With Superman: Space Age, writer Mark Russell and artist Michael Allred embarked on an interesting exploration of the Man of Steel. By placing Superman in the context of the 20th century, including meeting various historical figures, the duo were able to foster a new contextual understanding of Clark Kent as both the man and the hero. Now, the duo (with returning colorist Laura Allred) have shifted their attention to Superman’s best chum and counterpart with Batman: Dark Age.
Another Black Label title, Batman: Dark Age presents an origin story for this specific Bruce Wayne, who in Space Age was an even more complicated version of himself (a touch closer to Tony Stark, if we’re being honest). Here, we’ll see the “boy become a dark knight shaped by a city in turmoil as it marches towards its prophesied doom” in a story “filled with the iconic characters who’ve loved and hated Batman over the years like you’ve never seen them before.” While markedly similar to Space Age in some key ways, Batman: Dark Age is nonetheless a more layered and cunning exploration of cities, superheroism, societal decay, and what we really need to bring it all back from the brink of nihilism.
Batman: Dark Age #1 is out this week (March 26). In the lead up, we recently caught up with Russell via Zoom to talk about the book at-large. That includes the “movement” of Batman from Space Age to Dark Age, the larger role and value of cities in this story, Batman’s various relationships (like with his father), and the use of humor.
Variant cover by Michael and Laura Allred. Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: In Superman: Space Age, Batman felt like a divisive enough character. Is this a way to “rehab” him beyond an origin story?
Mark Russell: Well, I think it’s like Superman: Space Age in that it’s trying to get to the essence of a character. And I think what ultimately the essence of Batman is, he’s somebody for whom justice is ultimately local. He’s someone who thinks you start by saving the people around you and build out from there. Whereas Superman’s kind of the opposite. Superman thinks you just save humanity and then people will become better as a result. Or, you create a safe environment for humans to evolve and they will do so. Whereas Batman’s like, ‘No, you’ve got to be on the streets. You’re not going to save the world, but you’re going to save it for that person and person.’
I think in a lot of ways they have opposite trajectories. Superman started from a calamity where he’s shot out into space from a dying world. But then he finds family and friends in a support system that loves him and nurtures him and turns him into what could have gone very horribly wrong. But because he finds this nurturing support group, it turns him into a wonderful superhero. Whereas Batman had that at the beginning. He had like these loving parents and this great life. He won the lottery of birth. And then all that’s kind of taken from him. And so it’s about him sort of rebuilding himself without the support now and try to find a family after that. So I think in a lot of ways, these are two strikingly different origin stories that color the characters and the way they approach the world.
AIPT: I think Superman: Space Age really opened my eyes to the Man of Steel in a lot of ways. Whereas with Batman: Dark Age, it’s re-affirming a lot of ideas. Do you have a preference or lean toward one or the other? Is life more complicated than that?
MR: I think it’s probably more complicated than that, as you suggested. It’s not one’s right and one’s wrong. It’s just that they have unique insights based on who they are and where they’re coming from. And there are certain insights which make more sense given their situation. And I think that’s ultimately what stories are. It’s peeking through the fence of reality through a knot hole, and that knot hole is unique to that place in the fence. So what you see through that hole in the fence is vastly different than what you’d see on a hole on the other side of the yard. And I feel like this is what we get with Superman and Batman. They’re looking at reality, I think, both with compassion and with a desire to do good. But they’re looking at two very different parts of the yard and through very different parts of the story.
Art from Batman: Dark Age #1. Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: The other thing that is interesting about this book is the way you’re trying to kind of contextualize the 20th century. Space Age was all about the splendor and patriotism, and Batman: Dark Age shows a realistic, more grounded appraisal of the 20th century. Was that purposeful and what bigger ideas are you hinting at?
MR: I definitely wanted Batman to be more about the American cities, and about how American cities became the bellwether for the American dream. I think a lot of what has happened with American progress and the vision of the future we all had during the Kennedy years and the ’60s, where things are just going to continue getting better and there’s nothing we can’t do…a lot of that began to sour in the ’70s with the decay of American cities. The decay of American cities was not something that happened really because of anything the cities did wrong; they had to do with capital flight and people fleeing the cities and where the investments in America were not being made in cities and they began cannibalizing the cities for what value they could get inside of them instead of breathing in new life and creating new habitable places for people to live within the cities.
And so I wanted to tell the story about sort of the death of the American dream through the lens of the Batman comic and also about how important cities are. These are human experiments where we test the proposition of whether or not we as human beings can live together in large numbers. And they’re absolutely important to the survival of our species and how we like Bruce and Thomas Wayne need to embrace that if the human race is going to survive the 21st century.
AIPT: I love the idea in the first issue where Thomas Wayne basically says, ‘We’ve gotten away from our roots as a people, but a city is a chance to get back to that.’ It’s also something that’s imperfect and depends on the whims and machinations of people with completely opposing agendas and ideas.
MR: Right. If you want to make a city livable and really affordable for everyone, it’s very easy to do. All the technology is there…everything we need to make cities sort of wonderful places to live. It’s just the lack of people interested in actually doing it because it’s so much more profitable in a lot of ways, especially for mega corporation, to profit off the misery or off of the fear of cities. And so I think that’s where, after the assassination of Thomas Wayne in the beginning, this is the vision that was lost and now it’s the vision of , ‘Well, the city’s a great place to sort of plunder for quarterly bonuses.’ That vision of Gotham takes over within Wayne Enterprises, which is sort of the central conflict of the book. It’s Bruce Wayne versus Wayne Enterprises.
