26/11 BACK TO BAT

PIC - Dan Mora 2025 © DC Comics/Marvel Comics

HAND ME DOWN A CAN OF WORMS

This week I have been watching IT Welcome to Derry, reading Tom’s Crossing, and burying cats. It’s been a hell of a year and I hope it goes away soon to be replaced by one less brutal.

Also this week, we continue our annotations of the recently released Batman/Deadpool, covering the first half of the book and starting right here…

Page 1

In my scripts I use a lot of terminology adapted from cinema, as you’ll see. Comics and films are not really similar but a certain shared vocabulary has become useful.

It’s always a good idea to start your story with an interesting eye-catching image, a visual hook that will pique a reader’s curiosity and encourage them to read on. It is useful to start with novelty. Aim for the unexpected.

You may show Wolverine triumphant over slaughtered foes, but unless you undercut or subvert the image with some ironic caption or piece of dialogue, it’s a picture we’ve seen before a thousand times, with nothing to suggest that this story will be any different from the many we have read previously. Always aim for some arresting image that will intrigue your readers and encourage them to keep going.

Here, we open on something readers are unlikely to have seen before; two living, humanoid universes dancing back to back before making a love connection.

The anthropomorphic representations of the Marvel (left) and DC (right) Universes are ETERNITY and KISMET AKA Ahti, whose previous significant interaction was during the JLA/Avengers crossover series by Kurt Busiek and George Perez from 2003/4 (in my opinion the greatest of all the DC/Marvel crossovers).

In that story Eternity and Kismet meet, embrace and kiss, so it was only a hop skip and jump to take it to the next level.

The idea that this DC/Marvel crossover could be the result of two universes having a one-night stand was immensely appealing and provided a neat framing device and a connection to previous continuity. The whole story would take place while the two universes were getting it on, and end when the fuck was done!

The operatic, Romantic, cosmic quality of the epic liaison in JLA/Avengers could be filtered through the irreverent sensibilities of a Deadpool story, reducing eternal universal love to a sleazy celestial hook up, while depicting the sordid behind-the-scenes mechanisms of multiversal crossovers!

With this in mind, I had my opening – in a singles bar beyond space and time, an awkward shuffle turns into eye to eye contact, then a kiss…

Were space not at a premium, I might have opened with a full page shot of the pair and languidly spread their contact over the next two pages but with only 27 pages to work with, I chose to have the whole scene on the first page, with one large opening image and three smaller insert panels to zoom in on the couple and add some motion as they move in for the kiss.

These entities were designed by Steve (ETERNITY) Ditko and Tom (KISMET) Grummet respectively (I saw the characters as Adam Kadmon, the Cosmic Man of Qabalah and Sophia, the Gnostic Emanation of the Divine).

The semi-abstract being appearing as rings around a graphic corona core in background is ANTHROPOMORPHO – a cosmic creation of writer Mark Gruenwald and artist Greg Capullo who first appeared in Quasar #37 in 1989. This Marvel hyper-entity spawns living universes such as Eternity and the Living Tribunal! Here, the Prime Manifester is hosting a singles night for lonely universes that were close once but have now drifted apart…

With the big half page hit given over to introducing our Empyrean lovers, the lower half of the page can be used for that cinematic zoom towards the two universes as the dance brings them closer. Then finally we focus on the all-important KISS, which jump starts the story and gives it a name…

By the end of the first page, you want to have the reader fully engaged and on their toes – some will be delighted by the absurdity of the opening scene. Others may be enraged by the flippancy and the bad verse (the whimsical rhymes seemed like something Steve Engelhart or Steve Gerber might have done in the ‘70s). There will be various reactions. Ideally, very few of those reactions will be ‘…meh…seen this before a hundred times…’

As the page ends, we should feel a little disoriented but intrigued. Where is THIS going next?..

We have to turn over to find out…

PAGE 2

Scenes should always change on a page turn. The reader takes a breath and provides the beat of anticipation – ‘surprise me…’ - that cues up the scene transition. If you do this correctly you can startle the reader out of any complacency that might be forming on page 1 – i.e. by switching to something completely unexpected yet somehow inevitable…

In the original breakdown – for 24 pages - it went straight from the opening to the title page scene with Deadpool cradling a seemingly dead Batman in his arms.

