October 16, 2025 • 55 mins
John Jackson Miller (author) and Tom Hoeler (executive editor) join me to discuss the second book in Miller’s Batman 1989 dulogoy, Batman Revolution. We discuss how Michael Keaton’s performance influenced John’s writing, the choice of the Riddler as the antagonist, and the creation of puzzles that enhance the reading experience. Pull up a chair, grab your favorite mug, and have some Coffee With Kenobi!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is John Jackson Miller, Star Wars author. You're
listening to coffee with Kenobi with Dan Z. This is
the podcast you were looking for. Will be this crime
right up? What room for no one any if you
figure it out? Look for another royal riddle in this growl? Well,
(00:23):
well that's something or other, isn't it? Who invited you?
You know what happens to gate crashers.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
They have to match wits with the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And the humorous but sinister Riddler. Just a friend, but
you can call me.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
The Riddler.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
This is Vanessa Marshall Harrison Dula from Star Wars Rebels,
and you're listening to coffee with Kenoby.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Welcome to Coffee with Kenoby, your family friendly, spoiler free
Star Wars podcast. Intelligent conversation and a splash of humor
bring fans together from across the galaxy. I'm your host,
Dan's are educator and Star Wars author. Whether you're a
lifelong Jedi master or just hopped off your first Star Cruiser,
grab your cap and join us as we explore the mythology, philosophy,
(01:26):
and wonder of a galaxy far far away, one conversation
at a time. Coffee with Kenoby is more than a podcast,
It's a community. Together. We celebrate the people, stories, and
experiences that make Star Wars so special, creating a space
where fans can come together and share their voices. Thank
you to the official travel partner of Coffee with Kenobe
(01:46):
INMI Travel and mouse Fan Travel. Check out Coffee with
Knoby dot com slash mouse Fan Travel. Pray no cost,
no obligation quote.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'll let them know.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Coffee with Kenoby and dan zare say you on the
special Baman episode. Yes, I know Batman is not really
related to Star Wars, but you know who is. John
Jackson mill Or, the New York Times bestselling author of
so many wonderful Star Wars books, has the sequel to
his Batman books, set in the Michael Keaton Tim Burton
(02:17):
Batman universe. The book is called Batman Revolution. It comes
out on October twenty first, and I can't wait to
talk to you and talk to John and editor Tom
Holler all about it. So pull up a chair, grab
your favorite mug, and let's have coffee with Kenobi. You
know I dimitted starting the show with like pow bang,
(02:39):
but that would not be appropriate. That is not the
Batman that we are going to talk about. We are
going to talk about Batman Revolution, the second book in
John Jackson Miller's splendid duology, and fingers crossed that there
are more to come. I am joined by the author
of Batman Revolution. He is, of course, as we say
(03:00):
every time, if you're the first ever guest on coffee
with Kenoby, John Jackson, Millow, John, and welcome back to
the show.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Glad to be here.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Mike Card gentlemen, ah outstanding. He has got his original joker.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Somebody gave this to me in Greece. That was I
have no idea exactly how they got it, but there
is Oh okay, that is it's lacking. It's it's lacking
and authenticity as no one who has shot it.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
But still well, let's hope it stays that way.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I hope.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
So also joining us, he is the editor Supreme, Tom Holler.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Tom, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Two times road work. You're basically my co host.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Not a bad gig to have. Nice, Nice to see
you again, Nice to talk again.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It's great. I am.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I am so grateful that we get to do this conversation.
And actually, when John was on to promote Batman Resurrection.
I remember thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we could
have John and Tom to talk about this book? And
now we're going to get to do it with the
book that is coming out next week of the Times recording.
We are very excited for it, and I'm looking for
(04:12):
the date. It's slipping my mind. Whereas the cover twenty
first October, Oh there it is. Read there October twenty
first cover, audiobook and ebook. Yes, yes, and I have
read the book. It is a not only is it
a worthy sequel to Batman Resurrection, it is just a
fabulous Batman story. John, when you were writing a resurrection,
(04:34):
was there's always kind of a plan to bring the
Riddler into this and to hopefully write a sequel or
how did that come about?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah? This was always conceived of as a big nine
hundred and fifty page story, and you know I was
going to plant the you know, our antagonists for book
two into into book one, and in such a way
that really get a plugged into the second story, and
(05:08):
you know, you're really getting a prologue to the to
book two. Especially given how large Book two is reletive
book one, it kind of feels like, you know, this
is this is the first of three acts, and two
acts are in book two.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I like that description a lot. And and last time,
of course, you and I talked a lot about our
love of Batman and the character and the many iterations.
But Tom, I would love to pick your brain kind
of how did you I'm assuming you're a huge Batman fan,
how did you fall in love with this character?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Batman is very much like the first character that at
least I can call but the first character that I
can remember glomming onto in terms of like connecting with
being so fascinated by and also then being so instantly
fascinated and learning everything about the character. Like it wasn't
(06:04):
just that every you know day, I wanted to like
watch Batman in series where I wanted to like rewatch
the eighty nine Batman film a billion times and wear
a bunch of Batman T shirts. It was also like
I wanted to read as many Batman stories as I
could learn everything about every version iteration of the character
that that it was. And it might in part be
connected to the fact that I'm fairly certain that Batman
(06:26):
was kind of my way into comics and was my
way into learning that you know, comics as a medium
has this unique quality of like, yes, there's a character Batman,
but did you realize there's like multiple versions of this character,
or at least multiple ways in which the character has
been represented, because of the way that comic writers and
artists in particular turnover in a way that like, at
(06:46):
least at the time that I was a kid in
the early nineties, like we really weren't there yet with
movies and Batman or other kinds of storytelling is much
more static. And so that is where my like intense
affinity for Batman from. And it was a combination of
the Batman that we see in the Tim Burton films
with Michael Keaton, but then also the Batman from the
(07:09):
animated series that came just a few years later, and
in fact came right on the heels of Batman Returns.
Those were the two Batman that happened to enter my
life relatively speaking simultaneously.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
The animated series is a superlative Batman, I would say,
But the Michael Keaton Batman, of course, was so instrumental
in taking this character. Yes, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight
Returns was a massive part of it. But the Batman
film reached more people. It just did, and that's just
the nature of the medium itself. But then you get
(07:44):
to this one, and Tom, we'll throw it out to
you first, and I, because John and I talked about
this a little bit before, what was important to you
about capturing the essence and spirit of the Tim Burton
Batman verse and what kind of challenges did you face?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So, because there are so many versions of Batman. Of course,
if you're going to tell a Batman story and you
pick a Batman in this case, you know, the eighty
nine Batman, the Michael Keaton Batman, the Tim Burton back then,
however you classify it, it has to read and feel
like that character and like that version of Gotham, because
every version of Batman is not just a version of
(08:22):
a singular character, it's actually a version of an entire world,
the entire city of Gotham. The aesthetic of Gotham and
the Burton Batman is unique. The technology, the sort of
timelessness of like we're kind of in I don't know,
the fifty six some sort of you know, sort of
timeless neo Gothic place, and so getting all of that right,
(08:44):
just getting the descriptors right, getting the technology right, then
John and I spent a lot of time talking about, like,
you know, what sorts of technology was available at that
time to like you know, would have been available to
like the newspaper or the police. And then if Batman
is creating his sort of high tech version of that,
like what is then the riff on that baseline. But
it's all of that, and then it's just like inhabiting
(09:05):
the character and the performance of Michael Keaton, which.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Is like a challenge.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
But the nice thing is that we have two movies
of it, you know, to really we actually have like
a pretty good motif to be able to pull from,
and so all those things are sort of challenges, but
really just means like I don't you just have to
watch the movies a whole bunch of times. You just
have to like really dig into it, and you have
to dig into like the subtle differences in what makes
Keaton's Bruce Wayne and Keaton's Batman different from all the
(09:32):
other ones. And then again the subtle difference is in
the way in which Tim Burton has constructed Gotham versus say,
how like Christopher Nolan constructed Gotham or anybody else and
teasing that stuff out, which is why John and I
spent several months before John even like went into outline,
just sort of bandying back and forth about not just
(09:54):
Batman in general when we're spinning this stuff, but also
this particular Batman and like why we both connected and
why we both had an for this Batman, And through
those conversations we were teasing out those things about like
what what makes this version of Batman unique or what
makes it stand out from the others. So we kind
of did a lot of that legwork even before we
(10:14):
started talking about like, well, what's our story or.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Sort of what's our goal with the duology?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Well, and actually you made me think of something I
wanted to ask Jean about it. John, I think one
of the more important things about the Keaton interpretation of
the Batman is the way he moves. There's a stiffness
and a rigidity, which of course is part of that
is because of the costume, but also kind of adds
to the pathos of the character and the menace of
(10:40):
the character to the criminal underworld, and the way you
write him in both of these books, you capture that
essence quite beautifully. What is sort of your secret to that.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, he's very deliberate. And yeah, it's true he can't
turn his head. So there's that that is a that
is a small issue, but uh, you know, the whole
the whole idea of him you stalking around these scenes
and just trying to look you know, larger than he
(11:14):
actually is. That's part of what the purpose of the
Cape is to, uh, you know, create fear. You know.
I I did a actually a rewatch of the movie online.
