BY COREY HENSON
posted 11-25-2002 04:58 PM
courtesy of http://www.comicon.com/pulse
Devin Grayson emerged on the comics scene five years ago, almost immediately
gaining attention from audiences with her inherently witty sense of
humor and knack for scripting character-driven stories. She had almost
no previous exposure to the medium, deciding to enter the field after
becoming enthralled with the character of Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Robin,
from the Batman The Animated Series cartoon.
After successful stints as the writer of DC's Catwoman and Batman:
Gotham Knights, Grayson has come full circle, following Chuck Dixon
on Nightwing. Now she has the chance to guide the comic book life of
Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder Emeritus.
I interviewed Grayson during a convention appearance last month in
Houston. She was friendly and enthusiastic, greeting fans with a beaming
smile, joking around with table-mate Kurt Busiek, and talking the proverbial
blue streak (the entire two-thousand-plus word interview took place
in about nine minutes or so).
THE PULSE: Bruce Wayne recently adopted Dick Grayson, but they don't
really have a traditional father/son relationship. How do you see their
relationship?
DEVIN K. GRAYSON: Well, first I would question what you mean by traditional
father/son relationship, because I've never seen any such thing. I'm
from Northern California, and part of what really gripped me about the
Batman mythos right away was that he seemed a very familiar, paternal
figure to me, being very exacting and very fierce and very dark and
very emotionally shut down and also wildly charismatic and inspiring.
And to be in the position to be the kid, Dick, who's naturally effusive
and very generous and affectionate and warm, and to literally be raised
in a cave with this demonic figure, is an amazing tension that I actually
do think speaks to a lot of father/son relationships. Each generation
tends to be a little more verbal and able to express their feelings
than the one before.
You have a lot of situations where the son is really just wanting to
say "I love you dad, what can I do to make life easier for you?"
And the Dad's position is like "things like that aren't discussed."
So I think their relationship, because they work together, if you were
looking for examples in real father/son relationships, would have to
be one, where there was a family business at stake and then you'd need
to look for what I do think was the unusual thing, which is that the
son really wanted to be in that business.
And part of the key to their relationship is Dick loves what he does.
And he is so thrilled to have sort of stumbled into this life. And for
Bruce, this life came about absolutely of tragedy, and he'd give anything
to have his parents back. And I think at this point in time, Dick sort
of feels like "I'm not glad my parents were killed or anything,
but damn, this rocks!" So, Bruce works out of this sense of tragedy,
and Dick is doing it out of this sense of gratitude. But I think they
bring a lot to each other.
There's a lot of unhealthy aspects to the relationship, and a lot of
very healthy, grounding aspects to the relationship. And it's still
evolving, which makes it really fun to work with. With the adoption,
one of my friends said "Well, there's so much great tension in
that relationship, why would you end it with the adoption?" And
I said, "Are you kidding? We're just getting started!" [Laughs]
THE PULSE: Great points. And that's why you've written Batman, and
I haven't.
GRAYSON: [Laughs] Thank you.
THE PULSE: A few years ago, Dick took over as Batman on a temporary
basis. Would Dick, if given the opportunity, ever permanently replace
Bruce?
GRAYSON: I think about that a lot, actually, because it's sort of irresistible
the way everything is set up. And there're two different scenarios.
One is that Bruce steps down, and asks him to do it, in which case I
can't imagine he would refuse Bruce. I think it would make him wildly
uncomfortable on some levels, but he would be honored he asked. In a
funny way, he was raised by Batman more than he was raised by Bruce
Wayne, and his relationship is really with Batman, so I think he has
enough respect for the mythos not to let it die. But what I was saying
earlier about him being so naturally effusive and sociable, you know,
Batman is so not who he is. The other scenario of course is that Batman
dies. And I think, first of all, that's unthinkable, right, for all
of us? But for Dick, especially, I mean, that's got to be his greatest
fear.
