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We spoke with the comic book writer who has credits creating stories involving Iron Fist, Iron Man, Hawkeye, the Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four, and most recently on the latest Batman run.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is day two at the San Diego Comic Con in Malaga, and I'm here joined by Matt, which, for a change, is really, really nice to talk to a writer.
Because we've been meeting, you know, lovely artists, and of course that's perhaps 50% of the work, or of the success, even more."
"90%.
Depending on the story.
95%.
95% for artists.
It's a... comics are a visual medium, people come to look at the art."
"I'm a cup holder on the race car.
Of course, but we love the stories and we love storytelling.
And you guys released a new Batman.
Yeah."
"How does it feel? It released a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah.
We are still... we will be waiting until the spring in Europe.
So what was the feedback? How do you feel about that?
It sold 500,000 copies, it's the biggest selling comic of the year."
"By the time I realized that I should be afraid, it was too late.
I was six issues in before it occurred to me.
Oh, this is a big deal, I should be freaked out by this.
It feels incredible, the reception has been amazing."
"It's Batman, he's the coolest character in comics, people love him.
I'm thrilled to be here, I can't believe I fooled somebody into paying me to write it.
It's great.
And Jorge is the artist."
"New Batman, new suit, new Batmobile, new Gotham.
What can you tell me about these things narratively?
I think...
I wanted to do... I was interested in telling a story that was very superhero forward."
"And Batman has been very black and grey and brown and green.
And Gotham City looks like a dead avocado and you need a tetanus shot every time you go outside.
That wasn't what made me fall in love with the character.
And I think the reason it's endured 85 years is because you can tell all these different stories with that character."
"And I wanted to do a superhero forward version of the book.
The first time Jorge and I spoke, I was like, I want to put him back in the blue and the grey.
I missed that and he immediately went, yes! I wasn't kidding, comics are a visual medium."
"I wanted a book that looked beautiful, I wanted to see a Gotham where I understood why people would live there.
I wanted to celebrate all the comic book stuff that people love.
Just because I missed it, but it's also the thing that made me...
Batman was the first comic I ever read. I was three years old, it was 1978."
"I feel like I'm dancing with the girl that brought me.
So I want to celebrate all the stuff that made me love comics.
And that means colour and pop and scale and energy and all that stuff.
For all of the remarkable work that's happened with Batman, I really do think he's endured because none of those stories invalidate any of the other."
"You can have Lego Batman and Ben Affleck in movie theatres at the same time and no one's confused.
It's all Batman.
So I wanted to write a comic with that same kind of energy, like anything goes.
Anything goes without getting into spoiler territory and the comic is not out here."
"Can you tease us? Can you tell us something crazy that's going to happen?
Some events that you can share?
Jorge and I have created a new villain who has accomplished something none of the other rogues have ever done.
So there's a genuinely new challenge happening in the underworld of Gotham."
"It's interesting, Batman is sort of, as I've inherited the book, he's kind of back-footed.
The bad guys run the police department, bad guys run the political offices.
He doesn't have the Batcave, he doesn't live in the mansion anymore.
He's sort of starting over in a lot of ways."
"So he's got to face this incredibly challenging thing, but he's not at the height of his powers.
It's a very back-to-basics kind of a moment.
In a moment that also then pushes the superhero stuff forward.
He's still Batman. He's still Bruce Wayne."
"Oh, that's a spoiler. Batman is Bruce Wayne, you guys know that, sorry.
Parents got killed as well.
So what happens when he has to face this incredibly huge thing that's never happened before, but he's not at full power.
That's a start."
"And also, as a writer, this was a challenge, but every issue is self-contained.
There's a long story that we're telling, but every issue has a beginning and a middle and an end.
There's a full meal, and that was very deliberate, so there's a different character and tone and texture every issue.
Every issue feels different than the one before it so far, because it's a very different mode."
"I believe in the monthly comic, it's how I speak, it's where I learned.
I used to dream of Europe. You'd read about things about what comics were like in Europe, and like, what?
They have what? Festivals that the government pays for? There's a parade for a cartoonist? That's insane! The first show I ever did in Europe, I think..."
"Lucca?
No, it was maybe in Paris, but Asterix and Obelix came out.
It sold like 2 million copies. Oh my god, there were ads for it on buses? That's insane.
Anyway, I love the monthly format and really want to make it satisfying and entertaining."
"It feels like a great pop single, like a song you hear on the radio.
Albums are great.
You cannot get it off your head.
Right, but give me a banger. Give me all killer, no filler."
"How much political do you get? Because you mentioned the things Batman is facing.
You gave us a tease, a little bit of confusing details, of course, because there's no spoiler here.
None, but I was writing about recent history. I've been writing the book since a year ago, April.
What's the title?
Yeah, Batman."
"You mean the book?
Yeah, I've started a year ago.
I thought you meant another book, a different thing.
No, I started a year and a half ago, and I was writing about the past."
"And now it looks like I'm writing about what's happening outside my window.
You're foretellers.
It happened when I wrote Iron Man, that was a bummer.
Some new brilliant piece of technology would be spoken about, some breakthrough, some innovation, and I would immediately have to figure out how a bad guy could kill people with it."
"It was very dark after a while.
I'm writing a Batman comic about one guy doing the right thing for everybody, and I think that's what we're hungry for right now.
If the moment has made us hungry for it, let's examine the moment."
"But...
No, this is...
Everything is political.
Everything is political.
But everyone's been incredibly supportive, and I think gets it, and understands it, and sees what's going on, and..."