A wait WI is back with Carl Newman, who is
refers to himself as the ballet bat He was the
movement double. Uh for Batman. There were four doubles, or
(11:37):
actually there were there are four different people in the
suit uh for for Keaton, because there's there's Keaton himself
in all the close up shots uh and uh, and
then of course there's uh the stuntman, and then there's
the combat double. Uh. And then you know what Carl
does is he he does a lot of the manipulation
with the Cape, uh and getting into and out of
(11:59):
rooms and cars and things. And it's a it's Carl
that you see on top of the building at the
very end of the first movie.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And uh, and again there is a you know, deliberateness
of all of his actions because well, in part, if
he takes too wrong, attorney, he's going to go tumbling
with that outfit that he's got on.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, the the suit has got to wait a lot,
even if we imagine that there's all this super technology involved. Uh,
and so he's going to be somebody who's going to be, uh,
be very cautious about the steps that he takes. But then,
you know, on on the Bruce Wayne side, you know,
(12:45):
you see that Michael Keaton is always watchful. He's always
you know, just sort of scoping things out, no matter
where he is. You know that wonderful scene uh, you
know down town, one of the few scenes in Daylight
where he's uh, you know, there to lay the roses
(13:07):
down on his parents' death site and then just happens
to you know, happen upon the massacre of the mobsters
on the steps in the city hall. You see him
just sort of standing there saying what's going on and
then seeing the mime and all of these things happening,
(13:28):
and he doesn't even notice when he's being shot at
or what a bullet nearly takes takes a bit of
his collar out again. You know, this is something where
because we're in pros, we could really get into what's
going on behind those eyes and what's going on in
(13:48):
his mind and what he's calculating and what he's seeing
and and you know what he's trying to figure out. Uh,
and that's something that you can't really do in any
other medium.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Did you ever as a writer, did you ever like
physically stand up and sort of say, hey, how would
I describe this? And move around like you are? Michael Keaton?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I stopped doing that a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
People would people would you know, the various FedEx people
and people and uh postal workers would stop and see
me standing on top of things. Now, Uh, you know,
I I am uh very much of mind's I kind
of person. So uh, but I I would I would
you definitely all of the works that I do, Uh,
(14:37):
there are you know, set pieces, there are big set pieces.
I've got to know where everything is. H. I've got
to know, uh you know where things are relative to
one another. You know there's a there's a big sort
of a amphitheater uh place in uh in the second
book where you know in my mind. I I don't
(15:01):
even have it sketched out. I know what's where. If
I have to, I can. I can construct this thing.
And you know in three D and again it used
to be that was something where I would actually have
to draw maps like crazy. But it's it's just sort
of there now, right.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
It's it's almost like muscle memory to a degree with
all the writing you've done. So the movie, of course
features the Joker. We have Clay Face in in in Resurrection,
but then we come to the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So why I think I can probably.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Guess based on just the book itself, But I'm curious
why the Riddler? Why was that the next logical choice
for you?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Well, I think that you know, we we knew that
we didn't want to duplicate what they were doing in
Batman eighty nine in the comics, and at that point, uh,
you know, there's been no conversations about putting uh the
Riddler in in in the comics or anything else.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
They they actually do have a character that when you
read our novel you'll understand what his relationship to uh,
to our character is. But you know, since we're inhabiting
a world in which the Schumacher films are not part
of the tapestry, you know, uh it since since you
(16:30):
know they're they're very distinct in terms of their rules
for the universe. And also, uh you know, just esthetically,
I was looking at it and saying, well, let's go
ahead and uh and uh bring him in and try
to do a completely different kind of a story, uh
than your usual Riddler story. You know. One of the
(16:52):
problems with writing The Riddler, for anybody who's tackled him
is that if you want to stay with the conceits
that have been you know, put out all along for
the character, Uh, you're just struggling with a character who's
mo o makes no sense. Uh. You you're You've got
a guy who is sending Batman the clues he needs
(17:16):
to capture him. Uh and uh or if you subvert it,
he's sending Batman the clues he needs to get caught
in a trap. Well, Michael Keaton's Batman is too smart
to even bother uh messing with this. Uh And and
so I needed to think of, well, what's another way
(17:40):
or what are some other ways uh that I can
I can you know, give uh you know these devices
life in the story.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I already had the idea that I wanted to do
the sort of player on the other side kind of
a thing, uh, where you know, Batman has a parallel
character in town who existed long before he did, doing
you know, doing good work, and I wanted to have
(18:11):
a bit of a you know, an alliance there, but
also a rivalry that would eventually go completely wrong. And
then I had the notion of, well, let's actually take
the technology that did exist by nineteen eighty nine and
see how could this person, particularly if he were a frenetic,
(18:35):
magnetic fascinating a person to listen to you, how could
this person move everyone to action, you know, both by
asking questions and giving answers. And you know it's it
results in a very interesting version of the Riddler, for
(18:57):
whom giving the ans this is important as actually asking
the questions.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Oh very well said that. And when I knew it
was going to be the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Was it hard uh.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
To kind of not insert the Jim Carrey aspect of this,
or was it? Or was it fairly easy to distance yourself?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
I love that performance. It's a different thing. It wasn't
hard at all. Good. Well, we've seen that, we've seen
that and uh, so I was like, uh, I was
going to go in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Well, and when when we started talking about okay, it's
the Riddler, obviously we're we we much like we had
when we were making you know, uh, developing clay Face
for resurrections, Like, Okay, it's this batman villain that we
all know, but how does that batman villain manifest again
in the Tim Burton universe, right in the in the
(19:53):
in the Michael Keaton universe. So how does it fit
that all those you know, the aesthetics, all those elements.
But then also in doing that, we really kind of
built the character from the ground up as far as like,
all right, well, who is our Riddler? We understand what
he's going to do as the Riddler broadly speaking, but
who are they behind that? And as we had those
conversations and as we we built up who that person
(20:14):
was going to be, it was actually pretty easy to
kind of avoid or not really end up in the
same basket as any other iteration of the Riddler, because
we were really trying to build a like a kind
of fully realized and dimensionalized character who then so happens
to put on a green outfit and you started, you know,
messing around with Gottham City.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And and we give him a real good reason for
the green outfit. We give him a good reason for
all of these things. And you know when when he
throws in the little riddles every so often, he'll he'll
he'll just as part of his pattern. We understand why
he does that, and we we understand that these have
been part of how he communicates, going all the way
(20:55):
back to childhood. Uh and uh and so so yeah, uh,
and you know, we we really follow the the thing
that we were trying to do all along, which is
match Burton for uh pathos, match him for you know,
(21:18):
he wants to try to show these people who are
misshapen or damaged in some way by society or by events.
How you know, they're working out their issues on the
city wide scale with lots of destruction and lots of everything.
And Batman is one of them who is working out
(21:38):
his issues. Uh and uh. And you know the people
of Gotham beware, they're you know, things are things are
crashing around. Uh. But you know, as with the penguin
and Catwoman particularly, uh, you know, the the the viewer
is not just interested in uh you know, whether these
(22:01):
people uh defeat one another, you know, hand to hand. Uh,
we'd like to actually see them get some closure or
healing or whatever. I mean, I think it was uh,
you know it. Gene Siskel in his review said, this
is the first superhero movie where you really want everybody
(22:23):
to hit us sorry about returns, where you really want
everybody to hit sort of an equilibrium at the end
where where you want to see can these people actually
you know, relax and be healed? Uh and uh and
stop doing what they're doing. And uh. Of course you know,
Batman turns out to be the healthiest of anybody because
(22:46):
he's got Alfred uh. And the others do not.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Well.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And you you tapped into something about the villains in
this that it's not just so simple as white hat
black head. For some of them, it is the Joker,
it is, but but from these other characters, it's the
human side of them that isn't often portrayed, particularly in
(23:10):
the Riddler. The Ridler is, to me is one of
my favorite villains, but he's so rarely done correctly, at
least in my from my certain point of view. To
coin your other character, Kenoe, but I also think that
what you do with this character, and I can't wait
to see what people think about it is is make
him human and there's still that sensational part of them,
(23:33):
but he's not sensationalized like there. I think it is
portrayed quite well in the prologue, which I won't give
away here, but I really am. I really loved that treatment.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah. I I when I was thirteen years old, my
mother and I rebuilt a library from scratch. You know,
she was a she was starting out as a great
school library and and you know, the first school that hired,
uh it had a this big metal building that had
not seen an actual human being running it in five years,
(24:09):
and so everything it looked like a tornado had hit.
And you know, I spent the summer with her organizing it,
creating a card catalog, shelving books. I spent just as
much time, you know, basically loafing off. That's when I
read all the Michael Crichton novels. That's what I read.
(24:29):
Uh you know, that's the first time I read the C. S.
Lewis books. Uh, you know, and just and just reading
all sorts of uh, you know things, and I'm like, well,
you know, can I capture this sort of a thing
where this is somebody who has uh you know, you
(24:51):
living in in in a in a library, was kitt
at a candy store kind of a thing to him?
This is what he was thriving on. But unlike my
situation with with with my mother, who actually passed the
day after I finished this novel. Uh, she had a
(25:11):
stroke that I told her. I told her that I
had finished the book and and we had a nice conversation.
She had a stroke the next day and that was
the last conversation we ever had. And she passed about
a week and a half after that. But but you know,
we we had a we had we had a relationship
where she encouraged me to you know, express myself creatively.
(25:32):
And uh, I wanted to have Norman stifled for some
very good reasons, the same reasons that forced them into
this situation in this library to begin with. Uh. And
so so really, you know, he is he is kind
of crushed by, you know, the fact that he can't
(25:54):
express his ambitions. He doesn't have the resources, he doesn't
have anything Bruce Wayne, and he doesn't have a support
of Alfred.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
True and they established early on that they're they're basically
the same age as well, right, wait and tell me.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
About to Well, so what it was going to build
on with that was that one of the other things
that we thought about with The Riddler was we were
trying to think about different ways in this book to
challenge Bruce and to challenge Batman, different from how we
see him challenged in Batman eighty nine by the Joker,
and different from how we had challenged him with clay Face.