Art from Batman: Dark Age #1. Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: The other thing — and maybe that feeds into this whole idea of cities and whatnot — is that Bruce Wayne’s origins usually sees him adopt the romanticism of his father and that he wants to save Gotham. But I love in this book that he’s just a spoiled shitty teenager who’s just like, ‘I have all this money, I can do literally whatever I want.’ Were you cognizant of trying to tell the Bruce Wayne origin story in a new way as to not feed into the same kind of story that’s been done dozens and dozens of times across mediums?
MR: I don’t make a deliberate effort to do something different from other origin stories, but I do try to tell my own thing without being influenced by them as little as possible, which is hard in comics. But I think that way you do that is by focusing on this character, and trying to imbue them with what you went through. It’s like a lot of what we go through in life is growing up and is being shitty for a while. Being somebody who is only really capable of thinking of themselves. Or, maybe you’ve endured great tragedy, but your takeaway is that you shouldn’t have to care about other people because you’ve had tragedy in your life. And I think the process of growing up is realizing that the world is bigger than you, and you are just part of it.
The we way you heal yourself is by making the world around you better and more habitable for other people too. That’s a process. That’s something that Batman has to go through. He doesn’t automatically; it’s not something he can inherit like Wayne Enterprises.
AIPT: Also, maybe as a continuation of that, I love your depiction of Alfred. He’s struggling not just with the death but the burden of having to raise this prince in the making. It feels maybe more grounded, and the emotional reactions and responses among these characters made a little more sense given their circumstances.
MR: My take on Alfred is that he is a guy who, for all intents and purposes, just thought he was going to be a family butler for his entire life. He was happy doing that. He never saw himself having to raise a child, much less Thomas Wayne’s child. But when he’s thrust into the role, his sense of decency and his sense of not abandoning someone who has been sort of cruelly dumped on by fate guides him. That’s sort of his North Star. It’s like, ‘This isn’t what I intended for myself. This isn’t the role I’m prepared for, but it’s just what I have to do because it’s right.’ And I think that’s probably the earliest, most powerful influence on Bruce Wayne. Just somebody who is un-sniveling in the face of duty.
AIPT: There’s another force, too, in issue #1 — in the form of a well-known 20th century comedia who I will not name. I love the idea of this kid being in a perilous spot and having some who basically says, ‘If you’re going be a jerk, also be someone who helps others.’
MR: When I started writing Superman: Space Age, I knew this was something I wanted to do generally with that whole concept of placing these heroes against the backdrop of our actual history. Because I wanted them to actually run into historic figures and have meaningful exchanges with them, like John Lewis having an influence on characters like Lois Lane. The comedian you’re referring to having an influence on Bruce Wayne is one of the real central things I wanted to do with this whole series. But I think in a lot of ways it’s about absorbing wisdom wherever it comes from.
Art from Batman: Dark Age #1. Courtesy of DC Comics.
We’re not picking and choosing well. Like, ‘This is wise but it didn’t come from this one book that I based my life on, so therefore I’m ignoring it.’ If we’re going to be fully-formed human people, we have to be willing to find good ideas and have these moments where our life has changed even maybe when we weren’t looking for it. Nobody goes to a comedy club do have their view of reality changed, but if you’re open to it, it can happen.
AIPT: I think it’s also a nice continuation of your own use of humor, and how there’s a greater value to brevity.
MR: Standup comics I think often work like modern Diogenes, where they’re more like Greek philosophers. They’re just asking questions or pointing out paradoxes that people laugh at, but then the laughter becomes more uncomfortable the closer those paradoxes hit the home.
AIPT: There’s also another big cameo at the end of issue #1 that I similarly can’t spoil. But it’s also a really neat way to use a character that’s been seen in different ways across DC. Was there a specific agenda or an idea in mind as to why this character was revealed in the way that they were?
MR: I think that it was to underscore to the reader that this is a similar concept to Superman: Space Age — this is a doomed universe. And also to show that just because it’s a doomed universe doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doomed in the same way. Things will happen differently. And characters who experience the doom of these universes that were destroyed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths will react differently depending upon what universe they happen to be in.
AIPT: I like this idea that the worst kind of villains maybe aren’t the dude in the giant robot suit. The worst person isn’t the one you see coming.
MR: I don’t want to be spoilery myself, but I think one of the themes of Batman: Dark Age is that the real villains you never see. The real villains aren’t the guy who dons a costume and jumps off the edge of a building. You know, that’s the consequence of villainy destroying the place he called home. And the real villains are all in boardrooms making decisions that affect millions of lives without those people being any way to prevent them.
Art from Batman: Dark Age #1. Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: We have just a few minutes left, so I want to have one more question. Is there anything you can tease for issue #2 and beyond?
MR: Yes, I will drop something very close to a spoiler on issue #2. It’s about Bruce Wayne learning his sort of combat skills by going to a commando unit in Vietnam. He goes into the Vietnam War and that’s where he basically learns the ways of guerrilla warfare that will form him when he comes back.
AIPT: I love that. It might make people uncomfortable, but it makes sense in the grand scheme of the universe that you’re presenting.
MR: I read a thing once about what allowed the airline industry to really take off and become a.common thing that everybody flew, instead of just the domain of rich and famous people, was the fact that there were so many qualified pilots after the Vietnam War. So many people learned how to fly commercial aircraft because they flew large jets during the Vietnam War. It’s impossible to remove these things from our history. They are part of the collective DNA of our nation. And so it would be inconceivable to think of someone like Bruce Wayne at that time and place not being influenced somehow by the Vietnam War.
AIPT: Thanks for chatting with me. I loved the first issue, and as a Batman guy, I’m excited to see what he gets into next.
MR: You might actually get some some actual Batman in one of these issues aside from origin stuff. But I’m really glad they let me take this slow-boil approach to developing Batman, and I think it pays off.
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