Next month, a handful of DC titles join Batman's "Zero Year" to tell stories of the heroes before they were heroes. These stories, I think, predate even the #0 issues that came out in September, 2012, and include the 25th issues of Action Comics, The Flash, Green Lantern Corps... and Birds of Prey.
Yesterday, Comic Book Resources posted an interview with Birds writer, Christy Marx, about her "Zero Year" story, which follows the adventure of a young Dinah Drake. You can check out the full interview right here, but I've posted a few snippets and my thoughts after the image.
CBR News: While the Birds are obviously connected to Gotham, what was it about "Zero Year" that interested you enough to write a tie-in?
Christy Marx: It was presented to me by my editor as an opportunity to do something cool and different for that issue. It's always beneficial to tie into a larger event, not only for the individual book, but for the overall richness of the larger world of the DC books. It was especially alluring to have 28 pages to play with. I wish I could have 28 pages for every issue.
This is exactly the answer I expected, and the answer I dreaded. I have said for a long time that Birds of Prey feels like a book dictated by an editor with the "talent" filling in the dialogue. That Marx says her editor "presented" the tie-in to her tells me it was never her choice.
As readers, we've already seen a little of Dinah's back story in Team 7. That in mind, how is this younger Dinah in "Zero Year" different from the Team 7 version, or different from the person she is in the "Birds of Prey" present?
This story covers her early years and reveals more of what was driving her at the time. It covers the gap between who she was then and how her connection to Team 7 came about. It lays the groundwork for the person she is in the present and will help us understand why she reacts as she does to the changes she's going through.
The Team 7 series took place roughly five years before the present Birds of Prey. And Batman's "Zero Year" is taking place six years before present, I understand. I'm not sure if Dinah's "Zero Year" tale takes place at the same time as Batman's or not. Considering how much emphasis was put on her experience in Team 7, I would think that one year is not a lot of time to position her that way, but I could be wrong. If anything, I figure this is the story where she meets and falls for Kurt Lance.
Do you have any interest in bringing back old team members, like Poison Ivy or Starling?
I don't have an interest in bringing Ivy back. She is, pardon the pun, a toxic character. I definitely want to have a rematch with Starling and have some plans for that.
Yay! Using Starling as a villain--I'm cool with that. Not bringing Ivy back into the team--I'm really cool with that!
Check out the rest of the interview over at CBR. Birds of Prey #25 comes out November 20th.
This planned Year Zero comes as no surprise to me - since the Nu52 was forced on an unwanted readership, weve had precious little background info on who's working with who, who so-and-so is doing this here, and so forth, and this cuts across all the books. The worst examples of these have been the confusing timeline across all the Batman books [particualry on how long Dick Grayson and Damian have been working with him] and the Wonder Woman who acts completely different in her own book to how she is in Justice League. And of course here in BoP we have numerous questions that need answering.
ReplyDeleteEvidently the editors have taken not of all the critisicm and realized we needed a 'before the Nu' type series to fill in the gaps. Not before time, either.
I anticipate a sizable sales drop for issue #24 because there wasn't a 23.1 for Villains Month, and I have a feeling a lot of fans/readers would just jump off the book or forget about it. But slapping ZERO YEAR on the cover might cause enough of a look-in reader boost to counteract that sales plummet.
ReplyDelete