Before Frank Quitely Was Quite Quitely

Frank Quitely is one of the most respected artists working in superhero comics today, known for his distinctive drawing style, dynamic compositions, and willingness to experiment with form.

Which makes his statements in this interview at Comics Beat more interesting:

When I started out, I didn’t know a lot about storytelling because I never got a formal training in comics. It ended up being kind of intuitive and my main thing was about trying to make it clear and interesting. You know, I wasn’t really thinking in terms of narrative flow, it was more just about clarity and trying to make it as good as possible. Gradually, over the years, I just became more interested in storytelling.

There was a DC editor I worked with named Dan Raspler – the Lobo editor amongst other things. He was my editor on JLA: Earth 2 and before I did JLA, I did a short Lobo story for them and it was the first mainstream DC thing I’d done; I’d been working for [the imprints] Vertigo and Paradox for a couple years.

I sent him the pencils and it was the best thing I’d done up to that point and I thought “he’s going to phone me back and tell me how good this is” and he didn’t phone for a week. I was really panicking by the time he phoned; he started the conversation with “dude, I don’t know how to tell you this…”

Basically what he said was my drawings were really lovely, but my storytelling was really boring. He went through and told me what I should be thinking about and that was kind of a real milestone. As it was, that book never came out for different reasons. For JLA: Earth 2, he made me fax a rough for every page because he wanted to see that I could do art that makes sense in rough with a sharpie, then I could do it properly. . . . That was a big leap for me.

DC Comics published JLA: Earth 2 back in 2000. That was one of many collaborations between Quitely and scripter and fellow Glaswegian Grant Morrison.

As for the “short Lobo story” that Quitely mentioned, that was Lobo: The Hand-to-Hand Job, also subtitled It’s a Man’s World, scripted by another Scotsman, Alan Grant. It was never printed. This webpage on unpublished comics says, “Although the publisher has never commented publicly on the comic, the disappearance of the project could be chalked up to the reported nakedness of Lobo for at least half the issue, as well as a scene involving sexual self-gratification by a league of asteroid miners.” Yes, that would do it.

Reborn Robin Reflects Readers

As the last weekly Robin discussed, when DC Comics introduced Tim Drake as a new Robin in late 1989, it was careful not to offend fans of the original by letting him appear to supplant Dick Grayson.

He was, unlike the first Jason Todd, not simply a younger version of Dick. More important, unlike the second Jason, he was passionately respectful of Dick’s legacy.

The character made the arguments that had been appearing in the Batman letter columns about what Robin meant to Batman, and why he needed a teen sidekick.

But those weren’t the only aspects of Tim Drake’s character that produced a hit. As Marv Wolfman conceived of and scripted the story, there was a certain grouping of his personal qualities that readers might have found familiar.

• Tim knows all about Batman, Robin, and Nightwing. “I’ve followed them both....I know them so well.” “Mostly, I read about you two.”
• He collects stories about them (“Since I was able to read, I clipped every article I could”) and pictures (the first thing we see him doing is taking photographs of Batman).

• He knows their secret identities. He knows where they live. Indeed, his analysis of Batman’s psychology shows that he knows more about them than they do: “Batman needs a Robin. No matter what he thinks he wants.”
• He’s emotionally invested in the Dynamic Duo. “I care about them, Alfred. I really do.” “You’ve both been so important to me in so many ways.”
• They’re part of his imaginative life. “Heck, I used to fantasize what it would be like to be Robin.”

In subsequent stories, writers Alan Grant and Chuck Dixon added these details:

• Tim is a whiz at computers.
• He hangs out with his school’s nerds.
• He plays role-playing games.

Finally, even though Tim’s only thirteen, he insists that Batman and Robin should be the way they were when he was twelve. “I want him to be the Batman I remember.” “I was only thinking of the team...of what Batman and Robin meant! You can’t let a legend die like that, Dick...”

In short, Tim Drake was the embodiment of a comic-book fanboy. Of course, the company’s writers never gave him the habit of reading comics (unlike his future young teammates Impulse and Kid Devil), avoiding the risk that readers might think they were being parodied. Fanboys were free to identify with Tim’s smarts and ideals.

Back in 1940, when Detective Comics introduced Dick Grayson, comic books were published through newsstands for a mass audience. Dick was everything all boys might want to be—athletic and smart and funny. (So much so that he turned off some readers, like Jules Feiffer, even as he caught the attention of others.)

Nearly fifty years later, the comic-book market was defined by specialty shops. Readers were older, more dedicated, and more critical. And for those readers, the new Robin could reflect of the best parts of their youthful selves.

