Chris Daughtry On His Batman V. Superman Cover & More

Over the weekend, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice soared into theaters. The movie kickstarted the DC Comics movie franchise. To celebrate its release, DC Comics featured several variant covers to their current comics. One of those comics was Batman, which printed its 50th issue last week with a variant cover available drawn by musician (and long time comic book fan) Chris Daughtry and inked by veteran artist Jim Lee.

Daughtry, who has been hard at work between the cover, developing a new album, a recent live show, and still finding time to watch the epic new blockbuster, sat down at the Golden Apple Comic Store in Los Angeles on Friday where he signed copies of his new cover for fans. During his time there, he also caught up with ComicBook.com about the experience as a whole.

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CB: First of all, congratulations on the cover.

CD: Thanks brother, I appreciate that.

What’s the whole experience been like for you? From start to finish, when you found out about the opportunity, to actually doing it, to getting it out there on shelves?

It started out as excitement, and it very quickly turned into stress out the ass. It was mostly the pressure I was putting on myself, the fact that I found out that it was Batman number 50. Originally, I was going to ink it, and Jim [Lee] thought I was in the beginning when he first approached me with it. Then it turned out he was inking it, which made me so much happier. The fact that he was inking it, I didn’t want to give him some half-ass work. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of him helping correct my perspective and eye line, and things like that. A lot of late night phone calls and texts. The stress was certainly due to the fact that I wanted to hold my own amongst people like Jim, and Capullo, and all these other greats that I look up to, and knowing that I’m not at their level, I at least wanted to look as close as I could get it.

I definitely learned a lot during that. Hopefully, I’ll get to do more in the future.

Yeah, you did a pretty kick-ass job I’ve got to say. It’s pretty sweet.

Thank you, man.

Did you have anywhere specific, whether it be previous comics or movies or animations, or just drawings of the characters that you pulled from?

You know, I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do, and I looked through a bunch of different angles and poses. At first it was Batman from the back. It was basically the same pose that you’re seeing him looking up and Jim was like, “Dude, this is your first cover. They’re going to want to see your Batman, not the back.” I was like, “That’s a good point.” I kind of always had this idea of him looking up surprised or turned around and he’s kind of sitting there, or kind of charging, going up to charge at him, and wanted to give it a little bit of that energy. He certainly gave me a lot of insight on how to achieve that, and, “I see what you’re doing here, but you need to remember what angle you’re looking at,” and things like that. Kind of opened my mind up to things that I never really thought of before.

That’s pretty cool. He’s a pretty good mentor to have.

No doubt.

You think you’ll do any interior work in the books in the future?

I have no interest in that. I love seeing great panel work and splash pages. That would probably be the closest I would ever do for that. I feel like I’m better suited as a cover guy because to do panels that well, I feel like you have to devote an amount of time that I definitely don’t have to devote, no matter how much I want to, to really do some effective story telling. That’s a skill that I don’t believe I acquire for comics. I love seeing other peoples’ work. That’s me, it’s very tedious.

Yeah, I bet. Do you have any plans to do future covers? If you don’t any plans yet, are there any characters or covers you maybe get to work on?

I would love to tackle anyone in Justice League, or a Justice League cover. That’s always been my point of interest, is Batman and the Justice League. That would be a really cool thing, or any of those characters like visually speaking, I love Firestorm and Martian Manhunter and Hawkman and Flash. Those are certainly some of my faves out of the Justice League, and Cyborg. That would be cool to tackle, you know?

Speaking of Batman, he’s got a little movie coming out this weekend. I’m guessing you’ve seen it by now.

I saw it two nights ago.

What did you think?

I will hold any comments until people have a chance to see it. I do feel like people need to stay away from reviews and just go see it themselves.

I agree with you. I thought it was a lot of fun.

I’m definitely excited for what’s to come.

The planting of seeds for the future of DC movies was epic. It was brilliant.

The fact that we were seeing that, it’s cool in itself.

What about this, though? I remember you met Ben Affleck at Comic Con. Was he everything you dreamed of as Batman?

I thought he was excellent. That I have no problem saying. I thought he was probably the most visually compelling Bruce Wayne and Batman yet. I thought the character that I read for years really kind of shined through him.

Now, all these DC movies coming up, any in particular you’re dying to see?

I think Wonder Woman‘s going to be phenomenal. I don’t know why, I just have this feeling that they’re going to really dive into some deep story telling with that film, and that’s a character we’ve never seen other than now. Obviously, [Batman v. Superman is] not a movie that develops her, really, so I’m really interested in seeing that, and Aquaman. He looks so freaking cool. I guarantee he will never be the butt of jokes again after that movie. Not Jason, but Aquaman.

Yeah, oh my gosh, we wrote something about the cameo that we’re publishing this weekend that I wrote at the bottom. It was at that moment that any joke about Aquaman was left for dead.

Exactly!

So, you’ve got the comic book out, you have that album …

Yeah, it came out in February. That’s right. The single is out on the radio now, Torches. Then we’re doing a few shows in the UK coming up, and then we’re back to work on the fifth album.

Wow, that’s exciting. Anything else going on right now?

Right now, just reading over some scripts and seeing what happens!

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Have you seen Dawn of Justice yet? If so, go rate it in the ComicBook.com Movie Database for a chance to win your very own Armored Batman figure!

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is now playing in theaters and Chris Daughtry’s Batman #50 variant is available now.