Writer: Judd Winick

Artists: Guillem March (p. 1-10), Andrei Bressan (p. 11-20)

Colours: Alex Sinclair

Letters: Patrick Brosseau

Cover: Guillem March; JG Jones (variant)

Publisher: DC Comics

Judd Winick. His name polarizes comic book readers it seems. Gracing everything from Green Lantern to Green Arrow, and up to and including Outsiders and Batman, the writer returns to the Batman universe for a three issue arc on Batman and Robin with a story centred on the character he brought back from the grave. Jason Todd returns in this issue, but just what is up his sleeve is anyone’s guess. Onward ho!

Synopsis

Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne are Gotham’s Batman and Robin. Together they tackle the city’s crime as mentor and pupil, but are they prepared for another onslaught from Jason Todd?

Bruce, Dick and Jason swing into action during happier times

What’s the Story?

Sitting shackled in his cell in Arkham, Jason Todd is visited by Bruce Wayne draped in his familiar Batman garb. The teacher and former pupil reacquaint dancing about topics such as death and future plans. Jason Todd adamantly argues his point about being moved from Arkham before Bruce leaves and returns to the Bat Cave where he briefs Dick and Damian on his meet. Dick assures Bruce that he and Damian will keep an eye on the former Red Hood, but Bruce worries that by the time they have any sense of what he’s up to it will be too late.

Inside Gotham City Corrections, Jason Todd resumes his onslaught on the criminal underworld from the confines of the prison walls much to the dismay of the inmates who had been wholly intent on gaining retribution for the crimes against their brotherhood Todd is guilty of. After interrogating some hoods, Dick and Damian learn about recent events from inside the prison. They frantically place a call to the Warden demanding to know why they weren’t informed of Jason’s activities. They’re told Jason had been sent back to Arkham. During his transport though, his motorcade is attacked and by a gang who springs him loose.

The Pretty, Pretty Pictures

The artistic duties are split evenly in this issue between March and Bressan, and although I don’t typically like multiple artists in standard serial books, both turned in some good work. There are however minor annoyances. I felt March’s portrayal of Todd was a little overplayed, perhaps being a bit too cartoonishly muscular in the early Arkham scenes with Bruce. Regardless, I felt March put forth some nice work during the Jason-Bruce exchange, characterizing Jason’s personality through varying displays of emotion from purely laid back and humourous, to calm and stern, ending with a panel focusing in on his icy blue eyes and his tone presumably drops to a serious more serious one as he makes clear he’s not one of Bruce’s “freaks”.

Why so serious?

Bressan takes over at the half-way point of the issue, and I feel this is the better of the two offerings. Todd’s physique itself is more realistic to what we know, but that’s only minor. I felt the prison yard sequence where Jason sits down to read Pride and Prejudice only to be attacked by an inmate was an excellent touch. The panels follow Jason rising from his cross-legged position sitting against a pole, to the inmate leaping at him, to Jason turning around and grabbing his arm as the inmate lunges at him with a knife in hand; in the final panel on the page he trips him into another inmate. I also enjoyed the following page where Jason is eating his soup with Brutus-esque inmates plotting his death, completed by sprinkled scenes of his own dastardly deeds. Altogether I was quite happy with the art in this issue.

Jason Todd enjoys his soup

Overall Thoughts

This was my first issue back since Morrison’s departure from the book last year and I must say it was enjoyable. I think much of that enjoyment comes from the re-emergence of Jason Todd as a central antagonist in the book to Dick and Damian. Despite his historical revilement from comic fans of yesteryear, I feel like the character has a magnetism that other Batman rogues don’t. He’s a fallen pupil of Bruce Wayne, one of the chosen. Yet, he has resorted to murder to extend the Bat legacy beyond where Bruce, Dick or any other is willing to go and that’s compelling as a story element. Moreover I find he’s an interesting foil to Dick as Bruce’s two eldest “sons” again are set to go head-to-head. He provides the Dick Grayson interpretation of Batman with a rogue of his own relative to the more traditional Bat-villains, which places him very much akin to the Joker to Dick’s Batman.

With Winick again at the helm of a Todd-driven Batman story, I feel like his handle on the character is on par with no other perhaps save Morrison. This story shifts Todd towards his next big plot to undermine the Batman legacy by imposing his own interpretation of it onto the criminal underworld. It’s difficult to guess what Winick has planned over the next two issues, but I feel like he’s at home on this book with these characters. I was pleased with his prior work, as I am here. This isn’t his Green Arrow work, and I think this story arc deserves a look…so long as you can reconcile with the ridiculousness of the last page.

