Found this over at IGN, don't know if people have heard of or seen it yet. Regardless, I thought I'd be polite and put it up... Enjoy!
"What is Batman Inc.? That's the same question we had as Grant Morrison announced his new entry into the world of the Dark Knight here at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con. With our imaginations running wild, we couldn't let Morrison escape the show without trying to get some first details about the project. Read on for what might be Morrison's last major run with the Caped Crusader, a run that is equally inspired by the Brave and the Bold television cartoon as well as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Just Cause 2.
Somehow we had no idea Morrison plays the same videogames we do. Our minds were blown. (He's also playing Red Dead Redemption, is hesitant about Assassin's Creed after being displeased with the first game, and loved the hell out of Batman: Arkham Asylum as it was the first time you could ever truly be Batman.)
At any rate, read on for more on Batman Inc. Though we don't have a specific launch date for the series, we'd guess November or December is likely.
IGN Comics: Batman Inc. has just been announced here at the show. While we're sure you want to keep quiet on many details and keep the focus on the Return of Bruce Wayne, what can you say about Inc?
Grant Morrison: I don't want to say too much about the high concept until readers have seen the next couple of Batman and Robin issues, but I suppose you have to take the title The Return of Bruce Wayne literally. There was a kind of tacit understanding for a long time that there was no Bruce Wayne, only Batman, and that 'Bruce' was just a mask or persona. A lot of what we've been trying to do is to undermine that idea.
In Batman R.I.P. the 'Batman of Zur-En-Arrh' was a way of showing what happens to Batman without Bruce Wayne, Batman Inc. (with its 3-letter echo of R.I.P.) is about a Batman who has a lot more obvious 'Bruce Wayne' in his methods and operations. I wanted to do something to really bring home how he'd changed during the events of R.I.P. and Return. The last few years have been his Dark Night of the Soul, so this is a different kind of man and, I think, the natural result of fusing Wayne and Batman back together as one.
This really is the return of Bruce Wayne to the mix in a big way. It's Bruce we've seen pushed way out of his comfort zone, into supernatural and time travel scenarios where he's had to fight to survive and hold onto his sense of self. He's faced ultimate challenges to his very being and now he's back from those fringes to a more down-to-earth kind of story.
The new direction kicks off in a 30-page one-shot Batman: The Retrun which David Finch is drawing. We see the Batman Damian/Robin team in action and how that plays out, introduce some new villains and get the whole breakdown of how the Batman Inc. concept works, alongside a good half- ton of guest stars. With David on board I wanted to do something big and this is where we get our first look at Batman's updated costume, vehicles and allies (as designed by Finch). It's a blockbuster entry-level kind of Bat-book aimed at setting up the new rules and kicking off into one of those new eras we're always hearing so much about.
IGN Comics: Through your tenure on the Batman franchise we've seen you analyze all sorts of angles of the Dark Knight through various lenses – time, his family, his friends, his enemies… what new perspectives does Batman Inc afford you?
Morrison: I suppose this is my team-up book and it's about Batman's wealth, power and influence above all. This is Brave and the Bold in a way although most of the team-ups will be confined to our extended Batman family characters (Batman/Red Robin, Batman/El Gaucho, and Batman/Kathy Kane Batwoman among many others).
I'm a big fan of the animated Brave and the Bold show and the Johnny DC kids so I suppose there was a conscious effort to bring that kind of story into my all-encompassing every-Batman-ever structure. And of course I've always loved Bob Haney's iconoclastic but hugely successful run on The Brave and the Bold comic book from the'60s and '70s. This is my attempt to tackle that aspect of the life of the character – the relationships with other heroes – and wrap it into my own version of a consistent, 'definitive' portrayal of Batman and his world.
IGN Comics: All of your books – even arcs – tend to have radically different tones and themes. I remember back in the start of Batman and Robin you were describing your interest in doing quick, punchy serialized storylines. How will you be approaching Inc? Are there particular elements of the plot or concept that are driving this sort of approach?
Morrison: The first year is mostly 1, 2 and 3-part stories and the second, final year is a 12-issue rollercoaster ride through Hell. The biggest Batman story I could think of. I like to plan each book in terms of a 'season' on TV, where there's a series of individual stories with running subplots that come to a head in the season ender. The first year lays down the new status quo for Batman, introduces a horde of new characters and sets up the players for this apocalyptic finale.
IGN Comics: We also know you often draw much inspiration from the world around you – music, film, research, etc. Is anything in particular informing your development of Batman Inc?
Morrison: So many comics are still inspired by Hollywood movies, (many of which are now inspired, in turn, by comics in that pop-will- eat-itself way), and by extension a kind of approach to narrative which dates back to Aristotle's Poetics and the fundamentals of Greek Drama, almost two and a half thousand years ago, in the name of our dear lords Hermes and Zeus Almighty!
It occurred to me, immersed in my 50th hour of Just Cause 2, how far beyond that silent audience, proscenium arch, here's some well-paid 'actor' pretending to be someone else experience we'd gone and how very timidly other forms of storytelling entertainment had reacted to the challenge of the beast in their midst, this ultimate choose your own adventure playground that in some cases simulates 'life' and terrain so effectively it's like actually like going on vacation (how many gamers know the geography of Silent Hill as well as their own town? Do streets and locations from Liberty City, Panau, or Saints Row, turn up in the dreams of other gamers like they do in mine? I'll lay odds they do. These amazing virtual environments appear in my memories as real as Chicago or London. Paris, Venice, New Delhi, Jogjakarta or any of the non-CGI cities I've been to.
