Paul Dini is no stranger to Batman. He was an Emmy winning writer on the critically acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series where he wrote the universally acclaimed Mr. Freeze origin Heart of Ice. Together with Rocksteady Studios, he would write the stories for critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum & Batman: Arkham City games. And he was the co-creator of the popular villain Harley Quinn who he and fellow co-creator Bruce Timm, would write an origin story for her in the Eisner winning Mad Love. This time around, Paul Dini isn't writing another story about Batman. He's writing about his own struggles.
On one day in 1993, Dini was walking down La Peer Drive in Los Angeles one evening when two men approached him and mugged him. It was so bad that parts of his head were shattered – his zygomatic arch, for one — while parts of his skull “powdered on impact,” according to the doctors. Dini would need surgery. More than two decades since, Dini is revisiting that traumatic event with a highly personal graphic novel that features the Caped Crusader and his rogues' gallery as a kind of Greek chorus.
When talking about the book, Dini said. “What makes Batman and what makes other superheroes work is the myth that when life is at its lowest, and when you need a hero, a hero swings down and helps you. And I didn’t have that. Here I am writing these stories for an audience that loves this form, in comics, in animation, but now I was saying to myself, ‘I can’t go on with this. I don’t believe in it anymore. There is no hero for me. Where is my hero?’ The answer is: You have to be your own hero.”
Dark Night: A True Batman Story will give the spotlight on Dini who drinks too much and dates the wrong women (one woman bails on him as his Emmys date when she finds out the animation category isn’t televised). Then one night he runs into the two thugs. In the days, weeks and months that follow, he tries his best to recover but has to navigate Batman and his infamous cohorts, who offer criticism and advice as if angels and devils on his shoulders. Batman, a blunt parental figure, berates him and tells him ways he could have gotten away. The Joker, slyly evil, nudges him to take it easy and not leave his apartment (when just the opposite is what he really needs). Dini cites Woody Allen’s 1972 film Play It Again, Sam, in which a film critic tries to get over a divorce with the help of Humphrey Bogart, as an inspiration. And he combined it with his writing process, which he says includes conjuring up characters who tell him their dialogue. The whole process of expunging the story was therapeutic but not without turmoil. There were nights Dini went to bed weeping. And then there was the first time seeing the assault in art form. Dini said, “When I first downloaded the pages from the attack, I looked at them very quickly once, horrified. Then I put them away for a week. I burst into tears. I couldn’t look at them.”
Dark Night: A True Batman Story will be released in June 2016, the book isn’t an indie title but rather hails from DC’s imprint Vertigo. It will be one of the most autobiographical books ever published by Vertigo. The graphic novel will be an 121-page book, drawn by Eduardo Risso, the artist of Vertigo's 100 Bullets, What are your thoughts? Are you interested in this upcoming graphic novel? Comment below, let me know. Peace and here is the cover of the book by Risso...