There’s no more iconic pairing in comics than Batman and Robin. The dynamic duo have been protecting Gotham City from evil for over 80 years. Their origins, who they are and how they came to be, have been explored numerous times over the decades, and now DC is returning to the shared beginning of the two caped crusaders. Next month will see the release of Batman and Robin: Year One #1, the first issue of a new twelve-issue series that will definitively delve into the early days of the dynamic duo’s partnership. The new book comes from another acclaimed comics duo, writer/co-plotter Mark Waid and artist/co-plotter Chris Samnee, who are joined by colorist Matheus Lopes and letterer Clayton Cowles on the series.
For Waid and Samnee, Batman and Robin: Year One is the latest in a string of projects that includes an Eisner-winning run on Daredevil, plus books like Black Widow, Captain America, and The Rocketeer. The series is also a dream project for Samnee, who shared on social media a local newspaper article from when he was 12 that featured him and a drawing he’d done of the dark knight. Samnee has also annually taken part in Batober, a variation on Inktober in which he does an inked drawing of Batman every day for the month of October.
Ahead of the first issue’s preorder cutoff, The Beat sat down with Waid and Samnee to discuss the origins of Batman and Robin: Year One, exploring the beginnings of the dynamic duo, and why their collaborations have been so successful over the years.
Joe Grunenwald: Tell me a little bit about how the series came together. Is it something you guys have been talking about doing? Did you pitch it to DC, or did they pitch it to you?
Chris Samnee: It goes all the way back to when I was a kid. I always wanted to do a Batman book, and I’d been talking to different editors [at DC] over the years, and it just never worked. At one point I was pitching, and I just kept pitching different versions of something for, like, six months, and it never worked out. And I I just figured it wasn’t meant to be, I’d come back to it at some point, and I went off and did other stuff. And then there were some editorial changes, I’m sure Mark is well aware of, a bit of a changing of the guard, and then they were more welcoming to folks like Mark and I, who have sort of an ‘old school’ bent. And instead of just saying, ‘Hey, I have a pitch, here’s something that I want to do,’ I just emailed [DC editor Ben] Abernathy and said, “Hey, I’d like to do Batman next.” And he just said, “Okay,” and that was it. He said, “I’m a fan of yours. I’ve wanted to do work with you for a long time, figure out what you want to do.” And I thought about trying to do my own thing again and realized that I don’t want to come back and do something that’s a fill-in or some little story that doesn’t count. I want to make something that feels important. And if I’m going to do something important, I want to do it with Mark. I said, “If we’re going to pitch something, can I get Mark and we can do something?” And he was like, “Yeah, I know Mark’s busy. Good luck getting him.” And then I emailed Mark, and asked if he wanted to pitch something with me, and we started getting the ball rolling from there. That was over a year ago now.
Grunenwald: Mark, I imagine you cleared your schedule when he asked if you wanted to do something, right?
Mark Waid: Yeah, I’m no dummy. I mean, any time. Other stuff can go on the wayside. I can sleep less, it’s all good. It’s helped by the fact that Chris and I have a different working method than with a lot of other creative teams. Chris is fully co-plotting this thing. We get on the phone, we talk it out, I’ll turn in a few pages of, not so much a page-by-page, panel-by-panel breakdown, but something that’s an outline that he can follow and move around and play with as he does the layouts, and then from there I do dialogue, and we end up with a finished comic. It’s a lot closer to the way we did Black Widow.
Samnee: We just finalized our first issue with scripting, colors, and letters, and I honestly could not be happier with it. I’m always my own worst critic, but seeing that thing with colors and Clayton’s letters, and the Milton Glaser DC bullet that was on there, I had tears in my eyes. It’s honestly what I have always wanted to do. The first time I read a comic, I was like, ‘I want to make a Batman comic,’ and now I’m literally making that Batman comic that I wanted to when I was a kid. I don’t think anybody outside of the team has looked at it yet. I have been nervous to send it off, because I’m really happy with it, but I don’t know if everybody else is gonna be like, ‘Oh, it’s a meat-and-potatoes Batman story.’ After reading Absolute Batman, I was like, ‘Oh, they’re doing something completely different, and we are doing something that, to me, feels like home.’ Now I’m feeling first-day jitters. Without having it out already, I’m like, ‘Oh no, did we do something wrong?’
