May 262012
 

CBR‘s Staff writer Jeffrey Renaud, has posted a very nice interview with CHIP KIDD discussing his new graphic novel DEATH BY DESIGN, out next week on comic book shops around the US.  Here is the interview along with a small preview.

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SPOILER WARNING: The following interview discusses specific events and plot points from “Batman: Death by Design”

With “Batman: Death By Design,” seminal graphic designer Chip Kidd lives out his childhood dream as the writer of his very own Batman story. Kidd, a life-long fan of Bob Kane’s creation, has worked extensively with DC Comics over the years, most recently designing covers for “All-Star Batman and Robin,” “All-Star Superman” and “Final Crisis.” 

It was his turn as interviewer, in 2009 at 92Y, when Kidd joined Neil Gaiman on stage for a 90-minute discussion about “Sandman” in celebration of the landmark series’ 20th anniversary that led Kidd to writing the 104-page original graphic novel, which arrives in comic book stores on May 30.   

Hearing Kidd’s unrestrained passion for Batman and comics in general during the candid conversation, DC Comics Co-Publisher, then DC Executive Editor, Dan DiDio offered him the project on the spot. Kidd, praying it wasn’t some kind of joke, agreed and started the process, in earnest, shortly thereafter.

Kidd, who is also credited as publication designer on “Death by Design,” joined forces with Mark Chiarello, DC’s award winning Vice President of Art Direction & Design, and British artist Dave Taylor (“Batman: Shadow of the Bat,” “Batman & Superman: World’s Finest”) to create a story Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon (“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”) says “unites fandoms — comics, classic B&W films, architecture, design — like a conqueror unifying thrones.”

Set in the 1930s, “Death by Design” explores Gotham as it undergoes one of the most expansive construction booms in the city’s history. Inspired by two real world events — the demolition of the original Pennsylvania Station in 1963 and the fatal construction crane collapses in midtown Manhattan of 2008 — Kidd asks what if, despite the years separating the incidents, they were somehow connected? And what if they happened in Gotham City, during a glorious golden age when a caped crusader protected its streets?

CBR News: I won’t reveal how or why this question appears in “Death by Design” but what are you doing here?

Chip Kidd: [Laughs] I have been using that as the opening line in my lectures recently. Look, it’s a basic philosophical question that we could all ask ourselves every single day. It’s really about, “What are you accomplishing?” And “What are you going to leave behind?” Basically, “Are you doing something constructive with your life?” I forget why it occurred to me to include it in the book, but like I said, I think it’s something that we should constantly be asking ourselves.

You’re credited as the writer of “Death By Design,” but obviously you played a role in the book artistically, as well, as the publication designer. Can you describe your collaborations with Mark Chiarello and Dave Taylor?

Technically, I was the art director. I very much had a vision about how I wanted the whole thing to look and the milieu that it was supposed to be set. Mark Chiarello was amazing. He really stepped back and just let me go. He would then give suggestions, and almost always they were good suggestions. Even with a couple of the plot lines, he really helped out a lot.

For Dave Taylor, I would find visual references for the way I wanted it to look and I would send them to him. And he would send drawings back. That was our process. The overall look and feel of it, as I hope is evident, is supposed to look like the great, old 1930s’ Batman movie that was never made. Certainly, it is part Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” part Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” and part “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand.

The good thing about not really knowing what you are doing is figuring out how to do it. There are many different ways to write a comic book script. For me, as a visual person, I wanted to give him basic page layouts, where I would break down how many panels were on a page and their configuration. For the most part, he was really cool with that because it did some of the work for him. And there were times he would suggest different layouts for very specific reasons and he was always right.

The book is heavily shaded in pencils, no inks, with only splashes of color throughout it to highlight certain scenes or specific characters. How did you land on these types of decisions?

Like I said, I wanted it to feel like a great, old black and white film from the mid-to-late 1930s. At first, I really strictly wanted it black and white, but Dave sent me some color suggestions, which were subtle things we could do to enhance the mood. The street lights of Gotham have this sort of peachy glow to them. During the day, the sunlight is kind of blue. Dave totally convinced me that it was the right way to go. It just gives you enough to take you in and out of day and night. And more importantly, I think it’s very beautiful. And it helps the narrative. It evolved over time. The whole thing is pencil on paper. He scans it in and then puts in some lighting and coloring effects. For Dave, it really was his show. It’s not like we had a penciler and an inker and a colorist. It was all him.