Immediately, I knew this didn’t work. It didn’t ‘sound’ right.

Going from a jokey cosmic opener to a jokey surrealistic dreamscape made the story feel weightless, when it needed to be grounded. We needed to see how the conjunction of universes played out in a ‘real’ world setting before going into the trippy liminal world scenes.

Given an extra three pages to work with, I was able to include the Batman scene I needed. Without this scene, it’s just a fever dream with guest stars. These two pages and the last page payoff provide the story with a human dimension and an emotional anchor.

‘All roads led to Gotham’ brings us neatly down to Earth. The phrase is semi-familiar, comforting almost, we’re safely away from weird passionate universes getting it on. We open on an establishing longshot, a cityscape, to locate ourselves in a place and time – good old Gotham City, celebrating the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, hence the fireworks (I knew the story was coming out in November, so decided to add the ‘holiday’ feel). After the disorienting higher-dimensional opener, it feels ‘real’. It feels welcoming. It’s Gotham and we’ve been here before. Gotham means Batman, which raises the interesting question - how does Batman fit in with the opener?

As Gotham implies Batman, so does our opening dialogue refer to him. We don’t see him. We hear about him first. In fact, we hear he’s scary enough to make a grown man pee his pants.

Frame 2 takes us from the impersonal skyline to the human scale of a room interior – to sell this transition, Dan makes sure to draw the cityscape and its distinctive firework colours as a backdrop to Batman in the window, maintaining the continuity from the first panel into the window frame of the second. The bright lights of the city condense into the solitary lamp that illuminates the broken man in foreground, reducing the general to the particular, city scale to human. The whisky and the desk lamp bring a gritty detective story flavour. And then there’s Batman. It’s now unmistakably a Batman story – there he is climbing in the window. We don’t know what he’s going to do yet. He looks like a predator.

And we don’t show Batman’s face at first – this is how criminals see him, as a vengeful shadow, a looming presence, always on your tail if you’ve done something bad. An archetypal figure of vengeance.

There’s a man at the kitchen table filling us in with some exposition about his fiancée, killed as collateral damage. The man is VICTOR GOVER, the second of two crooks who chose SPORTSMASTER as their nom-du-crime.

Lots of storytelling and worldbuilding is conveyed visually here. Gover’s sports career is recalled in the Gotham Wildcats pennant on the wall, and the trophies in the cabinet. Above the lamp, we can see Gower’s distinctive Sportsmaster helmet – no longer in use, retired. Victor’s made an effort to put his past behind him, but we can feel his sadness, as he contemplates a photograph, the booze on the table to help him cope. Even without words, we can guess at his anguish over a loved one.

The first Sportsmaster appeared in All-American Comics #85, published May 1947. He was Lawrence ‘Crusher’ Crock, a man destined for trouble with a name like Lawrence. This unsporting gentleman was a disgraced, disgruntled athlete who chose to misuse his athlete powers in the service of his own peccadilloes, which were rooted in never stealing quite enough money to satisfy the urge to do it again.

His distinctive modus operandi saw him resort to sports themed weapons and gadgets to commit his crimes. These included baseball bats, bows and arrows, tennis balls, ice skates, golf tees, curling stones, and quoits.

Formidable enough to take on the Golden Age Green Lantern, a man with a will powered magic ring, (and an unfortunate vulnerability to wood, admittedly, which rendered his ring useless against toothpicks, clogs and charming woodland glades), armed only with a fishing rod, Sportsmaster also found time to hook up with the glamorous Huntress and begat Artemis Crock, the Tigress. It was all quite racy on the bad guys’ side of the street…

‘Crusher’ Crock lasted a surprisingly long time, but he met his end following Final Crisis, apparently, (not my idea!), then was revived before during or after the new 52! Who cares about all this anyway? He’s not even in this comic!

The new Sportsmaster, Victor Gover, appeared on the scene in 1989’s Manhunter #17, created by John Ostrander, Kim Yale and Grant Miehm. Victor’s grouse was that no-one took him seriously and this lack of respect was enough to turn him to super-villainy! We could all use that excuse! It’s not exactly like falling into a vat of chemicals or being turned to living clay, is it?

