The Dynamic Duo will be back in action in a brand new series fittingly titled Batman and Robin, and at the helm will be writer Joshua Williamson and artist Simone Di Meo. Bruce and Damian will be teaming up once again after a stressful and challenging few years, and fans will get a chance to see how they function as a team after going through their own individual journeys. Both Bruce and Damian have changed in their time apart, and that means they’ll have to get used to some changes, like Robin having his own ride. ComicBook.com had the chance to speak to Williamson all about the new series and the duo’s new dynamic, as well as the villains who will put them to the test…and that does include a certain buzzed-about new addition named Shush.
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Williamson has been working on ideas for the new series for a bit, and it didn’t take long before Simone’s name came up. As you can see in the preview below, he absolutely delivered. “Yeah, he came up last year. We’ve been working on the ideas of that book for over a year and a half maybe,” Williamson said. “When we knew I was going to leave Robin, it was kind of built into the plan because I was only going to be on Batman for a little bit and then Robin was going to end and we were going to go into Batman versus Robin. We knew that I was going to be Batman and Robin sometime this year, and at one point we thought it would be June and then we decided to move into September, which was the right decision. But Simone came up as an option. I was like, ‘Dude, let’s do it.’ He did covers for Robin too, and I met him last year at New York for the first time. We went and had lunch and I was just like, ‘What do you want to draw? Let’s start there.’ And yeah, he’s a genius dude. He’s so good. He’s so good.”
One of the main points of conflict between Bruce and Damian in the series revolves around Bruce wanting Damian to experience some semblance of a normal life, especially in terms of socialization. It’s understandable that Damian sees no need for it, and the conversation surrounding this will be key in Bruce and Damian figuring out how to really function as father and son.
“Yeah, I mean with them obviously there’s the whole Bruce wants Damian to go back to high school. But it’s for socializing, it’s not because of his education. I think that Bruce is this person who never stops training and he believes if you’re going to be the best at everything, you’ve got to be the best at everything,” Williamson said. “And that is more than just book-smart. So Damian is book-smart and street-smart. But I think that Bruce is like, well, there’s other parts of this life that I want you to have.”
“And so that’s really the biggest, I think conflict they have is, there’s still a little bit of a disconnect between, it’s like they know how to be Batman and Robin, but they’re not a hundred percent sure how to be father and son just yet,” Williamson said. “But that’s one of the challenges is that Damian is like, ‘I don’t have to go to school,” versus “You need to go to school.’ And by the time we get to issue four… Throughout the first four issues, Damian, says ‘Dad, if you can give me one reason to go to school, I’ll go.’ By issue four, something happens and Damian is like, ‘Oh, okay. That’s a good reason.’ There is more to it, and that leads into I think some really fun stuff we’ll be doing in the book that’ll be, I think different from what people expect from a comic book like this. It’ll be very different from what I think you’ve seen from a Batman and Robin comic.”
Williamson also wanted this series to be about Batman and Robin equally and not just one or the other, and that extends from the story to the book’s logo. That’s also why Robin’s got a toolkit of his own this time around, including a snazzy new car. “Yeah, I want Damian to have his own stuff. That’s part of what it’s about. The book is about both of them and they’re on equal footing. I have to actually check on this, but even with something as far as the logo, the Batman and Robin names are the same size on the cover, this is both their books,” Williamson said. “It was two sides to this. I didn’t want it to be Batman’s book, Batman’s world and Damian is coming into it. I didn’t want it to be that. I wanted to be that Damian has his own world, his own stuff, his own car for example. But also the selfish part of me needed to make sure it wasn’t all Damian’s book all the time too, making sure that I have a balance between the two of them.”
“But also things like the car, it’s an example of how far they’ve come, that level of trust between them now is established. We’re not going to deal with that in this book. It’s not going to be about them trusting each other anymore. I think we’ve done enough of that,” Williamson said. “It’s early on that whole idea of him wanting to drive the Batmobile and not being able to and all that kind of stuff, but then here it’s like, ‘Well no, here’s his car. And he’s the one doing the driving.’ It’s just little examples of how far they’ve come I’m trying to find places for in the book.”
While Bruce and Damian are dealing with all that, there will also be plenty of villains looking to take them down, including some well-known names and a new villain jumping into the mix. “Well, there’s a lot of bad guys in this book and obviously there’s a lot of little mysteries and stuff that’s on the table,” Williamson said. “And you see Killer Croc, Orca, and the Terrible Trio. It’s funny, when I started writing it, there were two things that actually I ended up writing way more of that I didn’t plan to originally in the first four issues, and that was White Rabbit and the Terrible Trio. I ended up writing way more of them. They’re in all four issues. They weren’t originally planned to be in all four of them, but now they’re all four issues. That was the direction the story went and I had to change a couple of things around.”
“And we already see a new character whose name is Shush and she obviously has connections with Hush, but I don’t want to get into too much of those spoilers with her because a big part of the book will be who she really is, and this kind of mystery with her. We put a lot of work into building out this mystery over the first, it’ll be a lot of the first year. It’s sort of a subplot about who she really is,” Williamson said.
Batman and Robin really wants to highlight the two sides of Bruce and Damian’s relationship while also delivering big action, and that balancing act will also be conveyed visually throughout the series. “It will be fun. It’ll be fun. I think that we’re doing some different stuff with this book where it’s a lot of high-octane action, but also I make sure we bring in the family stuff,” Williamson said. “And that’s another thing that Simone did really well in this first issue is that when you look at these pages where they’re Batman or Robin, he does one style of layout and then the pages where they’re Bruce and Damian, he has a different style of layout because he wanted it to slow it down.”
“And yeah, I’m curious what you’re going to think of this book because it’s going to be very different than I think what people expect, but at the same time it’s going to have a lot of fun father and son action,” Williamson said. “Some of the stuff we have planned for the book down the line, again, are things I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a Batman comic book.”
Batman and Robin #1 hits comic stores and digital platforms on September 12th.
Are you excited for Batman and Robin? Let us know in the comments and as always you can talk all things comics with me on Threads @mattaguilarcb!