Part of the appeal of this project must have been developing the concepts for the new architecture of 1930s’ Gotham City. Highlights for me included the humpback whale inspired railway station and the mini-maximalist nightclub, known as The Ceiling —

A lot of that is me just having fun and becoming a fantasy architect. There is no such thing as mini-maximalism or maxi-minimalism, or at least not that I am aware of. Early on, Cyndia Syl praises the Wayne Central Station because it’s “the single best example of patri-monumental modernism in America.” And that’s also gobbledygook, fake architectural speak. It’s patri-monumental modernism as in his father built it. But while it was all fun, I consulted with a lot of architects who have built skyscrapers in New York City to find out what it takes to get something built. There is a lot of real stuff here too.

The Ceiling was one of the few ideas that I have been harboring for years. And I really wanted to see it in a Batman story. Again, it is like something you might find in a Busby Berkeley movie that never happened because it’s just too literally over the top. The whale station, again, that was Dave pulling one of his miracles. I wrote all that into the script, “Thousands of commuters, each day transformed into Jonah himself, swallowed by the leviathan of mass transitional vortex. Only to emerge again, spat out onto the very sidewalk of their destinations, their faith in a mobile society restored.” But Dave’s the one that had to figure out what that was going to look like. It was completely up to him.

Batman is almost as famous for his gadgets as he is for his rogues. In this story, you were able to add a few new devices to the utility belt like the Grapple-Tron and the impact neutralizer. Does it get any better than that?

That was an incredible amount of fun. But I also wanted to invent a bunch of characters to put my personal stamp on the story, too. I loved this idea of a designer/villain who is not really a villain but more of a provocateur. He seems to come and go at will and how is he doing that? And why is he doing that? I think the best Batman villains work because you know why they are doing what they are doing. They have a reason for what they are doing.

Originally, my outline and proposal did not have The Joker in it. Chiarello said, “This is fine, but don’t you want to use any of the classic villains?” I said, “Am I allowed to?” Because one does not assume. And he said, “Sure.” I thought, “I may never get this opportunity again,” so I had to go for The Joker. And then I had to figure out a reason for him to be there with the other characters. And then I couldn’t resist a cameo of the classic Penguin at the end. Who knows, if I had more pages, I may have had The Riddler in there, too. [Laughs]

Speaking of The Riddler, when “Death By Design” was first announced, you said you were approaching the project as a problem-solving exercise? Is that how Batman would do it ,or is that all Chip Kidd?

Everything is a design problem to me. Getting up in the morning is a design problem. [Laughs] Certainly, I wanted the story to be that too. I wanted it to be a classic mystery. Why is this happening? Why are the cranes coming down? Who is this Exacto person? I love the device of a reporter that is also trying to figure out. He’s a reporter that was really not intending to be assigned this story in the first place. He’s an architectural critic not an investigative reporter so that becomes an interesting situation too.

But again, I really wanted this to be a detective story. Obviously, you have to have — if you want it to be a successful Batman story — some sort of fisticuffs going on. You have to have an action element. The destruction of the building does seem inevitable. And I wasn’t going to shy away from that. But it’s not an ultra-violent rage fest either. That’s really not what I am interested in. I wanted something that looked at some of the more nuanced aspects of living in a big, major city in the 1930s that would have this character living in it too.

I highly enjoyed your take on Bruce Wayne/Batman as opposed to the brooding/sometimes psychotic Frank Miller-inspired Dark Knight version of the character that we so often see. Is this version your preference ,or were you simply more comfortable writing him in this style?   

I was very conscious of that for several reasons. I love that in the very first original stories — from “Detective Comics” #27 up till #31 or #32, when Robin came on the scene — Batman was sort of like a gentleman adventurer. “My, my, you all seem very agitated that I’m here.” It was that sort of thing. I love the idea that Batman is to the manner born. He doesn’t hide the fact that he is a very well-born guy that, in his own weird way, has manners. In that way, Batman can look very elegant. In the penultimate scene at the end of the first half, he’s not this crazed, raged out guy, he is looking at getting to the bottom of what’s going on. At that point, it’s the union boss that completely freaks out and loses it. I also couldn’t resist the idea of getting caught in one’s own death trap. I think that’s a really fascinating concept.

