Detective Comics Will Have Batman Fighting An Old Foe

In the DC series Detective Comics, Batman and Batwoman have teamed up with other heroes and battling the evil that lurks inside of Gotham City. At WonderCon, we talked to the writer of the book, James Tynion IV, about the comic and what we can expect for the future of the series.

GameSpot: Cassandra Cain is the center of the series right now. Is she going to have a final confrontation with Shiva?

James Tynion IV: Oh, absolutely. Each arc, I've thought a lot about who is right at the center of each arc moving forward, and right at the center of this arc is Cassandra Cain. This story is very much a big Cassandra Cain story. Trust me, at the end of the next issue, you're going to see her re-enter the fray in the biggest, most bad ass way I could think of. I am very, very excited.

This arc was very much designed to remind people or even tell people who were not familiar with Cassandra Cain from classic continuity, why she is so bad ass, and why I wanted her in this book. I'm excited for people to see that play out.

Batman always has contingency plans for everything. Does he have one if the League of Assassins decides to invade and take over Gotham?

I think he has a few things up his sleeve, but the biggest thing here is that he has been convinced for a long time that the League of Assassins is the real threat. The League of Shadows is just a thing that Ra's al Ghul made up to scare his followers into submission. The idea of this kind of death cult that is the most elite assassins out there, so this is something that Batman is struggling with right at the beginning because he did not think that any of this was real. We're going to see that there's a reason why he didn't think it was real. That's going to be a key part of the next issue as Ra's al Ghul has entered the fray. This story also sets up a lot of stories coming up further down the line for Detective Comics.

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We haven't seen Spoiler since she got upset with Tim's "death," and she left. Are we going to see her come back? She is coming back, so when is that exactly going to happen?

The big thing with Spoiler... She ended the Victims Syndicate arc knowing that she wants to help people but no longer believing that being a superhero, being a costumed vigilante, is the right way to help people. We're going to see her take a new role. One of the most telling things that I stuck there at the end of the Victims Syndicate was the idea of her ripping the wiring out of the Batsignal, and the idea that the cops were able to resolve this whole big crisis one night because Batman never found out it happened. That role--the role of the Spoiler--trying to prevent these costumed figures from attacking each other, that is her new position.

We're going to see the character The Wrath, who the most recent incarnation was brought into the universe by John Layman and Jason Fabok a few years ago is one of my favorite stories from that Detective run. We're going to see him coming back onto the scene, ready to do the attack on Gotham that he believes will make him an A-lister, and we're going to see Spoiler try to spoil the whole thing so nobody ever knows that he even tried to attack. That's sort of the new position, and Spoiler is still figuring it out. She's still trying to figure out what's her role, what's her place, and also, I will say that her acting along these lines is going to attract the attention of classic Bat character who has not appeared in a long time, and I'm very excited to bring him back.

What about Harper Row? Is she still going to be working at the hospital, the hospice?

Yeah. Harper Row is still working at the Leslie Tompkins Clinic, and she'll be continuing to show up in supporting cast facility in the book. I've got bigger Harper Row stories down the line, but for the moment, we've got a pretty big cast in Detective already, and we've got Zatana right around the corner in the summer arc Intelligence.

Speaking of large casts, what about Tim Drake?

Oh, my goodness. All I can say is that I know the next time you guys are going to see Tim Drake, but I can't tell you any more than that.

Are you going to be involved with The Button, the big event coming up in Flash and Batman?

I will definitely say The Button is going to have reverberations across the entire line. It will definitely have a major effect of Detective Comics. If you are a big fan of Detective Comics, you should absolutely read The Button.

The big thing that I'm working on this summer that I set the pieces up for in Detective #950 was the Dark Days two-parter that is going to be coming out in June and July that sets up everything to come in the fall, and I can't really say more than that. You guys have seen the big, crazy cover, and I'm working with Scott Snyder, Jim Lee, John Romita, Jr., and Andy Kubert on that. You only pull that all-star cast together to do some pretty big stuff, so I'm really excited for people to read that.