NS news: James Tynion IV leaves DC titles for his

[icon_uk]

DC's Batman writer James Tynion IV has announced that he has turned down an offer to continue on the flagship DC title, and will be leaving it - and all of superhero comics - to work full time on his own comic book projects.

In the latest edition of his e-newsletter "The Empire of the Tiny Onion" linked to above, Tynion announced his final issue of Batman will be November's Batman #117, and that he'll wrap up his run on The Joker with April 2022's The Joker #14.

So the creator of... deep breath... Punchline, Vengeance, Clownhunter, Ghost-Maker, Miracle Molly, The Gardener, and Peacekeeper-01 will be leaving the titles which introduced them all.

Not always been a fan of his creative choices (Though as some of them were early in the New52, not sure how much would have been him, and how much was editorial edict), but I always liked his series about Calvin Rose, the rebel Talon taking the Court of Owls down after his escape. Shame he vanished into nowhere afterwards.

So whither next for Batman I wonder?

Comments

[cyberghostface]

Damn it, would have liked to see Joker's title last a little longer.

Wonder if Tynion was able to wrap up his plotlines at least, there seemed to be a lot being set up.

[iamrman]

I loved Tynion's work on the Rebirth Detective Comics. I haven't been to fond of his recent work though.

[lordy_co]

I've enjoyed his Batman run (even if it goes a bit over the top sometimes*) so I'm kinda sad he's leaving. I don't really follow many comics outside the superhero genre, but I hope he's succesful in his new career.

(*specially when it comes to introducing new characters and trying to fit them within his narrative)

[lucean]

As a really big fan of his work, of course really sad to see him go. I also feel he was important writer for the Bat-books in the sense that he was trying to introduce new elements and give the books momentum after the Tom King period.

This feels like a big move, though, as he was really cementing his position at DC. Still, hope for him the best and nothing but respect for following his own vision.

[dcbanacek]

So the creator of... deep breath... Punchline, Vengeance, Clownhunter, Ghost-Maker, Miracle Molly, The Gardener, and Peacekeeper-01 will be leaving the titles which introduced them all.

I wonder how many of those are going to be killed off in the next coming year or just "disappeared" into the aether.

[mistersandman]

I feel like Punchline has some traction at least. Ghost-Maker seems destined for an over-the-top villain turn in a few years before he joins Prometheus, Wrath, the Reaper, and the other anti-Batmen in comics limbo.

[tinygaylaura]

Ghost Maker isn't a villain or an anti-Batman

He's a hero

[lordultimus]

Yeah, he is right now, but you know editors; either these guys vanish into the ether, die horribly, or become evil.

[tinygaylaura]

I hope that is not what happens here :(

[janegray]

Speaking of, whatever happened to Azrael?

[tinygaylaura]

I'd be very happy if that happens to Peacekeeper

But I hope The Gardener, Miracle Molly and Ghost Maker stick around

[deh_tommy]

Why do you so vehemently despise Peacekeeper?

[janegray]

I mean. I can't speak for somebody else. But.

He's a zealot who represent the evil Thin Blue Line ideology that has been causing for decades and continues to cause tremendous harm to minorities IRL.

He's not a fantastical villain like Joker or Doctor Doom (who do terrible things but are so over-the-top they don't really remind anybody of RL), nor is he an extremist who has ruthless methods but frankly you can see how deep down they are right like Ivy or Magneto.

He's one of the guys who murder a black child by shooting him in the back because the kid "looked suspicious" (read: was being black in public) and then get off completely scot free because they claim they were fearing for their lives and are even given a promotion and a GoFundMe.

[tinygaylaura]

You hit the nail on the head exactly, thank you

Also we're MEANT to hate Peacekeeper in this series?

Tynion has hardly made it subtle that he's the bad guy here. He's a fascist psychopath who used to get his jollies brutally abusing and terrorising mentally ill people for fun and is now working for a maniac who wants to turn Gotham into a totalitarian police state...and as part of his work for said scumbag we've seen he's absolutely gleeful about attempting to murder unarmed men, women and children

I'd say that anyone who doesn't hate Peacekeeper has something wrong with them

[janegray]

Although, as a fellow poster pointed out, it might be for the best if Peacemaker sticks around.