(26:32):
And in thinking about the Riddler, we can you know,
we came upon this opportunity. For one, the Riddler is
someone who, from you know, Bruce's detective and skills and
his intellect, the Riddler can challenge him intellectually. The Riddler
can actually challenge his mind, different from how clay Face
challenge him physically, and Joker sort of challenges him in
(26:54):
a variety of ways, in no small part just due
to like his kind of general mania anarchy. But the
riddlar challenges Bruce and Batman's intellect, which was interesting. But
also and this informs so much of John building Norman
the way that he does. One of the great things
about Batman and his rogues gallery is there are so
(27:15):
many different dimensions to the rogues Galley, He's got characters
like the Joker who had just is evil, Like the
Joker is just evil, that's just his thing, you know,
just wants to watch the world burn like that's his thing.
But then there are and there are other characters who
are varying degrees of you know, maniacal or evil. But
then there are also people who are not actually bad people.
(27:35):
They do bad things, they make bad choices, they make
decisions that lead to badness, and they they fall into
patterns or they they happen to fall down a path
of doing bad, but they're not necessarily inherently evil in
the way that someone like the Joker is, And that
challenges Bruce and Batman because there are some villains and
(27:55):
some of his rogues who there is a way that
he can empathize or understand them in a way. And
we felt that the Riddler in Norman could be one
of those characters, which gives you such a great arc
to play and someone sort of falling down the you know,
falling down and becoming bad. But also in terms of
how Batman has to resolve his conflict with him, because
(28:19):
it isn't really just about like fighting evil to fight evil,
and so that that played a lot too into not
just choosing the Riddler, but also why it made for
such a really.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Great storytelling opportunity.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
And it is I would I would say and Ali
is a great storytelling but it's also compelling. And one
of the reasons it's compelling is because of the puzzles,
because of the riddles, and the two of you have
some great, great fun contextually with this novel. Again, I
don't know how much has been made public. I don't
want to spoil anything, but boy to be a fly
(28:58):
in the water to listen to YouTube map the things out?
What can you share? What would you like to talk
about in regards to the puzzles and the way you've
broken this book up.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I mean, I think it's first worth just setting the
stage by when it was actually New York Comic Con
a year ago, so when we were kind of celebrating
Batman Resurrection coming out and that John and I were
checking in and just sort of talking about where revolution
is going, and we had a conversation of what if
we put puzzles in this thing? Could we put puzzles
(29:31):
in this thing and not just could have it like
I think we need to because it's the Riddler, Like,
you can't you know, you can't just have him say
riddle me this and go off. It is like actually
making puzzles part of the reading experience was something that
we talked about for a while and then we just
kind of figured out how to do it both within
(29:52):
the context of the story. And then we work a
really cool designer.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
His name is Edwin.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
He's the layout design of the book. So he laid
out both Batman Resurrection Batman Revolution, and we brought these
ideas of like, hey, if we come up with some
ideas for some puzzles and things, could we integrate them
into the layout and Edwin did a whole bunch of
samples and tests. I literally we gave him sample material,
We made dummy puzzles, and he iterated on a bunch
(30:19):
of designs in order to help us integrate John's puzzles
and other puzzles into the book beyond just again the
sort of text. But that started John with the puzzle
that you made is in the front of the book.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Ah yeah, that is. That is the newspaper feature which
is called riddle me this, and uh yeah, this is
a major part of the whole thing that this is how,
this is how Norman has been expressing himself up to
this time. He's been putting his jokes into a newspaper feature,
(30:56):
which is you know what we could visualize as being
sort of the equivalent madness of wordle or you know
what what I would harken back to is there was
an app a few years ago called Trivia h Q
where you know it would be actually it was a
gambling thing where you'd you'd you'd sit there answering questions
(31:18):
and you would get a share of the puzz the
jackpot at the end of it if you've got everything right. Uh.
And I'm like, well, how do I make that work
in the eighties and how has that made worthwhile? Well,
there's no legalized gambling in Gotham City, so this is
a way to actually have this contest where people could uh,
(31:41):
you know, submit their answers and get something. And uh,
you know the what I wanted to do. I constructed that.
That's a design that was entirely that's this is this
is this is a very weird thing where I designed
it actually, I think to begin with in Microsoft Excel
and and the grid and then I took it all
(32:02):
into the photoshop and added the added the questions, and
the whole notion is that it's uh. There are all
these clues that work together into a multiple choice thing
that then gives you one final question that gives you
the secret word for the day, the cash word. Uh
(32:23):
and uh. And you know there's various levels of if
you get this right and this right and this right
in the postcard that you send in or whatever. Uh
you uh, you you're in in in a different drawing,
or you get you get a share of the money.
Uh and uh. What I wanted to do was have
a puzzle where a number of the questions are easy.
(32:45):
A number of the questions are just wickedly hard, and
some of them are there are many of them are punny.
They're they're, they're, they're, they're you know there, and then
there are a number that are only gonna work in
Gotham City if you live there. So uh, added to Wayne,
(33:11):
it becomes industrial. Add it to Knox, it becomes rich.
Or he added to Wayne, he becomes industrial. Added to NOx,
he becomes rich. Well, that's the word Fort Fort Wayne,
industrial city, Fort Knox Gold. And this is the riddler
(33:33):
kind of rather, you know, Norman kind of doing a
joke based on rich man Bruce Wayne in town and
his friend Alexander Knox. And one of the fun things
is that this is this this is the puzzle that
appeared the first day of the modern era time of
the story, that the post prolonged time of the story,
(33:55):
when we've actually got got Norman in the story, and
so you got uh something that Alfred is working on
at the table, uh, and he's able to observe about it.
You get Norman thinking about what it went into it,
You've got Selena, you've got other characters, uh, you know,
making reference to this thing and uh and it's just
(34:20):
a random puzzle, although you know there actually is uh
a you know, I I know we're about to run
the puzzle uh in uh in in a media location
and uh in the next couple of days and uh
and the answer to this puzzle does actually relate to
(34:41):
the the mystery of the greater mystery of the story.
And I guess that's that's one of the other things
that I think is unique to what our approach was.
You know, we've got Bruce and uh the Riddler trying
to solve mysteries at the same time, and they're getting
to the answers in different ways, and this is part
(35:03):
of their conflict. They're getting the answers in different ways.
The Riddler would love nothing more than to be you know, uh,
you know uh uh, you know Batman's Powell Norman uh
uh Doran pickus uh but maybe not but but but again, uh,
(35:25):
this is this allows us to get into Bruce's head
a bit because he's not trustful of any help other
than Alfred. And and we get a very nice, I think,
uh subplot with him and Commissioner Gordon in this which
is that you know, he why is he Batman? He's
(35:49):
Batman because the cops failed him and he even though
they're supposedly working together now, he still doesn't fully trust them.
And uh. And this is something that you know, we
wanted to. We wanted to We wanted to show the
evolution of Batman's activities over time, because by the time
(36:10):
you get to the second movie, it's clear that they've
just basically resigned most of the most of the police
activity to supporting Batman and letting him do what he's
gonna do. Uh. But uh, but there had to be
steps involved there and we give we give everybody a step.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I should note for anyone listening that the answer to
this puzzle is also in the book.
Speaker 5 (36:33):
It is in the very back of the book.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
So if you want to challenge yourself in trying to
solve it, either while you're reading or before you read
the book, there the answer key is in the back
of the book.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
We felt like it was probably fair to include the
answer key.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And then there are even some other puzzles that we
designed and added so that if you want to learn
what the parts of the book are called, yeah, you
have to actually solve a little word search or you
can turn the agency the answer. But I think once
we settled on this idea of putting one puzzle in
the book, we really dialed it up to like how
far can we go in making the book an interactive
(37:10):
object with puzzles. So I hope people and I will
say that when John sent in this very first newspaper puzzle,
the first thing that I did is I sat down and.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
I solved it.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
It took me like, well, it took me like forty minutes,
and actually I solved it without solving each of the questions.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Which is why which is which is a feature and
not a bug?
Speaker 5 (37:32):
Yes, so I I you know, I.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Got each of the Eventually I got each of the
sort of secondary questions.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
I just figured them out.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
And then once I had that, I figured out what
the sort of code word was.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Having that totally.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Uh solved all of the individual question.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
The way that Norman has constructed the puzzle and they've
constructed the contests is if you get the if you
get the secret word, you're in one jackpot. If you
get the four words that build up to it, you're
in another jackpot, and if you get all sixteen, you're
another drawing. And the whole intention was that people could
(38:11):
be able to enter without solving the whole thing, and
that you could work backwards and get things. You know.
I didn't want it to be so extremely hard that
nobody would be able to participate in it. And that's
kind of another interesting thing about our riddler is most
of his riddles he intends for people to solve, to solve.
(38:34):
He it's no good to him if nobody can solve it.
The really hard ones those are for him to solve
and for Bruce to solve independently.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Oh boy, there I have so many follow up questions,
but I don't I don't want to spoil things for people.
But just for fun, John, was it fun? Did you
get to stealth Tom at all? Did it ever get
to happen?
Speaker 1 (38:56):
He said, I don't.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
He admitted, well, he admitted on the show.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Well, there was really nothing like that. I don't think
there was because to.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Me it stumped me.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
There were never you know, because in writing the story,
it's like he write the you know, you know, he
gives the riddle, and then there is the answer. So
there was sort of never a moment where there wasn't
necessarily a stumping. There was one or two places where
I think we had to discuss whether or not something
qualified as a riddle or not, or whether or not
the answer to a particular riddle, like was the phrasing
(39:32):
was was totally dialedant for that to.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Whether it was the only answer that's.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
The yeah, or whether it was the valid answer, which
especially a and that that is one of the challenges
doing a regular story is like, because the riddler's riddles
are often meant to cause you, you know, move you
towards either a course of action or a decision or something.
