Letters to DC2 Most Wanted #2

We’re on a monthly schedule now, so you should expect to see an issue by the first Wednesday of each month! I’ve written up to April’s #4, and I wanted to sit on #5 a bit to find my bearings. After certain conversations with yourself, the direction of the finale has had some added dimensions inserted into it, so I need to make sure I do them justice.


I’m trying to end each chapter on as good a cliff-hanger as the last one, so I’m glad it landed well. Linking all the disparate scenes together so there’s sense of story cohesion is another intention, and I’m glad it’s coming along well.


We’re using a different line-up than the last appearance of the Suicide Squad in their ongoing, and this is kind of setting them up to move forward into the next phase of the DC2. We’ll be touching on some major plot threads from the original run of the book on the site, but this is a brand new era, and we need to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Catching everyone up on who everybody is was vital toward that, and framing it from Rick’s perspective also helped shaped him as a character, and shows how he reacts to all the nonsense around him.


Rick’s mindset and reasoning will become abundantly clear as he we move forward, especially when we hit #4. He’s never had the best relationship with her, but his responses to everything have all been to the extreme, and that’s a really important thing to keep in mind.


I always intended for Batman to be in Waller’s bad books after the events of “Trial By Fire”, the Detective Comics arc that featured Dick going up against the Suicide Squad when everybody thought that Bruce was dead, but I never had a chance to follow up on that. I think that any independent actor with his own agenda out in the world, one that sets him potentially in direct opposition with the majority, is a danger to certain people. It makes perfect sense that, of all the super-beings, the government and select agencies would want Batman off the board!


The autopsy begins next issue. We get to meet Belle Reve’s sawbones, and I’m really enjoying the ability to flesh out the cast of the Suicide Squad in new and different ways.


Interestingly, I was taking inspiration from Arkham City gameplay for the first “boss fight” of the story, and I had to write a lot more methodically than I might perhaps usually. The thing is, this is almost a Suicide Squad book more so than a Batman or Superman title, because they’re the group who don’t get the biggest showing on the site month-to-month. When you think of it like that, of course they have to “win”, but keeping in mind who exactly their opponent is, the victory can’t be so straightforward.

Is it any surprise that I’m really enjoying writing Harley Quinn?


Yes! I was thinking the exact same thing. We’ll get into Bruce’s thinking next issue, as we take a quick detour a few hours into the past to see where Gotham’s protectors were before the Taskforce X came to town. There’s less prep involved now, and there’s this massive element of surprise too.


Uh oh.

I just had a thought. Very rarely, in stories where there's an oppressive, evil government in control of anything, you don't see it being Bat-influenced. Batman is never the bad guy. He's never on the wrong side of history.

That said, whoever's opposing the bad guys, the freedom fighters, the rebels, that's where you see the Bat invoked. He's counter culture, almost, he's defiance, and I think that's a really cool trait to see. I'd love to see that dynamic flipped, I'd like to see an evil Batman who believes in what he's doing, but I don't think it's something we'll ever see delivered. I’m not talking along the lines of Dark Nights: Metal, where there are “evil” Batmen, twisted by perversions of a dark multiverse, but a Batman who is doing the wrong thing for what he believes are the right reason. A Bruce Wayne oppressing others because that’s what he thinks is the right thing to do, or because he’s entitled to. What an odd inversion that would be.


Interestingly, I was never a big fan of Harley Quinn. You can see it in my earlier writings of her—memorably Mayor Krol’s car ride from hell with the Joker in Batman #17-- she’s window dressing, a glorified heavy, not the rounded character she becomes later on in the mainstream DC universe.

I had no real plans to write her, but the original intention behind Most Wanted was a DC2 tie-in to Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, bridging the gap between the release of the two films. At that point, I had to write her, though it was only in the fourth issue I started having fun with her, but I won’t spoil the scene—hit me up if you realise what it is when we get around to it.

