
@’s by DETECTIVE COMICS’
Tony Daniel!!!
Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here. I had a chance to talk with Tony Daniel, who is pulling double duty as writer and artist on DC’s New 52’s DETECTIVE COMICS. Here’s what Mr. Daniel had to say about what to expect in the book in the coming months.

AMBUSH BUG (BUG): Hi Tony, how are you doing today?
TD: Great. How are you?
BUG: Good, good. Okay, we’re talking about DETECTIVE COMICS here and you just started up with the new 52, but you’ve actually been on BATMAN for quite a while. How do you think your take on BATMAN is different than, say, what’s going on in the other BAT books right now?
TD: I think that my take is a little bit different in that I’m concentrating mainly on Bruce Wayne Batman doing his thing in Gotham. I do more short stories and very little peripheral characters. It’s really just him, which is crime stories. Also the feel of the mood is very much darker and more sinister than I used to do on BATMAN with Dick Grayson, but you know it has a very old time detective noir type style even though it’s not really noir or hard boiled, but it has a little bit of that flavor in it, so I think that that kind of makes it a little bit different from the others. We really have these smaller stories, like you get one nice story with Batman in it and then you can move on to the next story and read a new adventure. It’s not a whole bunch of other books or characters, so you get the whole story with it.
BUG: Yeah, and there’s definitely a mystery going on with the Doll Maker and he’s pretty creepy. How did you come up with that character of the Doll Maker? What were the influences for you?

BUG: Yeah, it kind of reflects the way Bruce Wayne is an orphan and he has kind of brought in this family of crime fighters around him; even though he says that he’s a loner, he’s got all of these other characters around him.

BUG: You know I’m going back to Issue #1 where just starting off…how much pressure is it on you just to start off with this being the #1 issue of DETECTIVE COMICS and it’s such an iconic first issue and it’s really gruesome. It ends with the Joker basically getting his face ripped off and nailed to the wall. When you came up with that idea, did that have any trouble getting past any censorship or anything like that with editorial?

BUG: I also like the puppet Jokers that you introduce at the end of Issue #3. Those are really cool. They seem to be different renditions of the Joker throughout the years.
TD: Right, so you know, even though the Joker isn’t in the following issue, what I wanted to do was still keep some of that theme there where we will still get a thread. Joker was a big part of that first issue and the Joker mysteriously vanished after that, but we still kind of get a hint that there’s something bigger brewing and “Well, what is this? Why did they pick the Joker to mimic and test Batman’s strength or whatever in that arena?” And you know, it’s just available to you and it’s a fun thing to draw and then of course in writing it I wanted to draw some really crazy type of visuals for the book.

TD: Well I do put on like a different hat and the week that I’m actually writing and kind of developing the plot, I’m not drawing anything at all. I mean I might be drawing that week or something, but I just focus on the writing aspect and I enjoy both immensely and I get satisfaction from doing both, but you know I think the real challenge for me…I mean, it’s always a challenge to be left with a short time frame doing a monthly book. It’s not like we have a year to create this great novel. I mean you’ve got to come up with a story monthly and you really have to have a strict…
But in that sense the real challenge is the time constraints and making sure that I have enough time to develop a story and to develop something that’s going to interest people and intrigue them. For me what’s attractive….the big reason why I think people have kind of responded well to it is because I set out to really make this a book that I would love to see Batman in and that was one of my criteria when they approached me with the assignment and asked me if I wanted to do this, one of my requests was that I be able to do exactly what it is I’m doing right now which is shorter stories with villains that I want to use and not to be constrained by other characters or other storylines. Like say with BATMAN last year there was a lot of stuff that I had to…it had a different kind of feel, because being Batman with the BATMAN title, that was the main sort of Batman book with Grant Morrison. When you also have that going on with Grant Morrison guiding that it becomes like a double or triple head, because then you also have BATMAN AND ROBIN and so all of those books need to kind of tie into each other a little bit. I mean, you have to be aware of what everybody else is doing and so what I wanted to do if I were going to do DETECTIVE was I wanted to do my own thing and kind of bring it its own flavor where you can read my book and not necessarily have to read the others to read up and worry about what’s going on in the others. So if you only wanted to read my book, you could. If you didn’t want to read it, fine--you don’t have to. I thought that that could be a risky venture, but I think that worked out and I think that sticking to my principle of what I thought DETECTIVE should be is kind of shown in the enthusiasm that I have for it and from the fans which I’m very thrilled with. I’m surprised they are thrilled with it.

