Mark Waid reveals what Batman and Robin fans need to read in his new Year One series

This October, two dynamic duos are reuniting for a brand new Gotham story: Mark Waid and Chris Samnee join forces to bring DC readers. Batman and Robin: Year One. ScreenRant sat down with co-plotter and writer Waid to learn more about his collaboration with Samnee, Batman and Robin’s relationship, new characters and so much more.

Waid and Samnee, who are known for their collaborations on Marvel titles like Daredevil And Black WidowBut now they are Set their sights on one of the most iconic partnerships in superhero history: Batman and Robin. Batman and Robin: Year One Tells an early story not just about Gotham’s dynamic duo, but about the growing pains of the father and son duo, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.

Batman and Robin: Year One #1 (2024)
Release date:	October 16, 2024
plotters:	Mark Waid, Chris Samney
writer:	Mark Wade
Artist:	Chris Samnee
Colorist:	Matthews Lopes
writer:	Clayton Cowles
Cover artist:	Chris Samnee, Matheus Lopes
Variant covers:	Mikel Janín, Matteo Scalera, Karl Kerschl, Lee Weeks
Reuniting the successful team of MARK WAID and CHRIS SAMNEE! While Bruce Wayne adjusts to the realities of adopting orphan Dick Grayson, a mysterious new crime boss called The General has come to Gotham to claim the city by disrupting and destroying its other mobs. But what is his connection to Two-Face? Batman and his new sidekick, Robin, are out for answers, but it will take everything they have to navigate both sides of their relationship as father and son and dynamic duo, with Dick Grayson’s present and future hanging in the balance!

ScreenRant spoke with Waid about the upcoming story and particularly its first issue, which arrives on October 16. In this conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity, Waid not only reveals the story’s place in the current DC continuityBut also more about the villains of the story, its various “frictions,“And what it was like to move between big DC event stories and this more intimate family story.

Mark Waid discusses reuniting with Chris Samnee for Batman and Robin: Year One

Preview pages by Chris Samnee; Variant cover by Carl Kerschl

ScreenRant: What was it like reuniting with Chris Samnee, especially for characters as culturally iconic as Batman and Robin?

Mark Waid: It was great. I mean, the beauty of it just struck me in lockstep immediately. We don’t have to get used to each other or anything, we just have a good system where we’ll talk for a while on the phone and get the bots, and then I’ll sit down and write – not what I would normally do as a page For page plot as much as just, here’s a few pages of the stuff we talked about, sort of put in order with speech. And then he will go and do the layouts, and so he does more than just drawing. He is also co-plotting.

SR: So has that changed your process in working together?

MW: Not really? That’s because, again, he’s just so good at choreography – but actually, I guess it has, in the sense that he really has a very, very strong vision of what he sees the book looking like. And so he’s a little more off the rails when it comes to the actual story, which is fine by me.

SR: It must be exciting to work with someone who has such a strong vision of what the book will look like and what the story will look like.

MW: Yes!

Batman and Robin take a back seat to Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson

Variant Cover by Mikel Janín

SR: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this story is just as much about Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, father and son, as it is about Batman and Robin, superhero dynamic duo. In your eyes, how is Bruce and Dick’s relationship different from Batman and Robin’s? And why is it important to you to explore the father-son dynamic in this retelling of the original story?

MW: Because I thought we’d get some dynamic friction out of it. I think the trope is always that Dick and Bruce got along from day one. That was always the status quo for the characters and each time we retold the story. And when we started thinking about it, I mean, Bruce didn’t have any experience as a parent. He had hardly any experience as a child. And Alfred could only do so much.

Everything has changed for Dick—everything about his life has been completely upended. Obviously, there will be some friction. A lot of it comes from the fact that they have a common experience. They have the death of their parents, and Bruce handled it in a way that any 12-year-old would: he put on a costume and he went to punch faces. And he sees that in Dick, and it’s a matter of trying to get Dick to channel that anger and that energy in a more productive way. Because otherwise, as Bruce could easily have done, he might just fall. Dick could just as easily fall down a well of despair.

SR: I’m really interested in the phrase you started the answer with, “dynamic friction,“Which I think is such a great phrase both for the echoes of the dynamic duo and also as a narrative device. How do you use dynamic friction, whatever that means to you, for the story and as a storyteller with many years of experience?

