Batman writer Matt Fraction dishes on how the direction that the best-selling title is going in the future.
When talking with DC.com, Fraction revealed what he finds so personally interesting about Batman. Specifically, the Dark Knight has been around so long that he has so many incarnations that has inspired so many people.
“Part of the magic of this character and part of his endless appeal is that he means so many different things to so many different people for so many different reasons, right? You know the bit of grit that turns into the pearl? I just had my bit of grit and I was like, “Let’s see what happens.” But I hope everybody finds something in it and responds to it, and that one day the kid who takes this job found their way into the world of Batman through this book.
It’s amazing meeting kids who are into it. What it means to me isn’t the same thing it’s going to mean to an eight-year-old, but it means something to an eight-year-old, and that’s awesome. Batman was the first comic I ever read—at two and a half years old—Batman #316. [Writer] Len Wein and [artist] Irv Novick. It’s a Crazy Quilt issue. It’s not a particularly strong issue, other than it has my entire inspiration and origin in it. But it’s magic to me. It’s deeply weird and it’s great.
Jorge Jimenez Main Cover
Matt Fraction on His Unique Take on the Joker
Fraction had a lot to say when talking about the infamous issue #7. There, we see a new Joker where he is now physically fragile and mental more docile.
“Issue #7 was the midway point through the first year and it was our first chance to spend time with The Joker. It was one of the things that excited me as a creator, trying to figure out, “How do you come to Batman and do something with The Joker that was different from the way we had seen before?
I had this idea for what I thought we could try with the character, and it also gave me a chance to write something for Jorge to draw that I’d never seen before and to really give him this big showcase moment. I was like, “Jorge, I have this idea for how we can make The Joker special…” It’s this literal look inside his mind. The Crown of Storms is capable of regulating the wild electrical storm in his brain, and he’s got control of his faculties and he has his memories. It’s “What does The Joker’s memory look like to The Joker if you’ve been all these different things as Joker has been?”
[Issue #7’s four-page Joker splash-page] looks incredible, and it’s Jorge [Jimenez] working in a style I’ve never seen him work in before. It’s incredibly expressionistic and comes organically in this moment of the Joker at least purporting to be in control of everything that’s going on. He is trapped in his own head. He’s been medically paralyzed. He can’t move. He can’t speak. He’s locked in with the memory of all the terrible things he’s done.
We get to see what that looks like to him. To be able to look back at this history of psychosis and see the psychosis from a non-psychotic point of view is horrifying. I love Jorge so much. I just wanted Jorge to do something awesome, and [Batman group editor] Rob Levin and everybody went above and beyond to make it work.”
Teasing the ‘Bad Seeds’ Crossover
Matt Fraction also took time to tease a little bit of the upcoming crossover with Poison Ivy titled “Bad Seeds”. Since Poison Ivy #50, Pamela Isley is the new mayor of Gotham City. Isley and Commissioner Vandal Savage is coming down on Batman and the Bat-family hard. But “Bad Seeds” will show particularly one really intense bad night for the Bat-family and the entire Gotham City.
We’re doing this thing called “Bad Seeds.” It’s about what happens when Poison Ivy becomes mayor of Gotham City. When that goes wrong, it goes very, very wrong. It was a chance for us to design an event with the same kind of micro-line strategy that informs Absolute and Vertigo. Here’s the thing. Everybody [working on the Bat comics] has to tie in, but it has an intense, short window. It’s a long night. The day has to be saved by the time the sun comes up. It happens in Gotham City. It is immediate, and it affects everybody in the city in different ways and gives all of the amazing creators in the whole Bat line a chance to do something. It’s a tight two months.
There’s a murderer’s row of talent and the idea of doing something that’s less an event and more like a micro line, like if there were a Bat-Family summer blockbuster… Every week there’s a thing and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and really cool. It changes things so profoundly on the other side that the only thing crazier than how “Bad Seeds” ends is how Batman #15 ends, which is the first issue on the other side of the event. But we’ll talk about that when it’s Batman #15 time.
I can’t get into what Ivy gets up to, but it’s real bad. It is a bad, hard, difficult time to be in the Bat-Family. And the moment when the city needs them the most, they do what they do. They’re heroes, so we put these characters in these brutal crucibles that test their abilities and their faith in themselves and their talents and their strength—not just as heroes, but as a family unit—and see what happens. We’ve stacked the deck so high against everybody. I hope it’s as much fun to read as it’s been to write.
Sounds like Matt Fraction has a ton of interesting ideas ready for Batman. Batman #10 will
Source: DC.com