Wednesday, September 20, 2023

GERBER DAY


It's Steve Gerber's birthday. As I've said here before, I wouldn't be the writer I am today if I'd never encountered Gerber's work. Every Gerber story I read—the ones that soared and the ones that went down in flames—was evidence that mainstream comics could be so much more than I’d ever imagined. That there was no creative door that couldn’t be kicked in, no creative wall that couldn’t be torn down.

His voice is sorely missed.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

IT'S BATMAN DAY (AGAIN)!

In honor of Batman Day (yes, there is such a thing), here’s an edited and updated version of a piece I posted a few years back, looking back at my history, both personal and professional, with the Dark Knight…




I’ve loved Batman since I was a kid.  One of my primal memories is being six or seven years old, sprawled out on the living room floor with crayons and a stack of drawing paper, trying to replicate a Dick Sprang era Batman cover line for line.  In many ways, that square-jawed, slightly goofy (okay, more than slightly) version of Bats is the one I cherish more than any other.  I also remember the fangasms I had when, in the seventh grade, Batman came to television:  it may have been campy to the grown-ups, but to naive, overweight, just-turned-twelve year old me this was serious stuff:  comic books come to glorious life in a way they never had before.    

So, yes, JMD the fan has a long-standing, deep connection to Bats but I honestly didn’t think JMD the writer had much of a history with the character—after all, I’ve never written a Batman solo series—until I took a look back at my career and discovered that I've written more Batman tales than I ever realized.  Many more.  And it started with, of all things, a coloring book.


“The Mystery of the Million Dollar Joke” is the first superhero story I was paid to write.  And, yes, there’s a genuine kid-friendly story in there, waiting for you to bring it to life with your Crayolas.  Paul Levitz offered me the gig when I was first starting out at DC and I stayed up all night, hunched over the typewriter (remember those?), banging out the script.  If memory serves, I was paid a few hundred dollars for my efforts—which was just fine in 1979—and I still have a copy of the book tucked away on a shelf in my office.

The first comic book superhero story (y’know, the ones with the colors already provided) of mine that ever saw print was also a Batman adventure, in Detective Comics #489.  “Creatures of the Night”—also edited by Mr. Levitz—had Batman hunting vampires, mainly because most of my work in those days was for the DC horror anthologies and vampire stories were my stock-in-trade.  I don’t remember much about the script beyond the fact that it was illustrated by a Batman artist I admired, Irv Novick, who had nice things to say about it when I encountered him in Paul’s office one day.  Those kind words meant the world to a newbie writer.

My first full-length superhero story was also edited by Paul and also featured Batman:  Brave and the Bold #164, “The Mystery of the Mobile Museum,” teamed Bats and Hawkman (a character whose solo feature I wrote for a short time in World’s Finest) and the story was hardly classic.  What was classic was the artwork, by the great  Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.  He took my script and raised it up to another level entirely.

I didn’t encounter Batman again for another seven years, when he joined the ranks of the Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League—but he was an integral part of that series throughout its five year run.  Of course our Batman was a little different from the grim ‘n’ gritty avenger that the brilliant Frank Miller unleashed on the world the year before JLI debuted.  Our Bats had a sense of humor—incredibly understated, true, but it was there—and, though he’d deny it to his dying day, he enjoyed the idiotic escapades of Beetle, Booster and the rest of our quirky, and wonderfully obnoxious, cast.


In 1993, I came at the Bat sideways, via the Superman mythos, for an Elseworlds story called Speeding Bullets (art by the hugely-talented, and sorely-missed, Eduardo Barretto).  SB posited a universe where the rocket from Krypton was found not by the Kansas Kents but by the Gotham Waynes.  The baby was christened Bruce and, after being traumatized by his parents‘ murder, the boy grew up to be a flying, super-powered—and extremely angry—Batman.  And, if Kal-El was Batman, how could Lex Luthor not be the Joker? 

