DC Comics is collecting the classic graphic novels that inspired The Batman in a box set to release with director Matt Reeves‘ reboot in 2022. Issue #16 of solicitations magazine DC Connect reveals the first look at The Batman Box Set, which includes softcover editions of the three books Reeves named as inspirations for the new movie: Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween, Darwyn Cooke’s Batman Ego and Other Tails, and Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s influential origin story Batman: Year One. The three books are housed in a slipcase box with art by Jim Lee, creator of the moody red-and-black Batman poster premiered at DC FanDome 2020.
The Batman Box Set retails for $63.00 and goes on sale on March 1, 2022, just days before Robert Pattinson makes his Dark Knight debut in theaters on March 4. Artwork and the official description for the box set comes via the latest issue of DC Connect:
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Rediscover the classic stories that inspired The Batman feature film! This slipcase box set includes softcover editions of three books director Matt Reeves cites as his biggest influences for the upcoming film—Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman Ego and Other Tails, and Batman: Year One.
Reeves named the above books and Loeb and Sale’s The Long Halloween sequel Batman: Dark Victory as some of his favorite Batman stories in a 2018 tweet, where the filmmaker praised the works of famed Batman artist Neal Adams and character co-creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The Cloverfield and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes director later said that The Batman is not an adaptation of any particular comic book, but a “noir-driven, definitive Batman story.”
“Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One,” Reeves told press at the Television Critics Association tour in 2018, adding his rebooted Batman is not an origin story but would tell “a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman.”
Bruce Wayne is in year two of his career as Gotham’s costumed crime-fighter when we meet him in The Batman, which is influenced by early-day tales like Year One and The Long Halloween.
“I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis,” Reeves said in 2018 of the reboot set outside of the DC Extended Universe and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. “There’s no continuation of the Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool.”
Starring Robert Pattinson as Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, and Colin Farrell as Oswald “the Penguin” Cobblepot, The Batman is scheduled to open in theaters on March 4, 2022.