(39:56):
The riddles can't have multiple answers, you choose, you know,
to do something that the Riddler did not intend. Suddenly
his carefully orchestrated house of dominoes like just ceases to
fall down because you've you've walked away to go do
something else.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
So there there were a couple of those.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
But uh, but yeah, that that that was sort of
I think we we spent some time to like just
throwing riddles back and forth at each other.
Speaker 5 (40:22):
That was as as general inclusion, right.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
And at one point actually we were thinking about trying
to put a riddle on the back of the book
before we went in a different direction.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
And so we were, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's my
scroll on the back of the book. And and now
and and and we've decided now that to save money,
I'm I'm just going to do all the covers and water. Yeah.
Now it's a it's a I think I had better not.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
So que It says question everything on the back. I
tell my students that for very different reasons. But that's
another part of this, the riddles. This is a fun book.
It makes you think, it's very character driven. The pros
of course is great, but that's what we've kind to
expect from John. But it's fun. Like when I got
(41:13):
to the puzzles, just for a second without getting beat up,
I got to be Batman because I had to solve
the puzzles. And it is a really fun way to
put you in the head of Bruce Wayne, to put
you in out of Batman, or just to feel like
you're part of solving this this great mystery. And I
think that's that's a major coup, gentlemen. I really, I
(41:34):
really just want to thank you, just as a fan.
That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Well, I mean, hopefully this feels different than any other
certainly any Batman novel story. It does, and you know,
the battle is always going to be with people's expectations
no matter what. Anyway. But I think there's no way
anybody is going to get done with this book and
say that there weren't enough little mind teasers uh in there.
(42:03):
And you know, there's just a whole lot of different ones.
I mean, we have you know, you know, historical mysteries,
we've got, you know, serial killer patterns, we've got uh uh,
you know, just a variety of things where uh. The
the reason for doing the riddles is there's a lot
(42:26):
of different reasons that they appear and uh. Sometimes they're
done as affectations, sometimes they're done to entertain uh and
uh and so and again. You know, it's all against
this backdrop of what is a different kind of Batman
story in a sense in that we've gotten to visit
(42:47):
the underground, or rather the underworld in the previous books.
This is uh, this is really the underground, the local uh,
you know, political scene. And again this is something where
because this is a miss smash of nineteen thirty nine
to nineteen eighty nine and everything in between, I got
to imagine, you know, what a peculiar you know, a
(43:10):
bunch of you know, ragtag organizations might look like in
a Tim Burton aesthetic. You know, we know in these
movies that there are a variety of social ills in
Gotham City. We know the city is broke. We know
(43:32):
that apparently things are so bad that people are willing
to go rush out into the street and get for
a chance at money dumped on them by a guy
who has just trying to poison the city. You know.
We we also know that there's you know, this outside
the snow globe that we're given of Gotham City, and
(43:56):
Wayne manor we know, the outside world is got a
variety of ills in the form of Corto Maltese and
and the little we know about the war there. And
then also you know, uh, the the Defense Department is
designing you know, uh, chemical weapons that have their impact
(44:18):
on the story here. So there were a number of
different threads that I was able to sort of pull together,
uh and and knit into sort of the patchwork that
we get in this book.
Speaker 4 (44:28):
I love that. And Tom, how much fun is it
to Totinelli work and Batman? But how much fun is
it to work with this guy?
Speaker 5 (44:35):
Oh, it's a lot of fun. It's it is, it is,
it is until.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
My fifty page outlines show up.
Speaker 5 (44:43):
Oh but see that is the beautiful lake.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
So this this book, I mean, Batman Resurrection had a
decently sized island. But this this book in part because
we kind of knew it was going to be a
bigger story, it was going to be a longer story.
But also because like in building riddles and ciphers and
and things like, it just takes more time, not just
in story, but also particularly at the front end of
(45:06):
figuring out are all these dominos going to line up
that when we start to push them over, it's going
to fall as satisfying patterns. So I as an editor,
I love getting like a forty or fifty page outline.
I will say that the fifty page Batman Revolution outline
is not quite the longest outline I've ever gotten.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I'm not going to I'm not going to shoot for
all that.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
That's it's it's close as it's it's in like the
top three or four.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
But these are the sorts of things you can't figure
out on the fly. Yes, there's a lot I can
figure out on the fly, but but the the the
stuff that I can't figure out on the fly is
you know, the the the the Yeah, I will figure
out the theme of a book on the fly. I
don't want to figure out the the the Rubik's cube
(45:51):
workings of whatever. The big mystery is a bit of time.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
And especially when you have those works like as you said,
you have Norman solving things, you have Bruce solving things.
But then we even have other characters who are engaging
in their own plots that none of them, they do
not all intertwine at the beginning of the story, And
so you're also setting up these multiple chains that need
to eventually link up and sync, but that is not
(46:19):
something that we can realize on page two hundred of
the manuscript.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Hey, this thread.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
With this militia group doesn't actually tie in anywhere. What
do we do about that? Because in order to then
tie it in, you kind of have to undo the knots,
and you just can't do that in the manuscript. So
I love seeing us. I love seeing a super dense outline.
As an editor, I always always appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
And then, you know, I mentioned the spreadsheet I've been
doing for years when I'm developed at The outline really
started with some of my Star Trek novels that had
just burgeoning casts and burgeting groups of spacecraft here and
there and wherever. And then really it hit its most
extreme and crazed form with The Living Force, where I
(47:08):
had you know, twelve Jedi masters plus the villain, plus
uh Obi wan and and uh and Qui gone, and
I needed to make sure that they all got their
screen time and that we weren't away from anybody's story
too long. And so yeah, I mean I ended up
(47:30):
gritting everything out and and really, you know, we talked
about what we change on the fly that was one
of the things we're from the outline. In the beginning,
it was like, do we or if we had enough
Batman in here? And it's like, well, you know, quite
a lot of the Batman got added in after the
(47:51):
have we had enough action? And so like, there's a
there's a particular guy called the Archer in this book.
A lot of the Archers stuff and everything about him
shows up really after the outline because I'm knowing that
I'm gonna have this you know, thread coursing through this thing,
(48:15):
and it gives me a chance to actually balance out
the screen time as we're going along. Fantastic.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
Well, the book Batman Revolution, as we said at the
top show, comes out October twenty first. It's an absolute
must buy. It's a must read, especially if you're a
fan of the original or you just like a good story.
And again, the puzzles are so much fun.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Listening to coffee with Canobe, you are with Denzi the
podcast you're looking for this is, guys, how they're going
to work in audio, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
Oh boy, I'm glad that's something above my pay grade.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
And how they're going to translate, I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
It'll be a great it'll be a great challenge. John
and Tom. It was such a delight and a pleasure
always to speak with you, but to hear you talk
about the creation of this novel. John, thanks again for
coming on the show, truly and serious. I'm truly sorry
to hear about your mom. I remember you telling me,
of course that the first time you were on your
mom thought you would arrive because you were on coffee
(49:30):
with Kenobi.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
That's exactly right. We listened to that podcast the night
the book came out. She didn't actually go to the signing,
but but yeah, she she she heard that. It's like
and and then I was able to play her part
of the opening of the audio book where there's music
and everything and it actually sounds like a real you know,
I've got a real job at that point.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
Yes, oh God, well, God bless her absolutely.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
What What can we.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Look forward to you for you after Batan revolution that
you're allowed to talk about?
Speaker 1 (50:04):
I am working. I'm still working, guy, I'm still writing.
I have well, I've got a I've got I've got
a book tour going on here in the next week. Anyway,
I've starting at Wisconsin. Then I'm going back home to Tennessee.
Uh where Uh you know the uh I get to
You know, I dedicated the book to my high school
friends and they're actually all going to be at a
(50:27):
at an event uh that I'm going through down there. Uh.
And then uh, yeah, I I I have various projects
uh in the works. Uh. And of course I can't
say anything about anything.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
Well, as always, we'll look forward to we look to
your career with great interest, as they say. Tom again,
always at a light buddy.
Speaker 5 (50:50):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Tom.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
By the way, if you're not following Talm on social media,
he is so great about interacting with you and answering
your qu questions in a lucid, intelligent way.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
And Tom, I think just for that.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
Alone, it bes houd to all the other great stuff
you're a must follow on social media.
Speaker 5 (51:09):
Oh well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
I appreciate that a lot.
Speaker 5 (51:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
You know, often I probably should be doing work, but
you know, that's a work of a certain kind, and
I think a noble pursuit anyway, But thanks it. Actually
it is actually often why I am doing that while
I am doing work, which, because the life of an
editor is oftentimes relatively solitary, it does help feel like
there are other people around right other than just me
(51:35):
and my you know, fifty page outlines. But thank you, yeah,
you know, And I think it's probably worth just mentioning
that while this particular Batman story, as John said you
at the top, we'd always imagined it as a duology.
So this is the This is the completion of this duology.
This is the the Batman eighty nine Michael Keaton Batman,
(51:57):
Timbert and Batman story we intended to tell.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
But I will tell you that.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
I enjoy working with my friends at Warner Brothers in
d C. And there are definitely ideas for more stuff
in the future between us.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Our passports are still stamped good.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Where that will take us exactly and when we'll find
out together in the future.
Speaker 5 (52:23):
But even though this is this as a duology is.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Done, that doesn't mean that we won't be continue to
explore some cool stuff in the Warner Brothers and DC worlds.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Well.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
That is terrific news, John Tom, thank you again so
much for coming back on Coffee with Kenoby. For all
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Speaker 3 (54:33):
This podcast is not endorsed by the Walt Disney Company
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Speaker 5 (54:58):
This is the podcast l
Speaker 1 (55:01):
There's no One here, Hold On, Hold On,
Hi, this is John Jackson Miller, Star Wars author. You're
listening to coffee with Kenobi with Dan Z. This is
the podcast you were looking for. Will be this crime
right up? What room for no one any if you
figure it out? Look for another royal riddle in this growl? Well,
(00:23):
well that's something or other, isn't it? Who invited you?