MW: It’s just a lot more interesting to put together characters who aren’t completely sympathetic to each other. It’s not just that it gives you moments of suspense; It is also a way to reinforce who they are, as they will show their true colors under moments of stress. So with Batman and Robin, it’s strictly business, but again, it’s a matter of trying to get the kid to listen.

But at the same time, it’s also a matter of Batman trying to figure out how to lead, because not only has he never had a partner, he’s never thought about a partner. On the contrary, Dick’s whole life was about a partner – life and death every night. So on the Batman and Robin front, that’s the friction there. And then on the Bruce and Dick front, it really is just: “I do not know how to raise a child.” And especially one as freewheeling and coming from such an unstructured environment as Dick did. And Dick’s attitude is, “I don’t really know what I’m doing here either.”

SR: I’ll just keep picking at your language because I find that fun. “Unstructured environment“Feels like a really interesting tension to me in terms of who Bruce and Dick are. And the Batman mythos at large: the idea of ​​someone who’s unstructured suddenly thrust into the world of Batman and the cliché Batman stereotype of someone who’s intensely structured Down to the aggressive little details. What is it like to write that kind of character tension of someone like Dick, this unstructured child, versus – or withAgainst And With – the structured world of Batman.

MW: Again, Batman’s just struggling mightily with that, because in the crime-fighting field, the problem is that the kid is impassive. The problem is that the child leads with his face. The problem is that he doesn’t listen when Batman says wait. On the home front, it is difficult to figure out what structures to put on the child because Batman, or rather Bruce, after his parents were killed – he also has no structure. It was a self-imposed structure, but no one forced him to live a normal child’s life. And so he was pretty much his own guardian from that point on, and he used his time and his energy in a very specific way to train to be the greatest in the world.

Dick doesn’t have the same focus. Dick is just all over the map, and Bruce at first assumes, well, “If I give him all the runways in the world, he’ll do what I did.” And he doesn’t. Therefore: “If I overcompensate and be too strict and put up too many guardrails, maybe that will help.” And that only makes things worse. So it’s really just a give and take over the whole twelve issues, the whole miniseries.

Who is the general? Mark Waid reveals more about the villain of Batman and Robin: Year One

Variant Cover by Matteo Scalera

SR: The first issue solicitation teases a new player in Gotham: The General. So what can you tell us about the general? And also I’m curious to know if there is any connection to Tim Drake’s general character from back in the day.

MW: Oh! Not actually, no. Well, you know, not yet. But now that you’ve put it in my head, it’s something to think about. No, the general is a crime boss from Miami who was a military leader until he was disgraced. Or, to put it from his point of view, until he is unfairly run out of service.

He’s your Ollie North kind of character, and he came to Gotham because he has a secret weapon that he believes can make him the king of Gotham. We get a sense of what this secret weapon is in the second issue, but it really isn’t until the last third of the series that you get a sense of the scale of what he’s going for.

how does Batman and Robin: Year One Fit into the current DC continuity?

Main cover for DC All In Special #1 by Daniel Sampere

SR: So this book is launching at the same time as all the big DC things happening at the end of the year: All In, The Absolute Universe. So I wanted to ask if and where this story fits into DC continuity as it stands now?

MW: Oh yeah, it’s definitely in continuity. It is defining continuity now. I try my level best to sort of dance between the raindrops and make sure I don’t spoil any other previous Dick and Bruce stories. I think we’ve hit a sweet spot where we can fall into the cracks so we don’t undo anything. But at the same time, this is now official continuity, yes.

SR: I love the turn of phrase, “Dance among the raindrops.“

MW: That’s trademark Tom Brevoort [Marvel editor]But this is a good thing.

SR: It’s a really good one! What is it like as a writer – especially, you know, as you keep moving on, more and more continuity gets added, especially for characters like Batman and Robin. What is it like, in your writing life, dancing between the raindrops?

MW: I think that for 99% of my peers, it would be frustrating and annoying, and they would have a tendency to not worry about stuff. I really enjoy it. I like the challenge. I like the puzzle aspect of trying to fit it as neatly as I can. It doesn’t always work because, again, there have been – and I’ve told this statistic a thousand times, but I love it because it’s true – there have been more stories about Batman than about any other character in Western literature. This is a fact. When you put that on the plate, it’s really hard to figure out how to navigate every last little thing that happened. But I do my best! I have fun.

