James Tynion IV dishes on Batman’s shiny new suit

DC’s solicits for October have been making the rounds online this morning, and with them comes a new look for Gotham’s dark knight. Batman #100, the conclusion of the “Joker War” storyline that kicks off next week, will be available with a 1:25 variant cover featuring design art by Jorge Jimenez for an all-new Batsuit:

In a call with selected press this morning, Batman writer James Tynion IV provided more background on the genesis of Batman’s shiny new suit, and what it represents for the character:

“Honestly this suit is really thematically important for the issue, and this entire arc. There are some preview pages of Batman #96 that hinted at this suit, and we saw a sequence in this suit, but we also saw a Bruce talking to Alfred with gray temples. This is sort of an older Bruce, and honestly this is the Batman that Batman has been building himself towards, that he thinks is his own happy ending, and this story is very much about Joker seeing the happy ending that Batman wanted to build for himself and destroying all of the pieces that would be necessary to build himself that happy ending.

So that suit is an aspirational suit that we’re going to see ripped away. It’s one of those things where we’ll see that suit for the first time in #95, we’ll see it in the future in #96, and then it’s going to come back in a big way towards the end, in a way that isn’t going to necessarily be the utopian situation that [Bruce] was hoping to put that suit on. That’s a big piece of what we were trying to build.”

The new suit for Batman is a striking design, a variation on a traditional blue-and-gray suit, with the shining blue elements almost looking like a knight’s armor. At a glance it also reminds me of Kenner’s 100th Edition Batman action figure (fitting given its position on the cover of the current series’ 100th issue):

Look for more from this conversation with Tynion early next week. The “Joker War” storyline kicks off on Tuesday in Batman #95.