I chose the disgruntled Victor Gover for one reason above all others, however – he survived the fateful Suicide Squad mission that claimed the lives of several bad guys and, most importantly, a minor villain known as The Writer.

The way we keep the storytelling interesting and dynamic here is to have Batman show up in the window looking fearsome. He then silently and menacingly approaches the distraught man. It looks like a classic moment of retribution, at which point, we flip the direction of the narrative to surprise our readers and undo their expectations.

In another story, Batman’s black-gloved hand falling on Gover’s shoulder might signal the finale, the ‘gotcha’ of the law, as the hand of justice catches up with and collars the crook – but here the meaning is inverted, and Batman is instead comforting Gover. Human contact is established. Batman speaks here for the first time too, and Batman has a plan worked out.

This short scene also tells us quite a lot about our hero. He is scary. Gover even says so, but we can see it for ourselves as he perches in the window like a demon. But we also learn that Batman recognizes the pain of loss and is there to help. Already he has some depth! And this is where we set up the pay-off on Page 27. With this subplot in place, we can now go as wild as we like!

I’m indebted to Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez for restoring the blue to Batman’s cape and cowl, gloves pants and boots. For me, this is the Batman of Bob Haney’s incredible Brave and the Bold team-up stories with artist Jim Aparo, and the hallucinatory ‘swimming pool’ blue of Batman’s cape and cowl on those old covers is my favourite comic book colour.

Haney’s Brave and the Bold also gave me the template for this issue’s structure, with its three chapters.

We’re only on page 2 but in storytelling terms, we’ve come a long way.

With one page and 5 panels, we’ve established location and suggested the season. We’ve introduced some backstory and human drama with a fallen minor bad guy – we’ve got Batman on the case and sent him on a mission for justice…

With the emotional stakes in place, time for some Batman action. Wasting no time, which is space on a comic page, we cut to a new location…

PAGE 3

The second page of the 2-page sequence follows Batman to a completely new locale. This shift could be jarring, as it doesn’t happen on a turn, but our audience is now focused on Batman and will follow him anywhere. The changing background barely matters. Batman is still in his traditional, classic poses, doing Batman stuff. Batman is crouched there in the treetops instead of the rooftops, but he’s in his element everywhere he goes, dominating every scene and setting.

To emphasise the rapid cut, we switch from the Page 2 play out close up on Batman’s glove to a wide long shot, establishing a completely new environment – with a different colour palette.

As on Pages 1 and 2, where we flip from cosmic abstraction to ‘real’ world city, we use the trick of reversing polarity again and flip from night-time metropolitan clamour to daytime Greek island. This sets up a ‘this can go anywhere’ feel to the narrative. If you were getting bored with the drunk guy and his downbeat dramas, here’s Batman leaping through the jungle with skeletons and were-men, like Indiana Jones… and who knows what might happen next?

Aeaea Island was the setting for a fateful battle which appeared in the previously mentioned Suicide Squad #58 – old time DC fans or lore fiends may see where this is going!

Aeaea actually exists – we’ve taken care to give the place an accurate look. The original location appeared tropical in Suicide Squad #58 but we’ve given it the correct Mediterranean flora and climate (doing my due diligence, I’ve just read John Ostrander talking about this issue, and he says it takes place in the Amazon rainforest, which is indeed what it looks like in the book. However, the Suicide Squad are supposed to be attacking the fortress of the goddess Circe, which was established to be on Aeaea - so who knows where the fuck this was supposed to have happened. Sometimes research is a waste of time)!

Panel 2 brings the always reliable Batman landing pose, with cape billowing dramatically. It’s a pin-up beauty shot in the genre of superhero power landings. Again, this is reassure readers that we’re still reading a Batman story even if it seems slightly unorthodox. It would work on its own but to add narrative weight, I included the balloon with Batman saying ‘I MEAN THAT.’ These three words add to the static pin-up by adding a three-point emphasis that mimics the 3-point landing and also lets us know that Batman isn’t just talking to himself. He’s issuing an order - which will not be obeyed. This sets up the arrival of his hidden partner on Page 20.

