posts: 111
Location: I live on the second floor
Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:03 am |
 Post subject: Battle for the Cowl #1 (Spoilers) |
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New topic. The other BftC topic is for the mini as a whole (It's getting pretty big). The link for this issue is there though.
We read the ish today at the hut. As a result, we missed some very important points.
The contested "meanwhile" on page 22 makes perfect sense. Ivy and Croc are at the docks, happily killing and/or eating goons.
MEANWHILE...
Damien is taking the car out for a joyride with some girl. He presses some buttons in an attempt to impress her, and lifts the radio-cloaking that he placed on the car.
Oracle contacts him and informs him of the sitch (cf TDK vs. Superman) at the docks. She takes control of the car and directs the it towards the site. She then ejects the girl.
SINCE THEY'RE NEAR THE DOCKS
Croc gets the girl and rams the car. He eats the girl while Damien is getting out of the sinking car.
All of Damien's training doesn't stop him from quailing at the sight of a thousand-pound crocodile about to eat him, and Dick saves his ass (a bit of Batman and Robin foreshadowing there. Assumptions can kill you).
Then Jason (or maybe Jean Paul, maybe Jason is Black Mask. Speculation-generation for discussion) sets a grenade behind him and psyches himself up to make a dramatic entrance.
All in all an excellent issue, made even more impressive by the guy writing and penciling and inking. I just now noticed that Damien's name is misspelled throughout.
Highlights:
- Alfred and Dick sparring with bamboo.
- Alfred and Dick sparring! with bamboo!
- ALFRED AND DICK SPARRING WITH BAMBOO
- The Amazing Unmoving Motorcycle, Complete With Wind Effects
- SQUIRE
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marionjasper
Ito ang "tama"
Joined: 15 Jan 2009
Posts: 204
Location: Tandang Sora Ave, QC(for now)
Sun Mar 15, 2009 10:22 am |
| Post subject: tony daniel ign interview |
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Behind Batman: Battle for the Cowl Part One
Tony Daniel discusses writing and drawing the series that will redefine the Dark Knight's franchise.
by Dan Phillips
IGN Comics: I think the first thought that struck me while reading Battle for the Cowl #1 was that you really hit the ground running from the very first panel and never let up. It seems like you could have started the issue from a number of places. What made you decide to begin where you did?
Tony Daniel: The way I visualized this story starting was in the middle of chaos. When I described my initial thoughts to my editor, he shared the same ideas, and they also wanted to hit the ground running. I thought it should open up in a very explosive way to set the tone for what the rest of the story is going to be, which is an action adventure story.
IGN Comics: You're tackling a ton of story in Battle for the Cowl, and it's easy to imagine it could have been six issues long. Knowing you had to tackle it all in three, did you have to reevaluate how you wanted to approach the plot? For instance, how are you going about structure it in terms of Acts? Will we see one act per issue?
Daniel: Well if I was going to structure this in three acts, I'd say the first act would probably end around the time when Tim Drake decides to take the cape and cowl from the trophy room and head out on his own. Act II would probably take off after that, and take us up to the middle of issue #3. That's kind of the way I'm plotting it.
IGN Comics: Were there any moments in this issue that you would have liked to expand if you had the room?
Daniel: With all the different characters that are running around fighting the evil forces at work in Gotham, I would have liked to have some room to play around more with the different teams that are out there. Like Man-Bat and Lynx, or the Squire. There were a few characters I would have liked to dive into a little more in terms of everything that's going on. We really didn't need to in terms of the story, but it would have been fun. For me, if I were going to pick a moment that I would have liked to spend a little more time on, it would have been the Commissioner Gordon scene. I tried to tell as much as I could in as little space as possible because of the rest of the story that needs to take place.
IGN Comics: I think fans are always curious about how these big events and all their tie-ins are structured and broken down amongst the different writers. You mentioned Man-Bat before, and I know he has a one-shot coming up that explores his role in Cowl. Did you come up with the plot, and then DC took moments like the Man-Bat appearance and decided to run with it from there, or did you consciously set up certain things that people could then run with?
Daniel: I think they might have planned the tie-ins after knowing what I was doing with the plot. I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I know for sure that I wasn't instructed to do anything to work around a different tie-in. The other writers are having to find out what it is that I'm doing in order to make sure it fits with what they're doing. So I imagine I'm in a pretty good position, because I don't' have to check with any of the other writers.
IGN Comics: The first issue is narrated by Tim Drake. Are you going to switch narrators for each issue?
Daniel: Yes. We get to see the different characters' points of view and get into their mind a little bit. I think it makes it fun, and when you read it all together, it'll be very interesting to see each of their different views on what Batman is or who he should be. I think we really get into that with Robin's character, and the next two issues are really going to get into the soul of these characters.
IGN Comics: You did a great job using Tim's narration to showcase his detective skills and what he brings to the table as a hero. I'm assuming that at some point Dick will narrate an issue. What are you going to try to highlight with Dick's narration?
Daniel: Well Dick has a different mindset than Tim. He's experienced, and he's been there before, so he's going to be narrating it as someone who's a little older and wiser. He's going to have a lot of insight, and there will be a lot of different things he factors into what it means to be Batman. He'll be approaching things very differently than Tim.
IGN Comics: Tim's search to deduce the identity of this new gun-toting Batman kind of drives the issue forward. Will this mystery play out over the course of the miniseries, or will you move past that question relatively early?
Daniel: We'll get past that fairly quickly. There are only three issues, so we have to get to that point within what I'm calling the second act. Tim and Dick are going to understand who it is they're dealing with, and they're not going to like it.