5. Electra (2005)

Wow. This movie was awful. The only plus for it is that it was actually better than Daredevil. And only because expectations were so low. The plot is mostly nonsensical and the supporting characters: Stick, Stone, Tattoo, and Typhoid Mary basically resemble their comic book counterparts in name alone. Obviously made by Hollywood execs who heard that comic books were cool, this flick is only for Jennifer Garner fans or anyone who wants to see a blind General Zod fight a bunch of ninjas.

4. Batman and Robin (1997)

Brutal. And such a slap to the face to anyone who said “Batman Forever wasn’t very good, but I know the next movie will be great”. Ostensibly a modern “homage” to the campy 60′s television show, only someone who had never read a Batman comic book could truly enjoy this. Clooney is somehow miscast as a rich playboy (?) and the over-abundance of villains just adds to the gong show feel. Watchable only for Schwartzenegger because everything he does is completely awesome.

3. Captain America (1990)

Some will say this is an unfair choice, it is the only B-Movie on my list and it was direct-to-video instead of getting a widespread theatrical release but I stand by my selection. The plot is a convoluted mess of detritus and fascism and every divergence from the comic book will leave the viewer scratching their heads (the Red Skull is Italian for example). Watchable only as a laughable drinking game, if Chris Evans just showed up on screen and said “Hey ladies, I’m Captain Effing America!” this summer’s movie would be a vast improvement.

2. Daredevil (2003)

Despite the press that it received, I actually didn’t mind Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin. It is everyone else who doesn’t seem to understand the characters they are playing. I have put it so high up my list because Daredevil is a major Marvel character and this movie should have been way, way better. Boring and an utter disappointment. On a side note Affleck commented that he owns every Daredevil comic book. If only he had actually read them.

1. League of Extraordinary Gentleman

Definitely the worst comic book movie ever made. Not even Sean freaking Connery can save this one! Completely diverging from the source material and adding in extra characters like Tom Sawyer (it was thought that American audiences couldn’t relate to the all British characters), this is movie-making at its worst. You will laugh at loud at the implausible (even for a movie) Nautilus chase scene through Venice and scream in rage at the incomprehensible plot. Even the special effects are sub-par; I am certain that a child with an iMac could do better. Connery was quoted as “not really understanding the script”. No kidding.

“Under normal circumstances, I would follow Morrison and his ongoing Bat-narrative into the next title hosting it, but that new title is going to experience a 33% price increase, which is just way too much for me to be able to spend on 22-pages of Batman comics…especially when I know if I simply wait a while, I’ll get a better value from the collections.”

- J. Caleb Mozzocco

Every Day is Like Wednesday/Blog@Newsarama‘s J. Caleb Mozzocco is one of the best writers on comic books working today, offers up a reason why he won’t be following Mr. Grant Morrison’s next Bat-title in floppies.

Will you follow his lead?

I’ve been re-reading Grant Morrison’s Batman run – mostly because I’ve been enjoying David Uzumeri‘s annotations, and it’s gotten me thinking about how comics are put together.

With the exception of the republishing of Arkham Asylum’s in the back of the tpb, I don’t think I’ve ever read a Morrison script. While Arkham Asylum’s script is incredibly detailed with rambling thoughts – it seems as though Grant spends a lot of time sharing his story ideas to Dave McKean, rather than dictating every minute detail in a single specific image, as shown by this really verbose example (depicted and expanded by McKean on page 39 of the comic):

Batman pushes the glass into his palm. His face creases with the flare of pain. ((This act deepens some of the ritual symbolism of the story. The recurring Fish motif–which relates to Pisces, the astrological attribution of the Moon card – also relates to Christ, who in turn can be linked to the Egyptian God Osiris, whose life and descent into the underworld parallels with the story of Amadeus Arkham. We also see later that the Asylum is built upon a Vescica Pisces – this symbol (…) forms the ground plan of much religious architecture and is used in the construction of most of the major buildings of antiquity, like Stonehenge and Avebury in England. It is a development of the Greek symbol for Christ (…). We also have the Clown Fish in our story, of course. Interestingly enough, while doing some research into folklore, I came across a book, published in the 16th century by a quack doctor Andrew Borde, called ‘Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham’. The English village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire was famous for the antics of its fools and the three stories mentioned all contained some reference to images in our Arkham story. On one occasion, for instance, the Gotham villagers, upon seeing the reflection of the moon in a pool attempt to fish it out. In another story, they surround a bush with stakes in an attempt to catch a cuckoo. The third story tells of how an eel was eating all the fish in their pond. The villagers take the eel and throw it into another pond, leaving it to drown. Synchronicity is alive and well!