I started making notes for this posting in 2007, and in early 2011 Brian Cronin at Comics Should Be Good made similar points. But the idea goes back a long time. Reviewers like Tom Bondurant and D. K. Latta saw similarities between Tim and fanfiction Mary Sues [well, Latta wrote “Mary Janes”], which are projections of a writer’s wishful self. That’s not really the same as a character designed for fans to identify with. Nonetheless, Tim definitely reflected the fans.

Alan Grant on Robin, and a Road Not Taken

In 1988, the British writer Alan Grant began writing Batman stories in Detective Comics, at first with partner John Wagner but soon on his own (though Wagner’s name continued to appear in the credits for a while). Grant would end up writing Batman scripts for well over a decade.

In a 2009 interview with Graphic Novel Reporter, Grant had this to say about the Robin the Boy Wonder:

I’m not a Robin fan. Jerry [Robinson] told me personally they introduced Robin because the stories were becoming so dark the publishers were getting worried. They needed a younger audience, and a bit of color; Robin would bring it.

I accept the argument. I’ve read good Batman and Robin stories as well as mush. I’m just not a Robin fan. At heart, I don’t believe Batman—not the Batman I see—would really have a Robin. I know, I wrote it for years, but that’s the demands of my employer.

Grant’s first two years of stories didn’t include Robin. That probably wasn’t just his personal choice. DC Comics editors were struggling to figure out what to do with the character of Jason Todd, whom readers disliked and then killed, so they encouraged Grant to write Batman’s solo adventures.

In November 1989, Grant introduced a character called Anarky. He was a new vigilante in Gotham, driven not by Batman’s simple anti-crime agenda but by a philosophical commitment to anarchy. (Grant himself was entertaining such ideas at the time.) At the end of a two-issue tale, Batman unmasked Anarky as a very smart teenager named Lonnie Machin. Readers responded well, which gave Grant ideas.

Here’s how Grant described his thinking to William Cooling in a 2004 interview, originally at 411mania:

Funnily enough, I never mentioned the following interesting fact about Anarky. I originally created him specifically to be the new Robin. Imagine forgetting that. Don’t be a writer, Will, it scrambles your brain. Anyhoo, that was the plan. Batman was so popular back then, we’d have 3 or 4 meets in New York per year, planning out the future. Norm [Breyfogle, the artist working on Detective,] and I knew we’d soon need a new Robin, and what an honour—and what a profit—it would be for our character to get the job.

Alas, ’twas not to be. Some smart Marv Wolfman kid was waiting in the wings.

Grant said much the same the next year to 2000 AD Review, expanding on his thinking:

I knew Robin was going to die, and figured we’d need a replacement. I wanted a kid whose beliefs were not the same as Batman’s, in fact whose beliefs would clash with Batman’s. I didn’t want any dead parents who needed to be revenged. I wanted a kid who could think.

What I didn’t know, until the script arrived on my desk, is that Marv Wolfman had already created the new Robin. Bastard.

However, a 2006 interview with both Grant and Breyfogle tells a slightly different story of a gradually developing idea, which is probably more accurate:

Breyfogle: And then there’s Anarky of course, which was based on your directions because I wasn’t really familiar with the character V for Vendetta at that point.

Grant: Yes! I remember all I said was he was a cross between V for Vendetta and one of the spies from Spy vs Spy in Mad Magazine. [laughter]

Breyfogle: That’s right! I’d forgotten that.

Grant: I thought he’d only be there for one or two issues, but then I started to get ideas above my station by thinking, “Well fuck, this guy could be the new Robin!” Unfortunately, because everything was so top secret at that time and there was very little contact between myself and Marv Wolfman, who was doing the Batman monthly, I didn’t know that they were already working on a new Robin…

Breyfogle: I still want to draw Anarky as Robin. [laughter] I mean, Lonnie Machin, I would love to draw him as Robin still. Someday.

Finally, here’s Breyfogle’s own take on how the Anarky character related to both Batman and Robin:

Anarky’s singularity is due partly to his being, at his age, nearly as competent as Batman. I’m amused by Alan’s originally grooming Anarky to be the new Robin; the Robin role now seems too small for him! The audaciousness of a non-super-powered teenager functioning as a highly effective adult without a mentor is pretty iconoclastic in a genre where it sometimes appears “it’s all been done before.”

The big problem with Grant’s idea was that the dynamic he envisioned for Batman and Anarky had been done before. DC had just tried a Robin who started out as a criminal, who clashed with Batman in provocative ways. And readers hadn’t liked that. Their response had confirmed that Robin can’t be evil. DC certainly wasn’t going to try that again.

Anarky ended up being a natural antagonist to the new Robin that Wolfman created, Tim Drake.