Ever since their announcement, I’ve been incredibly excited about DC’s upcoming “Gotham Academy” launch (arrives Wednesday!) and change of direction for “Batgirl” (#35 is where it’s at next Wednesday). Between the towering creative talents that are behind the books (Cameron Stewart, Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl, Babs Tarr, Jordie Bellaire and Romain Gaschet!) to the refreshing approach the teams have taken to the books and their promotion of them, everything has been coming up DC in regards to those books.
While a huge part of that is Batman Group Editor Mark Doyle’s positive influence on the line and eye for talent (which I’ve written about in the past), there is one common factor between both books that unite them besides Doyle and Gotham: they’re both co-written by Brenden Fletcher.
Fletcher’s someone has quickly risen the ranks of my favorite people in comics for his charming, engaging personality on social media and for the enthusiasm he can’t help but share for the projects, but a big question I’ve seen in the past is “what exactly does he do as the co-writer?” on both projects. There’s a simple answer, and there’s a more interesting answer. I decided to find the latter, and to do that, I reached out to DC to talk with Fletcher.
Today, I present that conversation, as we talked about how the team puts the books together, the characters that make up both of their books, how they’ve promoted these titles, Mark Doyle’s fashion sense, and much more. Thanks to DC for setting this up for us, and to Fletcher taking the time to chat with us. I hope you enjoy the conversation, and don’t forget to pick up his books the next two weeks.
You’re kind of the mystery man of both the Batgirl and the Gotham Academy teams, and so, for the folks who don’t know your background yet, and perhaps more importantly, what was it like playing Parasite on Smallville?
BF: (laughs) That’s pretty funny. It’s funny that you ask that, but there is another Brendan Fletcher from the west coast of Canada. Our names have one letter different from another – he’s Brendan Fletcher, I’m Brenden Fletcher – however, we were both in the worlds of theater and film at the same time, so we actually had a little bit of crossover there. His career was much more successful than mine, but that was where I got my start really in theater and film, and on both sides of the camera.
So strangely enough…I was always doing comics when I was younger, but it was never a professional thing, until a couple years ago I started doing some indie books and doing some things behind the scenes of video games and every now and then a bigger project would come up and I would do it, like “Wednesday Comics”, but I just didn’t push for that to be my career because I had a regular job in journalism and video games.
The video game stuff turned into actually writing graphic novels for Assassin’s Creed, and then here we are doing this.
You worked with both Cameron (Stewart) and Karl (Kerschl) on Assassin’s Creed, and with Karl on that Wednesday Comics story, so you have experience with your collaborators. I have to admit, The Flash is my favorite DC character so your Wednesday Comics story was totally my jam. I’m curious though. You are co-writers with Cameron and Becky (Cloonan) on each book. How does that work? How do you plot together, script together…how does that work?
BF: Well the plotting stage is kind of the same in both cases. It’s just a matter of spending a whole lot of time either in person, as Becky and I have done for Gotham Academy or via…actually, Cameron and I were able to spend a lot of time together through times we were meeting up at cons like San Diego and TCAF (Toronto Comic Arts Festival), and we just really pound a whole lot of story work into that time. We’re just beating out the story at that point. Trying to figure out how to break it.
Continued belowWe’re dealing with single arcs in both cases. We have more story ideas and we have seeds planted for the future, but really our concern is with the first six issue arc in both cases. A lot of time is spent kind of nailing down how that will work in a general six issue arc sense, and as we go, we just spend hours on Skype talking out the beats of the individual issues, breaking it down page by page.
From that point, they become completely different processes. What Becky and I do is we split up an issue and we try to each write about 10 pages, and we invariably end up rewriting the other person’s pages, so every page of the book has a bit of our flavor in it. It’s a really kind of fun process between us, and Karl actually chimes in and expresses concerns and we end up rewriting a lot of the time because he’s found things that don’t make sense or could make better sense. He calls us on some of our bullshit, and I feel we end up with the best book we possibly could because we’ve got…we have the best editors possible in Mark (Doyle, the Batman Group Editor) and Chris (DC Comics Editor) on Batgirl, and also this great team of internal editors who call each other on what’s not as strong as it could be.
In Batgirl’s case, after we get the story what Cameron and I are doing is really bizarre. It’s something I’ve never done before. He’s doing the layouts, so he’s essentially drawing what the pages will look like and handing that off to Babs, and he’s mostly doing that from our page breakdowns, sort of like…I hesitate to say this but Marvel style of writing. I augment that by kind of pre-dialoguing our scenes based upon our breakdowns. So while he’s to develop the layout of the page, I’m shooting a bunch of specific beats and dialogue to him. Usually more than what will fit on a page. Then we sort of cherry pick it and he comes up with his layout, then it goes to Babs. Then we kind of have a fully dialogued scene, it’s just a matter of prepping the final script to send off for lettering.
