LOST LOVES

My schedule of working on comics usually involves working through the night. All reasonable people go to bed when it gets dark outside, but that's when I'm finally sitting down at the table to ink or write. It's more quiet, less distractions from the phone or door, and I'm just more alive and active. And before the sun hits midday, I'm back to bed to recharge. Graveyard hours are working hours for this freelancer.

Currently I'm in the inking phase of my relationship with comics. Scripts are turned in ahead of schedule. And now I'm juggling three different stories that I'm inking over three different artists. And while I like to write in complete silence, to hear my thoughts or the voices of my characters without music behind it, I actually like to ink with something involving sound as a background filter. Podcasts are one of the top things to help me through the work week.

Lately I've been listening to Kevin Smith's "Fatman On Batman" podcast, which has him sit down with any number of voice actors or comic professionals to talk about working on Batman and their love of the character. Currently he's running a month long visit (although I hope it extends even further) with Paul Dini. And the great thing, is that they're doing a running audio commentary on various Batman related episodes or movies that Paul wrote. And it's utterly fascinating to hear Paul reminisce about the makings of each.

The most recent one had them talk about the first animated Batman movie, Mask Of The Phantasm. Talking about how it was Alan Burnett's original idea to write a different kind of story that showed Bruce's failed romance in his early days that helped push him towards becoming the Dark Knight. Something you wouldn't regularly associate or see on the animated series for a kids show. And listening to it, it got me thinking of a story idea Dustin Nguyen and I were toying with awhile back.

Back when we were pitching to take over/relaunch the Batman Beyond comic (before it eventually evolved into Justice League Beyond and Batman Beyond Unlimited), we were coming up with and tossing around various story ideas. One of them involved Bruce falling into a coma. As he lie in the hospital, Terry was thinking of some way to speak to him or get him to hear things he might remember that might awake him from the coma. He was able to dig up a shoebox full of letters that Bruce kept back at the mansion. And before he could sit bedside with him, he'd have to go out as Batman and stop some threat in the city. Of course he would explain it away to his family and Dana that he had to start getting Bruce's accounts in place in this worst case scenario if he was to die this way. But in his place, Dana would sit with Bruce until Terry could come back.  She could read these letters to him and maybe be that soothing tether that could bring Bruce out of his coma. And it would be a way for her to find out more about the man that employs her boyfriend, drawing her closer to Bruce as well as Terry.

These letters would be love letters. Bruce, the ever failed romantic, would have kept various writings and mementos from the special women he cared for throughout his life. There wouldn't be anything in them to reveal that he was Batman (we'd find a way to be vague without implying too much so Dana wouldn't have that revealed). But it would also have a chance to flashback to various moments through Bruce's younger days…key moments of maybe when those relationships fell apart. It would be a chance for us to show a lot of Bruce's loves portrayed in the animated universe and a love letter to all the fans of those relationships. We'd touch on his first with Andrea Beaumont (most likely dealing with her reappearance after being thought dead at the end of the Phantasm movie), the confliction he felt being close to Catwoman and Talia, his brief relationship with Lois Lane (in "Worlds Finest"), and also his friendship and special relationship with Zatanna.
 

We'd even get into the romantic relationship with Bruce and Barbara Gordon. That was always the most heated contention amongst fans of the show, when that was introduced in the "Mystery Of The Batwoman" movie and on Batman Beyond. I thought it would be a great challenge to show how that relationship came about, worked briefly, and fell apart. To show the conflict that relationship would have to the dynamic of Dick Grayson (both to Barbara and to Bruce), which ultimately led to Barbara deciding it was an office romance that could never, and should never, go forward. That she would come to her senses and break it off, as she realized that Bruce would be too focused on his mission to fight crime, to ever truly become close.

Once it was decided that we'd be working on Justice League Beyond, that pretty much nixed all the Batman-centric stories. We'd have a much larger group to work with, and that seemed a more personal story for the Batman Beyond cast. As it ends up in the current stories by Adam Beechan, Bruce is in the hospital from liver failure. There's no way a story of this type in this form, could be introduced at a later date without feeling like a retread. Much like those love letters, the idea behind it is now just a memory. Something to think fondly of before returning it to that shoebox, as we move on.