The acclaimed series from DC Black Label Batman: White Knight is jumping a decade into the future, bringing yet another famous Bat-hero into the mix with Batman: Beyond the White Knight. But the reinvention of Terry McGinnis is only the beginning of writer/artist Sean Murphy's next blend of superheroes and science fiction.
The eight issue mini-series officially begins on March 29, 2022, picking up ten years after Bruce Wayne revealed his secret identity, shuttered his business empire, and funneled his fortune into improving Gotham City. Unfortunately, things haven't gone as smoothly as Bruce assumed they would--setting the stage for a new spin on the Neo-Gotham famous to Batman Beyond fans. As one outlet invited to a preview of the new series with creator, writer, and artist Sean Murphy, Screen Rant has all fans need to know. Find our full interview about this next chapter in Bruce's White Knight saga, an ethnicity change for Terry McGinnis, a brand new Mongolian Robin, and much, much more below.
The cliffhanger or bombshell ending to Curse of the White Knight promised the story was going to be following up on your version of Jason Todd. But now that it seems Batman Beyond is taking the spotlight for this sequel, where is the Bruce and Jason storyline going?
Sean Murphy: That's totally fair. Yeah, I didn't mean to short-change Jason. Honestly, Jason being the first Robin was kind of a mistake. In Issue #1 I had them walking by some gravestones, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if Jason Todd was one of these tombstones?"
You know, you're doing 100 things a day, trying to make sure you're spinning all your plates properly. I totally didn't realize that by putting a tombstone of Jason there, it makes him the first Robin. So rather than retcon it, I've been trying to... not fix it, but go with it for the last two volumes. So finally in this volume three, in Issue #1 we get to the meat of who Jason was, why he left, what kind of person he is, and what his stake is now in Bruce's life.
Obviously we can say Bruce breaks out of jail, that's all over the publicity so far. But I thought it would be interesting if he was able to patch things up with Jason, and then bring in Red Hood towards the end, when the Bat-Family comes together. There's a lot to go through in between. So what we have this time is a two-issue miniseries that is White Knight: Red Hood, I think is what we're calling it. It's going to be drawn by Simone Di Meo, and written by myself and Clay McCormack, my partner in crime through a lot of the Batman stuff I've been doing. That's where I'm really trying to give Red Hood fans what they've been waiting for. I did not want to skip over him and just focus on Terry, so I'm going to do my best to fulfill that.
So that tease of Jason's Red Hood motorcycle helmet and jacket in White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn isn't going to be left unexplored.
Sean Murphy: That's right, exactly. They brought him in to be the security guard to watch over Bruce. And once Bruce escapes, they sort of blame Jason for letting him leave, which he kind of does. But he's kind of a loner and a drifter anyway, so it's sort of a lifestyle that he's used to. Our idea with Jason was to make him like Johnny Lawrence from Cobra Kai, kind of a sad sack sometimes, but still extremely capable of fighting.
To humanize him we actually give him a girl in his life, a daughter figure. A Mongolian immigrant who is going to become the new Robin. And in the spinoff [miniseries] we have him witnessing her on her bicycle trying to stop some crime. He jumps in to help, and she figures out this guy used to be Robin. So she begs him for help, she begs him to teach her everything he knows, and of course he eventually caves in. The two of them have this adventure together, and through him training her he's able to forgive Bruce, or at least empathize with how tough it is to care about somebody. To want to teach them how to do their new favorite hobby--which is fighting--but also accepting that it puts their life at risk. If you love someone, would you really do that? And there's really no good answer for that.
But I figured by putting Jason into a father figure role, it'll bring him and Bruce together. And by the end of my book, Beyond the White Knight, we're going to get Red Hood and Gan--Gan is her name, who will be the new Robin--and Terry, and the rest of the Bat-Family up against [Derek] Powers, is kind of the idea.