Sorry, that was a really long-winded answer, but both processes are bizarre (laughs). But they work for us.
BF: Absolutely. And I have to say, it goes all the way to editorial. All the way to the top. Mark Doyle is our Group Editor, and I couldn’t ask for a better voice chiming in on these books. Mark really understands what the true north should be for each series, and his direction is really perfect. He’s not micro managing us. He’s finding the holes, the things that could work better, and guiding us. It’s great.
On Batgirl, we have Chris Conroy, who is giving me the best notes I’ve ever had on stories in my life. Great suggestions, and Chris gives really detailed page-by-page notes. These guys are integral parts of the team. You hear all these horror stories about people having battles with editorial, but it’s nothing like that at all. It’s a complete team effort, and these guys who are in New York are such an integral part of our team. I’m not just hyping here. This is actually the best corporate work experience I’ve ever had.
Yeah, I wrote an article praising Mark Doyle for his work, and seemingly he’s caused this sea change. Everyone who works with him adores him, and actually, my last question was going to be, “is he secretly a superhero?” I think we addressed that early on. Yes. He is.
Continued belowBF: No. He’s not a superhero. He’s just extremely handsome. (laughter) It’s a common misconception.
From what I’ve seen, he’s also much more well dressed than I am and I’m terribly envious.
BF: (laughter) He forces us to up our games. I can be a total slob in Montreal, but when I go to New York Comic Con and Mark Doyle’s there I have to be looking my best.
I wish I was going to New York Comic Con just so I could get some fashion tips from him. (laughter)
BF: I’ll do a remote for you. I’ll do a remote interview for you with Mark about fashion.
Academy is arriving very soon, and everything we’ve seen from that book doesn’t seem like anything else in comics. From Karl’s art, the snippets I’ve seen, it looks almost more akin to an animated series. There’s this charm to it that makes it irresistible to me. What are you going for on this book? Is there a general feel you’re going for on Gotham Academy?
BF: If you’re talking about the art in particular, I’m going to speak for Karl here…he and I have jammed on comics for years. We’ve known each other for decades. This has been one of his goals. He and I worked on this thing that’s never been published years and years ago…he was really pioneering this style in comics. He was really trying to figure out how to get this cell shaded look to characters with a more painterly background. Unfortunately, we were never able to get it out there, and then his work has been month-by-month work for hire or his webcomics which is whatever he can manage himself, this is really the first time he’s been able to stretch out and attempt to bring to life this vision he’s had for 15 years now. Maybe more. Maybe 20 years.
And he’s got the full support of, as I said, the best editorial team on the planet, who are really pulling out all the stops to make this thing a reality. So thanks to Mark, we were able to get Romain Gaschet, whose pen name is “Geyser”…I mean, you’ve seen it in the previews. His background paintings are unreal. Karl draws the backgrounds, and then Romain just goes in and brings them to life.
So yeah, that’s part of the feel of the book for sure. But it’s Karl’s sort of take on the vibe Becky and I were pushing for. We were all sort of in agreement on Karl’s vision of how to render it visually, but Becky and I were from the start were thinking of it as a spooky old haunted house, Nancy Drew mysteries, touch of Hogwarts…you can see all of that stuff in there already. And as soon as we started shooting that around and Karl started doing the sketches…this is the vibe. That’s when it really became a reality. He interpreted our story jams and character jams into what we see today.
Yeah. That one page of Olive and Maps sitting, I assume, outside the headmaster’s office. When they’re just sitting there…it really feels like a school in Gotham would look like. I know that’s obvious, but it has this spooky vibe and it’s over the top and beautiful.
BF: The school is a really important character. We can’t state that enough. You’ll see it more and more as the story goes on. As much as the story is about the characters, we’re really telling the history of this set of buildings and how they’re related to the rest of the buildings and the city. It’s kind of dark stuff. It’s connected to Batman and the Wayne’s and a bunch of other families who I almost named and shouldn’t.
So Karl’s taken great care in developing the visual of the school itself, and you’ll see that come into play in the first arc for sure.
BF: I can’t answer the Olive question specifically. Olive in particular would actually give away a lot of the secrets of the book. Olive has a unique relationship with Batman and to Bruce Wayne, and it’s one of the central mysteries of at least the first arc.