Dan has divided the composition in this panel along a rising diagonal line from left to right, like a guillotine blade dividing the panel in two. Batman dominates the top half with his vibrant movement contrasting against the corpse entwined in flowers.

The cadaver belongs to THE WRITER – torn to pieces we must assume by those ‘beastiamorphs’ from Suicide Squad #58 where he met his grotesque demise. The remains can be recognized by the distinctive and bizarre clothes The Writer character wore (by the time Animal Man artist Chaz Truog’s interpretation of what I wore in 1990 had been passed through the nib of Suicide Squad penciller Geoff Isherwood, it resembled some version of a Russian peasant outfit from Fiddler on the Roof)

An overhead shot gives us a bird’s eye view of Batman’s progress – it’s a shot that also suggests Batman is being followed or watched, perhaps by a drone! The choice of this POV helps to create a slowly mounting sense of unease.

Dead Checkmate soldiers lie in pieces. We also see the corpses of beastiomorphs! And is that a katana embedded in the ground? A batarang embedded in the wall? Some kind of bizarre battle?

Then a hand that seems to come from nowhere, from beyond the frame, reaching down to Batman still facing away, oblivious – proving the sense of being watched was justified…

This page picks up the pace with several storytelling hooks to involve readers more deeply:

Who is Batman talking to? What’s with the skeleton? Who killed the Checkmate soldiers? Who left the Batarang? Who is creeping up on Batman?...

Before we can answer any of those questions…

We close this ‘pre-credits’ sequence with a return to the opening scene, and a reminder that events in the larger cosmic world enfold and bracket the human world. We repeat the image of the cosmic kiss, with some intense tongue work as the action heats up between the two horny universes and they begin to MERGE.

We can imagine the rest…

From here, you may notice all scenes are strictly 2 pages long. The pace is brisk and steady.

PAGE 4

The title splash is a double page spread shot with a four insert action panels on the right hand page.

With the preamble out of the way, the title page should present an arresting image that sets up the story to come. Here we see Deadpool carrying what looks like a dead Batman, shot with multiple arrows.

What happened?

The pieta pose is not an homage, as some readers suggested, of the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 cover with Superman holding the dead Supergirl. It references the cover of Batman #156 from 1963, which depicts Batman carrying Robin’s dead body, an image from the haunting story Robin Dies at Dawn.

The red light on the wall takes the place of the red sun on that cover. The miniature gold bunker subs for the crater in the original image. The flags in the holes read 76 and 42 – Earth-7642 is the official designation for the ‘crossover’ Earth where Marvel and DC characters inhabit the same world rather than parallel realities.

Originally, the scene called for Batman to be naked but for his cape, cowl, belt and boots, but although it would have been amusing, I couldn’t make it work with later scenes.

For a while the working title was THE KISSING JOKE, which was funny enough, but I didn’t want the story to be saddled with such an obvious parody title. It deserved to be its own thing.

To that end, it should really be THE KING SIZE COSMIC KISS CAPER, but I forgot to fix the title in the lettering draft so THE COSMIC KISS CAPER it is!

PAGE 5

Here we go into flashback, as Deadpool explains to us, to show the chain of events that led to the shocking opener!

Rubber hose ninjas! Deadpool in the Poolrooms! This was just stuff I was looking at on YouTube going directly into the story as texture. In the case of the Poolrooms, it jived with the whole gestalt but the rubber hose ninjas were just weirdness for weirdness’ sake!

The switch to the long cinema letterbox panels cues another movie effect as Deadpool runs towards a camera while it zooms into him in slow motion! The four panels show a continuous focus pull action where Deadpool kills four cartoon ninjas. He seems to be in a cartoon or a video game!

Read the panels as a continuous sequence and you’ll see how Dan slows the action down while Deadpool continues to narrate at normal speed.