I hope you or Dave Taylor don’t take offense to this either, but Batman is kind of pretty in this book, isn’t he?

I have no problem with that. He’s still masculine or what have you, but the Bruce Wayne look was based very much on classic Montgomery Clift in the films.

As we discuss the attractiveness of your leading men, Garnett Greenside is a pretty handsome guy, too, if not vaguely familiar —

Yes. [Laughs] But I don’t think he’s too handsome. I wrote myself into it. It’s that whole I may never get this kind of opportunity again, so therefore, I am going to put myself into it. And as the villain, no less.

Is Garnett Greenside the villain?

Not really. But he is willing to trick Bart Loar into basically killing himself. And if that’s going to take Batman and Richard Frank with him, then so be it. He’s very practical that way. I love the whole Batman I shall not kill. The moral code is great, and I think it creates many interesting instances of dramatic tension because you have all of these other characters that would just kill somebody if that’s what needs to happen. Actually, that’s the big problem that I have with a lot of the Marvel characters. With them, a moral code doesn’t seem to exist.

In that sense, it’s not that Exacto is really a villain, but he’ll do what needs to get done in order to arrive at the solution that he wants to arrive at.

I loved writing that scene where there is this back and forth between Batman and Exacto, where Batman ultimately says, “Think about what you are doing. It’s murder.” And Exacto says, “It’s not murder. It’s assisted suicide.” This guy set all this up and he’s trapped in it now. “I am just helping him kill himself.” Then Batman has the classic line: “He should be tried in a court of law.” And Exacto says, “No. They tried that already. He’d just buy his way out of it again. Or threaten to have the jurors’ children disappear or order the judge’s car blown up.”

To what extent does this vigilante thing go? I love that Batman/Bruce Wayne still believes that you can not willingly take a life in this way. You just don’t do that no matter what the other person did. In that sense, Batman sees Exacto as less of a villain and more as an adversary. But I think he would also be very intrigued by him.

I would like to think that if this story was to progress, you ultimately would get these Batman/Exacto team-ups where they would investigate various, different things. Exacto would get a little over his head, and Batman would have to save him. Or it would be the other way around.

That’s partly why Bruce Wayne hires him at the end. He thinks this guy is a really interesting mind and wants to pursue that.

“Death by Design” written by Chip Kidd with art by Dave Taylor, arrives May 30.

(article originally posted by Jeffrey Renaud at CBR HERE)

Jan 052012
 

Hey gang,

DC BLOGS have been nice enough to get us a page of finished interior art as well as the creative process from CHIP KIDD’s graphic novel DEATH BY DESIGN.  The GN is due in May 2, but here you can start enjoying Kidd’s Joker art. This is what CBR says:

Set during the construction and development of Gotham City and influenced by architectural design of the 1930s, the graphic novel showcases the process of building not only a city, but also a hero and a villain. Now, via its blog, The Source, DC has revealed a first look at the steps of Dave Tayor’s artistic process from sketches to finished artwork.

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The generous guys at DC BLOGS even included the creative process for the creation of this particular piece of comic art.  Please click on the thumbnails to enjoy

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Pictures courtesy of DC ‘THE SOURCE’ and CBR

 

Oct 302011
 

More news for the Jokerholics: Joker is to make an appearance in the upcoming Graphic Novel.  DC has another Batman graphic novel on the burner, this time written by CHIP KIDD (The Cheese Monkey, multiple DC cover designer) and Dave Taylor.  CBR interviewed him this month and here is a reprint of the exchange:

CBR News: Chip, there may be some glaring gap in my knowledge of your work, but to my knowledge, we’ve seen you design books and logos about comics, we’ve seen you curate comics media and ephemera for projects, and we’ve seen you write your own novels — but this is the first time you’ve really written an actual comics project of this type, isn’t it?

