While at WWC, Thepullbox crew got a to be part of preview screening of Batman: Gotham Knight (are you guys catching all the great stuff that was at Wizard World Chicago?).
Batman:GK is a direct to DVD collection of animated shorts that will link Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. After the showing, there was a panel of writers from the release to answer questions. While I did enjoy the entire film, my personal favorite had to be the Brian Azzarello piece “Working Through Pain”, it was unique in the sense that there really wasn’t a protagonist in the short, but still made my hair stand on end. Here are some of the highlights from the panel and followed by the description of the DVD from the Warner Brothers site.
- These six films were designed to see Batman through a “prism”
- All comic book writers who wrote original pieces fro the DVD
- Kevin Conroy did the voice of Bruce / Batman throughout the film (and the crowd goes wild!)
- The film has an original score, music from Batman: TAS was not used
- While these are six independent stories, there is a common thread throughout
- The six stories are grounded well in the “Nolan-verse”
- The writers who were at the panel did a fantastic job, even with some of the very sad questions… “can you sign this?”… very sad!
Batman: Gotham Knight is a fresh and exciting entry into the Batman mythos, spinning out of a 40-year history in animation including the Emmy-winning Batman: The Animated Series, widely considered a pivotal moment in American animation.
Six standalone chapters, each with stylish art from some of Japan’s greatest anime visionaries, weave together into a larger story that follows Batman through his transition from beginner to Dark Knight.
- In “Have I Got a Story For You”, Josh Olson (A History of Violence) tells the story of how chance encounters with Batman by a group of youngsters leave each kid with a very different impression of the Dark Knight.
- In “Crossfire”, Greg Rucka tells the story of Gotham City police having to get over their distrust of Batman – while under fire from the mob.
- In “Field Test”, Jordan Goldberg showcases the incredible high-tech arsenal Batman commands and reveals that there are some things even Batman won’t do in his pursuit of justice.
- “In Darkness Dwells” takes Batman into the Gotham City sewers to face Killer Croc, a deformed thug who seems even more monstrous after the Scarecrow, and his fear toxin, makes a resurgence, in a story by David S. Goyer (co-screen writer of Batman Begins).
- Brian Azzarello explores an early chapter of Bruce Wayne’s training in “Working Through Pain”, showing how a mysterious and exotic indian woman named Cassandra introduces Batman to techniques that would help him to conquer the physical and spiritual consequences of what he does.
- Finally, in “Deadshot”, Alan Burnett ties together threads from all of the chapters, as Batman must thwart an unerring assassin whose love of guns and disregard for human life lets him cross a line that even a Dark Knight shies away from.