I can say that she doesn’t care for what she sees, as you can see in the cover to #3 in which she’s in detention, and scrawling a Bat symbol with a strike through it on her desk, as if to say no Batman. (laughs)
Speaking of those character images, though. I loved the grassroots online approach you took to these books. Those character images, the one of Olive and Maps and Kyle, and how you’ve been tweeting those and embracing the communities. It feels really refreshing and it seems people are responding to it very strongly. How did that all come together? Was it a product of the response, or was it always part of the plan?
BF: No, it’s partially because one of writers is also a noted artist, so while Karl is sort of in the crunch actually doing pages, Becky – while she has other projects – was able to do some additional pieces. I think why you don’t always see this is your artist on this book is doing work to get the product done. It’s a challenge to get additional promotional images by that artist, because the job is the job. So we were very fortunate to have Becky on the team, who was able and very willing to put together some additional promo work. And of course, DC is completely backing us up on that. Nobody forced us to do it. Everybody wants the same thing. Everybody wants to talk about the books more, and to get everybody as excited as we are about them.
I don’t remember if it was you or Karl, but there was the panel of Olive and Maps sitting next to each other in the chairs outside the headmaster’s office that was shared, and when I saw it I had this overwhelming feeling of, “I want more.” It was awesome. A single image, and I was in.
BF: That’s great. That’s amazing. It’s so nice to hear. We hear it through Twitter and Tumblr, people responding in such a positive way. I always say it’s so heartening because we work so long in a vacuum crossing our fingers and praying that people will respond to them. It’s so great that when the images get out there and people have positive responses. I can’t wait til Wednesday when people can actually read Gotham Academy and the following Wednesday when Batgirl arrives.
BF: (laughter) No way, man. It’s going to be Pomeline Fritch. You just have to wait ‘til issue two. I can see how in issue one it’s going to be all about Maps for everybody, but…and maybe it’s going to continue to be all about Maps, but I think Pomeline is going to…if I could write a book just about one of these characters, it’s probably Pomeline. (laughs) Sorry, I totally derailed your question.
No, no, it was just going to be “is Maps going to be everyone’s new favorite character”, but it sounds like we have even MORE to be excited about!
BF: You know, it’s really funny…Karl’s done designs for the whole main cast. There are a bunch of characters we don’t get to right away, and we’re just like, “these are good characters, but it’s all about Olive and Maps and Pomeline and Kyle”, and then when we get to actually writing the pages and to these other characters and Karl gets to drawing them, it’s like “awww…this is my new favorite character.” (laughs)
So we’ve got this character you don’t meet until issue two, you can see him in the design work. His name is Eric. You don’t see much of him in issue two, but already, he kind of pops off the page. We kind of dreaded writing him and Karl kind of dreaded drawing him, and now he’s awesome. I think it’s part of our goal as we move forward, to keep the school kind of alive and growing. Hopefully we get to do this book for years and can see some of these kids through to graduation and see new classes come in and new years of students come in, and that’s exciting. Have some characters go out and new characters come in, it’s going to be great.
Continued belowYou threw out the Hogwarts comparison, and I was a big Harry Potter fan. I loved reading those characters as they got older and new characters came in as new classes came in, and the idea of Academy doing that is…well, it makes me happy.
BF: (laughs) It makes us happy too. It gives us a real legitimate excuse to refresh every now and then.
BF: I think she probably has the most indomitable spirit of any member of the Bat family. This is a woman who is always going to be able to rise above whatever darkness is consuming Gotham. It may keep her down for a while, but ultimately she will find a way to extricate herself, defeat the darkness and rise above it. This is sort of the stage we find her in. She’s been at the lowest of the low. This is the first stage in her kind of healing process. So she’s not…she’s going to do this thing, she’s going to move out to this other borough. She’s not going to make all the right decisions. Maybe even moving there wasn’t the right decision. But she has to make some moves in her life to get to a place that works properly for her, and is a bit more healthy.
She needs to be the healthy member of the Bat family. (laughs) We know Bruce has got a lot of demons. Barbara tends to want to work through hers (laughs), Bruce tends to dwell on his.
The thing I think is super exciting about this book, you guys have said she’s supposed to be 21, and it seems like you’ll be exploring what it means to be a young person in this life and situation, which I don’t think we’ve seen a whole lot of.
BF: Yeah, we’re just going to open it up a bit. The character since the New 52 reintroduction has always been 21…we’re just running with that. Doing a little world building and letting her explore that a little bit, and kind of removing her from the sort of overall Bat family stuff, which gives the character a bit more space.
You’re talking about the world building, and Burnside…it’s been called the hip part of Gotham. Is it kind of a character in its own right like the Academy is?