You know what happens to gate crashers.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
They have to match wits with the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And the humorous but sinister Riddler. Just a friend, but
you can call me.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
The Riddler.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
This is Vanessa Marshall Harrison Dula from Star Wars Rebels,
and you're listening to coffee with Kenoby.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Welcome to Coffee with Kenoby, your family friendly, spoiler free
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(01:46):
INMI Travel and mouse Fan Travel. Check out Coffee with
Knoby dot com slash mouse Fan Travel. Pray no cost,
no obligation quote.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'll let them know.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Coffee with Kenoby and dan zare say you on the
special Baman episode. Yes, I know Batman is not really
related to Star Wars, but you know who is. John
Jackson mill Or, the New York Times bestselling author of
so many wonderful Star Wars books, has the sequel to
his Batman books, set in the Michael Keaton Tim Burton
(02:17):
Batman universe. The book is called Batman Revolution. It comes
out on October twenty first, and I can't wait to
talk to you and talk to John and editor Tom
Holler all about it. So pull up a chair, grab
your favorite mug, and let's have coffee with Kenobi. You
know I dimitted starting the show with like pow bang,
(02:39):
but that would not be appropriate. That is not the
Batman that we are going to talk about. We are
going to talk about Batman Revolution, the second book in
John Jackson Miller's splendid duology, and fingers crossed that there
are more to come. I am joined by the author
of Batman Revolution. He is, of course, as we say
(03:00):
every time, if you're the first ever guest on coffee
with Kenoby, John Jackson, Millow, John, and welcome back to
the show.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Glad to be here.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Mike Card gentlemen, ah outstanding. He has got his original joker.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Somebody gave this to me in Greece. That was I
have no idea exactly how they got it, but there
is Oh okay, that is it's lacking. It's it's lacking
and authenticity as no one who has shot it.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
But still well, let's hope it stays that way.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I hope.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
So also joining us, he is the editor Supreme, Tom Holler.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Tom, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Two times road work. You're basically my co host.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Not a bad gig to have. Nice, Nice to see
you again, Nice to talk again.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It's great. I am.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I am so grateful that we get to do this conversation.
And actually, when John was on to promote Batman Resurrection.
I remember thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we could
have John and Tom to talk about this book? And
now we're going to get to do it with the
book that is coming out next week of the Times recording.
We are very excited for it, and I'm looking for
(04:12):
the date. It's slipping my mind. Whereas the cover twenty
first October, Oh there it is. Read there October twenty
first cover, audiobook and ebook. Yes, yes, and I have
read the book. It is a not only is it
a worthy sequel to Batman Resurrection, it is just a
fabulous Batman story. John, when you were writing a resurrection,
(04:34):
was there's always kind of a plan to bring the
Riddler into this and to hopefully write a sequel or
how did that come about?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah? This was always conceived of as a big nine
hundred and fifty page story, and you know I was
going to plant the you know, our antagonists for book
two into into book one, and in such a way
that really get a plugged into the second story, and
(05:08):
you know, you're really getting a prologue to the to
book two. Especially given how large Book two is reletive
book one, it kind of feels like, you know, this
is this is the first of three acts, and two
acts are in book two.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I like that description a lot. And and last time,
of course, you and I talked a lot about our
love of Batman and the character and the many iterations.
But Tom, I would love to pick your brain kind
of how did you I'm assuming you're a huge Batman fan,
how did you fall in love with this character?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Batman is very much like the first character that at
least I can call but the first character that I
can remember glomming onto in terms of like connecting with
being so fascinated by and also then being so instantly
fascinated and learning everything about the character. Like it wasn't
(06:04):
just that every you know day, I wanted to like
watch Batman in series where I wanted to like rewatch
the eighty nine Batman film a billion times and wear
a bunch of Batman T shirts. It was also like
I wanted to read as many Batman stories as I
could learn everything about every version iteration of the character
that that it was. And it might in part be
connected to the fact that I'm fairly certain that Batman
(06:26):
was kind of my way into comics and was my
way into learning that you know, comics as a medium
has this unique quality of like, yes, there's a character Batman,
but did you realize there's like multiple versions of this character,
or at least multiple ways in which the character has
been represented, because of the way that comic writers and
artists in particular turnover in a way that like, at
(06:46):
least at the time that I was a kid in
the early nineties, like we really weren't there yet with
movies and Batman or other kinds of storytelling is much
more static. And so that is where my like intense
affinity for Batman from. And it was a combination of
the Batman that we see in the Tim Burton films
with Michael Keaton, but then also the Batman from the
(07:09):
animated series that came just a few years later, and
in fact came right on the heels of Batman Returns.
Those were the two Batman that happened to enter my
life relatively speaking simultaneously.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
The animated series is a superlative Batman, I would say,
But the Michael Keaton Batman, of course, was so instrumental
in taking this character. Yes, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight
Returns was a massive part of it. But the Batman
film reached more people. It just did, and that's just
the nature of the medium itself. But then you get
(07:44):
to this one, and Tom, we'll throw it out to
you first, and I, because John and I talked about
this a little bit before, what was important to you
about capturing the essence and spirit of the Tim Burton
Batman verse and what kind of challenges did you face?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So, because there are so many versions of Batman. Of course,
if you're going to tell a Batman story and you
pick a Batman in this case, you know, the eighty
nine Batman, the Michael Keaton Batman, the Tim Burton back then,
however you classify it, it has to read and feel
like that character and like that version of Gotham, because
every version of Batman is not just a version of
(08:22):
a singular character, it's actually a version of an entire world,
the entire city of Gotham. The aesthetic of Gotham and
the Burton Batman is unique. The technology, the sort of
timelessness of like we're kind of in I don't know,
the fifty six some sort of you know, sort of
timeless neo Gothic place, and so getting all of that right,
(08:44):
just getting the descriptors right, getting the technology right, then
John and I spent a lot of time talking about, like,
you know, what sorts of technology was available at that
time to like you know, would have been available to
like the newspaper or the police. And then if Batman
is creating his sort of high tech version of that,
like what is then the riff on that baseline. But
it's all of that, and then it's just like inhabiting
(09:05):
the character and the performance of Michael Keaton, which.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Is like a challenge.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
But the nice thing is that we have two movies
of it, you know, to really we actually have like
a pretty good motif to be able to pull from,
and so all those things are sort of challenges, but
really just means like I don't you just have to
watch the movies a whole bunch of times. You just
have to like really dig into it, and you have
to dig into like the subtle differences in what makes
Keaton's Bruce Wayne and Keaton's Batman different from all the
(09:32):
other ones. And then again the subtle difference is in
the way in which Tim Burton has constructed Gotham versus say,
how like Christopher Nolan constructed Gotham or anybody else and
teasing that stuff out, which is why John and I
spent several months before John even like went into outline,
just sort of bandying back and forth about not just
(09:54):
Batman in general when we're spinning this stuff, but also
this particular Batman and like why we both connected and
why we both had an for this Batman, And through
those conversations we were teasing out those things about like
what what makes this version of Batman unique or what
makes it stand out from the others. So we kind
of did a lot of that legwork even before we
(10:14):
started talking about like, well, what's our story or.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Sort of what's our goal with the duology?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Well, and actually you made me think of something I
wanted to ask Jean about it. John, I think one
of the more important things about the Keaton interpretation of
the Batman is the way he moves. There's a stiffness
and a rigidity, which of course is part of that
is because of the costume, but also kind of adds
to the pathos of the character and the menace of
(10:40):
the character to the criminal underworld, and the way you
write him in both of these books, you capture that
essence quite beautifully. What is sort of your secret to that.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, he's very deliberate. And yeah, it's true he can't
turn his head. So there's that that is a that
is a small issue, but uh, you know, the whole
the whole idea of him you stalking around these scenes
and just trying to look you know, larger than he
(11:14):
actually is. That's part of what the purpose of the
Cape is to, uh, you know, create fear. You know.
I I did a actually a rewatch of the movie online.
A wait WI is back with Carl Newman, who is
refers to himself as the ballet bat He was the
movement double. Uh for Batman. There were four doubles, or
(11:37):
actually there were there are four different people in the
suit uh for for Keaton, because there's there's Keaton himself
in all the close up shots uh and uh, and
then of course there's uh the stuntman, and then there's
the combat double. Uh. And then you know what Carl
does is he he does a lot of the manipulation
with the Cape, uh and getting into and out of
(11:59):
rooms and cars and things. And it's a it's Carl
that you see on top of the building at the
very end of the first movie.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And uh, and again there is a you know, deliberateness
of all of his actions because well, in part, if
he takes too wrong, attorney, he's going to go tumbling
with that outfit that he's got on.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, the the suit has got to wait a lot,
even if we imagine that there's all this super technology involved. Uh,
and so he's going to be somebody who's going to be, uh,
be very cautious about the steps that he takes. But then,
you know, on on the Bruce Wayne side, you know,
(12:45):
you see that Michael Keaton is always watchful. He's always
you know, just sort of scoping things out, no matter
where he is. You know that wonderful scene uh, you
know down town, one of the few scenes in Daylight
where he's uh, you know, there to lay the roses
(13:07):
down on his parents' death site and then just happens
to you know, happen upon the massacre of the mobsters
on the steps in the city hall. You see him
just sort of standing there saying what's going on and
then seeing the mime and all of these things happening,
(13:28):
and he doesn't even notice when he's being shot at
or what a bullet nearly takes takes a bit of
his collar out again. You know, this is something where
because we're in pros, we could really get into what's
going on behind those eyes and what's going on in
(13:48):
his mind and what he's calculating and what he's seeing
and and you know what he's trying to figure out. Uh,
and that's something that you can't really do in any
other medium.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Did you ever as a writer, did you ever like
physically stand up and sort of say, hey, how would
I describe this? And move around like you are? Michael Keaton?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I stopped doing that a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
People would people would you know, the various FedEx people
and people and uh postal workers would stop and see
me standing on top of things. Now, Uh, you know,
I I am uh very much of mind's I kind
of person. So uh, but I I would I would
you definitely all of the works that I do, Uh,
(14:37):
there are you know, set pieces, there are big set pieces.
