Comic creators Michael Dahl and Bob Lentz have taken a new role within the publishing world as the pair are now being looked at as brand ambassadors.
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While most every industry places some level of priority on courting new fans, comics has lagged behind. There are those who are doing their part, but that duo and along with editor Donnie Lemke, is responsible for the adorable and incredibly well received Bedtime For Batman, and have teamed up again for a new book called Good Morning Superman.
ComicBook.com was able to chat with the creators recently, and to them, there isn’t a superhero that can top DC’s iconic Superman. While the powers are impressive, it’s his profound goodness that puts him above all the rest. The pair said that being a role model is important and that Superman hit close to home.
“He looked a lot like my dad”, Dahl said. “When I was growing up, my dad was tall, and he had the same kind of features and the dark wavy hair. What I liked about him was I just thought he was like the ultimate good guy. He has this power — of course, who doesn’t want to fly and have x-ray vision and be able to lift up a mountain? — I just thought he was like the coolest of heroes, and for me then he just set the bar. He was the ultimate superhero.”
“Same. That’s how all the boys felt, and he had such a good upbringing too” Lentz said. “From his dealing with his new adopted parents, I realized that he was just the ultimate role model.”
As for who their favorite Superman is, that’s easy.
“Bob and I, although we’ve watched lots of movies over the years, in our various lives and there have been a lot of them. We both think Christopher Reeve was Superman. That was the ultimate Superman movie,” Dahl said.
Those influences can be seen throughout Good Morning Superman, an idea that came about thanks to their long and successful working relationship with DC Comics, including their incredibly popular Super Pets series.
“We have been working with DC Comics for a number of years. Bob and I were working together in an imprint with Capstone, it was called Stone Arch Book, and it was brand new, it was all fiction” Dahl said. “We started doing graphic novels for young readers. This was like ten years ago. We were at a conference at a booth and someone from DC saw our books. They liked what they saw. They were trying to create some titles and content that would be appropriate for school aged readers, and they saw that we already had that kind of feeling and they thought we were good at it. Of course, we were like oh yes, of course, we’ll work with DC. I’ll tell you going to those offices feels like a dream come true. It’s like Metropolis and Gotham City combined into one.
“They rely on us to come up with product ideas, things that they haven’t thought of already. I don’t know if it was you Bob or if it was someone else. We’ve done a whole line of books that are the Super Pets, and that came out a number of years ago too.”
Lentz also noted that they hope to return to the Super Pet series soon.
As for Bedtime for Batman, Dahl and Lentz noticed an opening in DC’s lineup at the time, that being the lack of true children’s picture books.
“As far as this Batman book we came up with that idea” Dahl said. “Mostly because we do a lot of picture books for kids, and we thought well there aren’t that many true picture books for DC. They’ve got a lot of reader books and books that have kids, but not that many that are really geared for the youngest reader, and we just came up with that somehow. Then as we were working on the Batman book, Bob and I would say, “We’ve got to do Superman. We have to do Superman.” So what would he be? Well, Batman has the night, Superman has the day. Right? The yellow sun. So Good Morning Superman just seemed like a natural title.”
“We had picked up with previous bedtime books, and this was kind of a nice way to leverage the DC license,” Lentz said. “I remember we were working on that book when we were working on Bedtime for Batman and just all the parallels in those books with the sun like you said, and the green toothpaste and Kryptonite. Like you said, they really write themselves.”
Dahl and Lentz both envisioned the same ending.
“Bob and I both saw it in our heads,” Dahl said. “Yes, the kid has to be looking out the car, and in the reflection of the window you see the real Superman. Yeah, that has to be there. Oh and that is Christopher Reeve by the way.”
Both Good Morning Superman and Good Night Batman are beautifully drawn in a warm cartoon-like visual style, and both accentuate the best parts of their lead characters, with Ethan Beavers on Batman and Omar Lozano on Superman.
“Well in the case of Ethan on Batman, he was already working on other DC chapter books for us in kind of the more traditional comic book style, and I asked him on a whim, “can you send me a sample of Batman in more of a children’s book style”, and the rest is history” Lentz said. “He came through with a beautiful, almost golden book kind of feel to it. Then in the case of Omar, his dream was to draw Superman more. I said, “Can you do this similar style as Batman, and he came back with almost a carbon copy, but it’s still in his style. They’re both amazing artists.”
The books have a running theme, illustrating the child’s day alongside the hero’s day. That is credit to the work of editor Donny Lemkey.
“That was Donny” Lentz said. “He really pushed that idea of having kind of the parallel, and it works wonderfully. I think it really appeals to fans, and then people that maybe don’t know as much about the characters. It helps them kind of push the story along. Yeah, another thing too is that Donny and I both have kids that are under four years old, and we are currently dealing with the morning and night routine with our own children, so it was really good source material as well. Actually, I read it last night to my son.”
One of the most delightful parts about both of these books is their acknowledgment that superhero fans don’t fit in a one size fits all category, and instead, the genre appeals to fans of all different genders and races.
“Well, I know Capstone has a real commitment to that because the books they make are for kids all over. One of the big goals is to create books for kids to see themselves, so after a while, it has become natural” Dahl said. “A cool little story, Bob and I were both at Comic-con a number of years ago, the big one in San Diego, and Capstone had a booth there and we had all of our other Batman and chapter books and the Super Pets books and all of that. There was a family that would come to our booth every single time. It was a mom and dad, two boys, and a girl. They were all little. Maybe like nine, eight years old. They were Indian American. They all dressed like they had some kind of Superman costume on them, I mean the whole family. The two boys and the girl, their middle names were Jor-EL Kal-El and Kara. We sort of thought about them as we were making these books because we knew what big fans they were.”
These characters are bigger than any superficial boundaries society can impose, and it’s wonderful that they are depicting that in their books. That said, there is another member of the DC trinity that fans would love to see get the same delightful treatment as Superman and Batman, and Dahl and Lentz are already working on ideas to bring her into the fold.
“Well funny you should ask. Actually, we are considering Wonder Women even as we speak” Dahl said. “Yep, and so that will give us a chance to have a girl as a character. Maybe our approach with her is that it’s not so much going to bed or waking up in the morning, having a routine, but that a girl can be like Wonder Woman throughout the day. That she can have those same attributes. She can be a hero. She can stand up for fairness and harmony and be brave. All kinds of things. The hardest thing is the tiara. Maybe the girl puts on a beret or something or a hat.”
For Dahl and Lentz, their stories showcase the best aspects of these timeless icons for children of all ages, while also relating them to the routine portions of everyday life.
For Dahl it’s about making sure no one is excluded.
“I think just a natural theme is that first of all these heroes are for everybody, not just older kids who get to see the movies, right, or dad who can go see the edgy Dark Knight,” he said. “The movies are for everyone. We want to make them really accessible for kids, and we wanted them to be heroic, and see that maybe there was the chance that even in my life I can do something that may lead to being a hero.”
As for Lentz, he loves the fact that they teach kids about responsibility.
“Just the idea of responsibility, I think, is kind of a common thread through both books that responsibility and dealing with duty every day that you need to get ready for bed or the morning. I think our life through DC is primarily the animated series made popular by Bruce Timm,” he said. “I think that style still resonates today. Great for these books.”
Good Morning Superman releases in March of 2017, and Bedtime For Batman is in stores now.