You mentioned the pseudo 'mistake' with the Jason Todd gravestone becoming a thing you've leaned into ever since. Have you had the idea for this book, as it as it stands now, since the first White Knight? Or what's been the inception for Beyond along the way?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, great, great question. I wanted to start off Volume 2 with Jason, by showing him living this life as a vagabond, sort of a drifter. But I had so much to get through in Curse of the White Knight, I decided just to remove it and save Jason for the big reveal at the end. When I had him at the very end, I honestly didn't really know exactly what I was going to be doing with him. I didn't know I was going to have him help Bruce escape, or have him train a new Robin, or anything like that. I think I just sort of set everything up in a way where I knew when I returned to Beyond the White Knight, there would be enough places for me to play with.
I also made the mistake of giving him really short hair, like a military cut. I had no idea how vehemently opposed a lot of Jason Todd fans were to that. Like, they really prefer him with longer, grungy hair [laughs]. So I fixed him immediately. You know, we see him in White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn and of course he has longer hair, and the gray stripe in the side of it, whatever. I think one of the best looks for him. When I first started messing with him I really didn't know what it was about Jason that spoke to people. And then I quickly realized, "Oh, he can't have short hair. He's got to have long hair. He has to be kind of a bruiser. We have to take him in this direction." So what you see at the end of Curse of the White Knight is not who Jason is for long.
When you're bringing this expanded Bat-Family together, what excited you most about bringing Terry into the mix? What was the biggest challenge of bringing some of those Batman Beyond elements into this world that you've created?
Sean Murphy: I think every artist wants to draw Blade Runner. I've done it a few times in my career, like in Tokyo Ghost, and a few other sci-fi books I'm sure I did. Drawing traditional Gotham is great these last few volumes, but I was really looking forward to drawing sort of Blade Runner/Batman Beyond sort of Neo-Gotham, you know? For me it was mostly about setting and possibility. Of Bruce going out there alone, and not having any idea of what this new city is, it's like a new planet for him.
I also wanted to sort of dive a little bit into how Gotham was able to advance so quickly. And with the idea that Bruce gave everything away, and donated to charity, and created all these funds for the city and whatnot, it kind of seemed a little plausible that a city infused with a billion dollar fortune could make these sort of changes within a 10 year period. But I love the idea of Bruce wandering into a city alone, not knowing exactly where everything is anymore.
As far as where Terry goes, the trick with Terry for me was how to make him a little different. I didn't want to just mirror exactly what happened with the Batman Beyond cartoon series. I wanted to make it unique, but sort of familiar at the same time. One of the things I really wanted to do is make him half Asian. I didn't realize this, but a ton of people--including myself--always assumed Terry was half Japanese, and half Irish, or something. Only because there's so much kanji in Neo-Gotham, and he has long, black, straight hair... like, a lot of people mistake him as being half Asian. Even though both of his parents are like, extremely white. So for this one, I decided to make his mom Asian, and his dad is obviously Irish, just to finally create a new kind of Terry. Maybe it's just window dressing, and it doesn't really affect story that much, but I just thought it was an interesting way to break out my Terry from the other Terrys out there. And obviously to diversify the line, which is important.
This is not a spoiler, because this was in the official announcement: Terry McGinnis is stealing the Beyond suit for Gotham Motors CEO Derek Powers--and that Bruce will be going against him. So how did you decide that? "I'll make the Batman fans really happy after all this Jason Todd stuff... by having Terry work with the enemy."
Sean Murphy: With Curse of the White Knight, I had Azrael destroy the Batcave. So it's basically the ruins of Wayne Manor. I really wanted to have an opening scene of Terry discovering something. Because he was a thief, and ran around with a bad crowd in the cartoon. I thought, "What is he's a kind of small-time thief--or a large-time thief, whatever it is--and he was going in there looking for Batman stuff to sell?" Then I thought, "What if he was going in there specifically for Derek Powers? What if he was already working for Derek Powers?" In a way, Derek was the Bruce Wayne ordering him around. So then when Bruce comes into the picture, he's opposed to Terry.
The trick there is Terry is the antagonist for a bit, but I also don't want to make him a bad guy, he's obviously very likable. And he's being lied to, so Terry is confused. With the traumatic loss of his father, and things going on in his family, I think it makes sense that his brain would be a bit scrambled. He's just looking for some guidance, and Derek is taking advantage of that for his own purposes. It's going to be up to Bruce to try to win Terry over, which is tricky, because Bruce doesn't have the best track record dealing with young people.