I've got to know where everything is. H. I've got
to know, uh you know where things are relative to
one another. You know there's a there's a big sort
of a amphitheater uh place in uh in the second
book where you know in my mind. I I don't
(15:01):
even have it sketched out. I know what's where. If
I have to, I can. I can construct this thing.
And you know in three D and again it used
to be that was something where I would actually have
to draw maps like crazy. But it's it's just sort
of there now, right.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
It's it's almost like muscle memory to a degree with
all the writing you've done. So the movie, of course
features the Joker. We have Clay Face in in in Resurrection,
but then we come to the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So why I think I can probably.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Guess based on just the book itself, But I'm curious
why the Riddler? Why was that the next logical choice
for you?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Well, I think that you know, we we knew that
we didn't want to duplicate what they were doing in
Batman eighty nine in the comics, and at that point, uh,
you know, there's been no conversations about putting uh the
Riddler in in in the comics or anything else.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
They they actually do have a character that when you
read our novel you'll understand what his relationship to uh,
to our character is. But you know, since we're inhabiting
a world in which the Schumacher films are not part
of the tapestry, you know, uh it since since you
(16:30):
know they're they're very distinct in terms of their rules
for the universe. And also, uh you know, just esthetically,
I was looking at it and saying, well, let's go
ahead and uh and uh bring him in and try
to do a completely different kind of a story, uh
than your usual Riddler story. You know. One of the
(16:52):
problems with writing The Riddler, for anybody who's tackled him
is that if you want to stay with the conceits
that have been you know, put out all along for
the character, Uh, you're just struggling with a character who's
mo o makes no sense. Uh. You you're You've got
a guy who is sending Batman the clues he needs
(17:16):
to capture him. Uh and uh or if you subvert it,
he's sending Batman the clues he needs to get caught
in a trap. Well, Michael Keaton's Batman is too smart
to even bother uh messing with this. Uh And and
so I needed to think of, well, what's another way
(17:40):
or what are some other ways uh that I can
I can you know, give uh you know these devices
life in the story.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I already had the idea that I wanted to do
the sort of player on the other side kind of
a thing, uh, where you know, Batman has a parallel
character in town who existed long before he did, doing
you know, doing good work, and I wanted to have
(18:11):
a bit of a you know, an alliance there, but
also a rivalry that would eventually go completely wrong. And
then I had the notion of, well, let's actually take
the technology that did exist by nineteen eighty nine and
see how could this person, particularly if he were a frenetic,
(18:35):
magnetic fascinating a person to listen to you, how could
this person move everyone to action, you know, both by
asking questions and giving answers. And you know it's it
results in a very interesting version of the Riddler, for
(18:57):
whom giving the ans this is important as actually asking
the questions.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Oh very well said that. And when I knew it
was going to be the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Was it hard uh.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
To kind of not insert the Jim Carrey aspect of this,
or was it? Or was it fairly easy to distance yourself?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
I love that performance. It's a different thing. It wasn't
hard at all. Good. Well, we've seen that, we've seen
that and uh, so I was like, uh, I was
going to go in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Well, and when when we started talking about okay, it's
the Riddler, obviously we're we we much like we had
when we were making you know, uh, developing clay Face
for resurrections, Like, Okay, it's this batman villain that we
all know, but how does that batman villain manifest again
in the Tim Burton universe, right in the in the
(19:53):
in the Michael Keaton universe. So how does it fit
that all those you know, the aesthetics, all those elements.
But then also in doing that, we really kind of
built the character from the ground up as far as like,
all right, well, who is our Riddler? We understand what
he's going to do as the Riddler broadly speaking, but
who are they behind that? And as we had those
conversations and as we we built up who that person
(20:14):
was going to be, it was actually pretty easy to
kind of avoid or not really end up in the
same basket as any other iteration of the Riddler, because
we were really trying to build a like a kind
of fully realized and dimensionalized character who then so happens
to put on a green outfit and you started, you know,
messing around with Gottham City.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And and we give him a real good reason for
the green outfit. We give him a good reason for
all of these things. And you know when when he
throws in the little riddles every so often, he'll he'll
he'll just as part of his pattern. We understand why
he does that, and we we understand that these have
been part of how he communicates, going all the way
(20:55):
back to childhood. Uh and uh and so so yeah, uh,
and you know, we we really follow the the thing
that we were trying to do all along, which is
match Burton for uh pathos, match him for you know,
(21:18):
he wants to try to show these people who are
misshapen or damaged in some way by society or by events.
How you know, they're working out their issues on the
city wide scale with lots of destruction and lots of everything.
And Batman is one of them who is working out
(21:38):
his issues. Uh and uh. And you know the people
of Gotham beware, they're you know, things are things are
crashing around. Uh. But you know, as with the penguin
and Catwoman particularly, uh, you know, the the the viewer
is not just interested in uh you know, whether these
(22:01):
people uh defeat one another, you know, hand to hand. Uh,
we'd like to actually see them get some closure or
healing or whatever. I mean, I think it was uh,
you know it. Gene Siskel in his review said, this
is the first superhero movie where you really want everybody
(22:23):
to hit us sorry about returns, where you really want
everybody to hit sort of an equilibrium at the end
where where you want to see can these people actually
you know, relax and be healed? Uh and uh and
stop doing what they're doing. And uh. Of course you know,
Batman turns out to be the healthiest of anybody because
(22:46):
he's got Alfred uh. And the others do not.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Well.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And you you tapped into something about the villains in
this that it's not just so simple as white hat
black head. For some of them, it is the Joker,
it is, but but from these other characters, it's the
human side of them that isn't often portrayed, particularly in
(23:10):
the Riddler. The Ridler is, to me is one of
my favorite villains, but he's so rarely done correctly, at
least in my from my certain point of view. To
coin your other character, Kenoe, but I also think that
what you do with this character, and I can't wait
to see what people think about it is is make
him human and there's still that sensational part of them,
(23:33):
but he's not sensationalized like there. I think it is
portrayed quite well in the prologue, which I won't give
away here, but I really am. I really loved that treatment.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah. I I when I was thirteen years old, my
mother and I rebuilt a library from scratch. You know,
she was a she was starting out as a great
school library and and you know, the first school that hired,
uh it had a this big metal building that had
not seen an actual human being running it in five years,
(24:09):
and so everything it looked like a tornado had hit.
And you know, I spent the summer with her organizing it,
creating a card catalog, shelving books. I spent just as
much time, you know, basically loafing off. That's when I
read all the Michael Crichton novels. That's what I read.
(24:29):
Uh you know, that's the first time I read the C. S.
Lewis books. Uh, you know, and just and just reading
all sorts of uh, you know things, and I'm like, well,
you know, can I capture this sort of a thing
where this is somebody who has uh you know, you
(24:51):
living in in in a in a library, was kitt
at a candy store kind of a thing to him?
This is what he was thriving on. But unlike my
situation with with with my mother, who actually passed the
day after I finished this novel. Uh, she had a
(25:11):
stroke that I told her. I told her that I
had finished the book and and we had a nice conversation.
She had a stroke the next day and that was
the last conversation we ever had. And she passed about
a week and a half after that. But but you know,
we we had a we had we had a relationship
where she encouraged me to you know, express myself creatively.
(25:32):
And uh, I wanted to have Norman stifled for some
very good reasons, the same reasons that forced them into
this situation in this library to begin with. Uh. And
so so really, you know, he is he is kind
of crushed by, you know, the fact that he can't
(25:54):
express his ambitions. He doesn't have the resources, he doesn't
have anything Bruce Wayne, and he doesn't have a support
of Alfred.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
True and they established early on that they're they're basically
the same age as well, right, wait and tell me.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
About to Well, so what it was going to build
on with that was that one of the other things
that we thought about with The Riddler was we were
trying to think about different ways in this book to
challenge Bruce and to challenge Batman, different from how we
see him challenged in Batman eighty nine by the Joker,
and different from how we had challenged him with clay Face.
(26:32):
And in thinking about the Riddler, we can you know,
we came upon this opportunity. For one, the Riddler is
someone who, from you know, Bruce's detective and skills and
his intellect, the Riddler can challenge him intellectually. The Riddler
can actually challenge his mind, different from how clay Face
challenge him physically, and Joker sort of challenges him in
(26:54):
a variety of ways, in no small part just due
to like his kind of general mania anarchy. But the
riddlar challenges Bruce and Batman's intellect, which was interesting. But
also and this informs so much of John building Norman
the way that he does. One of the great things
about Batman and his rogues gallery is there are so
(27:15):
many different dimensions to the rogues Galley, He's got characters
like the Joker who had just is evil, Like the
Joker is just evil, that's just his thing, you know,
just wants to watch the world burn like that's his thing.
But then there are and there are other characters who
are varying degrees of you know, maniacal or evil. But
then there are also people who are not actually bad people.
