CVM
October 1993
Issue 86
When the Bat BreaksâŠThe Knight Will Fall
By Neil Hansen
ââŠand down will come Batman, costume and allâŠâ
Two new additions to the Batman mythos have turned the caped crusaderâs world upside down. One, a villain named Bane, has broken Batmanâs back in a quest to ultimately humiliate the spirit of Batman; causing the second, a hero called Azrael, to take over the role that millionaire Bruce Wayne created to fight the forces of evil.
Holy setbacks Gotham City! Will Batman be able to get out of this, or is this the beginning of the end? Readers have already seen Superman killed fighting Doomsday; the world doesnât seem to be safe for superheroes anymore. Why?
In actuality, the DC creators wanted to explore what it would be like if someone else became the Batman. âTo get a different Batman,â said Doug Moench, writer of the Batman comic, âobviously, the original Batman had to step down for a time and a new one had to take his place. Of course, the Batman costume, which has been a classic for so long, also needed a new look. What kind of twist could be done on that? What would the classic design look like if it were altered for the nineties?â
The Beginning of the Break
The genesis of the story called, âKnightfall,â where the old Batman was forced to step down, and the new Batman took over, started two and a half years ago.
âI was having lunch with Peter Milligan, and at the time he was writing Detective Comics,â said Batman group editor Dennis OâNeil, âand we were just talking over story possibilities. He mentioned that it would be a good idea to put someone else in the Batman suit for a while. Peter left meetings,â revealed OâNeil. âI had about four or five of them. We decided that we needed a new villain for this. The only villain that was even close was maybe the Joker; but heâd been used a lot. And even then, he was not emotionally right for this storyline, the way it was developing.â
âThe Joker is much more of a psychological villain, â said Moench, âthan a physical villain, and we wanted a physical villain. Bruce Wayne had to be physically unable to continue as Batman to bring about a new Batman.â
The Bane of Batmanâs Existence
Bane was created as the instrument of batmanâs downfall in a one-shot called Batman: Vengeance of Bane, written by Chuck Dixon and drawn by Graham Nolan and Ed Barreto.
âI donât remember who exactly said what, said OâNeil, âbut most of the credit would go to Chuck Dixon, because he actually wrote the story and filled in the blanks; and without all of those blanks being filled in, you donât have a very good character.â
Bane was connected with the âVenomâ storyline created in Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20, written by OâNeil himself. âI had created him for a completely different story,â OâNeil remembered. âWhen I wrote that story for Archie Goodwin (Legends of the Dark Knight editor), I certainly didnât think it would have any âlifeâ beyond those five issues, but that was the one piece that was just serendipity.â
OâNeilâs experience with Batman first started as a writer. He was instrumental in first bringing the character back to his grim roots in 1970 (Detective Comics #395) with artist Neal Adams, following the demise of the popular but campy Batman television series of the 1960âs. Through this foundation, subsequent writers like Frank Miller built on this base, amplifying the grimness that OâNeil originally instituted. Moench, who wrote Batman from 1982 to 1987 had to play catch-up when he returned to the title using Millerâs increased grit and appreciated the fact that OâNeil wanted to go the same way.
âIt does feel a little odd,â said Moench, âbut I think Iâm up to speed now, and I have been since âKnightfallâ began. It was strange getting back into it because I no longer read the book after I stopped writing it, so I had to read all of the back issues. One of the good things about it was that, after I left, Batman had been done in the way that I wanted to do it â and did do it to a certain extent, but not as much as I wanted to. At the time, I guess they werenât ready for a dark, gritty Dark Knight kind of thing which Frank Millerâs book (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) convinced them that was the way to go. So, before Miller did it, that was the way that I had wanted to go. The editor, Len Wein, kept saying, âNo, no no! Itâs perfect like this!â and I kept saying, âI donât think you quite know what I mean.â OâNeilâs critical slant is closer to what Iâd wanted to do all along.
The Avenging Angel
The character of Azrael taking over as Batman will push the grit to the limit. In creating Azrael, OâNeil said, âAgain, weâd decided that we needed someone fresh.â
For instance, Nightwing, the first Robin and leader of the Titans, was given the thumbs down for the role. However, OâNeil had a bit of a struggle in creating the new character.