As a final interesting aside on the subject of fish, the Vescica Piscis symbol is a very basic representation of the holographic process in which intersecting circular wave patterns produce three dimensional images. Physicist David Bohm believes the hologram to be an analogy for his vision of a vast interconnecting universe, in which every part is in some sense a reflection of every other part. In a few pages time, the Mad Hatter will endeavour to outline Bohm’s theories as applied to child molestation.

In the same way, everyhting in this story reflects and comments upon everything else.

What was I talking about anyway?

Yeah, so Batman is here inflicting upon himself one of Christ’s wounds and it’s all got something to do with fish, okay?

Maybe I’ve been doing this for too long.))

BATMAN: UH!

BATMAN: JESUS!

All these references makes you want to check out where he read them in the first place. You get a sense of the immense scope of thought and creativity Grant’s pouring into the comic book, into that one little scene – and you wonder just how it all comes together in a script.

When Shawn Young and I interviewed Cameron Stewart back at Wizard World Toronto, Shawn asked him how Morrison’s scripts came in. Stewart told us that “…most of the important stuff is in there, and then he leaves certain action things open to artists that he trusts. I know that myself and Frank Quitely he just says go nuts on the action.”

There was another interview (which I cannot currently find) wherein one of the artists on Seven Soldiers of Victory said that he didn’t even write the dialogue for each issue until AFTER he received the final art in an almost Stan Lee/Marvel Style storytelling. I think this explains why – when in the hands of a lesser talent or, more fairly, of someone who is working on a deadline and can’t give 110% – his current crop of comics can seem like channel-surfing through the DC Universe and others seem so organic that you’d think it was done by one person.

Again, I don’t really know the ins and outs and how specific or non-specific Morrison is – but the fact remains that Morrison’s use of dialogue pared with body language (and not caption boxes) is really the driving force of the narrative for Batman and Robin.

Up next – we take a look at what Pete thinks Morrison is really doing with Batman.

So in saying that I’ve become completely enamoured with the idea of more Batman from him. I’ve heard rumours that he was supposed to come back and illustrate this next arc “Batman and Robin Must Die” – but time constraints left him unable. This made me sad because I’m almost positive that he’d give us a new look for the Joker that Morrison has really been going for.

I’m sure that Frazier Irving can do that… and do it tremendously well, but y’know… I would’ve liked to have seen sequential work from Quitely. Either way the DCU Blog has released the cover to Batman #13 and it’s beautiful.

God – just look at that.

It’s absolutely spellbinding.

Love the crowbar bit.

I’m a big fan of trades and hardcovers. I like having complete chapters to read. My typical Wednesday ritual is to go to the comic shop, gab with with the employees and some of the customers for a bit and eventually make my way home. I’ll grab a drink (usually a bottle of water or a can of coke), plop down on the couch, read the floppies first and then break into the trade or hard cover I may have picked up that week.

As you know from past columns, I’m a big Buffy fan and it’s the only monthly I get. Unfortunately even Buffy got a little short shifted this week as Wednesday heralded the arrival of the deluxe hardcover of Batman and Robin.

BUY

THIS

BOOK!!!!!

I have sung the praises of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman before but Batman and Robin is a slightly different animal. A fantastic animal.. it is like a gun-toting unicorn of comics it is that good.

For those of you living under a rock, Bruce Wayne is dead/mia/trapped in time/etc and Dick Grayson has taken up the mantle of Batman. Joining him as Robin is the slightly psychotic Damian Wayne the son of Bruce and Talia, grandson of Ra’s al Ghul. We join them on their first week out as a team.

I am not going to get into plot specifics as it will take some of the fun away from this book but I will tell you that I pretty much don’t care if Bruce Wayne ever comes back. Stay a pirate or whatever.

Morrison has set this book up so it is fresh and new but yet it’s still Batman. A lot of reviews have commented on the fact that the roles are kind of reversed which makes for an interesting read. Dick is not Bruce. He’s not brooding, he’s kind of a fun guy. Damian however is Bruce’s son with a touch of psycho, while he promised his father he would never kill (and he’ll stick to that) he see no harm in really laying in beatings.