Waid: No, I don’t think you have to worry. I understand what you’re saying. And by the way, I read Absolute Batman too, and I had that beat of, ‘Oh man, this is not at all what we’re doing.’ But the fact that – and this is not a humblebrag, this is just a brag – that World’s Finest continues to be like a third, fourth best-selling book every month, that there is a real appetite for classic DC characters. And I think that we get to ride that wave.
Samnee: Talk me off the ledge. (laughs)
Grunenwald: Tell me where Batman is as the series starts. Where in his journey do you guys see him? And how does adding Robin to that mix complicate things for him?
Waid: He’s pretty early on. I mean, this is probably the tail end of his first year or so. Chris, we haven’t really nailed it down, but somewhere in that ballpark.
Samnee: Well, it’s got to be after Year Two, because Year Two is the Alan Davis, Todd McFarlane, stuff that was pre-Robin, right? I think it’s Year Three where Dick Grayson comes in.
Waid: Let’s call it that then, yeah. And so Batman, year three, Robin, year one. So Batman has had a couple years now of just being a solo agent. He has no interest or use for having a partner. He’s really not built that way. He looks to himself for everything and doesn’t look for outside help, except for the occasional mending by Alfred. So to take this kid in, the story takes place a little bit after [Robin’s] origin and takes place a few weeks after they’ve caught Robin’s parents’ killers. And now what? And now Bruce Wayne has to look at this and go, ‘Did I make an impetuous decision? Is this the right thing to do?’ Because they don’t get along. They don’t hate each other, they just do not get along. That’s the fun of it to me, and I think to Chris too. We’ve always played it as if they were best buddies from day one, but, I mean, they couldn’t be less alike. Except for their shared trauma, they deal with it differently. The biggest difference is that Batman, as I said, is a solo character who is self-reliant, whereas Dick Grayson, every single day of his life, every night of his life, he is dependent upon having partners who will catch him if he falls, and if he doesn’t have that, he doesn’t know what to do.
Grunenwald: For Dick, as you said, he’s still pretty fresh off of the death of his parents as this book starts. What’s his headspace like? In the first issue, he’s pretty ‘laughing boy daredevil.’ Is he masking? What’s going on in his head?
Waid: There’s some stuff burbling. I mean, as there would be, as there should be, and it really starts to come out in issue six.
Samnee: If he’s in costume, he’s performing. So he’s literally putting on a mask. He’s trying to be something else, the same way that Batman is when he’s Bruce Wayne. He’s pretending to be all sunshine and rainbows. But as soon as that mask is off, we see that he’s got some stuff going on.
Grunenwald: It sounds like a big part of the series is Bruce trying to figure out how to be a father to Dick. I was curious if you’re drawing from anything personal as you come at that angle of the story. Chris, I know you have kids…
Samnee: I do. They’re all 12 and under, so drawing a 10-year-old Robin is easy for me. Our middle kid is into gymnastics, and she’s always doing flips and rolling around the house. Seeing the way she kind of bounces around, it definitely informs how I draw Dick Grayson, not just in costume bouncing around, because that’s obvious, but just the way she moves just moving around. Her body language is different than a normal eight-year-old or 12-year-old, in the same way that Robin’s is. She’s got a gymnastics background so her limbs and things work a little differently. Robin is more flexible and — I don’t know, this is maybe too into the weeds here, but it’s something in the personality that I’m trying to get. I’m not even sure how much that comes across on the page, but if Batman and Robin were trying to get somewhere, Batman is a straight line, and Robin is ping-ponging around to get there.
Waid: And conversely, I can’t bring anything to the kids’ side of it, because I’m like Bruce. I didn’t have kids. I have no idea what it’s like to be a father, and so I get to navigate that with Bruce.
Grunenwald: Gotcha, that makes sense. How would you compare this book tonally to other books that you’ve worked on? Is it lighter or darker, or how do you feel about it?
Samnee: Mark, what do you think? I’ve just been trying to draw Batman. It’s hard to pick tone until you’re done with it.
Waid: Right. I think it’s pretty similar to the Daredevil tone in that there’s some dark stuff that happens, but there’s also the light moments here or there. If it was just relentlessly dark, that’s just not our wheelhouse. I don’t want to write a Batman book where you have to have a drink afterwards. It’s not goofy, it’s not playing, there are light moments, but I don’t think it’s ever goofy or silly.