One of the challenges for Bruce is going to be to take everything he's learned about how to deal with Dick, how to deal with Batgirl, how to deal with Jason, and all these failed kids in his life. Can he move past it, or somehow utilize it in a way that gives him the ability to know how to save Terry? You know, can he finally use his words? Can he win somebody over rather than just being you know, the elusive Dark Knight?
To follow up on the Beyond suit, it is famous as the Batsuit without a cape. How different is that for your process, and approaching the look and feel you are going for?
Sean Murphy: It's funny how the cape works, it's so weird. Some artists draw it always dangling sort of like a red triangle just hanging off his back, some people just have it go away, and it just pops up when he needs it, which is what I did. Then it's unclear, it's like... the cape is attached to the wrists, but sometimes he can like move his hands down, and the cape is still there. It's very vague, and it actually bugs the sh*t out of me.
So for me, what I did [with the new Beyond suit] is when the cape expands, it actually connects to these talons that shoot out of his arms, and sort of acts like a glider that way. But for the most part, yeah, tucked away, and he's just a guy in a black suit. I actually based a lot of the ideas for him off of Spider Man 2099. I know DC will hate me saying that [laughs], but Rick Leonardi the artist is a friend and I love his stuff. And I've always wanted to do sort of a Spidey future book, so Batman Beyond is kind of the best of both worlds.
It's funny, there are so many different ways to draw the Beyond suit, but it's kind of like a Spider-Man suit, where it's so perfect the way it was originally conceived, that it's hard to really add stuff to it without mucking it up. I tried to play around with maybe getting rid of the mouth and covering the teeth, because I just thought it was weird that he could smile. But if you don't draw the teeth, it doesn't look like Terry anymore. So I tried my best to kind of tweak the Beyond suit and I really couldn't think of anything better. All I really did to it was add these red vents around his elbows and knees, and on his chest, just to give it some extra detail. But I think generally, when I'm dealing with a suit different than most artists is, I have a really scratchy rendering style. So I'm mostly going for texture on the suit, rather than actual design elements.
Going back to your desire to draw the sci-fi world of Neo-Gotham, how much influence did you get from the Batman Beyond show versus your experience working on Tokyo Ghost?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, a lot of it came from the cartoon of course, especially the pyramid, I'm not sure if... the building in the credits with the big kanji sign on the front, I'm not sure if that's actually used in any of the plots. I'm sure DC has done it for books since then. But I definitely tried to put that pyramid in the background as much as I can, and use a lot of the sleek, clean design elements of future architecture. At the same time, I also have my own way of rendering windows and things that are sort of tricks to make drawing cities go faster for me. So you're always going to see my fingerprints in there, so to speak.
I also didn't want to keep it too clean. I didn't want it to look like Metropolis at night, I wanted to give it a unique presence. I really focused on making the roads like veins going in and out of the city. A few of the shots will see these elevated highways going every which way, that was a fun thing. So yeah, that's my take on Neo-Gotham. I'm not really sure what... I'm trying not to look at anyone else's Neo-Gotham just in case I am doing something similar to them. I don't want to accidentally swipe something, but that's kind of my approach.
I am also a huge fan of your various Batmobile renditions, from some of the movies and other versions of it we've seen. Of course, Batman Beyond has a very different Batmobile. What can you tease about possibly seeing that, and the approach to design on that front, similar to the costume?
Sean Murphy: If you go on my Instagram you can see a model I made with cardboard, paper, glue, and paint. I actually designed my own kit I could have... easier to have it in my hand and move it around in space. I tried to obviously base it off the classic Batman Beyond one from the cartoon, that was great, but it sort of looks like... two commas stuck together. I thought for mine, I could probably do a little better, as far as making it a bit more Syd Mead, if that makes sense.
