James Tynion's Plans for Batman in 2021

[DragonPiece]

James Tynion sent out a newsletter last night with a lot of exciting info about his plans for the Batman and Joker titles.

There is a lot to take in, but here are some exciting bits I found interesting..

Urban Legends will spin out other gotham titles and mini series: "Urban Legends is going to be a real gift. A lot of storylines will be seeded in that title before they break out into their own titles… There are also more books to come in the Gotham line as the year goes on. Big moments in the core Gotham titles will set new runs in motion in other titles. Backups and shorts might turn into one-shots and miniseries and series, and we’re working to make sure it all matters."

On Batman's current wealth: "I'm bring him back to being a less problematic kind of Wealthy. Bruce Wayne, Millionaire, rather than Bruce Wayne, Billionaire. He’s not so rich that he could effectively buy Gotham City and fix it overnight. There are a bunch of much wealthier people than him in the city trying to maintain their power and influence and Batman is from their world and fighting against them, he doesn’t have the ability to just buy and sell them and walk away."

Planning the bat/cat dynamic: " I had a long chat with Ram V just the other day about how we can weave together a series of story threads between the Batman and Catwoman titles that are going to pay off incredibly when they all come together."


On the reaction to the Joker book: "I know there are a lot of folks who are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to there being a Joker book. If I weren’t writing it, I’d probably be one of them. Hell, back when it was first pitched to me, I said flat out that I wasn’t really sure how to make that work… And then I sat with it for a few weeks and said “okay, I know how to make it work, but it’s only going to work if we come at it from an unexpected angle.” And thankfully everyone in the Bat-Offices, and the DC offices bought into my angle. It is the scariest book I have written for DC Comics so far. And maybe the most human. I love writing Jim Gordon so fucking much. He’s been one of my favorite characters in all of comics for my entire life."

Backup Stories in Batman: "The Batman title is going have an unannounced backup features starting in April (After a two part ROBIN backup by my good pal Joshua Williamson and one of my favorite new artists, Gleb Melnikov, running between the March issues of both Batman and Detective) – I’ve been working with the artist on the next round of Back-ups since late this summer, and I could not be more excited to tell you about it. It is high octane manga-influenced action insanity, with an artist I love, and can’t wait to bring to into the Gotham fold."


Other small things:
-Next Batman arc is described as a cyberpunk horror story, introduces a new group caleld the unsanity collective
-Batman annual 5, that came out this week, sets up what's next for clownhunter's evolution
-He considers the current Batman era as roughly the midpoint between batman the animated series and batman beyond
-He has a 3 year plan for both the Batman and Joker titles, as always, it depends on how much people continue to support him on the titles