Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
From dark ops to Dark Knight
the iconic DC Comics crimefighter has instilled its own kind of trepidation.
“Honestly, it’s scary,” King says of creating Batman: Rebirth (issue No 1, co-written by Snyder and drawn by Mikel Janin). “I feel tremendous responsibility to the character, and to the readers who are shelling out good money for this series.
“I want to offer (my) take on this character, who’s been around for 75 years,” says the author, whose Rebirth debut pits the Caped Crusader against a villain’s environmental threat.
Ever since he was a kid, King has revelled in the art of storytelling. “My Jewish mother wanted me to be a lawyer or doctor,” says King, who as a young boy would visit the Warner lot where Die Hard was shot. “By the time I was 7, I wanted to make up stories for a living.”
That desire led King to intern at Marvel and DC Comics beginning in the late 1990s. On graduation in 2000, though, King didn’t pursue writing. “I thought that was beyond my abilities,” he says. “I thought maybe I’d be a lawyer.”
While weighing law school as an option, he headed to Washington and went to work for the Justice Department King might have continued with justice, but then came the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He says he felt called to serve his country in a direct and immediate way. So he logged on to CIA.gov.
King endured the agency’s battery of tests and interviews.Despite his inexperience, he had certain skills. “I’d been fortunate to have been in diverse environments, and I am a quick learner. Those two qualities made them see: This is a guy who can pick up things quick.”
King is at liberty to talk about why Americans gravitate toward heroes and superheroes. “I think during the Cold War, people liked Westerns and the idea of the good guy and the bad guy,” he says of that geopolitical clarity that came out of World War II. By comparison, King is intrigued by today’s less black-and-white climate”
“There are no easy answers,” King says, “so the best Batman can do is to actually be a hero at the end of the day.” – Washington Post