Batman DC Editor Mike Marts give us the lowdown on the Batman relaunch titles coming in June and the direction the Batman Universe will be taking:

IGN Comics: As I understand it, the wall is a way for you and your editorial team to keep everything organized and straight, rather than keep all this in your heads. What I'm curious about is how you guys break it down initially and go about relegating certain characters to certain books.

With the wall, I get this image of something like the NFL draft, with you playing the role of commissioner and the different writers vying for the chance to use each character. Obviously that's not the case, but what's a more accurate way to describe how you break down which series will handle which character?

Mike Marts: It's a combination of a few different methods. We divide everything up by regular monthly titles, and then if there are any ancillary books like one-shots or events, we include those as well. More or less we're working from what's already there and then branching out.

In other words, if Grant Morrison has an outline in for Batman and Robin, and we know that certain characters are going to appear in that series, we'll earmark those characters for that series and know that their appearances in other books will be limited or restricted. We kind of work that way, using the outlines from our writers and our conversations with our writers. Then we leave an open area for characters that are at large. And "at large" doesn't necessarily mean they're at large in Gotham City and running free. It can also mean that they're at large in that they're not currently being used in any of the core monthly titles.

IGN Comics: So it is it a common occurrence for you to have to tell a writer that Character A is off limits because he's being used in another series?

Marts: Definitely. In fact it happened this morning. I got a script in from one of our writers who wanted to use Firefly. He's a good villain, but not really an A-lister, and he hasn't really been used in that past few years other than some appearances in Gotham Underground. Suddenly it seems like for whatever reason Firefly is all the rage. We had him appear in Battle for the Cowl, and he's also going to be used in Paul Dini's Streets of Gotham.

So for the other writer who wanted to use it in his book, I had to explain that the character is being used in a significant way over here, which means we kind of have to adjust or make changes or come up with a replacement villain to be used in his book. So that's one example. It happens a few times a week, actually. But that's just one example of how the board helped us in managing the characters and knowing who appears where, when and why.

For the full interview click here...

(Source - IGN Comics)