Monday, March 29, 2004

Batman meets the werewolf (sort of): Comic Book Resources talks to Sam Kieth about Scratch, his upcoming five-issue miniseries for DC starring a werewolf named Scratch. Oh, yeah. Batman makes an appearance, too:

"It's the typical thing with these things. We've got a Led Zepplin here and if we stick Batman in, then it may not go down quite so quickly. I'm being sarcastic, really. I have to warn people, though, that Batman doesn't appear until the last issue, so, you should basically avoid the first four issues and just buy the last issue. I tell ya, we shoulda reversed it! We should have made the first issue the last issue, but of course it doesn't make any sense that way. Well, it doesn't make any sense, anyway!"

"By the time I finished [Scratch], and in fact my next project is a Batman project for DC, I was talking to Dan Didio and he said, 'It might have gone a little better for you if we'd come out with Batman, first.' It's basically a Werewolf book that Batman shows up in. It's not really a Batman book.

"I tell ya, if I drew Batman now, I'd totally draw him differently. I'd draw him super-realistically, because I think I've gotten so weird that I'm just taxing people's patients. That I'm getting so weird that even I don't know what to make of it anymore. It would be nice to get back to normal.

"That's not a good endorsement for a book, to talk about how far off course you've gotten is it? Go out and buy the first issue because by the fifth issue I'd pretty much had it!"