Chip Kidd: I would say so, yes. I mean, I’ve had a little bit of a head start. I wrote those two stories for the “Bizarro” anthologies for Tony Millionaire years ago, but I think they were each six or eight-page stories. And I co-wrote a story with Alex Ross for the end of our “Mythology” book. But those aside, this is definitely a first — to be able to do a long form Batman graphic novel. And I have to say, it’s very exciting to finally be able to talk about it. I was frankly surprised [to hear it was being announced] because their policy has been to hold off on promoting this when it doesn’t yet exist.

Everyone knows that you’re a major Batman fan and collector of Batman memorabilia, but how long has that love of the character been percolating as a desire to write the comics themselves? Did you carry this story around a while, or is this a more recent development?

Well, it was really interesting. The short answer is that it is a recent development. It grew out, of all things, an interview I’d done with Neil Gaiman at the 92nd Street Y [here in New York.] I believe it was three years ago for the anniversary of “Sandman.” DC had asked me if I would consider interviewing him on stage, which of course I jumped at the chance to do. When I came backstage after we’d done it — and it went very well as Neil’s a friend — basically Dan Didio came up to me and said, “I didn’t realize you were such a Batman fan. Would you want to do a Batman story for us?” And I said, “Of course I would! But please don’t say that unless you really mean it.” That was the start.

It really was not as if this was some story I’d been dying to tell since I was eight years old or something like that. It actually became a case of “Be careful what you wish for” because all of the sudden I had permission to do this. And because I’m primarily a graphic designer, it then became a case of problem solving. I am more than fully well aware of the entire history of this character, so what could I do to bring something forward that hasn’t been brought before? That was very, very intimidating.

What was your draw into Batman in terms of this project? I’ve heard artists over the years talk about their love of the design element of the character — how he’s essentially composed of triangles rather than rounded shapes. Is that what you tap into on a primary level, or does it start with the character’s story for you?

chipkiddgn2Even though I would say I very much art directed the project, I’m not the artist. So this became an issue of working with somebody who had a like-minded vision of what I wanted to do and could really devote what turned out to be two-plus years of his time to it. I had a sensibility in mind, and I had a kind of milieu in mind. Then I started thinking about a plot and a beginning, middle and end and taking it from there. The artist on the book is a gentleman named Dave Taylor.

Although from your point of view, the name “Death By Design” certainly does conjure up a picture of something in your visual wheelhouse. How did you develop the hook for the story and then shape it to be handed to Dave?

I actually came up with the title first. I thought, “If it’s me and you know who I am and what I do, then I’m going to come at this whole thing from a design standpoint.” I’ve said for many years that Batman himself and especially the way he’s evolved is brilliant design. It’s problem solving. And we get into that in the story. Beyond that, it became about me going “What if?” What do I want that I haven’t seen? And really, the overall Art Direction for the book is “What if Fritz Land made a Batman movie in the late 1930s and had a huge budget? Go!” There’s the visual platform.

I also — and I’m certainly by no means the first to do this — drew on an architectural renderer from the ’20s and ’30s named Hugh Ferriss, who I know Bruce Timm also referred to quite a bit for the look of Gotham City [in “Batman: The Animated Series”]. And Ferriss did most of his things in pencil. They were [these] massive, monolithic buildings that were lit up from street level at night. They really are, to me, the ultimate Gotham City images. So that was something that I very much used as a reference to give to Dave. And he did an amazing job.

As the story started developing around those ideas, did you gravitate more toward the dark Batman side of the character, or did you look at Bruce Wayne’s high society world a bit more?

That’s a very good question. First of all, this is not a brooding, self-doiubting or otherwise mentally unbalanced version of the character. For me, this is very much an old-fashioned, movie serial kind of approach. He does not have a problem being this character and is not a tortured soul. It’s more of an adventure, and it’s much more about problem solving. What I’ve always liked very much is that there are certain things Batman can do that Bruce Wayne cannot. But there’s very much a flipside to that because there are things Bruce Wayne can do that Batman cannot. You need both of those things — or at least I do — to make things interesting. A good part of the story and the plot goes into the building and design trade of Gotham City — how that works or doesn’t work and how it’s corrupted. There is a good bit of history with Bruce Wayne’s father. It’s not any kind of twisted, huge revelation. It’s about the design legacy of the Wayne’s in Gotham City.