This guy has been his savior, on many levels, and I think, initially,
he would really resist putting on the costume or letting anybody else
because it's sort of an admission that Bruce is not coming back. And
then you really get to look at his history with his friends and stuff.
Like Wally, who had to do this very painful thing of taking over for
his mentor. And I think, psychologically, eventually Dick would put
the suit on and would sort of become Batman, because it would be almost
easier to become him than to lose him. And that would be so psychologically
damaging for who he is and it would really screw him up. So for their
sakes, I'm glad that they're perpetually stuck in their respective twenties
and thirties.
THE PULSE: Do you think Dick could make a good Batman?
GRAYSON: I think he'd make a better Batman than anyone else available
to do it. But I think he makes a much better Nightwing. And it's much
healthier for him, and he can do things as Nightwing ... I don't think
there's anybody else who could be Nightwing, let's put it that way.
THE PULSE: Are Dick and Barbara Gordon soulmates?
GRAYSON: No, but they're really good friends who love each other and
have a lot of interesting history. I think about this a lot too now,
because I have to. I think Dick would be a terrifically difficult boyfriend
to have. He's really passionate, and really 100% there. I always think
of the way Tom Cruise does his acting. He's really right in your face.
That's very Dick-like, but then when that person isn't there, they're
100% wherever else they are, and as their girlfriend or boyfriend you
know that.
And it's not just the fear of cheating, but this sort of very unnatural
ebb and flow of energy that he's sometimes he's around and there's just
tremendous romance and intensity coming off of him. And then he's just
frickin' gone, and he's gone for four days and nights in a row, and
you know his life's in danger every moment. I like that Babs is older
than him, I think it puts an interesting twist on it, that's she's actually
a little more grounded and world-wise in her own ways. It's a really
interesting relationship that I'm going to be playing with in the series.
And my main point is that Barbara at this point is really looking to
build a future, and Dick, in many ways, is looking to protect the past,
and that's going to end up being a problem for them.
THE PULSE: That's interesting. I would have figured you'd say they
were soulmates.
GRAYSON: Well, I'm not sure I believe in the concept of soulmate anyways.
But if I were going to say there were soulmates, I'd say it was Bruce
and Dick. Soulmates are people who need each other to be complete in
who they are. Are Dick and Babs a good romantic match? Yeah, in a lot
of ways. They've got a lot of stuff to work out. But there's something
fundamentally immature about Dick, in a nice way. Childlike, rather
than childish. And Barbara's very self-defended. And I think, if they
can work this out, it'd be great. But the primary problem with the relationship
is that she does not want anyone taking care of her, and he lives to
take care of people. He can't help it. He'll be jumping up on the cupboards,
getting her stuff down. And she's like "Dick, the whole apartment
is set up so I can deal with it." "No, it's okay... "
He'll never stop white-knighting, and she'll never stop resenting white
knights.
THE PULSE: What are some of the most important elements of a good
comic book story?
GRAYSON: Comics is just a medium, and you can absolutely do anything
with it, and I think it's actually really fun to look outside what we
consider mainstream and traditional comics. It's an extremely powerful
medium, with the juxtaposition of words and images, that sort of has
endless applications. I think we've really only touched the surface
of what it can do. In terms of the mainstream stories that we're telling...
what I was a going to say is basic story structure, that there's a beginning,
middle and end in some true line. But actually, it's serialized fiction,
so sometimes the beginning, middle and end is done more in the manner
of soap operas or something, rather than a novel. I think there is no
one answer to that.
One of the things that works best is when a team, for whatever reason,
has a good synergy, and when the artist and writer are on the same wavelength
I think you can really tell. And when they're having fun with what they're
doing, I think that comes across generally.
THE PULSE: When you first started writing comics, you weren't very
familiar with them. Now that you've been doing it for a few years, who
among your peers has been an influence on you?
GRAYSON: People have been so friendly and generous, and I've really
learned not just from reading other people, but from talking to them.
And In that sense, Phil Jimenez, Kurt Busiek, Chuck Dixon, Mark Waid...
