When I was a young lad, someone handed me a copy of The Cheese Monkeys, a book written by an artist I was unfamiliar with named Chip Kidd. It was one of those books that spoke to me at the time as a growing lad with aspirations of an artistic-related degree. Of course, little did I know at the time that Kidd was actually an award winning graphic designer who just happened to be a huge comic book fan (who designs his own versions of comics he owns), whose work you might recognize from the Batman animated series or the recently released Shazam book.
Now Kidd is taking the Batman for his own adventure in Batman: Death By Design (of course!) with artist Dave Taylor. Kidd is tackling the book from his own unique design perspective as opposed to a strictly story-based one, and this will play a large part of the book’s story as Batman is faced against the Joker and a new villain of Kidd’s own design, with a new love interest as well. Kidd hopes that the title will be able to leave its own legacy on the Wayne family and Gotham, and as he explains in an interview with CBR,
For me, this is very much an old-fashioned, movie serial kind of approach. … A good part of the story and the plot goes into the building and design trade of Gotham City — how that works or doesn’t work and how it’s corrupted. There is a good bit of history with Bruce Wayne’s father. It’s not any kind of twisted, huge revelation. It’s about the design legacy of the Wayne’s in Gotham City.
Kidd notes that he does not plan to use the broody Bruce Wayne most fans of have been used to in recent years, but rather one ready for adventure.
Look for the book in 2012.
