Writer Chip Zdarsky has confirmed his departure from DC’s ongoing Batman series. DC announced Zdarsky would be the new Batman writer back in February 2022, taking over for Joshua Williamson. Together with Jorge Jimenez, Zdarsky charted the Dark Knight through several DC events while crafting compelling stories inside the pages of Batman, such as the Failsafe and Batman of Zur-En-Arrh sagas. But all good things must come to an end, and Zdarsky revealed that he will wrap up his run with Batman #157 in February 2025. This comes on the heels of DC announcing Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb are reuniting in Batman for Hush 2.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“I love Batman. It’s been a true joy working on the title. But some time in the spring I got the itch in the back of my brain to wrap things up,” Chip Zdarsky wrote in a post to his Substack newsletter. “Partly because Jorge and I were finishing up the giant Failsafe/Zur story, but also because my amazing Bat-editor Ben Abernathy had left for Transforming G.I. Joes at Skybound. I also had a terrifying workload in front of me and had to make some hard decisions about what needed to be prioritized.”
Zdarsky also revealed that he let DC know his plans to exit Batman around the time of the C2E2 convention in April. DC came back and asked if Zdarsky would be willing to stay on the title for one final story arc beginning in October, and he agreed. One reason he agreed was because he “wanted to do something special and contained” with his artistic collaborator Jorge Jimenez.
“I’m super proud of our final story, though scheduling issues forced it to go to biweekly, which meant Jorge sadly couldn’t draw it all,” he continued. “But then OTHER scheduling issues put it back to monthly, but what are you gonna do? Comics be comickin’. At some point we’re all at the mercy of things like ‘the financial quarter’ and ‘CEO MacGuffin has a plan.’”
Chip Zdarsky is leaving Batman just as DC is kicking off its All In initiative. DC is giving several ongoing series new creative teams while debuting new titles. There is also the debut of the Absolute Universe, which offers new jumping-on points for readers as DC’s most recognizable heroes get all-new origin stories from some of comics’ biggest creators. One of the new Absolute titles is Absolute Batman by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta.
Zdarsky definitely left his mark on Batman, and will surely be missed by fans. The writer got the Batman gig after wrapping up a multi-year run on Marvel’s Daredevil ongoing series. While it’s sad to see Zdarsky leave Gotham City, there are still four months to go before we reach February and have to say goodbye.