SR: It does please a certain kind of mind, right? As you said, it’s a puzzle.

MW: Exactly!

SR: What is your biggest goal in revisiting this particular time in Bruce and Dick’s life, and are there elements that you will be introducing now that might recontextualize how readers see the characters as they are in the current moment?

MW: That’s actually the goal. This is the goal. When I take on a project like this, the goal is to try to show you sides of the character that you haven’t seen or that you haven’t thought about from that perspective. I think we get a lot of that here. I discovered things about the characters that I didn’t realize as I was going. And so is Chris. That’s really the goal. I mean, otherwise we might as well reprint old Batman and Robin stories. But we will not do that! We want to show you a different perspective.

Mark Waid discusses the difference between writing events and writing personal stories

Absolute power #1 Main Cover by Dan Mora

SR: Thinking about showing readers a new perspective—at the time this is going to launch, we also have all these other big, universe-shattering stories happening, right? Absolute power is busy We’re going to get the Absolute Universe, you start Justice League Unlimited – all the great, great learning things. What’s your sales pitch for getting readers to go back to this smaller-scale Batman and Robin family story?

MW: This is just a more personal story. It’s still full of big, flamboyant action and setting up things in the Batman universe that will pay off in ways you should know about, but mostly my sales pitch is: It’s a good-looking book, and if Chris can’t win Every award that is to be given next year, then something is wrong.

SR: From your perspective, as a writer, who was moving from the big interconnected—I mean, from Lazarus planet As for what’s going on right now, you’re working on the really big stories that have a lot of moving parts. And not to say that Batman and Robin: Year One won’t have moving parts either, but –

MW: But exactly, but it’s not like – the world doesn’t crash into the story, exactly.

SR: In your process as a writer, what is it like to make that switch from something like Absolute power to Batman and Robin?

MW: It’s actually easier for me, because the quiet character stuff is the stuff that comes most naturally to me. The hard part is making the shift into, you know, absolute power or the bigger stories where I’m telling big, like I said, world-shaking events, but even still – finding the heart, finding the quiet moments there, the moments of Character interaction that’s – I mean, the most fun in comics for me is just taking characters that I haven’t seen together or have rarely seen together, and putting them together in a scene and just trying to figure out what their interaction, like their Relationship will be. I just enjoy that more than anything.

SR: Have you had any of these moments working on Batman or RobinFind the new characters to see together?

MW: Not yet, but in the back half of the series is when you start to see more of that, yes.

Why is Robin such an essential DC character?

Variant cover by Carl Kerschl

SR: In my many years reading about Batman, I always hear creators talk about what Batman in particular means to them. But I rarely hear people talk about what Robin means to them. Robin has been one of my favorite characters since I was a kid. So for you, as opposed to Batman, what does Robin as a character mean to you?

MW: Robin has always been a favorite, even more so than Batman. When I was a kid, I would dress up as Robin with a little yellow windbreaker tied around my neck so I could make a makeshift cape. I love Dick Grayson. I think that he is fun, but serious. I think that he is energetic, but has his quiet, introspective moments. Everything I love about Dick Grayson actually is what Tom Taylor’s doing over in Nightwing [with Bruno Redondo]. And the character means a lot to me. Next to Superman, he might be my favorite character in the DC Universe.

SR: You spent some time with him, too, in Batman/Superman: The World’s Finest [with Dan Mora] And World’s Finest: Teen Titans [with Emanuela Lupacchino]. What’s it like working with Dick Grayson for a few years now?

MW: It’s great. Once I realized that he was the secret sauce in World’s Finest that had been missing for a while – we’ve done a bunch of Batman/Superman books in recent years, but not Batman and Robin and Superman books. And putting Robin in World’s Finest made all the difference in the world, because now we have someone who can make the jokes. We have someone who can give a more surprised and scared perspective because they haven’t been through as much as Batman and Superman.

That character for me is irreplaceable. I realized just yesterday that I was going to write a whole issue without him, and then I just calmed down and said, “No, no, this is ridiculous.” And once I realized that, the whole plot came together for me.

Thanks again to Mark Waid for taking the time to talk with ScreenRant about Batman and Robin — and Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. Batman and Robin: Year One #1 Is available October 16, 2024 from DC Comics.

Source: Chris Samnee