Speaking of which, I love Damian. If I were a kid, I would so dress up like Robin for Halloween now. Just his attitude towards everything is really interesting to watch

But where I find the genius in the book is the fact that this Batman and Robin are still getting their acts together. They are not the well oiled machine Gotham or the reader is used to. They screw up, not only that, they don’t particularly like each other. It is really fun to see this dynamic play out, a personal favorite is that fact Lucius Fox keeps wanting to talk to Dick about the business and Dick has no idea about anything business like; at the least he’s a circus kid at the most he’s a beat cop and vigilante. Damian laments “It’s just numbers. I can do that.”

The first half of this hardcover is drawn by Frank Quitely and it is honestly the best work of his career. While I’ve been a fan of his since his run on The Authority, I do get why some don’t like him. My friend Dan best explained it as “He draws everyone like pro wrestlers.” and if you look at the run on The Authority and The New X-Men, you can see what Dan means by his statement; a lot of broad shoulder, lot of flat faces, lot of beefy people. And while he improved that issue slightly in All Star Superman, it is in Batman and Robin where he finally sheds it. The art is fantastic, the layouts on this book are nothing short of phenomenal.

Unfortunately there is a blip when the second half of the book is taken over by Phillip Tan. I’m not hugely familiar with Tan’s work beyond that in Final Crisis Revelations which I really enjoyed. I don’t know what happened here but something doesn’t seem to click quite right. It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly the problem is. Maybe it’s just the fact he had to follow Frank Quitely (which is kind of like a guitar player going out on stage right after Eric Clapton play Layla). Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t ruin the book but I would have preferred Quitely to stay on longer or maybe Cameron Stewart to start sooner.

All in all, this to me is what superheroes comics should be like. Fun, well written and unexpected. Now just an agonizing year until we get a second hard cover (estimated guess based on DC’s trade policy or lack there of).

But in the meantime, BUY THIS BOOK!

Brent Chittenden is a Canadian freelance writer who also happens to write humorous things for Bite TV’s blog. If you have need of his services you can reach him at bcchittenden@gmail.com, twitter at @BCNerdhole and his podcast Two Assholes Talking About Nerd Stuff. Feel free to become a fan of him at his Facebook group Brent Chittenden: The Writer.

I had approached Cameron as he was at Wizard World Toronto as a guest of honor, he was doing sketches and the line up was fairly solid. Luckily the dude ahead of me was asking some pretty great questions and allowed me to record and then join in on the questions.

While the first part of our interview did get cut off when a fire alarm was pulled, we managed to pick right back up where we were shortly after.

Special thanks to Cameron for being – as always – an amazingly generous interview, and to Shawn Young for doing half of my job for me.

____________

Shawn: So you were telling me about Grant Morrison’s scripts…

Cameron Stewart: Yeah

S: They come in pretty loose for action?

CS: You know most of the important stuff is in there, and then he leaves certain action things open to artists that he trusts. I know that myself and Frank Quitely he just says go nuts on the action. In issue seven of Batman and Robin, the opening chase scene through London that was all on the motorbike and through the streets of London, that was all very specifically planned out and he gave me…it’s an actual specific route through London that he gave me directions and said look on Google Earth and find the appropriate reference for it. But the later action scenes… The fight scenes, he just kind of allowed me to run with. And he said you know the fight that’s between the two Batmen down near that Lazarus Pit? He basically said I want this to be a fight where both of them are evenly matched and it’s just a series of blocks and parries and none of them can actually get a blow in. And then he just said “Do that and make it look fun”.

S: You were saying you turned to movies for references?

CS: Yeah, I looked at a bunch of martial arts, a bunch of vintage Jet Li martial arts movies and what I would do is I would just sit and watch them and sketch out moves that I liked. I’d press pause and just kind of sketch a quick pose. And then once I had a whole page of little poses that I’d drawn…I work digitally with my layouts. I do the final art on paper, obviously, but all of the pencilling is done digitally in Manga Studio with a Cintiq Tablet, so what I did was I had all my little sketches and I was able to just kind of play with it and arrange them on the page until I had a sequence that kind of flows.

S: Storyboarded?

CS: Yeah, and then if I had two actions that didn’t quite match up that I could draw a quick bridge between them, and once I had the choreography locked, then I inked it. He’s pretty good. He’s good to collaborate with in a true sense of collaboration.

