Comic Book Resource continue their long running Bat Signal column, featuring interviews with high profile creators in the Batman Universe. This time artist Dustin Nguyen talk Batman past, present and future.

CBR News: Dustin, you've actually been spending most of your time in the Bat-Universe for quite some time now. You've worked on "Streets of Gotham," you worked with Judd Winick on a few "Batman" stories, you worked on "Detective Comics." What's it been like working in the Batman world and what is it about this section of the DCU that appeals to you as an artist, keeping you here for so long?

Dustin Nguyen: Mostly, I really like Batman and I really like Gotham City. If anyone has seen my stuff, it's not just about Batman. It's about Gotham City, in general. I think I like the superhero aspect of it and I like the good and bad, but something about Gotham makes it stand in a time of its own. Everything feels like it's from a certain era. The style of it is a little darker - it's mainstream, but it's not too unrealistic. It feels like crime really does happen there.

I wanted to hit on two things you just mentioned. As an artist, there's a lot of dynamic to drawing Batman, between his cape and playing with the shadows. What about the character most appeals to you when drawing him?

A lot of people say that you have to draw Batman this way and that way, but I think it's all about atmosphere. Whatever your style is, you can pull of Batman anyway you want as long as the atmosphere comes off. And when I say atmosphere, I don't mean the feeling that Batman is in the air. He doesn't even have to be there. Sometimes you get to draw this really cool shot of Gotham City, and you know that's Batman's city. I think the cape is the element that ties the character to the city. It's kind of hard, because whenever I draw Batman by himself, it becomes very difficult because I'm trying to describe this whole atmosphere that isn't there if it's just him. If I draw him inside the city, I can use the cape to tie in certain elements, like what the temperature is like, which way the wind is blowing, the lighting of the city. I think all of the elements come together to make it fun. I'm not really particular about certain characters. I wouldn't care if it was Superman standing in Gotham City - I would try and blend the two and it wouldn't be so much about drawing Superman as drawing Superman inside Gotham City.

That leads right into the second point I wanted to discuss, and that's the idea of Gotham City. You said that you love the city itself, and if you compare it to Metropolis or Star City and Coast City, those places have their key elements, but Gotham is the one that is most well defined - everyone knows Gotham. Is that part of the appeal to drawing the city - the gritty realism and the definitive nature of the place?

Yeah. The gritty realism. And also, the original Tim Burton Gotham City was just rad. You look at it and you can just tell that it was a designed city, made to fit in its own timeframe and it would never move from it. It seems like nothing ever changes in Gotham, for some reason. [Laughs] Comics, the way it is, you can pull that off for years. I mean, Batman should be dead or pretty old, but with comics, you can hold a certain point in time and play with it as long as you want. Gotham is one of those cities.

For the full interview click here...

(Source - CBR)