‘Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the waters…’ is a misread of the opening line from Put Your Hand in the Hand - an evangelical song by the band Ocean and another sly reference to Deadpool as ‘Marvel Jesus’, a phrase we could not use anywhere in the comic… The correct line is ‘Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters. Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea…’

I prefer the version by Elvis, although it’s not one of his best…

Elvis Presley - Put Your Hand In the Hand (Official Audio)

‘Effendi’ is Stan Lee speak from the legendary Stan’s Soapbox columns.

Deadpool is reaching out to us through the 4^th wall, making a promise, and yet again recalling my favourite comic book cover, from Flash #163.

PAGE 6

Time to take a breath.

The overhead shot shows the dead end, the dead ninjas and some lovely Dan Mora water art. Our anti-hero stands in a literal Deadpool! No expense spared! I couldn’t let that ‘Deadpool in the Poolrooms’ connection go by.

Names on wall are DC and Marvel characters who have breached the 4^th wall

Mr. REKOJ -the Joker – overwritten by LOKI

Zatanna

Ambush Bug

Ultra Comics

Jen Walters AKA She-Hulk

B (uddy) Baker AKA Animal Man

Rick Jones

Gwen (Poole) with a heart!

The line ‘THE PLOT NEED NOT BE THE BEST POSSIBLE…’ was part of a correspondence between Dick Giordano and Jim Shooter in the early ‘80s - as reported in the foreword for JLA/AVENGERS from 2003/4, the last of the DC/Marvel crossovers, before the tradition was revived in 2025. The respective head honchos were discussing 1979’s proposed JLA/Avengers crossover book to be written by Gerry Conway and drawn by George Perez.

(Which is to say, the Kurt Busiek/George Perez JLA/Avengers was not the first attempt by Marvel and DC to put their top teams together. The 1979 attempt came close enough to fruition to have 21 pages drawn by the ubiquitous George Perez - whenever a story called for pages stuffed with every superhero ever fighting a giant, or hanging around space stations with no chairs or snacks, Perez was the speed dial choice)

DC were fine with it but Marvel, and specifically Jim Shooter, was unhappy with Conway’s plot, negotiations became quite heated and the original version of the book was never completed or published. However, Giordano’s quote memorably continues ‘…IN ORDER TO BE A SUCCESSFUL BOOK.’

We aim to please!

Next comes a reprise of Animal Man #19, by me and Chaz Truog, where the character becomes aware of the reader’s gaze. Here Deadpool replays Buddy Baker’s dawning awareness that he is in a comic being read in a higher dimension and repeats Buddy’s dialogue.

Originally the fourth panel was to be a full page pic, like the original Animal Man moment, but space was limited and the full page was scaled back. It would have been funnier, but some you have to give away.

Page 7

Chekhov’s ducks, floating innocently on page 5, overlooked, harmless, now converge on their punchline.

The BOOM sound effect and others here call back to Frank Quitely’s sound effects in Batman and Robin, which used the materials in the drawn environment to create pareidolic effects.

PAGE 8

Batman arrives, with Deadpool’s feet! We make a point of Batman observing how painful Deadpool’s healing factor must be, as another way of showing Batman’s humanity but also his keen powers of observation and deduction.

For Batman fans, the giant owl will recall Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls and their eerie, disorienting labyrinth - but that’s a misdirect. Marvel fans may pick up on the real clue, as we’ll see later. The Great White Owl…

The silhouetted skyline on the tiled walls is from the end credits of the ‘60s BATMAN TV show.

The player piano repeating a melody in C and D and C of course.

Can Batman and Deadpool outwit the ultimate escape room?

PAGE 9

The Deadpool/Deathstroke gags were some of the first that sprung to mind in the initial rush of dialogue exchanges - it’s no secret that Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld was inspired to some extent by the DC villain Deathstroke AKA Slade Wilson. Batman simply assumes that deadpool/Wade Wilson is some kind of multiversal variant of his old enemy, which allowed us to beat this gag flat in the dirt.

Batman’s gauntlets and bat-braces are not just decoration – they have practical uses!

Batman shows Deadpool who’s boss.

When the music’s over – a secret exit is revealed, red-lit…going down…

Batman is Batman, so Deadpool is the butt of many jokes in this Batman-biased story! As Batman demonstrates again and again, he is not like Wolverine from the movie who blows his top repeatedly when he’s driven to distraction by Deadpool’s endless jabbering. Batman’s unfazed.

