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Annotated: Batman/Plastic Man in “Bending The Rules” from Batman: Urban Legends #15

To paraphrase Vince Gilligan who is probably paraphrasing someone else, “I don’t enjoy writing so much as I enjoy having written.”

Part of that is because I can see how the finished product came out versus my grand plans at the conceptual stage, figure out where I could have improved, and make the next thing that much better.

To that end, since it’s now available for reading on DC Universe Infinite, I thought it’d be fun to do some quick notes on my Batman/Plastic Man story from Batman: Urban Legends #15, “Bending the Rules.”

This is both for readers who may want insight into the comic-making process and my intentions, and also for myself to take a more critical look at the final product.

Batman: Urban Legends #15 variant cover by Riley Rossmo

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Two things immediately jump out to me here — Pat Brosseau’s used his own font instead of something you typically see in a Batman book, and I love it. Also, artist Jason Howard keeping Batman in shadow for the whole first page is a great choice.

Some Easter eggs here: the first is obvious, which is that “Dixon Shipyard” is obviously a reference to longtime Batman scribe Chuck Dixon. I believe originally it was in the script as “The Gotham City Docks” or something and at the request of Editorial I gave it a real name.

The second is the character upon which this story centers: Brad Sampey. Brad is based on a very real friend of mine. He’s got the build of a bouncer, very tall, very imposing. He’s a huge Batman and DC fan, and a very long time ago he told me it was his dream to be a bodyguard to the Penguin.

And so in my first DC story, “Catwoman: Pedigree” from the DC New Talent Showcase 2018, I made it happen. Unfortunately, in that tale, the Penguin riddled him with bullets in an attempt to take down Catwoman and Robin.

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Writing Batman

Nearly twelve (!) years ago, while I was promoting my first-ever published comic book, Footprints, my hometown paper did a story about me and my work.

I was 26 and didn’t know shit about shit (as it stands at nearly 38, I only know a little bit of shit about shit), but it’s always nice when your hometown gives you some recognition. Anyway, in that story I’m quoted as saying “I don’t need to write Batman—I just love comics as a storytelling medium.”

Reading between the lines, of course I didn’t ~*need*~ to write Batman… but I wanted to. Desperately. Of course I did! Who wouldn’t?

Batman: Urban Legends #20 art by Vasco Georgiev and Alex Guimarães

Even though I was green and just starting to embark on a career in making comics, I knew enough to know that one key element to surviving in this industry, from a mental health perspective, is having your expectations in the right place.

Nobody is going to show up at your doorstep because you’ve decided to make a comic book and be like, “Hey kid! We heard you put together one book that ~100 people read! Wanna write Batman?!” So I was just being realistic, tempering expectations. But inside? Of course that was always one of the goal posts I wanted to reach.

Cut to this month, and my biggest DC Comics story to date is finally out in the world. It’s a four-part arc kicking off in Batman: Urban Legends  #20 called “The Murder Club,” a story that will see the wonderful Urban Legends series through to its conclusion with issue #23.

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Batman and Plastic Man Team Up in Batman: Urban Legends #15

One of my favorite things about the DC Universe, and Batman’s place within it, is how he can be surrounded by utter insanity and still be as serious as a heart attack.

I got to lean into this a bit with my upcoming story for the most excellent Batman: Urban Legends series in which Batman and Plastic Man team-up in an effort to help a former bodyman of the Penguin’s escape his former employer’s clutches after he decides to turn informant.

In the midst of it all, of course, Batman manages to windsurf on Plastic Man. Checking that off my bucket list for sure.

I’m very honored to have worked with the incredible Jason Howard, who rendered the Bats/Plas adventure with every bit of energy it deserves.

I’m equally stoked about Riley Rossmo‘s stunning variant cover for the issue featuring this particular team-up.

Batman: Urban Legends #15 hits May 10, 2022, so I hope you’ll check it out! Stay tuned for more…

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From Blew Hour to Rad Mobile

There weren’t any delusions about what was next. We lived in a small city in Western Massachusetts and we were fourteen. I think there was one all-ages club in our town that put on local bands, but we had no idea how to get from Ryan’s basement to that stage.

This was circa 1998/1999 when Green Day was the hottest shit around, Nimrod was my latest musical Bible, and while brainstorming band names we thought, instead of Green it’ll be Blue (but we’d spell it “Blew” in reference to the opening track on Nirvana’s Bleach, the same track I presented in an eighth-grade music class assignment to explain “grunge”). And instead of a Day it will be an Hour. It’s the kind of clever that only fourteen-year-olds can aspire to, and Blew Hour was born. 

We practiced all the time at Ryan’s, our lead guitarist’s house. His dad was a professional musician who idolized Stevie Ray Vaughan and played in blues bar bands across New England, so by default, Ryan was the one who had the extra gear, or at least, could get it. Blew Hour only played one real show, in the dead of New England winter at my high school’s annual talent showcase. We were freshmen and my favorite teacher, our English teacher, (she let me use Nirvana’s “Milk It” in a project meant to learn about iambic pentameter, so I knew she was cool), was heading up the audition process.

We auditioned after school, just me, Ryan, our new friend and bass player Jeff, a crash cymbal, and a microphone. We went in with a pitiful rendition of Nirvana’s “Polly,” one of the band’s most dynamic—and easiest to learn—songs. We went for the stripped-down version rather than the punk-infused New Wave rendition, considering we hadn’t yet recruited Brandon, our future drummer (who was actually an eighth-grader—at the time, the middle schools were undergoing massive renovations so the eighth-graders wound up attending our high school. I’m sure this made for some wild formative experiences, in retrospect). 

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This Is How I Wrote My First Book

“Writing is hard and takes a lot of time.” – Amanda Pleau, my wife, via Susan Conley, her mentor

When you see writers giving advice on writing, it almost always includes something to the effect of “finish something.” Meaning, don’t just start a bunch of projects and never finish them. This is the struggle, because if you’re like me, you get excited about NEW ideas at the exact same time you get sick of working on the OLD ideas.

And, if you’re like me, you’ve probably got a solid 20 pages of ten half-thought out books that you moved to your Graveyard Folder at the very first brick wall, like Han Solo dropping his cargo at the first sight of an Imperial Cruiser.

It’s easy to go, “Well, Thing A isn’t going anywhere, so what’s the point? I’ll just work on Thing B instead.” Sometimes you abandon things for one reason or another, but it should never be because you think it’s not worth it, or that it’s not a good idea, or you just read something else that is kinda-sorta similar to what you’re doing. Those are excuses your brain uses to trick you into abandoning something you’re not yet confident about.

My first novel has just recently been sent out into the world in hopes of finding a home, which means the manuscript was as solid as my agent believed it needed to be in order to (hopefully) sell. While this doesn’t mean it’s done (the future editor will surely have some suggestions), it does mean that, despite feeling like throwing in the towel constantly, I finished a god damn book.

It’s not a particularly long novel, but it’s a hell of a lot more words than get put into making a comic. No super talented artist to do the heavy lifting (sorry, fellow comic writers, it’s the truth—we have the easy/less essential job).

What it’s about doesn’t matter much at this point (if it sells you’ll be hearing me talk about it relentlessly, so hang in there), but it’s period crime fiction, so there was a hefty bit of research involved along with the plot machinations that accompany a mystery, so, it was pretty overwhelming to me as a first-time novelist.

But if you’re struggling to make it through that first draft, I’ve got the secret for you. The sure-fire way to finish that manuscript:

Sit down and do it, man.

I know, sucks right? It does. It really, really does. But that’s the only way to get it done, because no one else is gonna write that story except for you.

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