And it’s going to stay that way if King has anything to say about it.
“They’re steady in their relationship.
There’s no ‘Will they break up?'”
Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey/DC Comics.Credit: Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey/DC Comics
But this isn’t just another run-of-the-mill Batman comic to him.
“It’s not going to be as good asDark Knight Returns.
you might’t get to that place.
DC Comics
That’s like infinity and you try.
This feels like that to me.
This is everything I wanted a Batman story to be.
Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey/DC Comics.Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey/DC Comics
In that way, it feels ambitious.”
“It makes the story feel huge to me,” says Mann of theTrue Detective-like structure.
“I’ll draw one issue and feel like I drew five.”
Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey/DC Comics
Mann has especially enjoyed the older version of Selina.
I’m just having fun dressing her.
I’m used to drawing muscles and young people.
It’s nice to know I can stretch a little bit and do other stuff."
Clay Mann on drawing all 12 issues without any fill-in artists.
Do our younger selves die as we mature, and/or will our present-self die when we reach certain age?
Or are all these people the same?
Does she become her 20-year-old self again?
Does she become her 30-year-old self again?
What does it mean that he’s now forever tied to a semi-reformed thief?
How does he make sense of this contradiction?
For Catwoman, it’s even more complicated.
What does that mean?
Because I don’t hate myself [or] who I was,'" says King.
“It’s about them rectifying or not rectifying who they are as a couple.
How do I move forward?'”
Batman/Catwomanis already primed to have a lasting impact because it brings Andrea Beaumont, a.k.a.
“I just always loved the character, and it kind of made me angry they weren’t together.
It stuck with me as a kid.
I just thought it was weird she was never in the comics.”
And it’s almost always an Andrea segment.
In fact, King views it as as part of a new trilogy of angrier tales that includesRorschachandStranger Adventures.
“It’s about being a good person and a bad person at the same time.
That’s in Catwoman, Phantasm, and Batman,” says the writer.
“This is a very heavy book.
It’s about death and life and love, but I’ve never been happier writing.”
Batman/Catwoman#1 goes on sale Dec. 1.
A version of this story appears in the December issue ofEntertainment Weekly,on newsstands now oravailable here.