âI first looked at animals,â said OâNeil, âtrying to think of whatâs the natural enemy of the bat. I did some research â which is something writers get to do and pretend that theyâre working â and found that the only natural enemies that bats have are men. That seemed to be a dead end, so from there we began to look at mythology. I donât know how I stumbled onto Azrael, who was an angel of vengeance in two different mythologies, but once we had that â the idea of an angel of vengeance â the rest of it kind of fell into place.â
Azrael, like Bane, didnât originate in the regular Batman continuity of titles, but began in a four-issue mini-eries called Batman: Sword of Azrael, written by OâNeil and drawn by Joe Quesada and Kevin Nowlan (Quesada, who designed Azrael, is also designing the new Batman costume).
âThere was no way to bring them onstage in the current continuity,â OâNeil pointed out, âwithout bringing everything to a screeching hault, and we didnât want to telegraph our intentions that far ahead. Iâm not sure that the way we did it was the right way, but there was no other way, those two books came out after there had been an awful lot of Batman out, the second movie â so they didnât get as much attention as they probably would have, even if they werenât going to be important to later continuity.â
Unfortunately, sales on the Azrael and bane titles werenât as high as OâNeil thought theyâd be. Â âWe were a little disappointed,â OâNeil said, âat the reception of both, because we felt that they deserved better. On the other hand, we couldnât put a blurb on the cover that said, âThis is going to be rally important, dear reader, buy this book!â
However, initial disappointments on the two books turned into big money for comic book dealers.
âIâve seen Batman: Sword of Azrael #1 go for as much as $25,â OâNeil said. âIf I had to do it again, maybe we could have found a way to bring Bane on stage. I work with consummate craftsman, and I will stipulate that even if you never saw those books and will never see them, thereâs plenty of information in the stories themselves. You have everything you need to know about those guys if you read Batman and Detective Comics. Thatâs one of my criteria for doing comics. I donât think itâs fair to the reader to force them to go outside of what theyâve just bought in order for them to understand what theyâve just read.â
Building Batman
Before Knightfall, there had been complains in fandom that the Batman titles lacked continuity, but OâNeil claimed itâs always been there.
âIt just hasnât been the kind of continuity that Mike Carlin does in Superman, said OâNeil, âwhere one story ends and the next book picks up ten seconds later. Thereâs a lot of reasons for that, one of which is that I keep wanting to put emphasis on the story with continuity as a part of that; so I insist that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that THAT be finite. A writer is really going to have to work to convince me that he is going to need more than three issues to tell a story, so we do that, but I think of it as a mosaic. At the end of the year, all of the features fit into one big picture. We donât ever contradict unless we screw up, which is a distinct possibility, albeit a distant one. I was being facetious of course. We make mistakes all the time. But, if Tim Drakeâs father is kidnapped in one book, he stays kidnapped in the next book; and we can generally figure out that these three issues took about three days of Batmanâs life, and thatâs this week. The next story takes about two days, so that winds up the week. Iâve got on my computer an outline for the next year,â OâNeil continued, âwhich never gets more detailed than who the villain is, and if the villain doesnât exist, it says, ânew villain,â which when weâre dealing with something like Knightquest or Knightfall, then there are other things. Where is Jack Drakeâs health at a given time? Has Bruce recovered at al by whatever issue it is weâre dealing with? We can maintain that continuity that we spoke of earlier. Iâm not going to say it fits seamlessly, but pretty close to it, so at the end of the year you can make senseâŠassuming that these guys lead very busy lives! I would say that we have continuity working through the strengths of my creative people.â
With Knightfall, and later, the Knightquest storyline demand the other kind of continuity,â said OâNeil, âstillnot as tightly as Mike does it, but a lot more. Even having said that, we ry to keep the story self-contained enough, that if for some reason Batman isnât available to you, but Detective Comics is, youâll get enough of the backstory and surrounding information in Detective Comics to understand what is going on here and now.â
However, fandom has noticed similarities between the physical powers of Bane against Batman and the physical powers of Doomsday against Superman. According to OâNeil, this is just confidence.
