GKO: MADHOUSE
Here you will find our rambalings on all area's of Batman, interviews and speical features!
CBR News: Grant, throughout your "Batman" run, one thing that has gained a lot of attention is its unpredictable nature thanks to the fact that the story seems to be constantly growing and changing as you write it. I understand that all the way back to the beginning, the "Batman of Zur-En-Arrh" conceit originated as part of your "All Star Superman" pitch. How did that particular idea start to grow into what became "R.I.P." and how has that growth affected your view of Batman?
Grant Morrison: I guess it came basically from me doing my research and reading a bunch of old Batman comics I'd ignored over the years, like the '50s stuff and the sci-fi stuff. That one in particular – I'm just a sucker for different versions of costumes and different colored costumes. I just get a kick out of that. So when I saw this Batman that was red and purple and yellow, it just seemed like a really interesting visual – it was so wrong for Batman! The idea suddenly popped into my head "How can you make this so right? How can you tell a story where that could almost be justified again?" Just by looking at that ludicrous costume, it kind of cracked open Batman a little bit. It allowed me to think, "What if he wasn't the grim avenger or the Dark Knight? What if he was on earth as this crazy Batman of Zur-En-Arrh?" It gave me another look into the whole character, really – kind of a way to escape from the more gloomy, brooding Batman over Gotham kind of stuff. And I liked that stuff, but I just wanted to open it up to other influences.
You've talked a lot about how the current "Batman & Robin Must Die!" arc is in a lot of ways a flip on the story structure of "Batman R.I.P." How does revisiting that structure at the end of what is your "second act" with the Bat-Universe bring all the elements you've been playing with back into focus?
It did kind of seem good to come in that way. I knew that Doctor Hurt was out there, and I wanted to finish that story. That had been such a big part of my "Batman" story, and I wanted to bring it to a big conclusion. And I knew the Joker would probably have to come back because he'd promised to kill all the members of the Black Glove and Doctor Hurt, and I figured Batman and Robin would be caught up in the middle. That sort of got the idea thinking, "This is a lot like 'R.I.P.' anyways, but let's play up the more farcical elements of it to suit 'Batman & Robin.'" So in "Batman And Robin Must Die!" it's all kind of upside down. It's not really a Batman story. It's a Joker story. Batman and Robin are kind of back on the wrong foot because Batman was a little more controlling, and you see Robin in a coffin.
It did seem appropriate to kind of twist it at the end – to make it a bookend of those stories with Doctor Hurt in a way that ties into his character – the idea of this demonic specter, the black mask, the Satanic rite. It's a really interesting way of turning that upside down too tied in with the Professor Pyg character who also talks about "the topsy turvy world" and upside down things. Remarkably that all fell into place. These were things almost handed to me that made the story themselves. I didn't have to think too much.
One of the things that struck me about "R.I.P." and the Doctor Hurt thread as a whole is that it's a kind of anti-mystery. It's not like a "locked room mystery" like we saw in issue #700, that has pieces of evidence all pointing to a logical conclusion that let's us figure out the plot. You've talked about the stories making readers more interactive with the series, but how hard is it to play up those elements without making it about guessing the plot or the identity of the villain and more about guessing the why of it all?
I think the readers have kind of done that themselves. I tried to obviously direct people into the gaps and the spaces, and the whole thing with Doctor Hurt was that he was "the hole in things." That's how he describes himself. We see him in the form of this missing painting and as this gap in the story. Like you say, it isn't really a mystery because we kind of knew the guy was there since the Black Glove. We knew Doctor Hurt was the Black Glove, but who is Doctor Hurt? Is he the Devil? Is he Bruce's father? Is he some other person? I wanted to do that so people would engage with it and talk about it. And they really did. Everyone came up with their own ideas, and I love that about that particular character. He is that kind of empty space in the story that people can plug their own imaginations into. At the same time it comes to an end now, so we learn a lot more about him, but I did want to keep a little bit of that ambiguity in there because that's what he's all about.
Check out the entire interview here.
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