Steve Orlando Talks Midnighter And Embracing Violence At DC Comics

DC Comics' Midnighter is back, and he's bringing his innovative sense of violence with him to his latest ongoing series. The publisher's latest stab at Midnighter takes the character to new depths, sending to places--both physical and internal--that he's never visited before.  Though (inaccurately) seen as an extreme Batman analog to some, incoming writer Steve Orlando looks to give Midnighter his own identity. But this Midnighter won't just step outside of the Dark Knight's shadow. He'll also operate with his usual support system of  The Authority, his original team, or his partner, Apollo.

ComicBook.com recently spoke to Orlando about the upcoming series' on every level. In our discussion, Orlando describes level of violence that he's bringing back, whether or not Midnighter can fly solo, and where he fits into the DC Universe's post "Diverenge" tapestry. 

Steve, Midnighter is one of the more "recent" additions to comicdom, with less than two decades to his name. But in that time, he has already an established a rich legacy and strong following. Are you planning to build on top of that or chart your own course?

Steve Orlando: Everything old is new again! I know that's easy to say, but it's also true in this case. And what that means is we'll be going back to the core of Midnighter, to the things he does and says in his first appearances way back in Stormwatch, and then we'll be building him up from there. And why? Because since the reboot, we are seeing Midnighter in a place in his career we've never seen him, and that's exciting! He has only known Apollo a few months, and when we met him previously they'd been together five years off screen already.

So this will be raw, concentrated Midnighter. He's focus, and he's getting down to what he's about in his heart – helping people on the street, fighting for the little guy, and bringing terror to the people that terrorize others. That is the primordial Midnighter, a justice movement on the street, a force, and we're building around that.

So we'll be seeing Midnighter in new situations, with new characters and a new cast. We're taking a look at his life in depth as we never have before. Just as we drive the character down to his core principles, so to do he remove a lot of the excess from his life in order to define who he is when not fighting. He's good at that, he's great at that, the best. But we're watching him build a life around being the guy that doesn't give a damn who he punches.

When he left Grayson, Midnighter walked out on the God Garden, but someone else walked in. And the stolen God Garden tech leaking out into the world is creating a whole array of sick, mad science scenarios for Midnighter to bring his fist and boot style of conversation to.

Midnighter was built as a Batman analogue, but they're completely different characters. Who is Midnighter to you, and what does he represent?

Midnighter, I think, is best explained by the fact that he was based on The Shadow. When originally introduced he was "The Shadow by John Woo" and I think that drives his character much more than Batman, because like Midnighter, the Shadow took a certain pleasure in his work. And I think that is the key to Midnighter – joy. He doesn't brood. Midnighter has no doubts or conflicts about what or who he is, in fact he loves his job! It's just that his job is often horrifying.

Midnighter is a man wronged by science, turned into a fighting machine, that has found a way to turn the wrong done to him into good. He's not lingering on the past, he accepts what he can do, what drives he has in his heart, and puts it to use fighting the people that need to be fought. As he says in The Authority, "I love being me."

And because he does kill in a universe of heroes who on the whole don't, it is a unique opportunity for Midnighter to represent something primal and powerful. In a world where getting beaten up and turned into the cops is largely the consequence, he represents the moment you have truly crossed the line.

When you see that coat, when you see his profile out of the corner of your eye, you know you have fallen off the planet. You have stepped into a world from which there is no coming back, and that's what he represents. He is the man you see when you've gone to far, and he doesn't care who knows it.

Steve, as a bisexual man yourself, do you think Midnighter properly represents the LGBTQ community in comics?

That's a loaded question, mainly because there's no such thing as a "proper" representative for a hugely diverse group of people. There's no one representative of straight culture or any kind of minority. There is only the obligation to be true and honest to the character, who's a particularly passionate and layered depiction of a confident gay man.

Having said that, Midnighter's obviously a violent man of extremes, and I think his narrative does speak to the queer community. Growing up, I found his bucking of stereotypes incredibly moving, speaking to the fact that there is no one way to be queer. He did not act like the gay men I saw on television, he was something different, and he didn't care. As well, the fact that he has no backstory, no memories, drives him on a quest for contemporary identity that many up and coming queer youth face. We are told we have to be this way to fit in, or that way. And like Midnighter, we are striving to discover what being queer means for US, not for everyone else.

Finally, as I've said it before, I think his confidence, the 100% lack of shame of who he is and what he does, is a vital component. In that way he is unquestionably a role model, saying you should never change who you are for anyone. And I think, gay, straight, trans, white, black, it doesn't matter, but that concept is one we all aspire to. We all want to be uncompromisingly true to ourselves. More and more as adult life forces compromise, Midnighter's hyper confident point of view becomes escapism.

Midnighter comes from the Wildstorm Universe, an imprint that allowed for far more mature content than the proper DC Universe. Are you planning to embrace the innovative violence that the original Authority series allowed?

We're embracing it! Violence and manic energy is key to the character, and our Midnighter will be no different. He's the character that even other characters, other heroes in other universes look at and say "damn, that was cool" when he creatively dispatches someone or something. He lives his life by action movie rules, and that should never change. And there's nothing to be afraid of in the move to DCU, in fact the first run of The Authority was not a Mature Readers book, and created most of the iconic Midnighter moments, versus later runs that were made for Mature Readers.

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