We are big fans of “Gotham Academy,” one of the most unique and fun books that DC is currently publishing. From the amazing cameos to the heartfelt story, there is almost nothing about the book that hasn’t hit for us. Because of that, we jumped at the chance to talk to the creative team of writers Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher and artist Karl Kerschl about the book, and what we may expect from it going forward.
With the three of you collaborating on this book, what is your process like? I guess, more specifically, how has your storytelling collaboration evolved and changed since it started out? What are you more comfortable asking of each other than you were at issue 1?
Becky Cloonan: The whole process is extremely collaborative- from the first story meetings one year ago to now, we’ve all been pretty involved with every aspect of the book. Brenden and I show Karl our plot breakdowns and he will give feedback before we start the actual script. And I’ve gone in and done some background assists. We all trust each other completely, and we all want the same thing. If anything our process has become a little more streamlined now that we have a bunch of issues under our belt.
We were also all in the same place for the first several months of production on this book, which I think helped a lot with the foundation and groundwork. The three of us have really good chemistry, and the energy I get from being in the same room with them is electric
Brenden Fletcher: Karl and I have been friends since childhood and are used to constructing stories together. Luckily for us, Becky is completely like-minded. The three of us share a ridiculous number of influences and are generally able to use a shorthand to communicate how we see the characters and story coming together.
One aspect of our process that’s evolved since our first issue is that we’ve found we really enjoy doing our final dialogue pass together, preferably with pizza and drinks. The three of us just read the whole thing through with the art, streamlining the writing and adding jokes to make each other laugh. It’s the best!
Karl Kerschl: It is the best. I wish we could do that more often, but everyone’s been traveling or living in different places for the last few months. We were really spoiled in the beginning. When Becky joined the studio I felt like I’d regained a phantom limb or something – we get along so well and working together was such a natural thing. The lines of who does what on this book blur quite a bit, especially since Becky, as an artist, contributes to character design and helps with backgrounds and art details as well.
Obviously, this is a school story and it’s been fun seeing elements of Harry Potter and The Secret History and that Dead Boy Detectives from “Sandman” thrown in. So, lots of stuff with ghosts, hidden passageways, secret societies, and eccentric teachers. I’m interested in knowing what stories helped influence this book and how you see Gotham Academy itself moving off to being it’s own cool place?
BC: We all have very similar touchstones for this story, I think Harry Potter is the one that GA gets compared to most. I personally wear my love for Hogwarts on my sleeve, and even though our comic has a lot of similarities, I never came into the book with the notion of remaking Harry Potter. Gotham Academy has always been about Batman, and Gotham, and Olive and Maps and the other kids at the school. But growing up my favorite series were Scooby Doo, even Nancy Drew, Batman the Animated Series, all of which I think have an effect on Gotham Academy!
More than that though was just my experiences of growing up. My old friends, trouble that we used to get into… (Nothing ever as bad as poor Olive!) but there is a lot of my memories in this book. It’s oddly personal, if I look at it in a certain light.
Continued belowBF: We definitely share a lot of the same touchstones. I know I’m constantly pushing the Dracula envelope on this book (no complaints from my co-creators there yet!) and reaching back to Scooby Doo for lessons on how to handle horror in an all-ages story. I’ve also recognized a lot of an old, unpublished project that Karl and I laboured over for several years creeping into GA. Olive and Maps often feel like younger versions of those in our previous story.
Bouncing off that a bit, how do you guys find the balance between telling a standalone, creepy school story and having a book be part of the Bat line? We’ve seen Bruce Wayne show up (as well as some Easter Egg-y cameos), but can we expect to see any other prominent characters, either heroes or villains? Will their actions have an impact on what’s happening in the classroom?
BC: From the beginning this was always Olive’s story. Olive and Maps, and their friendship is the driving force behind this comic. We have plans for more characters from Batman’s world to show up, but the story is always going to focus around Olive, her connection to Batman, and how growing up in Gotham effects the kids who grow up there.
BF: Gotham Academy exists within current Bat-continuity so our narrative will always be bouncing off of events taking place in books like Batman and Eternal. But just because the characters in our story might be aware of the uncanny things shaking Gotham within other titles doesn’t mean those events necessarily need to dictate our plot. It’s incredible, though, to have the freedom we do, to focus on Olive and her friends while also being able to lean into other aspects of the line of the books when we feel like getting playful.
KK: I love all of those old-school Bat-cameos. It’s funny, though, at first I was eager to draw as much Batman as possible but every time we talk about putting him in the story it feels a bit off. I’m so much more interested in the kids and how they perceive Gotham and Batman than I am in actually seeing Batman show up. The name ‘GOTHAM’ is in the title of the book and that’s done most of the heavy lifting for us; you can infer a lot of gothic creepiness from seventy-five years of Batman stories.
What has been, for each of you, your favorite Easter Egg thus far? I have to put in a vote for Bookworm being on staff.
BC: I really love the posters on Olive and Maps’s walls. Olive has a movie poster called House of Secrets that stars a young Simon Trent…
BF: Yeah, Simon Trent, for sure! That’s a deep cut. But there’s a hidden suggestion of an Easter Egg in the cafeteria scene in issue 1 that I’m still so thrilled about. You’d never spot it unless we were to tell you about it. But we’ll let that particular cat out of the bag for everyone in issue 5. I can’t WAIT to hear what fans have to say after we drop that little bomb!!
KK: My favourite Easter Egg is from the belfry scene in issue 1 that no one has picked up on yet. Can’t wait for that one to pay off. 🙂
Brenden, You’re also on the creative team behind “Batgirl,” and so you have a feet in two distinct corners of the Bat books. Is there a similarity in working on these titles, both of which operate somewhat on the fringe of Gotham?