Comics have a problem with whitewashing cops. Having a villain cop that Batman can punch could be a good thing.

[tinygaylaura]

That's true

My worry is that if Tynion doesn't wrap up his story a lesser writer might come along and try and turn him into some kind of "Gritty Anti-Hero" bullshit tho

If DC announced a "Peacekeeper 01 ongoing series" I will scream in rage so loudly that only dogs will be able to hear my anger

[deh_tommy]

If they want a more heroic Peacekeeper and he doesn’t redeem himself in the end, they could always make, like, Peacekeeper-02 or something.

[tinygaylaura]

There is absolutely nothing he could do that would make me stop hating him so as far as I'm concerned there is no possible redemption for him

And the Peacekeeper program itself is vile and should not be allowed to exist. I'm hoping that Tynion's run ends with Bruce having Oracle use her hacking skills to both bankrupt and ruin Simon Saint and his entire company and expose all his dirty secrets which also leads to Nakano getting impeached from office

I'd find it delicious irony if Saint, Mahoney and Nakano all end up in prison with the very villains they've used to try and terrify Gotham's populace into supporting them

[deh_tommy]

No, I get that, but isn’t that the point? If the book was all “maybe he DOES has a point” or “OMG he’s so super duper Uber ultra awesome you guyz” then I’d be a bit more ticked off, but as that stands he does his job as a foil to Batman fairly well. I suppose what makes a character get on my nerves boils down to intention just as much as execution.

[tinygaylaura]

Yes it's the point but that doesn't mean I don't hate him

I don't hate him because I think the way he's written is bad I hate him because in universe he's a loathsome character

It's the same reason why I hate fictional rapists like Dr Light or Purple Man or fictional nazis like the Red Skull or the Fenris twins. I'm not hating on the writers for writing villains as bad people, I'm hating on the fictional characters for BEING awful people

[lordy_co]

I think Punchline and maaaaybe Clownhunter and The Gardener are the only ones with a good chance of not disappearing/being killed off.

[janegray]

I love Clownhunter, but in his case the best possible thing would be to disappear. His arc was all about a civilian accepting the need to get out of the business before it consumed him.

[lordy_co]

Good point. I could see him "retiring" but Bruce still keeping tabs on his whereabouts so he can appear now and then.

[thanekos]

I love the honesty of " creator-owned work gets me and my partners more on the backend " and " writing for superhero comics is catering to a small audience with finicky tastes ".

[donnblake]

Well, I'll be sorry to see him leave Batman, he's done some interesting things there, but I can't blame someone for wanting to creator-owned, and I wish him and his partners all the success.

[janegray]

Yeah. When you see stiff like "creator of the character whose movie made a billion dollars gets a 5000 check" you wonder why anybody would choose to stay.

[deh_tommy]

Ah dangit, I was really liking this run. As long as he’s leaving on his own terms, at least... I wish him the best for his future endeavours. I hope the supporting cast he’s built doesn’t get forgotten too quickly.

[beyondthefringe]

Agreed. His run was a real palate cleanser and relief after King's extended tenure on the title, and I've been generally enjoying what I read of him. Not all of it is perfect, but it's surprisingly better than expected much of of the time.

I just don't know if I'm interested enough in Tynion as a writer to follow him to Substack, though.

[kurenai_tenka]

Can he take Punchline with him?

Wow, end of an era! Good for him.

[tcampbell1000]

A few thoughts:

1) DC would be wise not to swerve from the path Tynion's laid out too quickly. Before he bounced in, the Bat-franchise was getting hobbled by its billionaire-and-cop-worshipping ethos, which just doesn't play so well in the 2020s, and a certain insularity of its character pool which Tynion's new blood has at least alleviated somewhat. I don't know what 2022 Batman will look like, but what would interest me the least would be a "back to basics" approach that restored Bruce's billions and made it so Gotham once again has the least corrupt police force of any major city. Speaking of which...

