When our staff votes for our Year in Review categories, often times a point will separate a top pick and the number two, or the entire top ten will be decided within ten or so points. When our Best Writer category was being tallied, I was shocked at the results. Not because of the winner, because he is quite deserving, but the dominance by which he won. Chip Zdarsky had a 20-point lead on his closest competition for the Best Writer of 2022.
And so, to celebrate this, we asked a few of our writers to pitch some questions for Zdarsky, and hope that we could put together an interview that would serve as a capper for his 2022. We quickly discovered that Zdarsky did so much in 2022 that unless we had a few hours, we couldn’t get to even half the stuff we wanted to. So instead, we focused the interview a bit around his “Batman” run. While we still talked about other things, our staff felt that his “Batman” run was an important piece of his 2022 success, and so that is where the bulk of our questions fell.
Thanks to Michael Shelling at DC for setting this up for us, and let us know in the comments what your favorite Zdarsky work of 2022 was.
You began your “Batman” run with a bang, a story that could easily have been an entire summer line-wide crossover, but as “The Knight” proved, intimate stories are just as important to you. How did you choose your first arc? What’s the process to pick the “perfect” beginning?
Chip Zdarsky: Really I just wanted to start with a bang and not give readers a chance to catch their breath in our debut arc! The first issue has some quiet moments of Bruce’s self-reflection and Tim’s concern, but it kicks into high gear pretty quickly.
It just felt right. Like, this isn’t a Batman movie, this is the Batman comic, and I wanted to show how wild we can get in a Batman comic.
When people discuss ‘street level’ characters in comics, the first two names out of their mouths are usually Batman and Daredevil. What do you see as the main tonal difference between approaching each one? Are they not as similar as some folks like to say they are?
CZ: Honestly I don’t find them that similar Sure, there’s the “street level” thing, but Batman has taken on Darkseid and Daredevil has gone to Hell, so that really doesn’t define them, though it’s a good center to bring them back to when you can.
Batman is a billionaire (usually, ha ha) who has prepared for everything and has certainty to an almost insufferable degree. Daredevil feigns certainty and is woefully unprepared and full of doubt and moral quandaries. Batman rarely questions his methods, Daredevil forever questions his. I find their contrast really interesting and I hope to explore that in “Batman vs Daredevil,” ha ha just kidding or am I?
Both you and Ram V are evoking a lot of the high concepts from Grant Morrison’s Batman run in your “Batman” and “Detective Comics” writing, was that a conscious choice, or do you both just have something you want to reflect on about those stories?
CZ: I think we’re both just drawn to the Morrison run! It’s wild and fun and really explores Batman in a fresh way. Also, sometimes it’s just a matter of having larger themes and ideas for a story and then realizing, “oh hey, wouldn’t Zur En Arrh work for this?” Playing with what came before feels essential to the larger continuity of Batman.
You first started your writing career with books that leaned heavy into comedy (like “Kaptara” and “Howard the Duck”) but you have already demonstrated that this is not the only genre you can tackle, books like “Batman: The Knight” (and “Newburn” and “Daredevil”) prove that you can write action and drama just as well; how has your comedy past helped you in your more “serious” books?
CZ: I mean, I think it helped me with pacing stories and setting up surprises? Jokes are surprises, you always want to keep a reader off-kilter so you can land the gags and funny moments. And I think some of those muscles help me with doing similar things with more serious subject matter. Keeping readers guessing, especially with the monthly format, feels crucial.
Continued belowDid you come into Batman with a secret favorite character who you want to give more page time to?
CZ: Ha! It’s the villains. It’s all the villains. I can’t choose just one.
Your Red Hood-focused story from “Batman: Urban Legends” is easily among the best Jason Todd stories ever told. People tend to struggle writing Jason because he defaults to ‘angry Bat-family member who will kill you.” But you really focused on the relationship between Jason and Bruce. Did this have an impact on how you’re writing Bruce now?
CZ: Oh! Thanks for that! And yeah, that story really informed my take on Bruce. He’s the patriarch of this bat-family and a flawed one at that, even though he’s the best at everything! A lot of what I’m working on is about Bruce getting older and seeing the younger heroes that were inspired by him in one way or another, and the responsibility he has toward them. Jason will always be his greatest failure, no matter how their relationship evolves.
How difficult is it to find an original story in Gotham City, the most written about setting in comics?
CZ: I think a lot of it is just figuring out new twists and deviations on stories that came before. I like when readers think they know where I’m going and then don’t, like I can play with previous stories and then not do what’s expected (hopefully!). Like, Batman has previously been up against unstoppable foes, but what if he only wins by losing? Or, at the end of an issue we had Gotham taken over by Failsafe, taunting Batman to come take it back. That’s been done before, so what if Batman doesn’t go back? What if he goes to the moon instead? What if the big fight isn’t in Gotham, but a quieter desolate fight with his son in the Arctic?
I had a similar thing with “Daredevil,” where the main thrust of my story was to break him down again, but how could I do it differently? How could I weave his story with Fisk’s in a way that wasn’t like what came before? And have them in different places on the other end of that?
It’s fun! I like the challenge!
Considering Batman and Daredevil are two of Frank Miller’s most seminal comics, what sort of influence has Miller had on your work?
CZ: “Daredevil: Born Again” is the best story Marvel’s ever published. And both “Batman: Year One” and “The Dark Knight Returns” are the best DC stories. It’s impossible to not have those be an influence. I remember when I took over “Daredevil,” one of the pieces of advice Charles Soule gave me was “don’t just do Miller.” Which is a solid bit of advice! I knew I was still in that Miller-style when I started “Daredevil,” but I did my best to make sure my voice and what I wanted to say overrode that as much as I could.
What would “Public Domain” have looked like if you wrote it any earlier in your career, or do you think it was only possible for you conceive at this stage in your superhero comics career?
CZ: Weirdly I think it may have been an angrier book? Having gone through working for the big companies and meeting such a wide variety of people with different experiences in the industry has made me try to find a more empathetic way into the story.
Having previously worked on a huge number of anthology stories, was there something about that structure you wanted to build on when you made “Newburn,” your own anthology title?
CZ: Honestly, I just wanted to be able to use my medium-level stature to get more eyes on talented creators! At Image, I get to call the shots on my books and that includes being able to hire great writers and artists and enjoy reading the stories that come in.
