Tom King Talks Detective Comics 1000 Exclusive

On The Case

Writer Tom King, who is the current writer on Batman at DC, talks to Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows about how he approached his story for DC’s milestone Detective Comics 1000, out now…

Tom King has been the writer on DC’s Batman since the middle of 2016. His CV also includes writing Mister Miracle for DC, The Vision for Marvel and The Sheriff of Babylon for Vertigo/ DC. He sees the longevity of Batman in very specific terms, he told me recently.

“He started the whole thing. He’s the first second dimensional pulp hero. Alan Moore said there were first dimensional, second dimensional and third dimensional heroes. First dimensional is the guy who does whatever, ‘I’m good because I’m good’, second dimensional person says ‘there’s a reason I’m good’ and that’s what Batman brought to everything: ‘There’s a reason I’m doing what I’m doing. My parents were killed and I’m seeking revenge’ and that’s so easy to comprehend from the time you’re four years old to the time you’re ninety years old. It’s just that one motivation driving everything and I see that’s the appeal.”

King worked with two creators he has worked with a lot before on the short story for Detective Comics 1000, he explained to me.

“I have two artists on it that I work with extensively. I have Tony Daniels who has been with Batman for fifteen years now, who has written and drawn Batman. Then I also have Joelle Jones, who’s the first woman to ever do an ongoing Batman arc that we did together in my run. She did a brilliant job. I actually love short stories. I won an Eisner for a short story and it’s almost a genre I prefer. The trick with a short story is you’ve gotta move quick, you’ve got to have every page turn and every page count. All of that has to build up to the last line. Whenever you are doing a short story, whatever’s at the end is going to be the big boom that they’re all leading to. Keep those two things in mind. Keep it moving and don’t fluff that last line.”

The genesis of his story connects with the short story he wrote for DC’s Action Comics 1000 which came out last year, he told me.

“My idea started with and a lot of other people started with this too I think, by seeing the covers for the issue. Also I’d done an Action Comics 1000 story where Superman visited the grave of his parents and talked about that. My mother passed away six years ago and every year I go and do that absurd thing when you go to the grave and tell them about your year. So you’re talking to dirt and you’re hoping the dirt responds. It’s very surreal. It just so happened when I got to do the Action Comics 1000 thing it was that time of year again, November, when I was heading back to her grave. So I thought: ‘what happens if Batman went to the grave of his parents?’ So I wrote a complimentary story so you can put the two together and see the differences between the two characters and my takes on them.”

A book like this does get seen by more people than a regular comic but King doesn’t let the pressure get to him.

“I’m a deadline writer so if you think about the pressure then you’ll die. I know you’ve already talked to Scott [Snyder] and he says that every time he writes a Batman book he thinks about seven baseball stadiums full of people reading it simultaneously and they’d be thinking: ‘I hate that beat’ all at once. So if you let those thoughts in your mind affect you, you’ll get stuck. So it’s better you replace them with the face of the editor and that’s how you get out of the anxiety of it. Once I had the idea, the pressure was off because if I executed this well it would be okay because it was something where I was leaning on my artists. I knew that Joelle would do great work and Tony would too,” he explained.

The writer admitted that he tailored the story to the strengths of both people drawing his script.

“You can’t write a story unless you know who the artist is. I started off with this and I wanted to work with Walter Simonson. I had a whole different sort of story and then that fell apart so then I found out that Tony and Joelle could do it. So with Tony, he draws big beautiful splashes of Bat people better than anyone. With Joelle, she draws dark emotion and scenery better than anyone. She captures the nightmare side of your brain. It’s like halfway between horror and romance. So for her I did some very emotional Bruce moments that she captured perfectly. And she does rain perfectly too.”

For King, when I asked him what his favourite Batman story was, he didn’t really hesitate as we wrapped up our chat.

“I want to say Dark Knight Returns. I could go for something more obscure like Englehart and Rogers’ Batman. But in my heart of hearts it would be Dark Knight Returns as the best Batman story ever told and will be until the end of time.”

Detective Comics 1000 is out now from DC Comics and King writes Batman monthly for DC Comics.