âIf I had known that Mike was going to do his storyline this year,â OâNeil commented, âI would have considered delaying mine. We were both working independently. There was no reason for me to check what he was doing and vice versa. By the time that we figured out that we were both working on major continuity-altering storylines, it was too late to do anything about it. I read Superman as it comes out. I donât really read other editorsâ stuff except as a reader, but I want to enjoy it. Therefore, I donât look at scripts or artwork ahead of time. Again, if Batman or Robin makes an appearance, I have to look at it, and complain if necessary.â
The Changing of the Guard
Knightfall reaches its penultimate chapter in Batman #500. Among the creative changes that occur are the changing of artistic guards from Jim Aparo to Mike Manley. Aparo moves to Green Arrow after a long run on Batman related comics.
âI left Darkhawk (for Marvel Comics) with #25,â said Manley, âand I was lining up to do some special projects stuff, and Brett Blevins, whoâs a really good friend of mine, left his contract at Marvel to look around and see stuff. He went over to see Archie Goodwin (Editor of Legends of the Dark Knight), who we both know at DC, and Archie gave him some work. Bret was saying, âYou should go see Archie.â He gave me Legends of the Dark Knight Annual, and a couple people were in the office â Neal Pozner, Mike Carlin â and they asked me if I would be interested in doing some stuff.â
âThen one night,â continued Manley, âat 7:30, Denny OâNeil called me up and asked if I wanted to do Batman. I thought about it for about 30 seconds and said âYeah!â I had no idea about Batman #500. I hadnât read Batman in years. His first artwork is chapter 1 of Knightquest: The Crusade,â which focuses on the adventures of the new Batman.”
âI was sort of coming in at the end,â Manley said, âthe beginning and the middle because itâs the end of the first part of the storyline they had come up with. I was the new kid on the block. Itâs in the middle of the storyline, and itâs at the beginning of the whole big new thing with Batman. Maybe in a way itâs a good thing I havenât read Batman comics in years, because Iâm trying to come at it from a fresh perspective. Itâs enjoyable, and I feel I have a lot of freedom. My preconceptions of the character are basically the stuff Neal Adams did when I read as a kid, and the stuff that Frank Miller did himself, and with David Mazzucelli. Thatâs the stuff I have in my head. Itâd be like, if I did the Fantastic Four. Iâd think about what Jack Kirby did. I think all creative people do that when they come on. If you were going to do Spiderman, maybe youâd go back and reread the old Steve Ditko and John Romita issues. Maybe for a young guy, it would be Todd McFarlane.â
Still, Manley has admiration for his predecessors.
âI didnât sit down [when I was hired],â Manley explained, âand think I was following in Jim Aparoâs footsteps. I feel that if itâ a new character, itâll be different from what Aparo did. I fondly remember the Aparo stuff from when I was collecting the Neal Adams stuff too. I used to confuse his stuff with Neal Adams stuff when I was a kid. He was one of the best guys in the field. He had a great flair for storytelling. I think to some extent, Neal was a better draftsman, coming from the old strips, but Aparo had a lot of dynamic storytelling to his stuff. Heâd chop up panels. He was very good at layouts and treating the whole page as a unit.â
âOne of the things that Iâm trying to do with Batman,â continued Manley, âis bring up the elements of Gotham City and work very hard on the backgrounds. Iâve really cut down on my workload, and I am just working on Batman, not two, three or four projects at the same time.â
âKnightquest: The Crusade will be seen in both Batman and Detective Comics, but what will happen to Bruce Wayne?â
âDenny will take Bruce off in Knightquest: The Search,â said Moench, âand Justice League Task Force, for a three-part story in which Bruce Wayne is trying to solve the mystery of Dr. Sondra Kinsolving and the adduction of Robinâs father.â
âWe thought weâd have to logically deal with Superman,â said OâNeil, âso a scene has been written by one of Mikeâs guys. Weâll have to deal logically with Nightwing, so that will pop up here and there. Weâre dealing with Green Arrow in Justice League Task Force. Our version of Batman is that he is not a very public guy. I donât think there are a dozen people in Gotham City who have decent photographs of him, and he certainly doesnât hang around talking to crowds. What the world knows is that heâs changed clothes. A few people in Gotham City â Gordon, Bullock, and Sarah Essen â will react to his personality change. Gordon will be shocked by it, and wonder if heâs gone over the line. Bullock will applaud it like heâs finally figured what to do with the lowlife scum: beat them senseless.â
What Makes A Hero?