BF: In terms of creative process, these two books are miles apart. Though both teams are super tight pals, the way we create together couldn’t be more different.
Gotham Academy’s story is broken down by Becky and I, jammed on by Karl, pages split down the middle for scripting, with final dialogue often overseen by all three of us.
Batgirl begins in exactly the same manner, with Cameron and I breaking the story into pages but from there it gets wild! Cameron begins doing page layouts while I feed him dialogue and page beats – some of which make the cut and some of which get left on the sidelines. From there, we fashion final dialogue together while Babs brings the layouts to life in her inks.
Continued belowDespite the differences in creative process, I feel both books are shooting for similar results. Both want to create something new within the line of Bat-titles. They want to stand on their own, unique and muscular in vision, starring youthful, diverse casts of characters. In that way, they feel like sister books, with only a division in tone and style – as if Gotham Academy could one day grow out of it’s mysterious gloom to become the brighter, more modern Batgirl.
You are co-writing both of these books with fantastic artists – does having a second artistic voice, this time on the writing side, give the book a stronger visual composition?
BF: With Cameron providing layouts for Batgirl, the voice of the writing team is absolutely represented in the final art in a very firm way. Babs influences the content in that she pushes for particular story elements to be featured more prominently but Cameron’s incomparable sense of inventive page composition and action choreography is there in every issue of Batgirl.
The pages in every issue of Gotham Academy are more a direct collaboration with Karl. Becky and I trust his storytelling sensibilities and will often write script scenes in a way that will allow Karl to push and pull them on the page as he feels most fits his vision.
I think knowing and trusting your teammates is the secret to creating great work. The more we spend time with one another, the more we allow each other to play with these fantastic Bat-toys, the better our books become.
Becky, As far as I know, this is the first time you’ve written something for someone else to draw. How do you approach the page, or how do you and Brenden approach the page, knowing that Karl’s going to be drawing it all out? Are there times you write a scene where you’re glad that Karl, and not you, has to draw it?
BC: It’s easy to work with an artist that you trust implicitly. Karl’s idea of handling the page is so unique, and he is such a strong storyteller, Brenden and I just work out the beats on each page. Every now and then I’ll write like “Close up” or “small panel”, but I don’t try and art direct.
We kind of share a hive mind too– we’ve never not been on the same page about stuff. Karl will hand me back a drawing and it’s like, did you just pull that out of my imagination? Because that is exactly what I was thinking! It’s amazing.
Has being on the “other side” of the storytelling impacted your visual work?
BC: I’ve learned so much in the last year. I mean, I am always trying to learn, but this has been exponential. I always had to draw thumbnails to break down a page, but now I can “think with words,” so to speak. Gotham Academy is a particular type of challenge because each issue is so dense. I naturally want to decompress, so I’ve learned a lot about being more economical with my storytelling. I still have so much to learn, but hey– that’s life, right?
Karl, your art is wonderfully different from what we see in most DC books – what were some of the influences that lead to your current style? Does working on something like “Abominable Charles Christopher” prepare you for working in a larger, shared universe like the DCU, or is this a totally different beast?
KK: It’s completely different – almost like two different art forms, They’re both sequential art, but writing and drawing The Abominable Charles Christopher strip is so much about freeform thought and then extreme economy of space whereas Gotham Academy (and all longer form stories) allow for much slower pacing; lots of reaction shots and wide angles and elaborate environments and establishing shots. Gotham Academy strives to be much more cinematic.
I’ve been influenced by a million things but the look of this book comes from my love of animation, in particular the work of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. There’s also a healthy dose of Disney, Don Bluth, Capcom art and Jamie Hewlett.
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I’ve noticed a lot of old school animation in the character designs and some Miyazaki levels of detail in the backgrounds: when you approach a scene, what sort of stuff do you look at to help build your world?
KK: Man, I wish I could get to Miyazaki levels of detail in the backgrounds. I do what I can but they’re truly brought to life by our amazing colouring team. Romain Gaschet, Michele Assarasakorn, Serge Lapointe, Dave McCaig and John Rauch are the stars here. They’re the reason this book looks as good as it does.
I reference a lot of old boarding schools and churches and creepy forests when I’m drawing the backgrounds, and I do them in a looser pencil style with indications of where I want the light to come from or where there might be cast shadows and then the colourists add their own sense of place and drama to it. There’s no other book on the stands being produced this way and while it’s complicated and a ton of work, I think it’s all worth it.
When crafting a story that is, essentially, about kids, does that affect the choices that you make in terms of the types of stories that you can/will tell? Does the age of the main characters help keep the tone of the series from getting too dark?
BC: When I was younger everything was so much more immediate. I felt things a lot more strongly, and yeah, having characters that age is a great place for melodrama, but also a great place for some ridiculous fun! It’s not all dark. And Maps is a perfect foil for Olive- when she becomes too internal and starts walling herself off, Maps can pull her out of it and drive her to action. And vice-versa, Olive tempers Maps, and grounds her. The two of them are a perfect team… One might say Maps is the Robin to Olive’s Batman
BF: We’re very conscious of the tone we’re striving for in Gotham Academy. There’s often a temptation to push the story into darker places but, yes, the nature of our characters always helps to pull the story back to where it belongs.
KK: The characters are all a year or two away from getting into really adult situations, too, so that keeps things very innocent. There’s a nice balance of relationship drama with adventuring. Priorities.
Finally, what can you tell us about the next few months of “Gotham Academy?” Have you ever thought for a moment about what these kids might become after they graduate one day?
BC: Between the three of us, we have YEARS of material planned for this book. We know exactly what will happen to each character after they graduate- and it’s going to be a blast until then.
BF: We’ve got a grand finale in mind for this cast that’s something we strongly hope to reach. It’s been planned from the beginning and will prove to be a fantastic and surprising payoff to the series.
