by Joey Esposito
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Lee Bermejo is best known for his fantastic collaborations with Brian Azzarello on the smash hit graphic novel Joker and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, as well as his fantastic cover work for the Vertigo Crime hardcovers. But with his new original graphic novel Batman: Noel, the artist has tackled double duty as writer and artist for the very first time.

With the book releasing this week, we talked with the writer/artist about his Christmas Carol-inspired take on the Dark Knight. As an added bonus, we've got some exclusive artwork from the book for a sneak peek before its release on Wednesday.

Check out the IGN Comics Review of Batman: Noel


IGN Comics: Can you tell us a little bit about the basic premise for Batman: Noel?

Lee Bermejo: Yeah, sure. The idea kind of started from an idea I had to do a children's book. I'd just finished Joker and it was just brutal, man. You know, I loved doing it and I'm proud of it, but it was a really violent, dark book. When I finished it, I wanted to do something going in the other direction. So yeah, I initially had this idea to do a children's book and that eventually morphed into what became Noel.


IGN: Would you consider Noel a children's book?

Bermejo: No, and my wife totally makes fun of me for that. I would definitely say that it's got storybook qualities to it; it's certainly got a kind of children's book format in certain sequences. It varies from traditional panel to panel comic book storytelling to more open and montage-y storytelling. There's also the lettering style; Todd Klein did a beautiful job making it look a little bit more children's book-y in terms of the lettering. But you know, I think it's certainly for all ages. I don't want to shoehorn it as just being a children's book.

IGN: What do you find interesting about putting Batman inside of a holiday setting?

Bermejo: I mean the holiday nature of it is just sort of secondary just because the book takes place at that time of year. But I thought that there was an interesting parallel between the story I wanted to tell and Dickens. I think it's important to make it clear that this isn't an adaptation of A Christmas Carol. This has got its own story that follows the same structural beats as A Christmas Carol. Your narrator is telling you his version of A Christmas Carol, but what you're seeing is very much a Batman story about a father who is desperate and decides to take a stab at the criminal profession. Batman winds up using him as bait to catch the Joker.


IGN: That actually ties in nicely to my next question, which relates to Dickens. At New York Comic-Con, on the Batman panel, you were talking about Batman moving beyond just being pop culture and becoming a literary figure. Can you talk a little bit about what that difference means to you and how it speaks to the importance of comics as modern mythology?

Bermejo: Oh yeah, definitely. I'm a pretty firm believer in there being a few characters that, to me, don't really fall into pop culture anymore, at least in terms of my definition of pop culture. They've just been around too long at this point and popular too long. Also what's important to know is that they're just able to adapt and evolve. They're not necessarily indicative of their time. I think that makes them more literary figures than pop culture.

And I think that it's interesting too because now you're at a point – specifically with a character like Batman – where you can look back at years of history, and the book does so. You can see now that Batman is a darker, harder, armored character. You can use that as interesting juxtaposition to the more light-hearted versions of the character from the past. I think it's interesting for the character and it speaks for where he's at right now. That fit in thematically beautifully with what Dickens was doing, and I think that's, you know… I mean, if you don't like Batman, you don't like ice cream. You can just do different flavors of the character and they work. That was kind of what I wanted to play around with in this book specifically. Batman's an older character here, and he's very unforgiving and hard, reflective of how he's been interpreted basically since [Frank] Miller. What does that mean to who he was as a character in the past?

IGN: So in terms of Batman the character and his lengthy career, where does Noel fit?

Bermejo: That's the thing, Noel doesn't necessarily fit into any continuity. The desire was to do a book that your average reader could pick up without needing to know specifically a whole lot about continuity. I think, again, these days Batman is such a well known character that friends of mine that don't really follow comics or really care about comics at all, they know who Batman is. They know who Robin is. They know who Superman is. These characters are big enough that you can play with them in ways that don't necessarily have to fit into the current continuity. Does that make sense?


IGN: Oh yeah, absolutely. How did you find pulling double duty as writer and artist? Is that something you've done before?

Bermejo: No, it's not. It was challenging. I think the first time you try anything new, there's a learning curve. Just seeing the actual printed copy, I was able to look at it and learn things that I can apply to the next project I write. It was great to steer the ship on my own. That's not to say I'll never work with writers again, obviously I will, it was just a fun experiment.

IGN: So it's something you'd do again, then?

Bermejo: If they let me, yeah. [laughs]

IGN: [laughs] Awesome. That's pretty much all I've got, is there anything you'd like to add about the book?

Bermejo: I would like to talk about the book's colorist a little bit, who is just fantastic. The work that Barbara Ciardo did on the colors of the book and what Todd Klein did with the lettering I think is just really good stuff. Hopefully people will see all the different facets of the book from the writing to the art, but also the colors and the letters that hopefully make it a really unique reading experience.

IGN: Great. I'm really looking forward to the book, so congratulations on it.

Bermejo: Hey, thanks. Thanks for your time and I hope you feel better! [Editor's Note: I was sick with a scratchy voice at the time of the interview. I got better.]

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