There’s definitely been a lot to take in with regards to Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point, as the comic miniseries has brought major revelations to both the DC Comics and Fortnite universes. The ways that the series has conveyed that information thus far has been particularly interesting, especially since Fortnite‘s playable characters aren’t able to talk while stuck in the game’s 22-minute loop of death. Issue #3 took a particularly unique approach to that narrative, by utilizing inter-office memos from the mysterious organization behind Fortnite island to shed more light on the consequences of Batman and Snake Eyes’ epic brawl. During a press event earlier this month, Zero Point writer Christos Gage and Reilly Brown spoke about the challenge of the series’ dialogue conventions — and revealed that the memos in Issue #3 will provide “interesting insight” with regards to larger Fortnite lore.
“It did present a challenge, in that there is the tried and true comic book device of what used to be thought balloons and are now narrative captions, which convey the inner thoughts of the characters,” Gage explained. “But with the third issue, I felt like ‘Let’s try something different.’ So that one is told from the point of view of someone who works for the organization that controls Fortnite island and is sending interoffice memos throughout the organization, talking about Batman and what he’s doing. So that was a challenge, but also a lot of fun to come up with that approach and implement it, which I think gives readers an interesting insight into that organization. So that was cool.”
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Brown also spoke about how the lack of dialogue — at least, for the first three issues — influenced his approach to the series’ visuals.
“Personally, it didn’t affect me too much because usually when I draw a comic,” Brown revealed. “I try to make it easy enough to read or clear enough to read, so that even if there wasn’t any text, you’d still know what was going on. So that part wasn’t that difficult. The dialogue, a lot of times, that’s where you get the characters, emotions, and thoughts and stuff like that. So since we didn’t have that, I had to play around a lot with facial expressions and things to make sure that I’m able to communicate what’s going on inside the character’s heads, at least as much as possible. Whereas normally, that’s something that would go on in the dialogue. Obviously, not being able to talk as a plot point. So that’s something that Batman has to deal with rather specifically and trying to communicate with Catwoman or, in the first issue, Ruckus, and just seeing his attempts to do that are very interesting as well.”