BF: It really is! Just the area alone really informs the type of storytelling that we’re doing. Burnside is to Gotham as Brooklyn is to Manhattan. It’s a very similar thing. There’s a lot of young start up companies there, there’s a lot of sort of artisanal shops. There are a lot of young people. It’s a kind of college area. There are a lot of bands and a lot of music and a lot of culture. While that’s not the focus of our stories, we don’t spend plot time on it, it’s there. It is there as part of her life. We’ve taken great care in developing a small chain of artisanal coffee shops. It has a name; it has specific types of beans…we’re working on that level. We’re trying to establish where this place is and how it exists, how detached it is to Gotham City and how it fits in the greater DCU. What things are really small and family owned in this small borough and what things have kind of spread out from Gotham. It’s world building, and we want to let Barbara live in a place that’s kind of a real place.
BF: Yeah, and I think that was bound to happen in our first issue. We needed to put our stamp on Barbara’s life and what we wanted to say about it. But it’s all in the greater service of a really cool superhero story. We have to do a little bit of heavy lifting off the top, but then we’re into the superhero stuff, and come issue #36, you’re going to see it hit hard. Issue #36 is so fun; I can’t wait for people to read it. There’s great superhero action in these books, and I hope this isn’t all going to coffee shops and hanging around in apartments. I think if people checked out the cover to issue #36, there’s Batgirl fighting the Jawbreakers, these twin katana wielding, motorcycle riding assassins. There’s going to be a lot more of that.
Continued belowThis is a random part of DC’s history, but did you read Chuck Dixon’s Nightwing from the 90’s?
BF: Yeah, I did.
That book…it was very much Dick Grayson moving off on his own to Bludhaven, living his life, doing his thing, but also doing awesome superheroics and fighting Blockbuster. That was such a textbook, awesome young superhero book for me. It kind of seems like that’s what you’re going for.
BF: I totally never thought of it, but man, that are a really good analogy to what we’re doing.
That really feels like what you’re doing. The perfect bridge of the character with their situation. Now I’m super excited to see her fight the Jawbreakers. (laughs)
BF: The Jawbreakers are awesome!
The Jawbreakers seem completely awesome, but when it comes to the superhero side of things for Barbara, while you’re exploring this new part of Gotham, are you looking to develop your own rogues gallery of sorts to fit your take on Batgirl? Or might we see some old favorites?
BF: It’s going to be all-new for the time being. We’re creating foes that fit the new tone and setting of our Batgirl run. I’m sure, in time, we’ll cycle back to some a familiar foe or two but for now, we’re having way too much fun coming up with fresh, colorful evil-doers for Babs to smack down.
BF: Oh yeah, it’s actually SUPER important. I mean, while Babs is, and most likely will ALWAYS be the most iconic Batgirl in the DCU, most current readers are more familiar with her as Oracle – a role that really shone the spotlight on her mental abilities. We wanted to draw that aspect of the character strongly into our run. We were also excited to play with the visual language of comics in the portrayal of her famed photographic memory. We’re going to illustrate the manor in which she’s able to reach back into her mind to pull together clues in a way that other superheroes can’t.
When you look at what makes Babs a unique member of the Bat-family – and even when you look at what makes her stand apart from Cass or Steph in the role of Batgirl – it’s her brains. Her smarts. She was raised by a cop, pretty much born a detective with a perfect memory and an affinity for handling information and data. C’mon, tell me you wouldn’t wanna play on that if you got to tell a Batgirl story! That’s fantastic, meaty stuff!! Any member of the Bat-family can take down a villain with their fists. Babs has got a whole other tool kit at her disposal. And we aim to give those tools a pretty solid workout in our run.
The last thing I wanted to ask was…I think one of my favorite things about the books is they just seem fun, no matter whether you’re talking about superheroics or getting into mischief at the Academy, and that’s just refreshing to me as a reader. Was that a big goal for both of your teams to accomplish?
BF: Well, it’s…I think one of the really unique things here is that Mark and his team chose creators with a very individual voice. I think the reason he wanted us to work on that was for our voice. This is how we write. This is the style of material we write. You read the Wednesday Comics Flash thing we did, that’s…Karl and I tend to do a lot of melancholy stuff together, and if you read Gotham Academy, it gets a bit melancholy. That’s not the tone of all 20 pages of every issue. We like to have some gags in there with our melancholy and some action in there, and I think the best storytelling encompasses a number of flavors.
Continued belowThe thing is characters bump up against each other and that leads to all kinds of things, and some of that is fun. If you’re asking me, did we want to come away from these books if they had a good time, then absolutely.
Yeah, that’s what I was saying. Not that it’s wall-to-wall gags, but it’s like readers leave the experience with a smile on their face.
BF: Yeah. You should definitely feel like there’s some mystery and intrigue and yeah, you have to feel like you had a fun ride as well.