(27:35):
They do bad things, they make bad choices, they make
decisions that lead to badness, and they they fall into
patterns or they they happen to fall down a path
of doing bad, but they're not necessarily inherently evil in
the way that someone like the Joker is, And that
challenges Bruce and Batman because there are some villains and
(27:55):
some of his rogues who there is a way that
he can empathize or understand them in a way. And
we felt that the Riddler in Norman could be one
of those characters, which gives you such a great arc
to play and someone sort of falling down the you know,
falling down and becoming bad. But also in terms of
how Batman has to resolve his conflict with him, because
(28:19):
it isn't really just about like fighting evil to fight evil,
and so that that played a lot too into not
just choosing the Riddler, but also why it made for
such a really.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Great storytelling opportunity.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
And it is I would I would say and Ali
is a great storytelling but it's also compelling. And one
of the reasons it's compelling is because of the puzzles,
because of the riddles, and the two of you have
some great, great fun contextually with this novel. Again, I
don't know how much has been made public. I don't
want to spoil anything, but boy to be a fly
(28:58):
in the water to listen to YouTube map the things out?
What can you share? What would you like to talk
about in regards to the puzzles and the way you've
broken this book up.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I mean, I think it's first worth just setting the
stage by when it was actually New York Comic Con
a year ago, so when we were kind of celebrating
Batman Resurrection coming out and that John and I were
checking in and just sort of talking about where revolution
is going, and we had a conversation of what if
we put puzzles in this thing? Could we put puzzles
(29:31):
in this thing and not just could have it like
I think we need to because it's the Riddler, Like,
you can't you know, you can't just have him say
riddle me this and go off. It is like actually
making puzzles part of the reading experience was something that
we talked about for a while and then we just
kind of figured out how to do it both within
(29:52):
the context of the story. And then we work a
really cool designer.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
His name is Edwin.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
He's the layout design of the book. So he laid
out both Batman Resurrection Batman Revolution, and we brought these
ideas of like, hey, if we come up with some
ideas for some puzzles and things, could we integrate them
into the layout and Edwin did a whole bunch of
samples and tests. I literally we gave him sample material,
We made dummy puzzles, and he iterated on a bunch
(30:19):
of designs in order to help us integrate John's puzzles
and other puzzles into the book beyond just again the
sort of text. But that started John with the puzzle
that you made is in the front of the book.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Ah yeah, that is. That is the newspaper feature which
is called riddle me this, and uh yeah, this is
a major part of the whole thing that this is how,
this is how Norman has been expressing himself up to
this time. He's been putting his jokes into a newspaper feature,
(30:56):
which is you know what we could visualize as being
sort of the equivalent madness of wordle or you know
what what I would harken back to is there was
an app a few years ago called Trivia h Q
where you know it would be actually it was a
gambling thing where you'd you'd you'd sit there answering questions
(31:18):
and you would get a share of the puzz the
jackpot at the end of it if you've got everything right. Uh.
And I'm like, well, how do I make that work
in the eighties and how has that made worthwhile? Well,
there's no legalized gambling in Gotham City, so this is
a way to actually have this contest where people could uh,
(31:41):
you know, submit their answers and get something. And uh,
you know the what I wanted to do. I constructed that.
That's a design that was entirely that's this is this
is this is a very weird thing where I designed
it actually, I think to begin with in Microsoft Excel
and and the grid and then I took it all
(32:02):
into the photoshop and added the added the questions, and
the whole notion is that it's uh. There are all
these clues that work together into a multiple choice thing
that then gives you one final question that gives you
the secret word for the day, the cash word. Uh
(32:23):
and uh. And you know there's various levels of if
you get this right and this right and this right
in the postcard that you send in or whatever. Uh
you uh, you you're in in in a different drawing,
or you get you get a share of the money.
Uh and uh. What I wanted to do was have
a puzzle where a number of the questions are easy.
(32:45):
A number of the questions are just wickedly hard, and
some of them are there are many of them are punny.
They're they're, they're, they're, they're you know there, and then
there are a number that are only gonna work in
Gotham City if you live there. So uh, added to Wayne,
(33:11):
it becomes industrial. Add it to Knox, it becomes rich.
Or he added to Wayne, he becomes industrial. Added to NOx,
he becomes rich. Well, that's the word Fort Fort Wayne,
industrial city, Fort Knox Gold. And this is the riddler
(33:33):
kind of rather, you know, Norman kind of doing a
joke based on rich man Bruce Wayne in town and
his friend Alexander Knox. And one of the fun things
is that this is this this is the puzzle that
appeared the first day of the modern era time of
the story, that the post prolonged time of the story,
(33:55):
when we've actually got got Norman in the story, and
so you got uh something that Alfred is working on
at the table, uh, and he's able to observe about it.
You get Norman thinking about what it went into it,
You've got Selena, you've got other characters, uh, you know,
making reference to this thing and uh and it's just
(34:20):
a random puzzle, although you know there actually is uh
a you know, I I know we're about to run
the puzzle uh in uh in in a media location
and uh in the next couple of days and uh
and the answer to this puzzle does actually relate to
(34:41):
the the mystery of the greater mystery of the story.
And I guess that's that's one of the other things
that I think is unique to what our approach was.
You know, we've got Bruce and uh the Riddler trying
to solve mysteries at the same time, and they're getting
to the answers in different ways, and this is part
(35:03):
of their conflict. They're getting the answers in different ways.
The Riddler would love nothing more than to be you know, uh,
you know uh uh, you know Batman's Powell Norman uh
uh Doran pickus uh but maybe not but but but again, uh,
(35:25):
this is this allows us to get into Bruce's head
a bit because he's not trustful of any help other
than Alfred. And and we get a very nice, I think,
uh subplot with him and Commissioner Gordon in this which
is that you know, he why is he Batman? He's
(35:49):
Batman because the cops failed him and he even though
they're supposedly working together now, he still doesn't fully trust them.
And uh. And this is something that you know, we
wanted to. We wanted to We wanted to show the
evolution of Batman's activities over time, because by the time
(36:10):
you get to the second movie, it's clear that they've
just basically resigned most of the most of the police
activity to supporting Batman and letting him do what he's
gonna do. Uh. But uh, but there had to be
steps involved there and we give we give everybody a step.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I should note for anyone listening that the answer to
this puzzle is also in the book.
Speaker 5 (36:33):
It is in the very back of the book.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
So if you want to challenge yourself in trying to
solve it, either while you're reading or before you read
the book, there the answer key is in the back
of the book.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
We felt like it was probably fair to include the
answer key.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And then there are even some other puzzles that we
designed and added so that if you want to learn
what the parts of the book are called, yeah, you
have to actually solve a little word search or you
can turn the agency the answer. But I think once
we settled on this idea of putting one puzzle in
the book, we really dialed it up to like how
far can we go in making the book an interactive
(37:10):
object with puzzles. So I hope people and I will
say that when John sent in this very first newspaper puzzle,
the first thing that I did is I sat down and.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
I solved it.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
It took me like, well, it took me like forty minutes,
and actually I solved it without solving each of the questions.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Which is why which is which is a feature and
not a bug?
Speaker 5 (37:32):
Yes, so I I you know, I.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Got each of the Eventually I got each of the
sort of secondary questions.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
I just figured them out.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
And then once I had that, I figured out what
the sort of code word was.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Having that totally.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Uh solved all of the individual question.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
The way that Norman has constructed the puzzle and they've
constructed the contests is if you get the if you
get the secret word, you're in one jackpot. If you
get the four words that build up to it, you're
in another jackpot, and if you get all sixteen, you're
another drawing. And the whole intention was that people could
(38:11):
be able to enter without solving the whole thing, and
that you could work backwards and get things. You know.
I didn't want it to be so extremely hard that
nobody would be able to participate in it. And that's
kind of another interesting thing about our riddler is most
of his riddles he intends for people to solve, to solve.
(38:34):
He it's no good to him if nobody can solve it.
The really hard ones those are for him to solve
and for Bruce to solve independently.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Oh boy, there I have so many follow up questions,
but I don't I don't want to spoil things for people.
But just for fun, John, was it fun? Did you
get to stealth Tom at all? Did it ever get
to happen?
Speaker 1 (38:56):
He said, I don't.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
He admitted, well, he admitted on the show.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Well, there was really nothing like that. I don't think
there was because to.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Me it stumped me.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
There were never you know, because in writing the story,
it's like he write the you know, you know, he
gives the riddle, and then there is the answer. So
there was sort of never a moment where there wasn't
necessarily a stumping. There was one or two places where
I think we had to discuss whether or not something
qualified as a riddle or not, or whether or not
the answer to a particular riddle, like was the phrasing
(39:32):
was was totally dialedant for that to.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Whether it was the only answer that's.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
The yeah, or whether it was the valid answer, which
especially a and that that is one of the challenges
doing a regular story is like, because the riddler's riddles
are often meant to cause you, you know, move you
towards either a course of action or a decision or something.
(39:56):
The riddles can't have multiple answers, you choose, you know,
to do something that the Riddler did not intend. Suddenly
his carefully orchestrated house of dominoes like just ceases to
fall down because you've you've walked away to go do
something else.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
So there there were a couple of those.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
But uh, but yeah, that that that was sort of
I think we we spent some time to like just
throwing riddles back and forth at each other.
Speaker 5 (40:22):
That was as as general inclusion, right.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
And at one point actually we were thinking about trying
to put a riddle on the back of the book
before we went in a different direction.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
And so we were, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's my
scroll on the back of the book. And and now
and and and we've decided now that to save money,
I'm I'm just going to do all the covers and water. Yeah.
Now it's a it's a I think I had better not.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
So que It says question everything on the back. I
tell my students that for very different reasons. But that's
another part of this, the riddles. This is a fun book.
