Tynion Leaving Batman and Joker

[K. Jones]

I'm mostly curious to see if he can wrap his ongoing storylines. If his next contract was approaching you'd hope there were built-in points where he could tie up the storylines. Similarly it's kind of amazing to think that Joker was going to go to 14 issues. I get the sales POV; it's a comic called Joker (that I didn't expect to be my current favorite bat-title). But as much as I'm enjoying the story I can't, couldn't, or don't think it needed to be more than 12 issues. We're at halfway already, it seems like revelations are around corners and then some kind of weird showdown and some answers, you can almost certainly do that in six more issues. Now, knowing there's eight more issues, I feel at least like there's plenty of space to wrap that one up satisfactorily.

The Batman stuff, on the other hand ... hard call. I'm eager enough for a new writer, sure. Then again it's possible if they're clever they could pull off a scenario sort of like it was when Rucka and Brubaker were in tandem but then Brubaker finished up; whoever they brought in to run alongside Rucka kind of picked up the swing shift - in this case maybe Tamaki can take the center stage with Detective and somebody neat can do something interesting with Batman, or she can rock both for a spell, getting to be the first woman to frontline BOTH Bat-books at the same time for a nice P.R. splash and hopefully some good stories. I've liked her stuff so far, not perfect, not my favorite run ever, but well rendered and neat and smaller.

Yeah dunno. I'm curious who might jump in.

[Vordan]

I wonder if the characters he created will last.

Punchline will, I totally see her getting adapted in the Harley Quinn animated series. Ghost Maker maybe, he’s kind of cool. The rest though? Clownhunter is 100% done once Tynion leaves. Miracle Molly and Gardner I don’t think will survive for long either.

[Frontier]

Punchline will, I totally see her getting adapted in the Harley Quinn animated series. Ghost Maker maybe, he’s kind of cool. The rest though? Clownhunter is 100% done once Tynion leaves. Miracle Molly and Gardner I don’t think will survive for long either.

I'm kind of curious how Punchline would fit into the HQ show given how they've developed their Harley/Joker.

I think there were rumors of a Ghost-Maker show, though I don't know how serious that was.

[TooFlyToFail]

I would like to see Priest or Lemire writing main book, but, yeah, I know it's highly unlikely.

Don't tease me. Priest would be perfect.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Revolving creators next please. Give them a set amount of issues like 6-12 to tell just a story, no build up for things to come etc.

[OopsIdiditagain]

I'm kind of curious how Punchline would fit into the HQ show given how they've developed their Harley/Joker.

I think there were rumors of a Ghost-Maker show, though I don't know how serious that was.

They'll make Punchline a psychopathic parody version of social media influencers for comedy. Maybe something like Harley getting bored and starting a twitch/youtube channel only to get into a feud with Punchline.

[Morgoth]

Any chance they will announce next writer before next month solicits?
Oh, and I'm glad Jimenez is staying.

[Veni]

I wonder if the characters he created will last.

Only Punchline and Miracle Molly. Since Harley and Catwoman became more heroic we need more female villains to fill the void.

[JBatmanFan05]

From the perspective of profession growth, I am happy for James Tynion IV.

But from my perspective as a fan of his work at DC? His work in the Batverse was way too short-lived.

I'm not as big a Tynion fan as you, but I have been enjoying his run (which I count as both Batman & Joker) more than his other ones. This does seem too soon.

Part of the reason I feel that way is because we don't know what comes next, and I don't have high hopes we'll get the right team or teams after Tynion here. I just don't see anyone out there now I'm too excited about, that would fit Batman.

Alfred needs to come back pretty immediately IMHO with Tynion's end or a new run beginning. This Tynion exit makes that continuation of "Alfred gone" even less palatable than it was already.

[Drako]

Dude just said "F* it, i'll spill all the beans, stay tuned"!

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/jame...g-on-substack/

I am immensely proud of what I've done on the Batman title, and the stories I was able to tell, particularly with Jorge Jimenez and Guillem March over the last two years… But I've also been pretty blunt in saying that the process of working on the book, especially in the beginning, was really f-cking rough.

Every head inside the company was turning toward what was going to be the 5G publishing initiative, but what the rules and details of that initiative entailed were changing rapidly week to week. And the priorities of Batman kept changing, rapidly, with them. One week the book was going to be coming out monthly, the next week it was going to be coming out twice-a-month, and then it was going to be monthly for part of the year, and twice-monthly the rest of the year, and then fully twice-monthly again. Key story pieces I asked for kept getting taken away, and some of the decisions of where they wanted to take the character of Batman and his relationship with the characters around him ran fully counter to everything I believed about the character. I had to work on the fly, because the goal posts were shifting as issues were written and turned in and were being drawn.

