Alexx1
02-22-2008, 12:20 PM
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=147734
Newsarama: Grant, let’s talk Batman. You’re currently doing the “Joe Chill in Hell” storyline, and you really seem to be deconstructing Batman, what he’s gone through in the past on a very philosophical level. You’ve spoken in the past about how you saw where Batman was, mentally, when you started working on the series. Where is this particular storyline going to take him?
Grant Morrison: Again, it’s basically trying to push Batman to the limit, to take him to emotional and physical places he’s never been before so we can really see how strong he is. The stronger a hero is the greater the challenges he should face. We want to put Batman under real pressure, to give readers get a better, more dramatic insight into the incredible physical and moral strength he does possess when the going gets rough.
So the idea behind “Joe Chill” and the current storyline is not only to expose weak spots that Batman himself has been unaware of for a long time, it’s to develop certain elements of his biography which may have been overlooked for a while and make those elements central to his undoing. It’s a story about karma in the strictest sense of the word – in his efforts to understand the derangement of his arch-enemy, the Joker, the young Batman inadvertently sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events which now threaten to destroy him utterly.
When I started this story, my first idea was, “What if all the Batman adventures from the 1930s until now were all part of one guy’s life, and he’s really gone through all this stuff, and it’s happened over the space of, say, 15 years, potentially?” To make it all work and still keep Batman at his peak, I settled on him being about 35 right now, so let’s say he’s been Batman since he was 19 or 20 years old.
Now try and imagine all that continuity squeezed into fifteen years. What you have is a guy who started his mission really well and was doing a great job, and then Robin comes along and that makes the job even better, the two of them start cleaning up the streets.
Then things begin to go a little bit wrong when Dick Grayson reaches college age and leaves. And then you have a succession of different Robins with disastrous results and consequences. You have the Joker’s paralyzing Barbara Gordon, you have Bane breaking Batman’s back, No Man’s Land…(laughs). All that’s supposed to have happened in the last few years of one man’s life!
So what would that do to your head? What we’re seeing now is kind of culmination of all these terrible things that have happened to him, and the fact that his mission has run into so many problems, and led to so many deaths. The psychological result of that will play directly into the storyline in the coming months, where we’ll get to see how Batman breaks down, and how he comes back from it…or not.
It will be interesting to see where he takes Batman and after all this is said and done what exactly it means for Batman, who he is and what he represents. And I guess Damien will be playing more of a role in the series at some point. Perhaps his character will be hitting a turning point in his personal development and beliefs but we'll have to see if it will be enough to endear him to fans.
Newsarama: Grant, let’s talk Batman. You’re currently doing the “Joe Chill in Hell” storyline, and you really seem to be deconstructing Batman, what he’s gone through in the past on a very philosophical level. You’ve spoken in the past about how you saw where Batman was, mentally, when you started working on the series. Where is this particular storyline going to take him?
Grant Morrison: Again, it’s basically trying to push Batman to the limit, to take him to emotional and physical places he’s never been before so we can really see how strong he is. The stronger a hero is the greater the challenges he should face. We want to put Batman under real pressure, to give readers get a better, more dramatic insight into the incredible physical and moral strength he does possess when the going gets rough.
So the idea behind “Joe Chill” and the current storyline is not only to expose weak spots that Batman himself has been unaware of for a long time, it’s to develop certain elements of his biography which may have been overlooked for a while and make those elements central to his undoing. It’s a story about karma in the strictest sense of the word – in his efforts to understand the derangement of his arch-enemy, the Joker, the young Batman inadvertently sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events which now threaten to destroy him utterly.
When I started this story, my first idea was, “What if all the Batman adventures from the 1930s until now were all part of one guy’s life, and he’s really gone through all this stuff, and it’s happened over the space of, say, 15 years, potentially?” To make it all work and still keep Batman at his peak, I settled on him being about 35 right now, so let’s say he’s been Batman since he was 19 or 20 years old.
Now try and imagine all that continuity squeezed into fifteen years. What you have is a guy who started his mission really well and was doing a great job, and then Robin comes along and that makes the job even better, the two of them start cleaning up the streets.
Then things begin to go a little bit wrong when Dick Grayson reaches college age and leaves. And then you have a succession of different Robins with disastrous results and consequences. You have the Joker’s paralyzing Barbara Gordon, you have Bane breaking Batman’s back, No Man’s Land…(laughs). All that’s supposed to have happened in the last few years of one man’s life!
So what would that do to your head? What we’re seeing now is kind of culmination of all these terrible things that have happened to him, and the fact that his mission has run into so many problems, and led to so many deaths. The psychological result of that will play directly into the storyline in the coming months, where we’ll get to see how Batman breaks down, and how he comes back from it…or not.
It will be interesting to see where he takes Batman and after all this is said and done what exactly it means for Batman, who he is and what he represents. And I guess Damien will be playing more of a role in the series at some point. Perhaps his character will be hitting a turning point in his personal development and beliefs but we'll have to see if it will be enough to endear him to fans.