It makes you think, it's very character driven. The pros
of course is great, but that's what we've kind to
expect from John. But it's fun. Like when I got
(41:13):
to the puzzles, just for a second without getting beat up,
I got to be Batman because I had to solve
the puzzles. And it is a really fun way to
put you in the head of Bruce Wayne, to put
you in out of Batman, or just to feel like
you're part of solving this this great mystery. And I
think that's that's a major coup, gentlemen. I really, I
(41:34):
really just want to thank you, just as a fan.
That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Well, I mean, hopefully this feels different than any other
certainly any Batman novel story. It does, and you know,
the battle is always going to be with people's expectations
no matter what. Anyway. But I think there's no way
anybody is going to get done with this book and
say that there weren't enough little mind teasers uh in there.
(42:03):
And you know, there's just a whole lot of different ones.
I mean, we have you know, you know, historical mysteries,
we've got, you know, serial killer patterns, we've got uh uh,
you know, just a variety of things where uh. The
the reason for doing the riddles is there's a lot
(42:26):
of different reasons that they appear and uh. Sometimes they're
done as affectations, sometimes they're done to entertain uh and
uh and so and again. You know, it's all against
this backdrop of what is a different kind of Batman
story in a sense in that we've gotten to visit
(42:47):
the underground, or rather the underworld in the previous books.
This is uh, this is really the underground, the local uh,
you know, political scene. And again this is something where
because this is a miss smash of nineteen thirty nine
to nineteen eighty nine and everything in between, I got
to imagine, you know, what a peculiar you know, a
(43:10):
bunch of you know, ragtag organizations might look like in
a Tim Burton aesthetic. You know, we know in these
movies that there are a variety of social ills in
Gotham City. We know the city is broke. We know
(43:32):
that apparently things are so bad that people are willing
to go rush out into the street and get for
a chance at money dumped on them by a guy
who has just trying to poison the city. You know.
We we also know that there's you know, this outside
the snow globe that we're given of Gotham City, and
(43:56):
Wayne manor we know, the outside world is got a
variety of ills in the form of Corto Maltese and
and the little we know about the war there. And
then also you know, uh, the the Defense Department is
designing you know, uh, chemical weapons that have their impact
(44:18):
on the story here. So there were a number of
different threads that I was able to sort of pull together,
uh and and knit into sort of the patchwork that
we get in this book.
Speaker 4 (44:28):
I love that. And Tom, how much fun is it
to Totinelli work and Batman? But how much fun is
it to work with this guy?
Speaker 5 (44:35):
Oh, it's a lot of fun. It's it is, it is,
it is until.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
My fifty page outlines show up.
Speaker 5 (44:43):
Oh but see that is the beautiful lake.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
So this this book, I mean, Batman Resurrection had a
decently sized island. But this this book in part because
we kind of knew it was going to be a
bigger story, it was going to be a longer story.
But also because like in building riddles and ciphers and
and things like, it just takes more time, not just
in story, but also particularly at the front end of
(45:06):
figuring out are all these dominos going to line up
that when we start to push them over, it's going
to fall as satisfying patterns. So I as an editor,
I love getting like a forty or fifty page outline.
I will say that the fifty page Batman Revolution outline
is not quite the longest outline I've ever gotten.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I'm not going to I'm not going to shoot for
all that.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
That's it's it's close as it's it's in like the
top three or four.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
But these are the sorts of things you can't figure
out on the fly. Yes, there's a lot I can
figure out on the fly, but but the the the
stuff that I can't figure out on the fly is
you know, the the the the Yeah, I will figure
out the theme of a book on the fly. I
don't want to figure out the the the Rubik's cube
(45:51):
workings of whatever. The big mystery is a bit of time.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
And especially when you have those works like as you said,
you have Norman solving things, you have Bruce solving things.
But then we even have other characters who are engaging
in their own plots that none of them, they do
not all intertwine at the beginning of the story, And
so you're also setting up these multiple chains that need
to eventually link up and sync, but that is not
(46:19):
something that we can realize on page two hundred of
the manuscript.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Hey, this thread.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
With this militia group doesn't actually tie in anywhere. What
do we do about that? Because in order to then
tie it in, you kind of have to undo the knots,
and you just can't do that in the manuscript. So
I love seeing us. I love seeing a super dense outline.
As an editor, I always always appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
And then, you know, I mentioned the spreadsheet I've been
doing for years when I'm developed at The outline really
started with some of my Star Trek novels that had
just burgeoning casts and burgeting groups of spacecraft here and
there and wherever. And then really it hit its most
extreme and crazed form with The Living Force, where I
(47:08):
had you know, twelve Jedi masters plus the villain, plus
uh Obi wan and and uh and Qui gone, and
I needed to make sure that they all got their
screen time and that we weren't away from anybody's story
too long. And so yeah, I mean I ended up
(47:30):
gritting everything out and and really, you know, we talked
about what we change on the fly that was one
of the things we're from the outline. In the beginning,
it was like, do we or if we had enough
Batman in here? And it's like, well, you know, quite
a lot of the Batman got added in after the
(47:51):
have we had enough action? And so like, there's a
there's a particular guy called the Archer in this book.
A lot of the Archers stuff and everything about him
shows up really after the outline because I'm knowing that
I'm gonna have this you know, thread coursing through this thing,
(48:15):
and it gives me a chance to actually balance out
the screen time as we're going along. Fantastic.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
Well, the book Batman Revolution, as we said at the
top show, comes out October twenty first. It's an absolute
must buy. It's a must read, especially if you're a
fan of the original or you just like a good story.
And again, the puzzles are so much fun.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Listening to coffee with Canobe, you are with Denzi the
podcast you're looking for this is, guys, how they're going
to work in audio, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
Oh boy, I'm glad that's something above my pay grade.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
And how they're going to translate, I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
It'll be a great it'll be a great challenge. John
and Tom. It was such a delight and a pleasure
always to speak with you, but to hear you talk
about the creation of this novel. John, thanks again for
coming on the show, truly and serious. I'm truly sorry
to hear about your mom. I remember you telling me,
of course that the first time you were on your
mom thought you would arrive because you were on coffee
(49:30):
with Kenobi.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
That's exactly right. We listened to that podcast the night
the book came out. She didn't actually go to the signing,
but but yeah, she she she heard that. It's like
and and then I was able to play her part
of the opening of the audio book where there's music
and everything and it actually sounds like a real you know,
I've got a real job at that point.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
Yes, oh God, well, God bless her absolutely.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
What What can we.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Look forward to you for you after Batan revolution that
you're allowed to talk about?
Speaker 1 (50:04):
I am working. I'm still working, guy, I'm still writing.
I have well, I've got a I've got I've got
a book tour going on here in the next week. Anyway,
I've starting at Wisconsin. Then I'm going back home to Tennessee.
Uh where Uh you know the uh I get to
You know, I dedicated the book to my high school
friends and they're actually all going to be at a
(50:27):
at an event uh that I'm going through down there. Uh.
And then uh, yeah, I I I have various projects
uh in the works. Uh. And of course I can't
say anything about anything.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
Well, as always, we'll look forward to we look to
your career with great interest, as they say. Tom again,
always at a light buddy.
Speaker 5 (50:50):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Tom.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
By the way, if you're not following Talm on social media,
he is so great about interacting with you and answering
your qu questions in a lucid, intelligent way.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
And Tom, I think just for that.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
Alone, it bes houd to all the other great stuff
you're a must follow on social media.
Speaker 5 (51:09):
Oh well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
I appreciate that a lot.
Speaker 5 (51:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
You know, often I probably should be doing work, but
you know, that's a work of a certain kind, and
I think a noble pursuit anyway, But thanks it. Actually
it is actually often why I am doing that while
I am doing work, which, because the life of an
editor is oftentimes relatively solitary, it does help feel like
there are other people around right other than just me
(51:35):
and my you know, fifty page outlines. But thank you, yeah,
you know, And I think it's probably worth just mentioning
that while this particular Batman story, as John said you
at the top, we'd always imagined it as a duology.
So this is the This is the completion of this duology.
This is the the Batman eighty nine Michael Keaton Batman,
(51:57):
Timbert and Batman story we intended to tell.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
But I will tell you that.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
I enjoy working with my friends at Warner Brothers in
d C. And there are definitely ideas for more stuff
in the future between us.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Our passports are still stamped good.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Where that will take us exactly and when we'll find
out together in the future.
Speaker 5 (52:23):
But even though this is this as a duology is.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Done, that doesn't mean that we won't be continue to
explore some cool stuff in the Warner Brothers and DC worlds.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Well.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
That is terrific news, John Tom, thank you again so
much for coming back on Coffee with Kenoby. For all
things Star Wars news, reviews, videos, and more. Head to
our home base Coffee with Kanoby dot com. Don't forget
to join the c w K Cafe on Facebook at
Coffee with Kanoby dot com slash community, our family friendly,
spoiler free group for all your Star Wars thoughts, comments,
(52:58):
and conversation podcast as possible thanks to the incredible support
of the CWK Alliance, I want to help keep the
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You can join the CWK Alliance and get access to
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Learn more at coffeewith Keanobe dot com slash CWK Alliance
(53:21):
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(53:44):
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(54:07):
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Speaker 3 (54:33):
This podcast is not endorsed by the Walt Disney Company
or Lucasfilm Limited. It is intended for entertainment and informational
purposes only. The official Star Wars website can be found
at www dot star Wars dot com. Star Wars, all names, sounds,
and any other Star Wars related items are registered trademarks
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copyright holders. All original content of this podcast is the
(54:54):
intellectual property of Coffee with Kenobi. Unless otherwise indicated.
Speaker 5 (54:58):
This is the podcast l
Speaker 1 (55:01):
There's no One here, Hold On, Hold On,
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