S: Is he easily accessible?

CS: No, he’s not. I think every waking moment of his life is spent writing so he doesn’t have a lot of time. Every keystroke has to be on the scripts, it can’t be wasted on eBay or whatever so all of the communication I have is through his wife, who is also his manager.

S: So he calls?

CS: No, it’s not really phone calls. If I have a question, I’ll email her and ask for a question and she’ll either already know the answer or she’ll quickly check with him and then she’ll write back to me.

Pete DeCourcy: How much of an influence does Frank Quitely have on your page layouts? Specifically for…

We3: "Some next level shit."

CS: Oh, quite a bit. He’s my favourite artist by far. When I was working on it I didn’t want to just be copying him because I wanted to do obviously my own thing, but I found it almost impossible not to be influenced by him when I was thinking about how I wanted to have the pages look, envisioning “well, how would he do it?”

PD: There’s a couple of those panels that have that We3… where it’s inverted in and inverted out like those fight scenes. It just looked really, really cool.

CS: Well thank you. It was definitely a conscious…again not trying to copy him but have the same approach. I feel like consistency is pretty important with this kind of thing and I just wanted to make sure that it felt the same as his work on it. With something like We3, I always felt that We3 was such… Can I swear?

PD: yeah.

CS: I always felt that We3 is like the next level of shit that really. I was disappointed that more artists, including myself, didn’t pick that baton up and run with it. And start thinking more about the way that comics pages are almost… using it like a three dimensional space which is what he was doing. I don’t know if people were just intimidated by it, I guess I am certainly, or just think that nobody is as good as he is at doing that stuff. It’s definitely not a coincidence that it’s there.

PD: If I could just change gears to Sin Titulo. What are your feelings on the iPad? Last year at a Transmission X panel you said it’s not a coincidence that most of the panels in Sin Titulo are shaped like the iPhone. So with the iPad, what’s your take on it?

CS: I am going to Boston next weekend for a convention there, and I will be going to an Apple store and buying an iPad. I am so in the tank for that thing. I’m really, really excited.

PD: Do it think it’s going to change the way we’ll see digital comics?

CS: Yes. I think there are a couple of very key factors that I hope they…I think pricing is essential.

PD: Right now it’s like $600 for the cheapest model.

CS: Oh no, I think the price point on the iPad is…they nailed it. I think it’s perfect. I’m talking about pricing of comics. If Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, whoever, if they release comics on the iPad, and they try and charge $3.99, that’s going to fail. But if they’re bold with it, and they charge 99 cents for a comic, I know, personally, I will buy three times as many comics as I currently do. There are a lot of comics that I am actually kind of interested in, but casually enough that I don’t fell like paying four bucks. I don’t feel like having it clutter up my studio. But if I know that I can get it for 99 cents, and download it to my iPad, it won’t even be a question. I’ll absolutely do it. And I think this whole thing with the…you probably saw the Amazon big fiasco a couple of weeks ago where they accidentally listed comics at a really cheap price point. People flocked to Amazon and ordered stuff. Which I think proves, that if comics are priced reasonably, people will buy them in huge amounts. I think the iPad really has the potential for that if they do it right. There is a worry that the comics companies are going to be greedy and they’re going to want to charge four bucks for a digital download. I think that’s crazy. I think that they shouldn’t do that. I think that what will probably most likely happen, in the long run, which I am absolutely fine with, is that monthly pamphlet comics will die and go all digital and then the trade paperbacks will be what is printed and sold in stores.

PD: I’d actually be okay with that.

S: So would I.

CS: I would be completely happy with that. It remains to be seen. As I say, there’s a lot of variables, a lot of factors, that are going to influence it, but I hope they get it right. I really do because I really believe in that device. You know it’s funny because when it was announced I guess backlash against the hype and people were saying “That’s it! It’s just a big iPhone! What’s the point?” I think that’s really shortsighted. If anything, with the iPod and with the iPhone, Apple has a very proven track record for making these things monstrously successful. Changing the industries, changing the world. Both the iPod and the iPhone completely revolutionized those industries and I think the iPad is going to do the same. What’s not immediately apparent about the iPad is the… What made the iPhone sing was the third party applications that were developed for it. The first year of the iPhone, it was locked and you could only get the Apple stuff but when they opened it up to the developers and had the App Store, suddenly that thing…developers were coming up with stuff that was inconceivable. Every day there’d be a new app for the iPhone and I’d go “My god, I can’t believe someone thought to do this, how to use this phone this way”. And I think the iPad is going to be exactly the same. I think there’s going to be some really ingenious stuff that’s developed for it. And I think hopefully a lot of that is going to include not just comics, but magazines and books and everything.