A few years later—tied to the release of the third Batman movie, Batman Forever—came Batman/Two Face:  Crime and Punishment:  a serious exploration of Harvey Dent’s split personality (building on a wonderful story written, a year or two previously, by Andy Helfer), featuring dynamic, emotional art by Scott McDaniel) and that was followed, in 1994, by a four-issue Legends of the Dark Knight arc, brilliantly brought to life by Joe Staton, that may be my absolute favorite of all the mainstream superhero stories I’ve written.  “Going Sane” featured a Joker who believes that he’s killed Batman.  With his mortal enemy gone he has no reason left to live—and his mind snaps.  Now, if we snap we go crazy—but if the Joker snaps...he goes sane.  What came next was a tender love story—a tragedy, really—about a gentle man who doesn’t know he was once a homicidal maniac with a permanent grin on his face.  At least he doesn’t until Batman returns to Gotham and all hell breaks loose.  The story also focused on Bruce Wayne’s relationship with the doctor who brought him back from the brink of death and, I hope, revealed a Batman whose greatest weapon was his compassion.


The next year, the amazing Mark Bagley and I had the pleasure of teaming up Batman with my old pal Peter Parker in Marvel’s Spider-Man/Batman:  Disordered Minds.  This was followed, two years later, by DC’S Batman/Spider-Man:  New Age Dawning (beautifully illustrated by Graham Nolan).  To say that it was a kick teaming up two of my all-time favorite characters—and doing it for both Marvel and DC—may be the Geek Understatement of the Century.

I didn’t return to Gotham until 2002, when I scripted another Legends of the Dark Knight arc—a Robin-centric tale, with art by the terrific Trevor Von Eden, called “Grimm”—and wrote my first Batman graphic novel, Absolution (with rich, painted art by Brian Ashmore):  a gritty story of justice and redemption that found Batman traveling to India in search of a holy woman...who just might be the terrorist Bruce Wayne has been hunting for over a decade.

Around the same time, Bats appeared in an issue of Justice League that I wrote, during Grant Morrison’s run, along with an issue of The Spectre and the 2003 Justice League/Spectre mini-series Soul War. Batman later guest-starred in an issue of Phantom Stranger and Keith Giffen and I sent Batman’s DNA into the far future in our Justice League 3000/3001 serieswhich imagined a Batman very different from the one we all know.  This is a Bruce Wayne who wasn't traumatized by the death of his parents—in fact he can't remember their murder at all—and that lack of a motivating tragedy has altered him in fundamental ways.

In 2021, I joined with Justice League Unlimited producer (and all-around great guy) James Tucker to write the Justice League Infinity mini-series, which built on and continued that classic television series.  Batman, of course, was a pivotal part of the story.



I’ve also had the pleasure of writing Batman in animated form—first with multiple episodes of the aforementioned Justice League Unlimited and then with eight episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  I’m genuinely honored to have been a part of both those wonderful shows, but I got a special kick out of writing for B & B because it was so reminiscent of the square-jawed, over-the-top Batman I adored as a kid.

2015 saw the release of the direct-to-video animated movie Batman vs. Robin—which explored Bruce Wayne’s relationship with his son, Damian—and the following year brought the sequel, Batman: Bad Blood, which shined a spotlight on the entire Bat family.  

Given my more than forty year history with the character, I suspect my dance with the Dark Knight isn't over yet—and I hope we keep dancing for years to come.


©copyright 2023 J.M. DeMatteis
Batman and his pals ©copyright 2023 DC Entertainment

Thursday, September 7, 2023

MAG-NIFICENT!



A gentle reminder that Magneto #2 is on sale now. Here's Marvel's hype:

ENTER: THE QUEEN OF WRATH! Years ago, MAGNETO battled the X-MEN on the island-nation of Santo Marco. Now, as Magneto attempts to turn over a new leaf, he will feel the wrath of IRAE! But what secret does that battle hide for Irae, and what shocking revelation is in store for the Master of Magnetism? Continuing the all-new adventure set during Magneto’s days as Headmaster of the NEW MUTANTS, and unearthing never-before-revealed aspects of his past and future!


Tuesday, September 5, 2023

CAN I GET A WITNESS?


My new novella—a supernatural thriller called The Witness—is on sale today, courtesy of the fine folks at Neotext Publishing




Featuring a cover and ten extraordinary illustrations by the brilliant J.H. Williams III, The Witness is the story of Jonah Blake, who finds the world literally crashing down on him when a 757 drops out of the sky. The subsequent explosion rips through Jonah's life in multiple ways, and opens the door to a terrifying, and perhaps soul-transforming, paranormal experience.