"And Batman's the perfect character for the moment.
You can tell it's a comic book because he's a billionaire who wants to help people.
Perfect way to put it.
You've mentioned several times the "Superhero Forward" approach."
"That's your trademark sort of motto, style, or...
With this one anyway, yeah, with this.
For those who are not into this concept that you've applied to previous superheroes, what does it exactly mean?
It means a comic book, at least in the American idiom, that functions as a comic book."
"I don't...
It's not a movie being adapted.
I don't have to worry about, well, how would someone film this?
It means we're only limited by our imagination."
"It means we're only limited by our imagination.
Physics, time, space is all nonsense.
The only boundary in comics are what you can dream up.
I want a comic that celebrates that."
"That moves like a comic, and thinks like a comic, and not like an adaptation of a film, or a show, or a novel.
If I wanted to do that, I would go do that.
I just spent five years working in television."
"It's a different engine.
There's a lot of common language.
Spanish and Italian are very different.
They're very similar, but they're very different."
"There is a dreaminess, and an imaginative quality, and a romantic route to comics.
You don't need to explain where the Batmobile gets its tires.
It's the Batmobile."
"You've bought the ticket, you take the ride.
There's an energy.
Have you seen the new Superman film?
Nope, not yet.
I was delighted by it."
"It's a comic book movie, not a superhero movie.
They're different things, right?
You have kids?
It felt like when your kid would explain a dream to you, but they also had to go to the bathroom."
"And then, and then, and then, and then.
And comics can do that.
Comics have that energy.
Oh, I don't care.
Wait, where did he get the tire?
Who's filling up the gas?
That's a different thing, right?
There is something very dreamlike."
"It's a communal dream.
And because it's a dream, you can do things that real life don't.
Oh my God, he's going to break his neck."
"No, he's not. He's Batman.
He knows what he's going to do.
If he jumps out of the building, he's got the big wings.
The minute you're thinking about, oh no, he's going to..."
"No, I don't...
The real world is hard enough.
Let's do awesome, fun, exciting, energizing, hopeful stories about people doing the right thing, because it's the right thing."
"That's beautiful.
I was going to ask you about humanity, but I think you answered that already.
So let me ask you about narrative structures."
"Some of yours have been quite, sort of groundbreaking, different, varied.
So how do you go about, when you start, for example, Batman, and you say, I'm going to try this completely original, fresh thing that nobody has seen before."
"Because it's a risk.
It's a risk.
I don't know.
There have been Batman stories told consecutively for the last 1,063 months of human existence."
"I don't know that there's a new Batman story out there.
You know what?
It feels like it's rock and roll in 4-4 time.
It is like..."
"When I want to do crazy...
What if I...
There are other places for that.
I don't know that...
When I find the Batman story, I'm like, oh, what if time didn't exist?
That doesn't feel right right now."
"I feel like I'm trying to deliver...
Just hits.
Like big...
It's just bangers.
House banger."
"It's recognizable, right?
But we still love it.
For a reason. It works.
It's a structure that can hold all this other stuff."
"So I want to write really entertaining and satisfying stories about my favorite superhero.
And that's the objective.
And if I can get to a moment where I can get formally audacious, okay."
"But I think there's something formally audacious.
But just trying to like...
The fundamentals executed well feel similarly audacious."
"Can you...
Are you a baseball fan?
No.
It feels like you're calling a shot.
It would be like if you walked onto a soccer pitch, a football pitch, and you just pointed to the net."
"Like, that's it. A kickoff.
Here it comes.
That's what we're trying to do.
I'm going to try to deliver Batman stories as best I can with all the tools and experience I have."
"Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
I don't have control over that.
But the ambition is not to reinvent the wheel.
But let's remind people why wheels are awesome."
"Batman's the coolest character.
He's got the coolest costume, the coolest villains, the coolest everything.
Like, let's just do that."
"It doesn't need reinventing.
It's 85 years of not being that.
Closing one.
Other than Batman, we've spoken a lot about Batman."
"So, Hawkeye and Sex Criminals.
Any special memories you would like to share about those two works?
Something that sets them apart for you?
Oh, yeah."
"Those were life-changing for me.
My collaborators.
David Aja, fellow Spaniard.
My brother from another mother.
David is the only person in comics I've met who thinks about comics like I do."
"And it feels like we fell off of the same spaceship.
I love him.
I love his work.
He changed my life.
And working with him made me a better writer."
"It made me a better reader.
It made me a better thinker.
And we were doing a book that no one believed in or expected about a character we loved because we fell off of a spaceship."
"And it found this incredible resonance that remains magical and life-changing.
There's a pizza dog stuffed animal that they sell at Disneyland."
"That's going to outlive me.
That's going to go on forever.
Right?
All of it's been crazy, but that I got to work with David was incredibly meaningful."
"And with Sex Criminals, we're working with Chip Zdarsky, who is my best friend.
I thank God we got to experience that together because no one would believe us if we explained to anyone what it was like and what we saw."
"And that I got to work with someone who I came to because I loved his work.
And we were friendly.
And then we really have this bond."
"And Chip wrote Batman before me.
And when he left, he said, I'm leaving.
What would you think?
And I just felt honored by that."
"And I love collaborators and both of those books for all of the incredible things that we experienced.
The most meaningful are the people that we met."
"That's boring.
It's not boring at all.
It's beautiful.
It's the best way to wrap this up.
Thank you so much for your time, Matt."
"Enjoy the rest of your San Diego Comic-Con in Malaga.
Thank you, Malaga.
Gracias."
