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Courtesy of Wolverine #48, X-Men Forever #2, Rise Of The Powers Of X #4, and X-Men Unlimited Infinity #136.
Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Batman, brian azzarello, chris chiang, Comics, dc, dc comics, entertainment, vertigo, wonder woman
The Batman By Chiang And Azzarello That Vertigo Never Published
We mentioned the earlier New 52 version of Wonder Woman that was planned by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, but in the new TwoMorrows magazine Modern Masters Volume 29: Cliff Chiang, we also get a look behind the scenes of the Vertigo Batman comic that never was. Or, The Bat-Man, closer based on the character's first appearance.
We were supposed to do a First Wave: Batman series, but those plans changed when the First Wave books were abandoned. After Greendale, First Wave: Batman morphed into The Bat-Man for Vertigo. Vertigo had a reputation for reinterpreting classic DC characters, so we thought what if we did that with Batman, perhaps as part of the Vertigo 20th Anniversary? We got the go-ahead, and Brian wrote the first script and I started doing the visual development. My Batman: Black and White statue was intended to come out the same month as the book, to help promote it. If you look at that statue of Batman with his guns drawn, it would have made more sense if you saw the book. It would have featured this young and inexperienced Batman who still relied on his guns, fighting police corruption, gangsters, and Mexican drug cartels in a West Coast version Gotham City. L.A. Confidential meets Batman. Brian and I were really excited. After Jimmy Olsen, after Aquaman, we'd been talking about it for so long, it was finally going to happen! [laughs] Then one night Brian called me and asked, "What do you think of Wonder Woman?" He'd just been asked to write the book. Brian was very convincing, but in the end I stuck to my guns. We'd been working to get this Bat-Man book off the ground for so long, I couldn't walk away from it. I would have loved to draw Wonder Woman, but not before this Bat-Man book.
MM: But it never happened, and instead you did Wonder Woman anyway?
CLIFF: [laughs] Well, three months later DC rescheduled The Bat-Man just as I was about to start drawing pages. They said they wanted to release it two years later, in 2013. In hindsight, I think they really wanted Brian and me together on Wonder Woman.
Here is that statue…
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