There's a weird kind of zen mode I hit in and around that time, where I let go of the things I couldn't control and began to focus on the ones I could. The biggest reason I leaned into new characters was that none of the powers that be at DC had any preconceived notions about my new characters so they couldn't give me shifting mandates about any of them. And once I started letting go of everything I couldn't control, I found a new rhythm and a new energy that got readers really really excited, and taught me a lot about what works in Superhero comics in a way I never really saw before. At least not clearly.

So, I thought that I would spend the next few months telling THAT story, while you read the conclusion to my Batman run in the Fear State event.

I think a lot of creators don't like to show the sausage-making process. A lot of fans would rather believe that the stories come fully cooked, ready to go out the door, but it's rarely that way. Writing in a mainstream superhero universe requires you to be deft on your feet and adapt to a hundred different masters who want wildly different things from you. Half of the job requires you to be a politician, and the other half requires you to be a kind of mathematician. There's a strange mystic algebra to all of it that becomes a bit second nature after you're doing it for a while, and frankly, I'm probably going to lose that when I fully leave mainstream superhero books. There is this joy to solving a story problem that you had no control over existing, in a way that satisfies you and the players who threw the wrench at you in the first place. I don't know that I'm going to miss it, but learning to be quick on my feet and how to problem-solve superhero stories is how I became the writer I am today. And I'm proud of the way I ducked and weaved between the wrenches thrown at me over the years.

So, fuck it. I'm going to show off my original plans, talk about the wrenches that got thrown at those plans, and how I adapted and maneuvered around each of them. I'll talk about what I was planning on taking over before I got the Batman gig. I'm going to show you the things I pitched for 5G, and the reasons I stopped pitching things for 5G, and what I pitched instead (Hey there, DC vs Vampires!). I'll show you the different iterations of my Batman pitch, and how I came up with The Designer and his original secret identity. And a lot more…

And I'll talk a lot about everything I've learned about Batman and Gotham City over ten years of working on the character and his world.
These posts are going to run weekly, on Wednesdays. We'll dive in in earnest next week with my thoughts on Batman's continuity, which is really how I started cooking up everything I've done over the last few years.

[JBatmanFan05]

Dude just said "F* it, i'll spill all the beans, stay tuned"!

This is a surprise. I won't pay a dime to read about any of these plan/pitches, but I hope somebody reports on them or posts them.

Hopefully this "editorial by committee" thing will end at DC. Writers shouldn't have to be politicians (to a hundred different masters) like Tynion laments. If too many cooks in the kitchen is costing DC writers, then it must change.

[Jadeb]

This is a surprise. I won't pay a dime to read about any of these plan/pitches, but I hope somebody reports on them or posts them.

Hopefully this "editorial by committee" thing will end at DC. Writers shouldn't have to be politicians (to a hundred different masters) like Tynion laments.

But fans now insist on an integrated, continuity-heavy universe dominated by epic events. You don’t get that by letting each writer do their own thing. Personally, I’d rather have shorter, smaller stories told with more artistic freedom, but I recognize I’m in the minority and that my preferences wouldn’t sustain DC’s bottom line.

[JBatmanFan05]

But fans now insist on an integrated, continuity-heavy universe dominated by epic events. You don’t get that by letting each writer do their own thing. Personally, I’d rather have shorter, smaller stories told with more artistic freedom, but I recognize I’m in the minority and that my preferences wouldn’t sustain DC’s bottom line.

I'm not necessarily against that. You correctly point out that maybe if we did want it, DC might not do it anyway because they've calculated longer runs are only the profitable model.

I read Tynion's complaints there as going beyond the expected coordinative hiccups created by doing an "integrated, continuity-heavy universe dominated by epic events." I personally read it more as abridging his artistic freedom for other reasons that (he must have felt) have less justification (like all these various power players just trying to impose their rigid vision of this or that on him, perhaps, and I'm totally speculating right here, because these visions tie into some coming film or show or etc).

[Vordan]

Pissed Tynion is putting it behind a paywall, guess I’ll just wait for BC to summarize all the info anyway.

[Jadeb]

I'm not necessarily against that. You correctly point out that maybe if we did want it, DC might not do it anyway because they've calculated longer runs are only the profitable model.

I read Tynion's complaints there as going beyond the expected coordinative hiccups created by doing an "integrated, continuity-heavy universe dominated by epic events." I read it more as abridging his artistic freedom for other reasons that (he must felt) have less justification (like just trying to impose their rigid vision of this or that on him, perhaps (and I'm totally speculating here) because these visions tie into some coming film or show or etc).

I don’t doubt there are plenty of petty tyrants at any publishing company with as many stakeholders as DC, but, at the same time, I suspect there would be a lot less interference if, say, the Superman office was focused on the Superman books and the Batman office was focused on the Batman books, Instead of each office coordinating their character’s appearances across all the events and convoluted continuity. Too many cooks.