I had a nice talk with Neil Gaiman once that was really helpful. I think
Alan Moore structurally is the guy that I actually study. I take those
down and I look at every single page because there's brilliance there.
Terry Moore is one of my favorite people to talk to, and he's really
interesting because he can come at it from the artist's angle, too,
and talk about that process.
The editors that sort of trained me in the Bat-verse were also writers
- Scott Peterson, Denny O'Neil, Jordan Gorfinkel, Darren Vincenzo. I've
learned a lot from them and they really shaped me as a comic book writer.
So I feel like if there's a school of comic book writing that I'm from,
it's them. But there're tons of people who influence my work, and I
meet more every time I go to a con.
THE PULSE: What are your biggest influences outside of comics?
GRAYSON: The thing I love about being a writer is that absolutely everything
is relevant. You can be sitting in a diner, listening to somebody talk
three tables away and go "Wow!"
I love movies. There're a couple of directors I tend to follow. I love
reading. Actually, these are all listed in here (points to the convention
program, which features an interview with her) so I'm not going to take
up tape space. But you can go and actually get detailed names. [Editor's
Note: For the record, the program's interview lists a wide range of
influences, including Carl Jung, Dostoevsky, James Baldwin and a bunch
of others.] But I love this job, and part of it is because absolutely
everything counts.
THE PULSE: A lot of writers these days, like Grant Morrison and
Garth Ennis, use a "less is more" approach to writing, meaning
they rarely, if ever, use narration of thought balloons. What are your
thoughts on this?
GRAYSON: When it's done well, it's masterful. I think that's one of
the things that the medium is in a position to do really powerfully.
When you have an artist who's very good with storytelling, and pacing,
and you have a writer who can trust them to do that, I think a lot of
the most powerful stories can come from that. I'm definitely against
copious text -but there are a couple of issues that I will pick up and
laugh at. There's one scene - I don't want to name names - but the character's
literally talking himself out of the panel, and all you can see is the
mouth and this huge balloon where his head should be.
Sometimes, people can use the text, like Neil Gaiman, rather poetically,
and it's really adding to what's going on. But for the most part, at
least with what we're doing right now in this stage of developing comics
that we're in, I think less does tend to be more.
THE PULSE: Do comics appeal to female readers?
GRAYSON: I have no idea [laughs]. I am bisexual and I am a tomboy and
I am just the worst representative of womankind that you can find, so
I don't really know what girls are into. But I can't see why they wouldn't.
One of the things I've heard is that girls aren't used to reading monthlies,
or the idea of starting a story and going back to the store. But they
love magazines, and some of them love soap operas, so it doesn't seem
that the concept would be so far-reaching.
THE PULSE: That sounds like a completely stupid concept to me.
GRAYSON: Yeah, I'm not sure I buy that either. You know, I have a lot
of people asking me my opinion on the sort of improbable way that women
are drawn, and does that turn girls off. And I'm like "Well, yes,
I can't find a female who looks like Catwoman, but nor can you find
me a male who looks like Nightwing." And I would think that would
be a draw [laughs]. So that's fanciful, it's fantasy stuff. It can be
done offensively, but I think for the most part, it's not. It's just
part of what we're doing. I think the big problem is the marketing.
It's just not reaching them. And the specialty stores, for the most
part, are not very female-friendly and are not places most girls would
wander into and just go "Gee, what's here?" They'd just sort
of look at it and go "Ugh" and keep walking, or go back to
the ear-piercing place in the mall or something. But again, comics is
just a medium, and there's absolutely nothing about it that suggests
it would be gender-specific.
THE PULSE: What's coming up in Nightwing?
GRAYSON: Right now we're dealing with the corrupted police force in
the 'haven -- things are really heating up for Nightwing both during
his day job and on his night shift. And just when he thinks he's got
things settled down a little bit, in comes one of my favorite Titans
villains, gunning for somebody close to Dick. And don't miss our specially
sized issue number 75, which, among other things, introduces our all-new
Tarantula!