PD: Well the newspapers are pretty much…maybe this will be a way for them to find new life.

CS: I don’t think it’s going to be the amazing saviour of the print industry that people are maybe expecting it to be, but I think it’s going to help, and I think we’re in an interesting time right now where stuff is changing. The world is changing, the way that we consume media is changing, and right now people who produce this stuff haven’t really figured it out yet. They don’t know how to quite exploit it. But I think it will happen. It might take a little while, it’ll get there. I’m a big believer in the iPad. I would be very happy to sell my comics on the iPad. I will most likely at some point…what’s that?

a panel from Stewart's award winning webcomic "Sin Titulo"

S: Will that push you towards more creator owned stuff?

CS: Oh man, I don’t need the iPad to push me towards creator owned. I’m going to do that anyway. Yeah, I’ve got Sin Titulo, and I’ve got other stuff in the fire that I want to work on. The great thing about it is…you know with bands right now, you can get an album on the iTunes Music Store and have global distribution. You don’t have to be with a record company you don’t have to be anything.

PD: That’s how Arctic Monkeys got started, right?

CS: Yeah, exactly. And I think it’ll be the same… I mean, it already is the same with the internet. You can put a web comic up online for basically free, and build an audience that’s global that way, but I think if you’re able to sell them for a reasonable amount of money on the iTunes Music Store, or the iBooks, or however they are going to sell them, I think there’s a real potential for independent artists to do creator owned material and package it in a way that’s exactly equal to what Marvel, DC or all those other companies do. And it’s going to be a great equalizer, I think, which I’m sure Marvel and DC don’t want to hear, but it’s going to happen. I think it’s great. I’m all for it. So I’m really excited to get my hands on it and see what it can do.

PD: What do you have in the fire? What’s coming up? Outside of the Cowboy Batman, which we’re all really excited about.

CS: That’s unfortunately all I can talk about. I have my web comic still. I’ve got Sin Titulo which I’m working on. But the other stuff that I have is too early for me to actually make any official…

PD: Any word on either Apocolipstix or Seaguy? Or is that too secret?

CS: No, The Apocolipstix is a thing where I would like to do it but I don’t get paid to do it. The first book I did as a gamble. You do it and maybe it pays off, maybe it doesn’t, but if it pays off then great. Unfortunately, The Apocolipstix didn’t really set the sales charts on fire so it’s difficult to justify doing another 150 page graphic novel for free. The incentive is that they are my characters and I enjoy working on them but it don’t pay the bills. I will get back to it. If nothing else, I want to do it so I can work more with Ray, which is great, and…

PD: Have you had a chance to read Possessions yet?

CS: He gave me a copy but I haven’t read it yet.

PD: It’s really good.

CS: I’m sure it’s great because he’s wonderful. I would like to do it for that sake. I’m really not sure. It’s going to be a case where if I manage to get some free time, and I’ve got some money in the bank, then I’ll do more. Seaguy hopefully will be, I mean Grant is super busy right now. Grant is doing all kinds of stuff.

PD: Do you know if he’s got Multiversity coming up soon?

CS: It’s on the cards, but I don’t know how far along he is.

PD: You haven’t been approached for that yet?

CS: Well, I can’t really say anything.

PD: Well, let’s be honest. You’re one of Grant Morrison’s best collaborators.

CS: Well, thank you.

PD: You, Frank Quitely, who else? Phil Jiminez, Phillip Bond, JG Jones, Williams the 3^rd, etc… I mean there’s quite a few guys but not a lot of them can pull it off like you, Quitely and the rest of the guys do.

CS: Well, thank you.

PD: Would you say that you are probably going to be approached for that?

CS: Okay, okay, I’ll be honest. I’ve been asked about it. I don’t know if I’m doing it. My official comment is I’m not doing anything for it. But he asked me about it; Grant asked me about it quite a while ago. We’re talking over a year ago. He said “Would you like to do one of these Multiversity books?” and I said “Yeah, absolutely” but that was so long ago now that I don’t even know. I don’t know what’s going on. They may literally have filled it all already.

PD: It just seems that there’s going to be a lot of similarity between…with Seven Soldiers of Victory he had all his main guys minus Quitely, and then even with Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne it’s very similar.