One of the biggest decisions I made was that in this Neo-Gotham, there are no flying cars. It's just the grounded city. Eventually Bruce realizes that if he is fighting Terry, and Terry has the ability to fly, then Bruce is going to need the ability to fly. So he goes back into the ruins of Wayne Manor and digs up this prototype Batman Beyond-mobile which can fly. Whether or not he gets it running, you have to just buy the book and see. But that big reveal is coming in Issue #4, and I'm really excited about it. It's weird drawing a car with no wheels. Usually, drawing the tires is kind of where a car comes to life, and just sort of drawing this of weird spaceship and thinking of it as a car... it's going to be really interesting.
Like with any White Knight book, there's inevitably going to be a lot of other Easter Egg Batmobiles in the background. I plan on bringing in the '89 Batmobile again, just because it's kind of a tradition at this point. I actually threw in the Pattinson Batmobile into Issue #3, which I think might be the first interior rendering of the Pattinson-mobile in comics? But I'm not really sure.
I'm excited for that movie. I know we all are. We would all rather be watching that right now than talking to each other. That's okay.
Dick Grayson's new costume is the star of the cover art for Issue #2, but is also visible in the first cover art. What is going on with the design here, and more importantly, what does it mean that he's holding a new Bat-helmet, leading Bat-helmeted guards?
Sean Murphy: You find out later that Derek Powers had a lot to do with Batman's gadgets over the years. A lot more than anyone realizes. So when Bruce goes to jail, Powers works with the GTO. To keep his company alive, he starts developing a lot of new stuff. Including Bat-tanks, Batsuits--like Robocop suits that cops can wear--that are a natural evolution of the GTO.
It was supposed to be kind of a one time thing, to reel in this vigilante. The worry is that cops who have too much power can become dangerous. The GTO, at this point, has become the worst version of a police department. They've turned Gotham into a police state. Whereas the GCPD are like the good guys, they're the cops everybody likes. So it's setting up Gotham for a civil war of traditional GCPD blue collar cops versus these overbearing Robocop-Batsuits with Dick in charge. Dick is not a bad guy, I think he's just confused, and he's also being controlled by Derek in a way. Whether or not Dick actually comes around and sees how much he's screwed up, you'll have to read the book to find out.
But he is also one of the antagonists in the book. Bruce can't go anywhere without being traced on camera. And, you know, the GTO's got security cameras all over the city, so they can spot everybody, anytime. It kind of makes Bruce's life harder, when he needs to operate. But as far as why do they look like Batsuits? I'm not really sure, other than I think it looks cool. I think it would be kind of like an interesting, 'F*** you' to Bruce, if Dick was really mad at him, and he was helping development these GTO suits. Dick would be like, "Yeah, give them bat ears. Why not? Bruce isn't around. He wanted a city where Batman was keeping crime in check, isn't this what he wanted? Why not put bat ears."
How did working with Katana Collins and Matteo Scalera on White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn change or influence your approach for this Beyond book?
Sean Murphy: Well, my wife has always been in the background influencing my scripts. Whenever I'm writing a scene that has Harley saying some stuff about being a mom, or whatever. "What's it like for a woman?" I always go to my wife like, "I feel like this is a good thing for a girl to say, who's empowered?" So she's always been there helping me through the process. And Matteo is one of my closest friends, so having him on it was amazing.
What it actually helped me do was think about how I could expand my universe larger. I even have a proposal into DC right now to create a White Knight universe, sort of like Marvel's 'Ultimate' line, if that makes sense. But yeah, working with my friends made me start to think bigger, and try to pitch other ideas of how to do more spinoffs.
Right now all we have through is Batman White Knight: Red Hood. We had a script for 'Batgirl White Knight' at some point, but I'm not sure where that is right now. And depending on how popular Joker's kids are, we might do a spinoff of them later on. We're not really sure yet. We're going to have to see how sales look.
We know that Harley Quinn is going to play a part in this story. It's been 10 years obviously, we know, we have some hints that you know, the relationship between her and Bruce has changed. And obviously your kids have grown what can you kind of tease about her involvement in the series as it moves along?
