Let me tell you guys, FAN EXPO Dallas was great. Tons of great comics information was revealed over this past weekend, including the upcoming re-teaming of Snyder and Capullo on Dark Nights: Metal. Tom King himself was present as well, and he revealed lots of details about what he has in store for Batman.
The Batman scribe, speaking in a spotlight panel Sunday afternoon, discussed his work on Grayson, The Omega Men, and The Sheriff of Babylon, while also divulging a few details about his upcoming Batman/Elmer Fudd crossover special with artist Lee Weeks (expect noir and some delightfully hard-boiled dialogue).
He also went into quite a bit of detail about his current run on Batman, and where the title is going in the next few months. Some of it is still top-secret, of course, but there was still plenty of great info to be shared, particularly regarding the upcoming epic “The War of Jokes and Riddles” arc.
The basic highlights:
- Batman #20 wraps up “I Am Bane.”
- In #20, which is out this Wednesday, King gives Bruce an official middle name.
- Batman #21-22 will be part of “The Button” crossover.
- Batman #23 is the Swamp Thing issue with Mitch Gerads, hopefully seriously called “The Brave and the Mold.”
- Batman #24 will be a sort of recap and wrap-up of the run so far, with a cliffhanger that leads into “The War of Jokes and Riddles.” He says the last page will be shared and talked about for decades.
- “The War of Jokes and Riddles” takes place early in Batman’s career, “Year One plus a year or so.”
- It begins in Batman #25, which is a deluxe sized anniversary issue, and is an eight-part story arc.
- The basic premise: the Joker and the Riddler clash, as neither one wants the other to destroy Batman and rob them of the satisfaction. This causes a “gang war” to erupt with people taking sides, all while Batman is caught in the middle trying to keep the city safe.
- We’ll see some cool fights, like Deadshot vs. Deathstroke and Solomon Grundy vs. Killer Croc.
- The arc will be broken up into acts, after a fashion: issues 25-26, 28-29, and 31-32 will be part of the main story, with art by Mikel Janín.
- Issues 27 and 30 will feature a guest artist he couldn’t announce at the time, and they will take a look at what it means be a bottom-tier villain during one of these big wars. It may or may not focus on Kite-Man.
It was a great panel with a lot of information. King is positively giddy at what’s to come, and his enthusiasm was infectious. My personal favorite quotes from him were “What’s the difference between a joke and a riddle? A joke is chaos; a riddle is order” and “Batman is the comic that makes you think that if you punch a bad guy, he falls.”
King has also been tweeting out teasers and some images from the arc throughout the morning:
More details as we hear them here at Batman-News. Needless to say, this is some pretty exciting stuff.