CS: A lot of the same guys, yeah.

PD: So with that, how is your design sense, do you guys go with what Kubert drew or are you kind of allowed to go…

CS: I’m taking Andy’s design but I’m trying to draw it in a way that’s comfortable for me. With the Cowboy Batman stuff I want to have it look like…I don’t know if you’re familiar with Lt. Blueberry?

PD: Yeah

CS: By Moebius. I really want that kind of look to it.

PD: So kind of like what Darwyn Cooke did on Jonah Hex number 50.

CS: Jonah Hex. Yeah, I can show you some of the designs. They’re up on my blog. You can include them with your article. It’s not secret or anything. Obviously I don’t want to… Just like with working after Quitely, I don’t want to copy exactly what he’s been doing. It also has to be something of my own as well to justify doing it.

PD: So will we be seeing you return to Batman and Robin anytime soon?

CS: I don’t think so. I have certainly not been asked, and my understanding of it is that, we’ve got Andy Clark doing it now, and then Fraser. I think Quitely is coming back at some point.

PD: That’s the rumour. Hopefully. Because he’s supposed to do the Joker. Grant Morrison said somewhere that he wants to see Frank Quitely’s Joker.

CS: Right. So yeah, it might be that, I don’t know. But I’m not on the schedule for any more. I would love to do it.

PD: Is there anything you’re reading right now that you want to recommend?

CS: Right now I’m halfway through the Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami. Anyone who has read my web comic I think would enjoy reading that. That’s what I’m reading.

PD: Awesome. Thanks very much for your time. And best of luck to you.

CS: Thanks very much.

Pete DeCourcy is EiC of ComicBookDaily.com. He tumbls over at You Practically Rock and writes for The Simple Art of Crime. If you have any questions or demands of him, he can be reached via email at pdecourcy[at]comicbookdaily[dot]com

DC Comics announced this morning that Frazer Irving will follow Andy Clarke as artist on Batman and Robin beginning with June’s Issue 13.

Irving, who collaborated with writer Grant Morrison on 2005′s Seven Soldiers: Klarion the Witch Boy, joins an impressive art roster that’s already featured Clarke, Frank Quitely, Philip Tan and Cameron Stewart.

That brings us to DC’s other Bat-related announcement — the full artist lineup for the six-issue miniseries: Chris Sprouse, Issue 1 (Cave-Batman); Irving (Solomon Bat-Kane), Issue 2; Yanick Paquette (Bat-Beard), Issue 3; Cameron Stewart (Bat Revere), Issue 4; Ryan Sook Issue 5 (Bat Spade); and Lee Garbett, Issue 6. The miniseries debuts in May.

Here’s a look at Irving’s Return of Bruce Wayne #2 Variant.

So cool.

Now most of these books are old, and for whatever reason I only recently picked them up. These include – Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman Vol. 2 A Thousand Bullets, Batman & Robin #7 and Paul Grist’s Jack Staff volume four: Rocky Realities.

I can’t really review Paul Grist’s work as it’s probably going to involve me just blathering on and on about how amazing the title is, how it’s probably the single most inventive superhero comic – maybe even comic period – on the stands right now. This volume keeps with the amazing mastery of the art form that Grist has established time and time again that he’s the best at. I can only urge you to either a. Check out the link to a earlier column devoted to Jack Staff, or to Brent’s column detailing the beauty that is his police procedural series Kane.

Batman and Robin #8 has all the earmarks of a classic Batman story, lazarus pits, team ups between Batwoman as well as the Knight and Squire as well as classic character moments that Grant Morrison really excels at.

This issue continues the storyline of Blackest Knight – which in some ways ties up plot threads established by Morrison in Final Crisis and Batman R.I.P. While Morrison’s scripting is, as always when it comes to Batman, a joy to behold – the real revelation is Cameron Stewart’s art.

Stewart’s long been a favourite of mine since I discovered his work following up Darwyn Cooke on Catwoman, I then set out and found every single piece of sequential story-telling that he’s put to ink and paper since.

He’s always been a fantastic storyteller, with beautiful and lush linework that is remeniscent of the aforementioned Cooke, but with hints of Hernandez and DeCarlo. But as of these past three issues, he’s come completely into his own, perhaps inspired by Frank Quitely’s brilliant panel layout during the first arc (Batman Reborn?) He apes Quitely’s fractured panel designs for fights scenes – practically saying: shit man, this is how bad-ass this fight is, the panels are actually being rocked off the grid, falling down or shifting inwards as each kick or punch is landed.

