One of the major themes during day one of WonderCon was Batman’s 80th birthday.
The big day will be celebrated by DC in full at the publisher’s “Happy Birthday Batman!” panel, which will feature a number of actors who have portrayed Batman or one of his rouge’s across different mediums. But first, DC gave the writers and artists who craft Batman’s in comics today a chance to revel in some of the Batman birthday glow at its “DC Celebrates 80 Years of Batman Comics” panel.
This panel—which also featured the unveiling of a new Detective Comics logo and the first release of interior artwork from Batman: Last Knight on Earth—included Greg Capullo, Peter J. Tomasi, Becky Cloonan, Joelle Jones, Scott Snyder and Tom King, with Sam Humphries acting as moderator.
In it, creators shared their Batman origin stories. Capullo drew Batman after watching the Batman ‘66 TV show when he was four, Cloonan and Jones were fans of Batman: The Animated Series as children, and Tom King used to get bullied for wearing Batman t-shirts to school in the ‘80s…before giving them up right before the Batman (1989) movie came out and made the character cool.
One of the most interesting things to come to light at the panel though was that King’s pitch for his current 100-some issue run on Batman was two lines and six words: Batman loves Cat Woman. Bane is mad.
King, the others noted, literally wrote those two lines on a whiteboard one time at a DC writer’s retreat, much to the chagrin of fellow panelist Snyder, who joked that meanwhile he spent five hours on a presentation that also included slides.
Anyway, the Batman festivities will continue today, and I will continue, of course, continue dutifully covering this party as it unfolds.