This is a story I've been living with for more than twenty years and I'm thrilled to finally see it in the world.  You can read a preview at the Neotext site and purchase the book (in either ebook or print form) at Amazon.




Tuesday, August 29, 2023

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK (A DAY LATE)!

Yesterday was Jack Kirby's birthday. Kirby's extraordinary work only gets better with time and my gratitude for his impact on our popular culture, and my life, can't be fully expressed in words. Jack was, and will always remain, the King.

My favorite Kirby work (probably my favorite comics ever) is his interlocking Fourth World saga and I recently took part in a celebration of those classic books. You can watch it below.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

REMEMBERING DAN

Dan Green has passed away.  Dan was one of our finest inkers, as well as a brilliant illustrator in his own right, as evidenced by his work on our Doctor Strange graphic novel, Into Shamballa.  Dan was also an old friend—his daughter, Galen, and my son, Cody, grew up together and remain friends to this day—and he will be profoundly missed by all of us who knew him.  


Back in 2018 I was interviewed about working with Dan on Shamballa.  Here’s what I said about that unique collaboration.


Keep in mind it’s been decades and memories are fragile things, so take everything that follows with the proverbial grain of salt.  That said, Dan saved my outlines and scripts and many of his layouts and notes, so, using that as a kind of archaeological guide, I’ve tried to reconstruct the way we created Into Shamballa.  

Since Dan and I lived in the same town and we saw each other regularly, that allowed us to work very closely every step of the way, bouncing things back and forth, building the story together, brick by brick.
  After we talked the story through and came up with a framework that excited us, we pitched it to Jim Shooter, who was editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time, and he had some very valuable insights that helped bring our story into deeper focus.  I then wrote up a five page story outline for our editor, Carl Potts, that we also shared with Roger Stern, who was writing the Strange monthly at the time.  We wanted to make sure that we weren’t stepping on Roger’s toes and that our story didn’t overlap with anything he was doing.

From there Dan and I worked out more details of the story, discussed layouts, tone, etc.
  Then, based on our conversations, I wrote up another outline, breaking the story down, which Dan used as a jumping off point, laying out the entire graphic novel and, I’m sure, adding new details along the way.

I wrote my script from Dan’s layouts, but I was free to change things, make shifts, as I went along.
  Dan recently unearthed lots of material that he’d saved and found some of my own layouts—and I use the term loosely!—that I’d do if, in the writing, my script deviated from what Dan had already done.  This way he had a sense of what I was seeing in my head as I was writing.  I also added some art notes to the script itself, something I’d forgotten until Dan showed me the old pages.



I’m sure Dan had feedback about the script that I then incorporated into a another draft and, with that in front of him, Dan worked out the final layouts.  I suspect we discussed that, making sure we were both happy, after which he went on to the finished art—which, all these years later, still stands as some of the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen in a comic book or graphic novel.

This kind of back and forth is
not the way the average comic book is done!  The fact that were were able to do so much work face to face, and that we had the extended deadline that graphic novels afford, allowed us to really collaborate in a way writers and artists in comics working on monthly comics just can’t.  It was a magical collaboration as befits such a magical character. 



Safe travels, Dan.  Say hello to the Lords of Shamballa for me.

Saturday, August 12, 2023

WITNESSING


My new novella, a supernatural thriller called The Witness, with a cover and ten illustrations by the brilliant J.H. Williams III, will be out September 5th in ebook form, courtesy of the fine folks at Neotext Publishing. (A print edition will soon be available, as well.)

What’s it about?


On a sleepless night, Jonah Blake goes for a drive—and finds the world literally crashing down on him when a 757 drops out of the sky, exploding in the nearby woods.

Jonah, the lone witness to the event, soon finds himself engulfed in a maelstrom of voices and visions. Are these truly the souls of the 215 people who lost their lives aboard Flight 77—or is Jonah Blake losing his mind?

And if these are the spirits of the dead crying out to him—what do they want?


More info to come!  (And while you're waiting for The Witness, feel free to check out my 2022 Neotext novella, The Excavator.)