BATMAN’S NEXT ENEMY
COMIC CONVENES COURT OF OWLS,
Batman will do battle with the villainous Bane this summer in movie theaters, yet in the comic books, the current bane of the Dark Knight’s existence is a group of fine feathered fiends. Unlike Tom Hardy’s Bane in The Dark
Knight Rises (out July 20) and Heath Ledger’s Joker in 2008’s The Dark
Knight, the Court of Owls is an expansive, secret organization rather than a single bad guy like many in Batman’s long-standing rogues’ gallery.
Under the pen of current Batman writer Scott Snyder, however, they’re arguably just as ruthless, far more cunning and determined to destroy Batman once and for all by pecking away at his superhero confidence.
In Batman Issue 8 (available in comic shops and digitally Wednesday), the Owls begin their massive attack on Gotham City in bombastic manner using their assassins, called Talons.
Their mission: take out the town’s most important public figures, as well as Bruce Wayne and his Bat-family of characters, including Robin, Batgirl and Catwoman.
“In one night, they plan on changing the whole face of Gotham and showing everyone it’s a city of Owls and not a city of the Bat,” Snyder says.
The battle is so big it can’t be contained in one book: The “Night of the Owls” story line will cross over into other Batman-centric titles such as Detective Comics, Batman and Robin, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Batgirl and Nightwing.
That means 20 people contributing their writing and illustrating skills to make this a huge event, says Batman group editor Mike Marts. “It’s been one huge creative explosion.”
Snyder has been seeding the Court of Owls’ omnipresence in Gotham in other Batman stories even before DC relaunched the Batman comic last fall. With that much history comes hierarchy: The inner circle of Owls are men, women and even children clad in creepy porcelain owl masks and hatching their nefarious plans, with the vicious Talons carrying them out.
To flesh out Owl history, Batman artist Greg Capullo designed different eras of Talons, including those from the 1660s, 1770s, 1840s and 1980s. He concedes it wasn’t always easy making an assassin look cool when frills and stockings were in fashion.
But mainly he wanted to create a facade that was similar to Batman’s but also menacing, such as the influence of an executioner’s hood.
“They’ve been entrenched in Gotham for centuries,” Capullo explains. “That just by itself makes them larger than life and a very ominous threat. The visuals are a component of that — it’s a big black blanket of feathers.”
Adds Snyder: “It’s the anonymity and the fact that they own the history of Gotham — (that) is what makes them scary to Bruce.”
The writer says the greatest villains are the ones who affect the opposing hero at his very core.
Bane, for example, made his debut in the 1990s and became infamous in one story arc where he broke Batman’s back, taking him out of the superhero game for a long time.
With the Owls, Snyder is tapping into Batman’s deepest emotional fears — he prides himself on his confidence in knowing Gotham is his, but that belief is shaken with this new group that says it owns it.
“That’s what great horror is: taking the things you trust the most, whether it’s your car in (Stephen King’s) Christine or your family dog in Cujo, and then making that thing that’s the scariest to you in the world,” Snyder says.
“That’s why I’m making Gotham frightening and a stranger and an enemy to him. And trying to convince him of that in the story is what makes that scary to write, as well.”
Even though Batman’s greatest bad guys, such as the Penguin, Two-face, Mister Freeze and Poison Ivy, have existed for decades, Capullo feels it’s always a good time to create more of them. The more dastardly, the better. “Batman’s already got the coolest rogues on the planet, bar none,” the artist says.
“To be a part of creating new ones that are arguably some of the biggest threats he’s faced, it’s nothing but a party over here on my end.”