Although many current video games are constructed on a narrative spine which follows the basic action movie hero-beats-baddie script, it's never that aspect of the player's interaction with the virtual environment that's important. I know I tend to skip the cut scenes in games without losing any awareness of the arrow of narrative progression. Batman Inc. is an attempt to do a comic influenced by the storytelling structures, images, senses of scale, movement and perspective and so on that I've absorbed from games. The experience of actually being Batman in the Arkham Asylum game was profoundly eerie and I'd love to find a way to capture that depth of involvement and identification with the character and environment. I'm not sure how much of this I'll be able to realise but this is where I'm beginning my thinking on what might make Batman Inc. different from other books.
Batman Inc. is Brave and the Bold meets Just Cause or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare! That's my pitch! Throw in a dash of Mission Impossible and a pinch of The Magic Christian and it's nearly there.
As research for my book Supergods, I re-read a lot of my old comics and got really excited by that old 'musical' approach to writing superhero comics I saw especially in the work of Roy Thomas (the Kree/Skrull War is an amazing orchestration of plot, characters and ideas into a multi-levelled narrative that uses several interwoven voices – including blended 1st, 2nd and 3rd person captions – to practically conjure sound onto the paper. Almost every scene has some reference to sound, in fact, from the opening, apocalyptic door slam, through Black Bolt's whisper and the continually pointed out lack of sound in space), Steve Engelhart, Doug Moench, Don McGregor and the others of Marvel's '70s auteur generation.
The popular 'cinematic' approach to comics has largely done away with those poetic narrative captions but an even greater loss is that free flowing multi-perspectival viewpoint – when was the last time you read a comic that addressed the character directly 'You are the Batman!!' before sliding into an omniscient 3rd person narrative voice, 'He is the Batman!!' then shifting to a 1st Person 'I am the Batman.' voice, all in the same story! That kind of writing has a metamorphic, psychedelic and very refreshing quality that seemed to tap more directly into the way comics can work together as words and pictures. The dance between writer and artist seems more fluid and the comic book artist is set free from the constraints of being a mere storyboardist, the writer gets a chance to express his or her own voice rather than just the voices of the characters etc. So with this book, I'm trying to find a road into that kind of multi-narrative approach that feels modern rather than retro.
We'll see how it works out and how far it seems appropriate to push in that direction but these are the influences I've been absorbing and the thoughts I've been having at the beginning of the process. For me, it's about seeing the familiar from a slightly different perspective.
IGN Comics: Your work on Batman and Batman and Robin really stands apart - despite ultimately being part of the larger tapestry you've been weaving, each book has its own vibe. Will Inc have its own very distinct tone or might it be more of a direct continuation of your work in Batman and Robin?
Morrison: Inc. will have its own tone, which as you may guess from above will be a bit different from my approach on Batman and Robin. It will be picking up on some plot threads laid down in Batman and Batman and Robin, but otherwise has its own distinct agenda.
IGN Comics: One thing we're curious about is how the Batman franchise will interact. It's our understanding that Scott Snyder's Detective Comics will have its own area to work in. Will your book tie to any others in any sense – Pete Tomasi's Batman and Robin, for example?
Morrison: It may do [that]. I sent in a huge pitch with a rough 2-year plot overview for Inc. All the other creators have seen that, know what I'm doing and have been given the option to join in under the Batman Inc. banner or to do their own thing. The nature of the concept means that it automatically includes Batman and Robin, Red Robin or Batgirl etc but the individual books can play along or ignore it.
I haven't seen anyone else's plots so far, so I know as much about where they're all going as any other reader. I imagine there will be some interaction with Batman and Robin in particular but I tend not to dictate, drive or interfere in the stories of the other Bat-franchise writers.
I'm a freelancer like the other guys. Mike Marts is the main man in the Bat-office – and there is a real Bat-office and he sits in it every day, unlike me who sits in a tower overlooking the ocean – and he's guy who has to pull all these rampaging horses together to keep the wagon train rolling.
IGN Comics: Whenever we talk to you about Batman it seems like you've reached the last pieces of your plan, and yet you always seem to have more ideas. You've even noted that when it comes to Batman, everything has been done. Was there a piece of Batman lore or an aspect of the franchise that sparked the idea for INC? Is this essentially that "second season" of Batman and Robin that you had mentioned to us in the past?
Morrison: When I decided to tie up and pay off every thread from my Batman run, I realised there was still one big, final story to tell and it goes right back to the beginning of my time on the book. I'd found the epic finale for my whole run and I can't wait to write it... This ending was always there, waiting in the first issue as they so often do. And in spite of what I said, I think Batman Inc. might actually be based around a couple of big story ideas I don't think I've seen before with Batman.
After that I think I may have said it all for this stint on Batman.
IGN Comics: Can you say who the artist is? You have a real knack for teaming with artists that suit the mood you're seeking very well. What made this artist the right fit for INC? Will you rotate artists as you did in Batman and Robin?
Morrison: As with Batman and Robin, we'll be using a few different artists, at least in the first year. The first two Batman Inc. adventures – five issues in all - are being drawn by the wonderful Yanick Paquette, one of my favourite collaborators (most recently on Return of Bruce Wayne #3). There are a few artists I feel I work particularly well with so hopefully we'll see more Cameron Stewart and Frazer Irving during all this, for instance.
IGN Comics: Is there anything else you want to add regarding Batman Inc. or this fall's next step in the Batman franchise?
Morrison: I hope it's got something for everybody"