Deadpool knows who Batman is – and knows Batman will never be beaten or play second fiddle. Batman just has to answer any and all questions with ‘I’m Batman.’ and Deadpool knows he’s beat.

PAGE 10

Down an escalator to a Casino/Motel subterranean hell! A big scene-setter with Deadpool and Batman entering a new location. The red glow from below on the previous page is amplified here to emphasise the continuity between the last scene and this.

The cramped and pressurized no-exit liminal spaces on these pages, all fake painted skies, no windows, no weather, no day or night time - were inspired by various Las Vegas casinos.

There’s also a map of the Florida KEYS, a wall of hotel room KEYS, and we already had piano KEYS… sycamore seeds, which the overhead fans resemble, are known as keys – you get the picture – the key in basketball is the main field of play and later we have typewriter keys –

What Batman’s hiding in his mind is the image of a keyboard!

There are several Easter Egg references to previous DC/Marvel crossover books:

That’s Hulk’s fist vs Superman shield from 1999’s The Incredible Hulk vs Superman.

On the right hand wall, the figures of Superman and Spider-Man recall the cover of Superman vs the Amazing-Spider-Man, from 1976, the first of the DC/Marvel crossover books.

There are also Pop Art images of various other Marvel and DC characters who have cropped up in crossover stories.

Batman has found the web gun belonging to Spider-Boy, the mash-up of Spider-Man and Superboy from 1996.

The Joker tunnel face reminds us of Joker’s appearances in various DC/Marvel crossover books.

The swan pedalo – this is the one element of the story that has no secondary meaning as far as I’m aware. Black Swan events were originally impossibilities, but the term is more recently used to describe events that are unforeseen outliers, with catastrophic consequences, which are rationalized and narrativized in retrospect, if I understand it correctly. Not that it really ties in.

Moon Knight, Nighthawk, and Hawk Owl are all Marvel characters created to be reminiscent of Batman.

PAGE 11

The absurdity of Batman and Deadpool pedalling down a Tunnel of Love type canal gave us a moment to indulge in some random banter to set up the story’s central gag/statement of the obvious…

The Dead Pool was the title of the final film in the Dirty Harry series, and as Deadpool says here it’s in no-one’s top ten Clints.

Batman’s favourite Clint Eastwood movie is The Outlaw Josey Wales! After a tragedy where he loses his family, Josey assembles a new family around himself of gifted misfits and outsiders…

The original script called for a reverse zoom from the swan pedalo but the lines didn’t land with a longshot. We switched to a closer shot of Batman and Deadpool, where we can more clearly see Deadpool’s pose and Batman’s little smile as he shuts Deadpool up by reminding him he’s not the most annoying person he’s ever had to deal with.

A Galactus helmet is embedded in the architecture – in reference to John Byrne’s Darkseid vs. Galactus: The Hunger from 1995.

The lighting and colour scheme changes, with another new scene and location, based on the miniature recreation of Venice from the Venetian casino and hotel in Vegas.

A couple of talky panels without action, I’m getting twitchy, so let’s introduce the first note of tension… see the bubbles on the surface of the water?..

Then Deadpool’s ‘Spidey-Sense’… then the bubbles following the pedalo in the final panel.

This is another useful trick. The reader is now following the pedalo with our heroes in it, they seem to be headed to the next page, which encourages the readers to catch up and turn that page… while more observant readers will want to know about the bubbles…

PAGE 12

Now the source of the bubbles begins to reveal itself. Batman and Deadpool in background have wound up in what resembles an empty school gymnasium – with a basketball hoop high on the wall.

Deadpool is canonically bad at shooting hoops! My scant research revealed that much, and I thought was useful for the story, as another way to get the ‘key’ clue in.

The pursuit finally catches up – the wound-up tension is released in action. We sense Deadpool was getting riled up to fight Batman again and the ninjas arrived just in time.

The web gun gets its big moment! The original line here was ‘I GOT AN EJACULATION GUN!’ but Marvel nixed it. My replacement line seems worse to me.