âA lot of heroes in movies,â continued OâNeil, âand in other comics, commit whole slaughter pretty casually. Thatâs another idea that weâre playing with in this series.â
OâNeil to use Bruce Wayne and Azrael to explore different aspects of the same theme. âWe decided to not just let Bruce be an invalid,â said OâNeil, âbut to tell a story of a different type of heroism. In real life, I have not a great deal of admiration for somebody who charges a machine gun nest because thatâs adrenaline, but someone who is in great pain, gets up and makes their life work despite that: thatâs a real hero. The story will start in Justice League Task Force #5 and 6, then Shadow of the Bat #21-23 â thatâll be written by Alan Grant and done by the regular shadow team â and I will finish it up in a three-parter in Legends of the Dark Knight, again emphasizing that each of these will be self-contained stories in which a problem will be solved. I would like to believe that anyone who reads just one of these stories will be perfectly satisfied and feel theyâve gotten their moneyâs worth. If you read all three of them, you get the big picture and find out all the details. âA model for this sort of thing,â continued OâNeil, âis a Dashiell Hammett book called The Dain Curse, which is made up of three novellas, and they were each published separately. Nobody ever knew that they were all part of a large novel, so therefore, everybody who read them â they were serialized in Black Mask (a pulp magazine) â got their moneyâs worth. Then Hammett pulled them all together with very little rewriting into one novel, and youâd say, âOh yeah, man! Now I really see what this is about!â Thatâs what weâre trying to do with Knightquest: The Search. We will have failed if we donât provide lots of action, melodrama, and larger than life characters; but underneath that, [weâre dealing with] heroism. Is it the very violent action that Azrael does? Is it the thing that Bruce Wayne is doing?â
While OâNeil couldnât divulge the length of Knightquest, or the permanence of the changes, he did disclose, âWeâre going to build it to a dramatic conclusion. Weâre exploring the character of Azrael. To some degree, we are waiting for feedback. Weâre seeing how readers feel about it. Weâre seeing how readers feel about it, and how we feel about it.â
Anniversary Shakeups
Between the publicity of the death and resurrection of Superman in Superman #75 and Adventures of Superman #500, and the current goings on with the Caped Crusader with the new armored Batman debuting in Batman #500, violent occurrences and radical changes seem to be the new milieu for DC superheroes anniversaries.
âMike Carlin and I arrived at our ideas completely separately,â said OâNeil, âwithout so much as ten seconds consultation, but I can pretty much figure out why we did it. We both have the same problem to solve, and that is that we have characters that are half a century old. In my case, I made a guess based on my 26 yearsâ experience that maybe we were getting routine. I know that movies and television shows would draw attention to the character, and weâd get hepped on that, but all of that was going to be over now. Itâs deadly to let a character like Batman or Superman go on autopilot, and itâs easy enough to do that. Both characters have had stretches in their history where itâs happened. You still collect your paycheck, and sales donât slide dramatically, but you want to keep the stuff fresh.â
âThe trick,â OâNeil continued, âis to keep it interesting for you.â Then, if the writers or artists have interest or are having a hard time doing their jobs, thatâs probably going to have a lot of interest for the reader. Thereâs always people who hate what youâre doing, but if you didnât do this shakeup once and a while, there would be a danger of the characters repeating themselves, going on autopilot. That would be the death of them.â
OâNeil described how he handled that major shakeup. âWhat weâve attempted to do,â he explained, âis preserve the essence of the character, that core identity, what made him a hero in the first place. Then, either allow the externals to evolve or every once and a while give the externals a kick in the slats to make them evolve, to keep them contemporary. If weâre doing our jobs right, weâre doing stories that appeal to a twelve-year-old or a fifty-year-old. When I started in this business, there were all sorts of rules. Some of them made sense. Some of them were simple rules someone that of at the time; but we had far less freedom to deal with the essence of the character then. Any changes that happened during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, happened as a sort of evolution. It happened when people werenât really watching. Now, we are allowed to actually tell dramatic stories, and dramatic stories always involve change.â
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