TD: As long as I’m doing it, it’s going to be just Batman. I don’t foresee…I know last year they introduced the new Batwoman for a while, but I really don’t foresee that, because that’s really kind of not what I want to do with the book. For me, this is the character I want to do and these are the kind of stories I want to tell, but you never know. Maybe there’s some other kind of story that I might want to do, but to be honest you’ve got to stick to what’s interesting to fans. If they are buying this because of Batman, you’ve got to have Batman, although it would be interesting to do a short two-issue story of one of the villains or something or the Riddler or you’re just focusing on that kind of story. I mean there are possibilities that you could do something really cool and maybe that’s something worth exploring down the road, but at least for the first year or so I think it would be a bad idea to get off track and turn it into anything other than a Batman book.
BUG: And one of the things that I have been asking about a lot of the 52 books is how long each of these creators are going to be on the book. It sounds like you have a lot of stuff to work on for DETECTIVE, so you’re going to be on there for quite a while?

BUG: Sounds good. Well, last question and I know that you are sick today and so am I, so I’ll take it easy on you today. (laughs) I just wanted to check in and see…in the past there have been big Batman crossovers and I know that lately it’s been kind of the overarching crossover across a lot of the DC books. Do you ever see at any time in the future a Batman crossover just within the Batman books again?

BUG: Okay, well I wish you well. I hope you feel better. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk with us today. Are there any books other than yours that you are enjoying right now as far as the DC 52?
TD: I haven’t been able to follow a whole lot of different books just because of my workload, but you know I’ve read a lot of the first issues of the 52 and I’ve got to say that I can see why a lot of people are excited, because it seems like everybody brought their A games, the artists as well as the writers. You know, for me if I have time to read I read all of the books that I might need to know a little bit about, like I read all of the different Bat books of course and I think they are all great and I think they all came out of the starting gate really strong, so I think that it’s obvious why so many people are excited right now with the new 52. I think it was a good idea and I think it took some big balls to do something so insane and huge and not worry about “What if it’s a disaster?” I mean, maybe they had some worry there, but I just think that the guts to do something huge like this is a testament of the people running DC that they have a vision and so I’m really excited about the plans for all of the books at DC. That sounds like an editor talking, doesn’t it?

BUG: Yeah, but that’s okay. It’s true. It’s good to like all of the Bat books; I do too.
TD: As an artist and writer, I’ve got to worry about what these guys are doing. The first time I heard of it, I was kind of like “What? Seriously, you’re doing what?” When they first approached me with DETECTIVE #1 I didn’t know and I don’t think that they knew that they were going to relaunch everything with #1, then after like a month later I learned “Okay, it’s not just DETECTIVE, it’s everything” and I was like “You’re kidding!” (laughs) So yeah, I’m just happy for the sake of everybody that works here that it turned out as well as it did and it took a lot of guts.
BUG: Definitely.
TD: Okay, well thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
BUG: Thank you so much and take care.
TD: Thank you. You too.
BUG: DETECTIVE COMICS #4 is on sale this Wednesday from DC Comics!
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole / wordslinger / reviewer / co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Mark is also a regular writer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and will be releasing FAMOUS MONSTERS first ever comic book miniseries LUNA in October (co-written by Martin Fisher with art by Tim Rees) You can pre-order it here! Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
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