Samnee: In my head, it’s always just an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. When Batman speaks, it’s Kevin Conroy in my head. This is always just what feels like, in my head, tonally, where we’re at. But reading it, you know, Batman is a different character than Daredevil. I mean, Dick is probably closer to Daredevil. So, maybe a little darker than Daredevil. But also, we have some serious stuff in Daredevil that I think people kind of gloss over thinking about Javier [Rodriguez]’s colors and how bright it was. I think people kind of dismissed the deep depression that Matt was in and all the things that we were actually dealing with.
Grunenwald: Sort of segueing from there, have you looked at any past stories or creators’ work as you’ve been working on this series for inspiration?
Waid: I haven’t because it’s all in my head. (laughs)
Samnee: There’s a lot of stuff that I have as a touchstone in my mind. I’ve been trying not to read too much while I’m doing it because I don’t want to be immediately influenced. Right before I started work, I did a whole bunch of reading. The first few issues are really dense in panels because I reread all the Marshall Rogers Batman and they’re like 12-panel pages, and I just love that dense storytelling. So the first few issues, there are probably more Marshall Rogers. Two-Face shows up, and my design is a little different, but there’s a lot of Chris Sprouse in that because that’s always been my favorite Two-Face story, “The Eye of the Beholder” [Batman Annual #14, with Andy Helfer].
Grunenwald: I saw you mentioned that in your Reddit AMA, and that’s one of my favorite Two-Face stories as well. It’s a beautiful comic.
Samnee: It’s so good. It’s not even in the Best Two-Face stories trade paperback, it’s crazy. Bruce Timm has always been a touchstone, I know my Batman takes a lot from Timm’s. In my head, I wish that I could draw like Jim Aparo or Norm Breyfogle or Marshall Rogers, Gene Colan, José Luis Garcia-López, all those guys are what I wish I could draw my Batman like. I haven’t cracked that nut yet. I don’t know, maybe one day.
Grunenwald: Mark, you’ve written Batman a lot over the years, but it’s typically been in a team setting, or in juxtaposition with other characters. As you come at this book, you’re in his head with him as the focus. Is your approach to writing Batman different in that respect? Or how do you come at it differently, if at all, from having written him before?
Waid: I do come at it a little differently. I mean, this is a younger Batman, and it’s Batman in a brand-new situation. So it took some thinking, and I think what I finally landed on is a Batman who, when he’s by himself in the series, when he’s off on solo stuff, he’s very much the dark, Batman: Year One take on the character. But also, even though he doesn’t know a lot about being a father, he’s not stupid, and it’s less about him trying to fit Dick Grayson into the role of Robin than it is about him trying to figure out how to tailor the job of Robin to Dick Grayson. There’s a little bit of both of that happening at the same time. He’s a kinder man. He doesn’t smile as much, but when he’s around Dick, he’s making an effort to be a little kinder without losing the edge that Batman has, that we’re familiar with.
Samnee: There’s some of that in issue one, where I emailed you about it, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if this works,’ and you were like, ‘No, think of it. If you think about it, where he’s coming from, that does make sense,’ because this isn’t year one. We’re years in. And also, if Bruce is perpetually an eight-year-old, he’s gonna empathize with Dick and what he’s going through. They’re both kids of trauma. Like, why would he do this harsh thing to him, you know?
Waid: How did you put it? You said something to the effect of, this is how an eight-year-old deals with trauma.
Grunenwald: There’s a scene between them in the Batmobile in the first issue, and it just felt like such a nice scene. He’s explaining and relating to Robin and letting him know what he’s thinking. That was probably my favorite scene of the issue.
Samnee: In hindsight, I love the warmth of it.
Grunenwald: Exactly.
Waid: First pass was very cold. First pass was the very cold Batman that we know, but second pass felt like, ‘No, there needs to be some warmth here.’ A lot of the comedy of the thing is just the tension between them as Bruce and Dick, so we want those moments that show early on that Bruce is invested. This is not just some whim. He’s questioning whether or not he did the right thing, but he does like the kid. And when I say they don’t like each other, that’s surface stuff, obviously, deep down they do.
Samnee: He wouldn’t have taken him on if he didn’t, right? He obviously it’s not just seeing himself in Dick. There’s got to be a reason that he was wanting to take this kid into his house and bring him into this whole world, tell him the secrets. I’m picturing issue six now, I’m trying not to draw. (laughs)
Grunenwald: Chris, your Batober sketches are an annual event at this point. Are you doing that again this year, or are you focusing all of your bat-energy on this series?
