DAVID BETANCOURT: Do you feel there's already a fan preference as to who should be the new Batman?

DAN DIDIO: I think so. We had a lot of fun with this last year as we were building to the story and we were polling a lot of groups and there was definitely a clear favorite to this, but not as unanimous as you would think. Characters such as Jason Todd (the second Robin) who you would think would get no votes, actually got many. It's kind of interesting to see and realistically while we did do a poll, and that has a lot to do with it, the new Batman will be the one that made the most sense just in regards to the history of the character and how you would expect the characters to evolve.

DB: Does the fact that Robin (Tim Drake) is a contender show that he has grown up and he's a man now?

DD: Absolutely. The thing that's most interesting...the fun part for all of us is that we're telling a story where the entire world thinks that Batman is dead, but for everyone in the know who's reading, knows that he's not. As it stands, the entire world does think that Batman is dead with the exception of Tim Drake. He's the only one that doesn't believe it. It shows a maturity level to him, but also how Tim has always been identified as one of the keener detectives of all the Boy Wonders. We always played Tim as the smartest. On a thinking, planning and tactical level Tim is the one who is the most comparable to the way Bruce acted and behaved as Batman.

DB: Is Batman on New Krypton?

DD: No. I shouldn't say no because we're not going to answer that. We're not going to say if he's on New Krypton, trapped in the past, or one of the big choices is Arizona. Everyone seems to think he's in Arizona.

For the entire interview click here...

(Source - DCU: The Source)