Sean Murphy: That's funny, one of my pitches for an expanded universe was a 'Harley/Ivy: White Knight' that was going to talk about her relationship with Poison Ivy. Ivy at this point is hooked up with Neo-Joker, who is a character I didn't really get to go too much into. So I did have plans to sort of dive more into Harley, just as a character outside of my wife's book. But for this one... it's hard to talk about without giving too much away, there is a big spoiler at the end of Issue #2 that I won't tell you, but her and Bruce's relationship has gone a lot further than anyone realized.
A lot of this story is going to be about how Bruce feels about Harley, how he and she are getting over Joker's death? What is it about this chemistry that Bruce and Harley seem to have? Are they really potentially into each other? Are they just good friends, do they just have this unspoken trust? There's a lot of people that are really interested in seeing them get together, which is crazy, because like five years ago nobody would have said that. But because I've been teasing Bruce and Harley for, you know, three volumes now, I think it's time to maybe explore what their relationship is.
Not only are we going to get that, but we're definitely going to get her getting back into the suit, and helping Bruce find her kids, because one of the side subplots of this is that her daughter is missing. Her daughter has a Joker fetish--she's sort of... not a good guy, not a bad guy, she's 12 years old, she's just confused, but she's also a liability. So it'll be interesting to see how Bruce and Harley manage to bring her in.
When Harley was confirmed to be pregnant with Jack Napier/Joker's twins, every fan assumed: 'one of them will be good, one will be evil.' You have a really cool way to approach that response in this story. What went into that? What's happened in the last 10 years for Bryce and Jackie?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, thanks for asking. Bryce is sort of the Arnold Schwarzenegger character, and Jackie's kind of Danny DeVito [from Twins]. So all the good stuff went into Bryce, and all the bad stuff into Jackie. But that's not really true, they're both really super smart and dynamic characters. But Bryce literally wears red, more like Harley, so he's sort of the good one more in keeping with what his mother would like him to be. Whereas Jackie is struggling. She's really smart. She's able to hack into classified documents to learn her mom killed her father. And yes, it's really traumatic, especially for a 12 year old. So she finally has had it with bullying, and she goes on a journey to figure out who the Joker really was. She's not really a Joker apologist. I think she's just confused. So it's going to be interesting to see what she learns about the Joker by facing off against his greatest enemy Batman, so to speak.
It seems like the whole White Knight universe is one where antagonists--you've mentioned Jason Todd, Terry McGinnis, Harley, Harley's daughter--they're more confused or being taken advantage of. That was the complicated thing with Joker in the first White Knight book, too. Do you see any of these characters as pure villains? How important is their redeemable nature?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, that's weird. It's a good question. And something I didn't really notice about myself as a writer, I haven't written a whole lot. Someone pointed out to me that one of the things I keep falling into is, "You keep taking bad guys and making them very likable," or giving readers reasons to think that there's a motivation for why they became bad. Or there's some empathy there. And no one wants to empathize with the Joker, obviously. But I made Azrael as bad as possible, but by making him a veteran who's got PTSD, and his legacy was taken from him... I mean, he's not completely incorrect.
But really, the main antagonist for the whole book will be Derek Powers. Later on, you know, he'll become Blight, he'll have some kind of an accident that makes him a lot more dangerous. But his motivation for wanting to militarize the police isn't just for money. We find out later in the series, he has a very good reason for why he's so scared, and why he's trying to ramp up the militarization. That's going to be revealed on the very last page of the book. But to answer your question, even Powers, as bad as he is, and as manipulative as he is, you find out that he has a pretty interesting reason for doing what he's doing.
You made a point of slaughtering most of the Batman villains in Curse of the White Knight, so it's only a matter of time until people start wondering what's going on outside Gotham City. Would you bring the Justice League into the White Knight story?
Sean Murphy: I have plans to get into some of that, yeah. I can't tell you exactly how, but by the end of the book, I think you'll see where it's going. I'm not as educated on Justice League as I am on Batman. So a lot of... I'm not the best candidate to do a lot of the stuff. But if I get White Knight to a place where I am setting up a Justice League? One of my ideas was to just hire other writers and artists to do spinoff books of a 'White Knight Justice League.' Hey, I don't know a lot about Green Lantern, but if Pete Tomasi does and wants to write for me? Awesome. Let's do it, you know? But yeah, I definitely want to start setting up the JLA, and you'll start to see it happen here and there, and at the end of the book.