I’m writing her in another project that’s coming later this year, so keep your eyes out for that, too. No spoilers on the what, of course.

I really can't help myself.


That's a really interesting read on the character, but like you say, I don’t think it’s the one I subscribe to. I think of Bruce Wayne as trying to do the right thing against impossible odds, because no one else can. He does all he can for this city that is broken, not just as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne The Character, the one who promotes charity work, is pumping money into infrastructure and education, mental health programs, rehabilitation… I tried to convey that in the two-part Batman: The Final Knight series I did for 10YL, but it’s a subtext to my work that I think is too much sub and not enough text.

I also believe there are two masks that Bruce wears, which I wanted to explore with the dynamic between Diana and him as their relationship progresses in Justice League. I think Batman is a mask. I don’t think Batman is the real version of Bruce, but rather a boogieman he created in some way when he was eight and his parents died.

When Thomas and Martha were murdered, this darkness descended on him and until that bat smashed through his window that first night after a less than successful time spent crime fighting, it was formless. An elemental engine of vengeance and need that he couldn’t control or direct until ‘Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot…’ and ‘I shall become a bat…’. That’s when he was able to weaponise his grief and direct it at a cause that needed it.

But you can’t be Batman without a Bruce Wayne to pick up the slack in the day. Turning Wayne Enterprises, as much as possible, into a charitable foundation, providing well paid jobs and opportunities where there weren’t any before, creating scholarships and schemes to get folks into school and off the streets, that’s just as important as the work Bruce does at night as the Batman. But you can’t be a driven person in both identities, because people could draw a direct line correlating the identity of Batman and Bruce Wayne. Can you imagine if Bruce was as driven in Wayne Enterprises as he was as the Dark Knight? That’s why you have this well-meaning guy be socially ineffectual and effete, so no one guesses.

Personally, I could have done without Batman, Incorporated as a concept, but it makes sense, it tracks between the two masks Bruce wears, and it helps legitimise a lot of what Batman does… but it’s a rich fop funding a worldwide vigilante campaign. What does that even mean, legally?!

So, you have the two masks. Public Bruce and Batman. That leaves the real Bruce Wayne, under both. Quietly intense. Very internal. Stoic and implacable and caring. He has to be caring. He cares so much so that he puts his body and mind on the line every single night, regardless of danger or weather, to try and keep the world safe. No powers. Just determination and training. Training that never stops! He can never let up. You don’t get to meet the real Bruce Wayne often.

Few have.

Alfred, Dick and Tim, for sure. Jason vaguely remembers it, but their relationship leaned more toward Batman and Redwing, not Bruce and Jason. I’m sure Bruce regrets that—he regrets letting anybody down. Failure in anything haunts him, no matter what. Diana is seeing it now, and maybe Julie Madison did, before she died. I think Clark sees it, despite Bruce’s best efforts. He’s a good man. The best kind of man. Damaged, like the city he wants to protect, that he wants to better, but he remembers better days, stories his parents told him, aspirations they had. If he can do anything in his power—and he is so privileged, and so economically and sociologically capable—he will try to do it.

I hate “Batman is the real Bruce Wayne! Bruce Wayne is the mask!” arguments. They don’t ring true. I hope I can get this thesis on the character down in a story. I’m going to need to start a new Batman ongoing to deliver it. One day…

I have so much I can say about Batman, and I wish I could get to a place where his stories are the only stories in my head, but right now I'm spread pretty thin across a number of projects. That said, I wrote another scene for May's DC2 Most Wanted #5, and it's becoming this deep-dive on stuff I planned and teased in other aborted stories of the DC2, along with stuff that's wholly new and exciting to build toward. I wish ArtTeach were still kicking about the site, because his art made this project exciting and vital, and now he's gone!

Today I'm planning on finishing DC2 Most Wanted #5, and it's gone balls to the wall crazy. Can't wait for May to come around so you can all check it out!