IGN Comics: Obviously the big reveal in this issue is the return of Black Mask. The last time we saw him, Catwoman was putting a bullet in his head. What can you say about the Black Mask character that appears here?
Daniel: The person underneath the Black Mask this time is different from the guy who died. His identity is a mystery to us for now, and we'll have to wait to find out who he is exactly. But he's a villain who initially, when I first thought of what I wanted to do with Battle for the Cowl, was a character that I liked, and I saw some great potential in him. Then we kind of cast him aside because we didn't think we'd have the room to have a subplot going on with the villains trying to take advantage of Gotham's weaknesses. When we decided we did have the room, we brought the character back into the equation, and I think he's a great enemy to bring into the mix.
IGN Comics: You deal with quite the eclectic cast of villains in this issue, many of which are personal favorites, particularly the Great White Shark and Mr. Zsasz. Are there any rogues that you've fallen in love with over the course of writing and drawing this series?
Daniel: Poison Ivy has probably always been my favorite female villain. But I was kind of limited with my choices in terms of the characters that could appear in the bus ride back to Arkham, so there were lots of characters that I would have liked to use. Mad Hatter for one. There were a lot of characters that I would have liked to use that just didn't make sense because they were no longer in Arkham. But Poison Ivy and Killer Croc are two of the characters that I'm very happy I'm able to write and illustrate. And in issue #2 we get to see Two Face and Penguin and a couple of other guys we haven't seen lately. That's going to be fun.
IGN Comics: Going back to Black Mask for a moment – I imagine the appearance of a new Black Mask would cause some sort of emotional reaction from Catwoman, who had such a tie to the last iteration of the character. Is that something you're going to be dealing with?
Daniel: She doesn't deal with that directly just yet. That'll probably be dealt with later in a different book. But we'll see more of what Catwoman is up to in issue #2.
IGN Comics: One of the most interesting aspects of the issue was seeing you handle Damian Wayne. Even though Grant Morrison featured him prominently throughout his run, the character is pretty much still a blank slate other than being a young, brash and very bratty kid. I think you show us a number of different sides to the character than we've seen before.
Daniel: Yeah, I really wanted to make him a little more likable in a sense that he might be a pompous brat, but he still could be sympathetic. I also wanted to find the humor in some of the things he does, which you see in the car ride and the girl that he picked up. And then when he's trying to save his ass from Killer Croc, we get to see him when he's not being so brave in the face of certain death, and he even screams for his mommy. He's not necessarily a coward, but we get to see the fa?ade break down, and underneath he's still a boy that can be terrified out of his wits. I also wanted him to bond a little bit with Nightwing, and let Nightwing maybe see a side of Damian that he's never seen before. He gets to see his more human side there.
IGN Comics: I know Oracle has a three-issue miniseries coming up that will coincide with Battle for the Cowl, but how much of a role will she play in your story?
Daniel: For the most part she's helping everybody orchestrate where they need to be in Gotham. She's kind of the overseer of Gotham City, and is helping dispatch people to trouble zones and whatnot. So she's helpful in that sense, but that's pretty much the extent of her role.
IGN Comics: Let's talk about the art, which I think looks great. Did your approach to this book differ from when you worked on Grant's run? Were there any specific things you wanted to do differently in Cowl from a visual standpoint?
Daniel: I wanted it to look a little less rough than I think RIP did in places. Some of that was me, and some of that was getting my inker to make things look a little smoother and slicker. The two of us together wanted to have a more streamlined look, mainly because we have so many characters running around, and if it were too gritty it wouldn't have looked nice. It would have looked muddy and ugly. I kind of approached the look that way, where we have much cleaner lines. And we brought in Ian Hannin, the new colorist, who is just making everything look ten times better than it is. The colors are very vibrant, with all the effects and bells and whistles that I could ask for.
I'm very happy with the end result of this. It's a different look. I think it's a lot more polished than RIP was. With RIP, some of it was that I was hauling ass, which takes a toll on you. Everybody was trying to get that thing out the door, and there were a lot of reasons why that book just could not be late. Not that this book could be late. I just had more time to play with it, and I think that makes a big difference.
IGN Comics: It all seemed like a lot of what Grant was calling for with RIP focused on that disjointed nightmarish feel of the story, which I assume might have kept you from stretching your legs on certain visuals.
Daniel: It was very different, because it wasn't a traditional Batman story where you get to see him kicking ass for several pages in a row. It was a very different kind of a story. If you look at RIP, there were very few moments where he was in the Batman costume. He was homeless for an issue or two, then he was wearing the rags of the Zurr-En-Arr costume, and then he finally came back as Batman in the last issue, which is where I got to have the most fun. Now I'm drawing something that's a little more traditional, but it's still not traditional Batman, because it's different characters vying for the chance to possibly replace him.
IGN Comics: To wrap things up, can you leave us with a tease for issue #2? What should fans expect?
Daniel: Fans should expect to see more of Black Mask's master plan. We get to see characters like Two Face and Penguin going at it, and we'll see lots of killer action that'll lead to a pretty big climax for the second issue. We end up with a very nice cliffhanger, and I think people will be anxiously awaiting the third part. |
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Sir Pepoy Josepito
Super Special Awesome
Joined: 02 Dec 2008
Posts: 603
Location: in sanity
Sun Mar 15, 2009 5:37 pm |
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OK, so at least the guy under the Black Mask isn't Roman Sionis. And with the Black Mask's identity being the mystery and XTREME BATMAN's identity being resolved straight away, I guess it's safe to say that it definitely is Jason Todd.
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