It's funny, you know: my mother-in-law, who doesn't have an ounce of nerd in her, is just so excited by the fact that I write 'Batman' because she'll see an article about me in the 'Washington Post' or 'The Wall Street Journal' or something. And that means so much to me.
Tom King
When I was 12, I used to ride my scooter two miles to a comics shop, which I can't imagine letting my kids do by themselves through the city.
Honestly, I grew up a huge Peanuts fan.
That's what's great about the Batman universe. When you explore Gotham, when you explore the villains, all of them point to this one character. This iconic American symbol for how we deal with pain and loss and how we move forward after it.
I served my country; I did that. I was in the C.I.A., and I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I love this country with every part of my body, and I was willing to risk my body and my family for it. But I wake up in a country I don't understand anymore.
I started out as a novelist, and I think novels have gotten a little stiff, a little repetitive, and the energy in comics was much more appealing.
Literally, over a weekend, Friday to Monday, I went from a C.I.A. officer to changing diapers and putting the kid in a Bjorn and going to the playground and hanging out with all the nannies. I was the only dad - everyone kind of gave me strange looks because of our sexist society.
You can't tell a Batman story without the Joker, and you can't tell a Joker story without Batman. They're just the symbols of the best and worst of humanity.
That's all the Joker is. It's Batman without love. The Riddler is the opposite of that. It's the detective in him.
I love continuity. I was a continuity nerd growing up. I loved buying a comic in the middle of something and loved digging for back issues or going forward and trying to figure it all out.
Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you.
The idea of doing a buffer, sexier Riddler - I like that. I think he's a reflection of Batman, and I think of him like a scary, evil Batman. Like Bruce Wayne without a conscience.
I've said this before, but I don't like putting captions in my comic books. I feel, for me, they become a crutch, a way to ignore the essential fact that our medium is a visual medium, and the greatest pleasures to be derived from comics are how stories can be told with pictures.
It's hard to find a unique look for a Batman villain. Everything like a scar on the face, or a skin condition, there are so many unique signifiers taken.
Batman gets close to the insanity of Gotham, to the craziness, to what drives that city mad, and not be driven mad himself - or, at least, most of the time he isn't. That's most like the mission of the C.I.A. We get into the heads of our enemies without becoming our enemy.
I'm a comic book writer, so I work with a lot of artists. Sometimes, you get art back, and you're like, 'Oh, no.' Sometimes, you get art back and you're like, 'That's exactly what I imagined in my head,' and you're happy about that.
My dad left when I was young. I didn't have a dad. I'm part of that divorced generation and didn't want to do that to my kids, so I took a year off and became a full-time dad, changed diapers and all that while my wife worked.
All stories are just stories of a character changing.
I have my dream job. If I was seven years old and you asked me what I'd want to be 30 years from now, I'd say exactly who I am. So, 'rare' and 'lucky' are the exact right words. It took a lot of hard work, and I took a weird route to get here, but man, am I grateful for it.
If you actually read the 'New Gods' tetralogy, this epic without an ending, it's like dipping your head into madness. You feel a little bit like the Joker for a little while. And I mean that in the best way possible.
That's my whole point as an artist - I'm trying to get you to turn a page.
I wanted to write about the Trump era, but I didn't want to write, 'Fascism sucks' or 'Trump sucks.' That doesn't get you anywhere.
I grew up your classic nerd who was not good at throwing balls or kicking them. I was good at reading stories by myself. That was my specialty as a child.
Not to get political, but it seems like every day I read the paper, and you're reading about nuclear war and Russians taking over the country and Nazis again. It's like every once in a while, the world blinks for a second, and it goes, 'Darkseid is!' The world has changed, and it's changed in a 'Darkseid is' way.
My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.'
I love comics for comics' sake. Always have. Always will.
You throw sadness, you throw depression, you throw horror at Batman, he's like, 'Yeah, yawn, I've done that.' You throw happiness at him? That's something that riles him; that's something that he's not used to.
My first book is called 'Carry the Three.' It's definitely in a drawer, and it's terrible. I never sent it to anybody. My wife read it, but nobody else.
Batman's not mine. He doesn't necessarily belong to me. As a character, he belongs first to the audience and second to the hundreds of writers who have been writing him in comics for 75 years.
I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.
When I write, I see the pages in my head, not the words.
As ever, I caveat with saying that I don't write about the factual content of my C.I.A. experience. Ever. People who are working hard to save lots of lives depend on me to keep my mouth shut.
I grew up in a weird environment. My mother's head of the home video division, basically. She played a big role in the invention of DVD - she won an Emmy for it. Or rather, she's part of a group that won an Emmy for it.
I wanted to be a writer, and my mother was like, 'No, why don't you become a lawyer?' That sort of thing.
If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself.
I always felt like the 'outsider' kind of kid.
I wanted to look like the most diverse writer in comics! Spy genre, space genre, crime genre, and then you realize that it's all actually the same thing.
I don't believe in writing for goals, or else I'd write essays.
Sometimes I understand how Bruce Wayne feels. When you take down a terrorist or something, there's always six guys to take their place. Everyone is Hydra. But you still have to do it.
What eventually you find in comics is the only thing unique you can bring to a character who's been around for 80 years is yourself.
I still feel it's kind of weird to say, 'I'm a comic book writer.'
I went to college in New York. I interned at Vertigo, and then I interned at Marvel working for Chris Claremont. Just to age myself, this was in 2000.
'Batman' readers are the smartest readers in the world. I don't have to hold their hands.
It's good to be a cynic. I'm a cynic. But the best part of being a cynic is somebody proving you wrong.
I've been the desperate writer before. I wrote a novel, and they paid me for it, and I've had those calls from my agent, and I'm like, 'Do you need me to ghost-write a vampire novel? What do you need? I'll do Transformers... tell me!'
My novel got published, and I became a paid writer, which was nice, and then it came out, and nobody bought it, so I became an unemployed writer again.
When I talk about the C.I.A. stuff, I feel guilt because I left. I really believed in that job, and my colleagues are still there. But I have kids now.
I try not to push characters too close to myself because they get harder to write, but as a writer, you try to find odd little personal experiences that you hope are universal or think might be universal.
When I was dealing with a lot of Iraqis, lies were constant; people constantly lied to you. It's a part of their culture. They wanted to please you so much, they were willing to lie to you to please you.
I think sometimes you go through an experience, and you don't feel the impact, especially in a war experience, until way past it.
