GKO: MADHOUSE
Here you will find our rambalings on all area's of Batman, interviews and speical features!
CBR News: Fabian, from what we understand thus far about these "Road Home" titles, they seem to be one-shots exploring Bruce's return and the impact that has on the lives of the characters - is that accurate?
Fabian Nicieza: Yes, but it's more than that, too. The way it's working out is that it's a continuing story told in self-contained single issues. There is an absolute running through line in the books. There's two running through lines, really. One of which is Bruce Wayne's return and how he is evaluating the current status quo of the individual characters that are involved in the one-shots, as well as gauging the role those characters may or may not play in his larger plans, which is "Batman, Inc." The majority of the characters he is evaluating don't even know that he's returned. Some of them find out during the course of their individual one-shots; some of them don't learn yet at all. It depended on how each individual story worked out, and that's part of the self-contained aspect of the issues. Each issue has its own story to tell that's part of what these characters do during their evaluations.
The second running through line in all the books - which is actually picking up cleanly off a running subplot that's been going on in the Bat-family for a year now - is Vicki Vale's knowledge of the secret identities of Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake. She has knowledge of this, but she doesn't technically have proof. She can't print a story until she has proof, so she's trying to find proof. That running subplot is picked up on to a lesser or a greater extent in the individual one-shots. By the later chapters in the event, it takes on a greater focus.
That's very interesting, because it's pretty different than what readers would originally expect upon first glance at all this.
[Laughs] Yes, it is, but we hope different in a good way. It evolved from the Bat-family editors talking to me about helping to structure the October event and trying to find a way to make the individual issues provide readers with a complete story, but the readers who read all of them are going to get a bigger picture, a bigger overall story and resolutions to subplots that have been running in different books.
Every writer had to handle their individual issues with different approaches. I'm the writer of "Red Robin," so I could treat it as if it were an insert into my monthly flow. Bryan [Q. Miller] is the writer of "Batgirl" and he used the issue to do a fantastic job cementing Stephanie Brown's place in the Bat-family and the reason she has the mantle now. In essence, we really wanted to have our cake and eat it, too. It's not an easy thing to do, and everyone involved, Bryan, Marc Andreyko, Mike Barr, Derek Fridolfs and Adam Beechen, have really worked hard in a tight time frame to find the right way to tell their stories and still make them part of the bigger whole.
If you look at the titles coming out, you're writing three of them. From what you said, DC came to you to design the whole thing, so your involvement in this is actually pretty sizable.
Mike and Janelle talked to me about working with them to use existing on-going events in the Bat-family to flow into a logical course for Bruce to take upon his return that would, hopefully, smoothly flow into, but not interfere with, Grant's "Batman, Inc." launch. I knew how my Red Robin plans comfortably worked into Grant's plans, and I knew the Vicki Vale subplot was sort of simmering, so we realized there were definite ways to make it all work. In addition, because Peter Milligan was unable to write Batman #703 on his schedule, Mike had offered that issue if I wanted to use it to help set-up or introduce Batman's larger readership to the planned storyline. Of course, I said, yes. Not just because I could use the issue to introduce the Vicki Vale sub-plot, but because "Batman" is the flagship title and I get my damn name in an actual issue of the comic, which, for a kid who came to America and whose first memories being here are watching the original 60's TV show, is a pretty damned phenomenal treat.
Originally, I was only going to write one of the one-shots, two at most, but I lobbied to be able to write "Red Robin." Mike wanted me to write the first "chapter" and the last one, which were the "Batman and Robin" and "Ra's al Ghul" one-shots, but I really whined a lot that I didn't really want anyone else writing the "Red Robin." I even tried to see if Chris Yost had a free minute so we could co-write it. I was trying to get my fingers into that one, no matter what. I understand that having me write three of them is more than most readers, retailers and DC sales guys would prefer, but the only other option would have involved whoever else was chosen to write "Red Robin" dying in a tragic brake-line cutting accident before they could have finished their script. So, lots of whining, maybe an implied threat to the life of an innocent writer and several compromising pictures later, Mike acquiesced and let me write "Red Robin."
Check out the rest of the interview here.
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