COMICS: New Details On Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang's Cancelled THE BAT-MAN
Three years ago, the team behind New 52 Wonder Woman began work on a Batman book that would take him closer to his pulp vigilante roots. Though the project has been indefinitely "rescheduled", artist Cliff Chiang has provided some new details on the series that never was...
There have been countless comic book projects shelved and delayed over the years, but here's an exciting prospect - the critically acclaimed team behind the New 52 Wonder Woman series working on a Golden Age Bat-book. In 2011, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang begun work on The Bat-Man, a title over at Vertigo that would feature a Dark Knight closer to his first appearance. In the new Modern Masters magazine, Chiang gave us a closer look at the series that never was. "Vertigo had a reputation for reinterpreting classic DC characters, so we thought what if we did that with Batman, perhaps as part of the Vertigo 20th Anniversary? We got the go-ahead, and Brian wrote the first script and I started doing the visual development.
"It would have featured this young and inexperienced Batman who still relied on his guns, fighting police corruption, gangsters, and Mexican drug cartels in a West Coast version Gotham City. L.A. Confidential meets Batman. Brian and I were really excited. We’d been talking about it for so long, it was finally going to happen! [laughs] Then one night Brian called me and asked, 'What do you think of Wonder Woman?' He’d just been asked to write the book. Brian was very convincing, but in the end I stuck to my guns. We’d been working to get this Bat-Man book off the ground for so long, I couldn’t walk away from it. I would have loved to draw Wonder Woman, but not before this Bat-Man book."
Despite his determination, however, DC "rescheduled" the title for 2013, and Chiang went to work on Wonder Woman anyway ("In hindsight," he admits, "I think they really wanted Brian and me together on Wonder Woman"). Other than some concept art, the only thing that came out of the project was a fantastic Batman: Black and White statue, based on his designs. "My statue was intended to come out the same month as the book, to help promote it. If you look at that statue of Batman with his guns drawn, it would have made more sense if you saw the book." It's a real shame that we'll probably never see this book released, but we can only hope that the two decide to return to the concept.
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