PAGE 13

Cartoon ninjas pour in from all sides as the absurdity increases. The unreality is pushed to breaking point and Batman senses it. The time has come for him to face down the illusion.

Then the big pitch. Batman reaches out to the reader, breaking the panel border, practically urging us to turn the page and face the truth… and that’s me referring yet again to Flash #163, the gift that keeps on giving.

In terms of the story’s construction, we’re now approaching the half way point – which is where we introduce the pivotal ‘game change’ moment that raises the stakes again!

Everything’s about to get more complicated and dangerous…

PAGES 14/15

The turnover for that big twist had to be impactful so it works in various ways.

It’s a big image, forcing us to pause and stare.

It’s a low angle shot so we’re looking up from child height at the villain torturing our heroes. This places the reader in an immediately vulnerable position.

It takes us crashing back to the REAL WORLD. The synthetic lighting and closed antiseptic interiors are replaced by lightning, rain, and the wild and elemental forces of nature! There’s a more raw and ‘real’ feel to the drawings.

And here’s Cassandra Nova, created by Frank Quitely and I for New X-Men in 2001. She was portrayed in fine style by Emma Corrin, as the lead villain in Deadpool/Wolverine. Her trademark fingers-through-your-head trick is recreated here to provide her intro with full drama and, perhaps more importantly, the audience recognition factor we’re relying on when suddenly introducing a new character half way through!

She gets younger as she works her way through our heroes mindscapes, because we wanted to nod in the direction of the movie take…

VOICES

Some replies to yer correspondence!

Bobby – Glad you liked it – and the kids did too! Dan Mora is a rare machine! That word balloon was cunningly arranged so that it didn’t obscure any of the graffiti.

DeeSee – Be water, indeed…

Osiris – More layers peeled above! This is just my personal method, which is why it seems easy! hope the Constantine works out!

Felipe – I have page after page of Batman/Deadpool banter – the first thing I did was to write down the conversations that began to play out in my head. I only kept a small proportion of the material that was generated.

1. I’ll say it again. I love Babylon! And that 2001 moment in the cinema is transcendent.

2. Natural Born Killers is just great from start to finish and in every detail! Downey Jnr is incredible as Wayne Gale - ‘courageous bronze medallist John…’ I read Hollywood Babylon ages ago. My mum, who preferred illusion to reality, hated it, and tore out the photo of dead Marilyn from the library copy she borrowed so the book had a bad rep round our house!

3. I wasn’t a Nine Inch Nails fan, so I had no real interest in his music when I met Trent Reznor, I just liked him as a person and we got on quite well. I worked with him on a TV adaptation of his Year Zero album concept which, like so many of these things, never happened because the studio decided to make some other shite everyone’s forgotten. Kristan was the huge fan but she’s in LA right now, so I can’t ask her what to recommend. I liked the Year Zero album, especially the song ‘Capital G’.

4. That’s exactly what happens with Captain Atom!

Ken – I don’t think Rob got to it!

FylGja – I’ll happily take your advice and write as if Jim Hamilton was still reading. It’s the feedback I miss.

Patrick – I’ve never had much of a relationship with John Ostrander but I remember getting on with him. I certainly have no beef with him and no hard feelings over ‘The Writer’. I really liked his Spectre and Martian Manhunter books in the ‘90s.

Sean – I watched a bit of that video! These podcast presenters are quite notably humourless – a sure sign of demon possession, as far as I’m concerned.

I can’t imagine scripting a conversation that goes on for 24 pages! If I had to do it, I’d have the characters moving through a landscape towards a goal as they speak. The From Hell chapter where Netley and Gull take the coach ride around London is a pretty good example of how to dramatize a long conversation in comic form.

I have only the most peripheral pop culture knowledge of Lupin and the various updates of the character and concept. Sebastian is the hero of a decadent novel ported over into a steampunk action story… and there’s that kind of amoral escape artist/assassin thing going on in Fantomas and his derivatives too.

Another week barrels by, roaring at the top of its voice. Arriving Friday at Xanaduum will be Chapter 6 of Luvkraft vs. Kutulu, entitled A Short Walk to a Bookshop and we’ll be back next Wednesday with the last of the annotations and more more!