Batman & Robin has quickly become one of the must reads in terms of redefining what Superhero art can do in comics. I know that lots of people sort of poo-poo’d Philip Tan’s previous arc, but there were beautiful moments in his first issue, coupled with some brilliant Bolland-Killing-Joke inspired panels on his last issue. There’s something very special going on in this issues and i’m really excited for more and more people to discover this.

And now let’s talk Hitman volume two.

Garth Ennis doesn’t want to write a superhero comic, not really. He’s got other stuff going on, but it seems that every now and then he gives in – or atleast as much as he can – and he creates the closest thing he’ll get to superheroics.

Which means it’s pretty far away from anything remotely spandex clad.

No, the antagonist of this story – the titular Hitman – is just that a hired gun named Tommy Monaghan who through some wierd alien encounter just so happened to get superpowers – in this case x-ray vision.

This volume is where the series really hits it’s stride. Blending the male bonding, war stories, and hyper violence that Ennis is known for.

While the first storyline wraps up loose ends from the previous volume (though not without planting a few more and giving us a villain that really seems to match the ruthlessness that Tommy himself eschews for a blaise attitude towards his given profession.

The second story is a final night tie-in that goes the Cantebury tales route and has each man talk about their experiences with death and killing. These are either heartfelt, hilarious or war stories that probably have happened

The last story though; the Hitman annual is pure and utter joy.

It’s a spaghetti western that hits all the hallmarks of a Leone western without seeming cloyingly cute.

Look, the truth is – this series is a total gem – it’s not the best thing Ennis has ever done, but it’s so good that you’re willing to look past it’s good looking sisters to try it out.

Pete DeCourcy is Editor in Chief of Comic book daily. He also manages Blue Beetle Comics in Barrie, Ontario. You can find more of his writings at the Simple Art of Crime and You Practically Rock.

Someone give Dan Slott a no-prize!

Dan Slott explains away all that Kevin Smith Daredevil nonsense and wins a no-prize while doing it. I’m not exactly a HUGE fan of Smith’s Daredevil run, but Slott doesn’t necessarily toss it out of continuity, just sort of.. sweeps it under the rug? I don’t know.. I just loved the issue.. as you’ll no doubt notice…

I would have also accepted SCRASH!

Because it really doesn’t hurt when Marcos Martin is drawing some of the best art of his career. His panel layouts are among the most brilliant and visually interesting this side of Frank Quitely.. saying that though: who incorporates soundeffects into artwork better? Quitely or Martin?

click to embiggenate

OK, just one more.. I don’t want to post a full page all the time but this is again just a perfect moment. Dan Slott, Javier Pulido and Marcos Martin are so in-tune on what makes a great Spider-Man comic that you’d think they are all one person. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had this much fun reading a Spidey comic.

Oh comic books...

Because, well let’s be honest: Freeze Breathe > Black Ring That Makes You DEAD AND SUPER-POWERFUL.

Cameron Stewart ...I never knew...

Because Batman Kicking a Darkseid-Science-Based Insane Clone of Bruce Wayne is pretty much the reason why I read comics. (I should mention that he then puts on Electric Knuckles to continue the fight.) I should also add that Cameron Stewart is a total revelation here. I’ve been a fan since I discovered him on Catwoman and followed his career ever since (we here at CBD love, love, love Apocalipstiks written by Ray Fawkes and drawn by Stewart)  but his art is totally different, evolving. I see a lot of Kyle Baker in his work now.. what do you think? Am I off?

is someone regretting their career choice?

And finally… Kate Kane is one of the best new characters to come along in what feels like forever*, and while Morrison hasn’t exactly nailed her dialogue, he’s shown her as being so uber-competent when dealing with a group of Darkseid worshiping Mary Poppins Chimney Sweeps who are planning to bring the greatest evil into this world, that you tend to overlook it.

The fact is this: if you’re reading ‘tec right now, you love Batwoman. You want her to succeed even in spite of the fact that she could easily become not only a mary-sue character – but a poorly concieved attempt at being PC and shocking…

*maybe since… Renee Montoya?

Pete DeCourcy is EiC of ComicBookDaily.com. He tumbls over at You Practically Rock and writes for The Simple Art of Crime. If you have any questions or demands of him he can be reached via email at pdecourcy[at]comicbookdaily[dot]com