2) Punchline and Ghost-Maker are the characters I'd bet on to outlast Tynion's tenure (and make their way into other media). But I kinda hope Peacekeeper-01 sticks around in some form, as long as we're not encouraged to empathize with him too much. There's basically no Bat-villain who isn't sometimes presented as sympathetic, but Batman's history has plenty of good cops from Gordon on down. We need some of the other kind, a cop that Batman can punch. And punch. And punch.

3) I'm glad things seem to be going well for Tynion, a very talented writer. I have to confess, though, that there are certain writers whose work on other people's properties intrigues me more than their own work, and so far Tynion is one of them. I've read The Nice House on the Lake, The Department of Truth, and We Only Find Them When They're Dead. They're all good works, I like them well enough (and I seem to like Tynion's indie work more the longer its title is). But I'm still chasing that emotional high he gave me in Batman/TMNT #1, when he had a trauma survivor lower all his emotional defenses to befriend a giant turtle.

Does this mean I'm just a basic bitch, biased toward the characters I grew up with? Well, that's certainly possible. But I did think it was worth mentioning: I sometimes feel like certain writers do best when they're playing against known quantities, whether those are corporate characters or just overly familiar tropes. Perhaps the Substack stuff will be a best-of-both-worlds kind of thing for Tynion. Here's hoping.

4) I'd be more impressed with Substack's comics initiative if it spent more time talking about the benefits it'd already conferred upon non-comics authors and less about converting email lists into blockbuster movie franchises. The former is a tangible, measurable reason to take Substack seriously. The latter feels a lot like hype-based logic that has little to do with how the entertainment industry actually works, like arguing for Magnus, Robot Fighter or Mark Trail as the potential #1 movie of 2023. "Why not us instead of Marvel, right? After all, we are also long-running comics."

5) Despite these doubts, I certainly wish Tynion the best, and the Substack deal sounds like it was literally too good to pass up. I've seen far too many talented comics people bitterly slandering newer approaches that could have been their canvas, just because they'd carved out some success with an older model and now put fear of change above the love of innovation. Here's to new frontiers.

PS: Tynion has a follow-up post to answer a few FAQs.

[ap0cryphal]

We Only Find Them When They're Dead is an Al Ewing joint - were you thinking of Something Is Killing The Children?

//

Anyway I'm kind of in agreement over most of this. Department of Truth is quite good, and most of his original work has been pretty well received so I hope he gets to continue on that path.

[tcampbell1000]

I was. Also, I had the issue number wrong with that citation: it was just the first of Tynion's three Bat-TMNT miniseries.

[silverhammerman]

As someone who has long felt that comics are just a terrible business and workplace, good on Tynion for taking his shot and getting paid here.

If I were DC or Marvel right now I would be flat out panicking, given that between Tynion leaving Batman (bar none, the biggest mainstream superhero comic coming out today), and Hickman drifting away from his X-Men commitments even if he doesn't end up leaving, and the others, this is a huge blow. The current way comics are run and compensated absolutely cannot compete with venture capital throwing money at people in a (likely shortlived) bonanza of trying to corner another shiny new market. I mean, Disney and WB do have the deep pockets to compete if they really wanted to, but comics have always been built on a deep well of underpaid and exploited labour, so they probably won't want to. I'm deeply skeptical of Substack and venture capital in general, but for the moment I'm happy to see these creators get paid.

Really, the worst case scenario here is that we see the mid-tier and creator owned published get cratered by this disruption as Marvel and DC continue trucking right along, and then in five years when the VC runs out, the creator owned scene is all but destroyed.

[tinygaylaura]

My big worry is actually that if DC and Marvel don't make an effort to give talented creators an incentive to stay on we're left with a world where the only "writers" working for the big two are people like Jason Aaron and Geoff Johns and superhero comics turns into absolute worthless shit with less diversity than a Klan rally and less writing talent than the Supernatural writers room

[lordy_co]

Really, the worst case scenario here is that we see the mid-tier and creator owned published get cratered by this disruption as Marvel and DC continue trucking right along, and then in five years when the VC runs out, the creator owned scene is all but destroyed.

Agreed. I fear an implosion of creator-owned comics might be coming a few years from now.