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The other side of the Batman equation is his great rogue’s gallery. How did you approach who or what to use in terms of threats to Gotham?

It was funny. I really made this up as I went along since I’d never done anything with this kind of scope even though I’ve written two novels. So I wrote up an outline and some character sketches. I created some characters. I created a villain. And so I presented all of this to my editor, Mark Chiarello, and we went out to lunch to talk about it, and he said, “I like this, and I think it can work, but I’ll just throw this out there: don’t you want any of the classic villains?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know what I’m allowed to do or not do!” [Laughs] Maybe this isn’t very obvious, but the whole project is very much out of continuity. And as it turns out, thank God! Because at the time we started, the New 52 wasn’t really on the timeline at all. So after Mark said that, I went, “Can I have the Joker?” and they said sure. So I threw him into the mix, which turned out to work very well. It added to the story, and I got to do my version of it, or rather, our version of it.

Now that you’re personally at the end of the scripting process, what have you learned that even after knowing so much about the comics you didn’t expect going in? Did you feel in over your head at points as you went, or did it come naturally?

I think with something like this that if you don’t feel in over you’re head, you’re probably not trying hard enough. I think it is good to try and do something outside your comfort zone — not just for the sake of it but to challenge yourself. I think the big challenge for me was that the page count was finite, and I found myself wanting to squeeze in more stuff than I had room for. There were certain subplots that I wanted to work in that I simply wasn’t able to as it was breaking down. That was kind of a drag and hard to work around, although I think we did it well in the end. We’ve still got to do lettering and sound effects yet, but it is all drawn.

The pleasant surprises for me were when Dave would frankly not do what I was telling him to do and break it down a little differently. The one thing I did that he said he really liked was that — and I don’t know how else to do it — I didn’t do a script that looked like any normal comic book script I know of. In other words, it doesn’t look like a movie screenplay. I diagram all the pages out. It’s very specific with me showing “This is how big this panel is, and this is what’s happening in the panel, and this is the dialogue.” Dave said he liked that because it did a lot of his work for him, and that was the idea — to put as little guesswork in as possible. But where he pleasantly surprised me was where he would deviate from that. There’s actually one big huge deviation at the beginning of the book that just shocked me, and it didn’t make me angry, but I had to go “Hmm. Wow.” I can go into more detail about it once the book comes out, but he did some really amazing things.

His characters look great. There’s a new female character who’s not exactly a femme fatale, but she’s kind of a romantic foil for Bruce Wayne named Cyndia Sill, and she’s absolutely amazing. She’s sort of a cross between Jacqueline Kennedy and Grace Kelly. She’s really fantastic. It all looks great, and is colored minimally. It’s all pencil with no ink, so it has a really distinctive look.

I think it’s interesting to see you do so much in comics from designing logos for books like “All-Star Superman” to editing the art comics for Pantheon, but has this kicked off a new phase for you where more work could be in the offing?

I’m sure it’s boring and predictable to say it, but I would love to do more of this. We just haven’t really talked about it yet because we really wanted to make sure this would be finished in a way that everybody was happy with. I would love to do more. I love these characters obviously, and hopefully the book will do well and DC will want to do more. But I think right now, we want to concentrate on getting this done. It’s been very, very labor intensive, and I think it shows, and I hope people enjoy it.

I’m very, very lucky. I get to do the books at Pantheon where we have a massive, massive Chris Ware project that’s coming out in about a year, and we have “Habibi” by Craig Thompson out now. It’s great. There’s no real set game plan beyond the fact that I’d love to do another of these whether it’s with Batman or somebody else. It really is like magic when you write all that stuff on the page and the artist goes out and just does it. It was intimidating to do my own Batman thing, but of course, being the narcissist I am, I also made myself a character in the story. [Laughter] That was really fun to see.

Well, I suppose we’ll all be waiting with baited breath to see if you kill yourself off then.

[Laughs] I only killed myself off artistically!

Original interview made by Kiel Phiegly for CBR NYCC BAT SIGNAL