Grant Morrison's New Batman and Robin

When Grant Morrison's name was last featured on a Batman comic book, the world of the Dark Knight was a very different place. For one thing, Bruce Wayne was still an active member of the DC Universe. Wayne's fate, of course, was handled by Morrison himself in the final moments of DC's Final Crisis event. Though many casual fans are under the impression Wayne died, the final moments of Crisis revealed that he was simply trapped in the distant past.

Since that time, the battle for Batman's cowl began, and earlier this week, fans discovered who would become the new Dynamic Duo. The revealed pair – Dick Grayson, formerly Nightwing, and Damian Wayne, the punk child of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul.

With Battle of the Cowl closed, all eyes are now turning back to Morrison as he helms a new series, Batman and Robin, which will become the flagship book of the franchise. Teamed with Frank Quitely for his first three-issue arc, Morrison has plenty of details that he can discuss now that Cowl has concluded. IGN tracked down the infamous writer for plenty of Gotham-related chatter. Read on for his thoughts on the characters, his approach to the series, the artists working alongside him and much, much more.

Editor's Note: Throughout this interview we've included the J.G. Jones variants for the June Batman titles - Batman and Robin, Batman, Detective Comics, Streets of Gotham, Red Robin and The Outsiders. Gotham City Sirens is not included in this article, but will have a Jones variant when it ships.

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IGN Comics: So the wait is over and now fans know the identities of the new Batman and Robin – Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne. Before we get into specifics though, I'd like to talk about the big picture. You've made no secret of the fact that this is all part of a greater, long ranging story that you're telling. How does Batman and Robin fit alongside your recent Batman work?

Morrison: It's pretty simple. It comes in straight chronological order after the recent stuff. This is the sequel to Batman RIP, which is why the first arc is called 'Batman Reborn.' It builds directly off of it, and there are threads we pick up from before. As I've said before, the main villain in the first arc has already been seen in Batman #666, which had the potential future for Gotham City in it. So it's a straight continuation and the next part in the long running story from 'Batman and Son' onwards. We'll be picking up threads from that first book as well.

IGN Comics: You described Batman RIP as Batman fighting the greatest evil he's ever come up against. How would you describe the "tagline," so to speak, for Batman and Robin and 'Batman Reborn?'

Morrison: Basically, I suppose it's 'Can the a whole new Batman and Robin team cut it in the wild world of Gotham City 21st century?'. The only way I can explain the tone is that I had this idea of recapitulating the television show in a certain way. I wanted to do something different with that kind of format – the short, punchy serial format. Because obviously I looked at a lot of the Batman fifties stories when I was doing RIP and the stuff leading up to it. I've kind of always had this notion of looking at the dark and dusty corners of any character. If there's a long running character, there are almost always certain parts of their history that no one wants to talk about because everyone's embarrassed by it.

So with Batman, there's that kind of fifties era with weird modernist aliens and paranoid stories where Robin's constantly breaking down in tears because he thinks Batman is going to leave him. That era was something that people didn't like at all because it obviously just did not fit the tone of modern stories. That was a time in the fifties when the comics code stopped Batman from being able to fight crime or deal with anything realistic at all. Those stories really didn't fit the character, but I tried to bring them back in and give them a new slant and freshen them up. Because it was an area of inspiration that nobody had really gone to. It was kind of an untapped well.

So with Batman and Robin, it was the same thing. I was thinking of what other aspects of Batman are completely out of favor - that people tend to hate and don't seem to work anymore. The Batman 60s TV show was one of those. Obviously it was camp and a product of its time. But when I was a kid I thought it was really serious. [laughs] So I wanted to take some of that bizarre, psychedelic feel. I wanted to take the idea of very short, punchy stories that just kind of existed on their own terms. Rather than Batman RIP, which was a big, epic story that had a lot of secret subtext and hidden meanings and stuff, these are just crazy stories that are pretty upfront.

It was taking that aspect of the Batman TV show and then trying it in with David Lynch and Twin Peaks. [laughs] And creepy European cartoons and marionettes and stuff like that. That bad dreamlike feeling of a Marilyn Manson video in the '90s, or like Chris Cunningham's video for 'Windowlicker'. [laughs] Again, it was about trying to fuse those two things together into a bad trip, Lewis Carroll kind of world. I realize I give a massive, long answer every time we speak, Dan. But that was kind of what obsessed me about Batman and Robin going into it – to take these weird elements and marry them together to see what we could get.

IGN Comics: With Batman more so than any other superhero character, fans seem to have a firm idea of what constitutes a Batman story. There's that sense of pseudo-realism, that dark undertone and all those recognizable tropes they expect to see. The Dark Knight movie and its massive success seemed to reaffirm those tropes further for the mainstream. Here you seem to be going almost the opposite direction. It sounds like that's very deliberate on your part. Do you think it's important to try and get Batman away from familiar territory, and what everyone expects from the character?

Morrison: Yeah, to that extent of it. But at that same time, what made the Dark Knight great and a lot of the recent Batman stuff great was that edginess. It was that modernity. I don't want to lose that. What I want to do is bring out a slightly creepier twist on that same feeling. If anything, Batman and Robin is more like the Dark Knight. It's a lot more realistic and gritty. When you see the fight scenes that Frank Quitely has done, it's just hardcore, bone-crunching, teeth-breaking, brutal stuff.

My point in trying to play with all these things is to see how many of these influences we can push together. To take something and make it feel modern and progressive, but adding some of the elements that maybe have been forgotten – those spices and ingredients – and make it seem new.

IGN Comics: So let's talk about the new team of Dick Grayson and Damian. What's their dynamic like?

Morrison: There's just real friction between them. Damian doesn't respect Dick Grayson at all, and Dick Grayson is kind of this consummate superhero. The guy has been Batman's partner since he was a kid, he's led the Teen Titans, and he's trained with everybody in the DC Universe. So he's a very different kind of Batman. He's a lot easier; He's a lot looser and more relaxed. At the same time Damian is pretty hard to deal with. The characters are just amazing fun to write. Sparks fly all around them.

IGN Comics: You've said this is all part of the greater Batman story you're telling. I'm assuming you knew you wanted to bring Dick and Damian in once you took Bruce Wayne off the map with RIP and Final Crisis. I think some fans are wondering why you didn't want to tell the story of how Dick assumed the mantel of the Bat?

Morrison: I wanted to just come in – I know some fans don't like this approach – but I like to just come in when the story is underway and the fun has started. I thought that background stuff could be taken as read. Tony Daniel's dealing with those details in Battle for the Cowl, and the basics have been laid down. Apart from that, everything you need to know about the intervening time and how Dick and Damian got together gets explained over the next year of Batman and Robin anyway. It's all in the story. I just didn't want to front load it with expository material, because I wanted to jump straight into action with the characters, to be honest.

IGN Comics: It sounds like that goes back to what you were trying to do with Final Crisis, where you cut out all the quieter moments and just got down to "the drums and the bass", as you called it – the meat of the story.

Morrison: Yeah. I went to see Crank: High Voltage when we were in Los Angeles. I had just watched that, and I thought everything else just looks like slow motion, really. I wanted to get that effect into the comics as well. To me that was just a great action film, and every action film after is going to have to try and move at that speed. I really wanted to get that into Batman and Robin. Again, the stories are really easy. There aren't big multi-layered Gnostic parables this time around. Like I said, it's like a really bad trip cartoon. [laughs]