Percy authors Batman story for Detective Comics
St. Olaf College Writer in Residence Benjamin Percy has begun writing for Detective Comics, the comic book best known for introducing the superhero Batman. The first part of Percy’s first storyline for the comic book, a two-issue arc called Terminal, will be published on October 1 — and features the Caped Crusader himself.
“I grew up a comics nerd. I remain a comics nerd,” says Percy. “I’ve been trying to break in for several years and finally got a pitch accepted by Mark Doyle at Detective Comics. Writing Terminal might be the most fun I’ve ever had at the keyboard.”
Published by DC Comics and the source of its name, Detective Comics is the longest continuously published comic book in the United States. Batman appeared for the first time in 1939, and has since become one of the most popular superheroes of all time and an American cultural icon.
“When writing about a character like Batman — someone whose story has been told thousands of times — I of course tipped my hat to the mythology while also wanting to make him my own,” Percy says. “Mine is sort of a riff off Frank Miller’s aged Batman in The Dark Knight Returns.”
Percy worked with artist JP Leon on Terminal, which will be published in issues #35 and #36 of Detective Comics.
“The story concerns a ghost plane that lands at Gotham International Airport,” says Percy. “A quarantine might not be enough to contain what Batman finds on board.”
Percy is also the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Wilding and Red Moon, both of which he is currently developing for the screen, as well as two books of short fiction. He serves as a contributing editor for Esquire, and his work has been published by GQ, Time, Men’s Journal, Outside, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and Tin House. His third novel, The Dead Lands, will be available April 2015.