Samnee: I’m just trying to channel it all into the pages. My wife and I have been talking about whether or not I could try and squeeze in more, and I don’t think that I can. I wish that I could. I think that this year, Batober just has to be getting a Batman book out. This isn’t my only Batman book, I also have Last Halloween that I need to get started on. So I think that all of my Batober energy will be focused on Batman and Robin and the Batman: The Last Halloween issue.
Grunenwald: I don’t think anyone will be upset about that, honestly,
Samnee: I’ll be sure to post Batman, but it’s probably just gonna be like, ‘Don’t forget to buy Batman.’
[Note: a few days after this interview took place, Samnee shared that he would in fact be doing Batober again this year, likely for the last time.]
Grunenwald: You two have had a very successful collaboration over the years. What do you think about your own work the other enhances? What do you each bring out in each other that works so well together?
Waid: I think for me, it’s Chris’s humanity and his beautiful blend of being able to do comedy and drama equally well. There’s just a warmth and humanity that is really important to me when I write, and the character stuff is the most fun for me to write. You can’t have 22 pages of a conversation in comics, because that’s not a good use of comics, but those are the fun parts to me.
Samnee: For me, working with Mark, he has such a beautiful sense of story structure, where my brain is just all over the place all the time, and he can help make any silly idea that I have make sense in context with the whole rest of a story. I’ll say, ‘What if we do this?’ And somehow he can squeeze it in and make it make sense. I can draw whatever on a page, and somehow or other he can make it look like we landed. There are whole chunks of issue one where it was just like a sentence, and I turned it into two or three pages, and just said, ‘I don’t know what they’re saying. I’m sorry.’ (laughs) And Mark just turned it into what looks like something that was beautifully crafted, but I feel like, we’re just playing it by ear, and somehow Mark always manages to make it look like we know what we’re doing, and his dialogue is wonderful. I can tell a story with just pictures and no words, but Mark can turn my nonsense into a beautifully crafted story.
Waid: It’s easy because the characters are just so expressive. I’ve done a lot of plot and dialogue over the years, and there are artists who are exceptional, whose characters just don’t speak to me and they lie there on the page, and then there are artists who, every panel, there’s something that’s just suggested. There’s just something that is easy about dialoguing your work, as opposed to some other artists who are almost as good that I’ve worked with, just beautiful stuff, but it just lies there on the page. And it looks great, but I just can’t get a hold of it for some reason. But yours is so easy.
Samnee: Well, I love to make them act. They’re actors on a stage. When my wife and I were still trying to get me broken into comics in my early 20s, we were looking at other people’s portfolios while we were waiting for my turn to try and show DC or Marvel or wherever, and she said something early on that I think really stuck with me, that a lot of people, when their characters are talking, they don’t open their mouths, and if they’re not opening their mouth, how do you know that they’re talking? In a political strip or something in the newspaper, you can always tell, if the dialogue’s just written on the bottom without a word balloon, you can tell who’s speaking because their mouth is open. But in a comic, I think the shorthand of the balloon is a bit of a cheat. And if their mouth is closed, how are you supposed to know they’re saying anything? Unless it’s the letter ‘m,’ why isn’t their mouth open? That informed a lot of the acting that I try and do in comics, so that they can emote, and so you feel like they’re speaking, not just grimacing or looking cool.
Waid: On that note, the reason that works, and the reason that that comes across in your work is because, unlike 90% of the artists I work with, many of whom are exceptional, you’re the one who remembers that balloons and copy are an important part of the page layout, just the same as a desk and a car and a person, and they’re in your layouts. The balloons are in your layout.
Samnee: With no dialogue in them, right? (laughs)
Waid: But at least they’re there. I certainly never feel like I have to go, ‘Oh gosh, what do I have to cover it? What am I gonna have to cover up in this panel to get this dialogue?’ And I don’t have to feel that way with you.
Samnee: I’m giving you a virtual high-five. There you go.
Grunenwald: Do you have anything else that you want readers to know about the series before they pick it up?
Waid: It counts. It’s in continuity. This is, for real, Batman and Robin: Year One. We wanted to do something. That’s why we drew the line in the sand with the ‘Year One’ [title] because we wanted to make sure that everybody understood this isn’t just another sort of one-off Batman and Robin story. This counts.
Batman and Robin: Year One #1 (of 12) is due out in stores and digitally on Wednesday, October 16th. The final order cutoff date for the debut issue of the series is Monday, September 23rd.