We talked a bit about the relationship between Bruce and Jason, and getting some closure. How do you envision them? What can you tell us about the relationship moving forward after this?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, you know, it's funny, like how do you differentiate all of Batman's kids? I have Dick set up already as the angry one, which I know normally is Jason. But for my Jason, I have it so that he was angry, but he's older now, and he's kind of passive. He's not so unforgiving of Bruce that he's not willing to help him escape.
There's a lot of Bruce in Jason, and that's what Jason finally realizes by helping train a new Robin. But yeah, I like to make Jason kind of wiser, and slower to get to anger. Wise enough to know that. Maybe one of the things that he collides with Dick over, is he could say to Dick, "Listen, I get it. You're mad. I was mad for a lot of years, too, but you've got to let go of it. You've got to realize he's not really your dad, he didn't sign up to be a dad in a way, he's not good at everything, you know. But growing up in the Batcave is pretty cool. And just be thankful for all the good things he gave you. Let go of your grudges."
You know, that's something that will come from Jason, at this point in his life. Not so much from Dick, but that's something that Dick needs to hear. You know, Barbara, she had it bad but she's pretty well adjusted. She's normally the voice of reason, as it turns into, like, a giant pissing contest between Bruce and his sons who are fighting.
Could you talk a little bit about how Terry might eventually end up figuring into that dynamic in the in the bath family?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, that's a good question. For the first half of the book, it seems like Terry's just being led around by Powers and is just confused... He's also looking for answers. And he's not really sure who to be mad at. Colliding with Bruce and the Bat-Family is hopefully going to straighten that out.
Bruce is obviously not going to remain in his prison uniform for the course of this story, so how long does it take for him to sport the new costume seen in the released cover art?
Sean Murphy: In Issue #3, he pieces together a Batsuit out of other Batsuits. But he's not Batman, he refuses to wear the cowl, he doesn't want to wear the cape, and he actually spray paints over the symbol. Like in his mind, he really doesn't want to cross that line. As ridiculous as it is, Bruce just has to go through most of the book claiming he's not Batman. So he's basically like, a dark Batman guy in a trench coat. By the end of it, you know, he realizes that being Batman is the thing that's going to pull everybody together and solve the most problems. So even though he's running around as like a badass semi-Batman in a trench coat, by Issue #6 or #7 I think he'll see the light and decide to become Batman again.
That's kind of where every Bat story is, isn't it? I mean, ponders whether he should be doing this. He has a fight with his kids, tries to do it alone, realizes he's got to bring the family together and embrace it, and then kick the bad guy's ass. But yeah, if you look at the cover for Issue #3 you'll see Bruce. He looks kind of like like The Shadow... it's kind of hard to describe him, because he's kind of wearing the cowl just on the sides of his face, you can still see his face and beard. At this point everybody knows he's Batman anyway, so he doesn't really need to cover his face. But he's also trying to avoid cameras, so to cover up he's got the hoods which cloaks him, in a way.
It sounds like you have pretty extensive plans for more with this cast of characters. Sales and everything allowing, do you have an end point you would like to reach with the the White Knight universe? Is it something you would like to keep going in perpetuity?
Sean Murphy: Yeah, I have an extensive pitch deck that I gave to Marie Javins, and I'm still waiting to hear back on it. But I've got plans for multiple books and spinoffs--possibly like a five year plan, not more than that--if DC is interested. With COVID and supply chain, shops being closed, being open, whatever it is right now. I hope once COVID is finally over and we come out of this, the industry will have a surge and we can all get back to you know, approving more deals and expanding the line. So yeah, I'd love to do that stuff. It's in DC's hands right now. I'm just waiting to hear back.
One of the things we see teased in this issue is the Red Hood duo, and get a look at their suits. You mentioned how they're going to come together, but on the visual side, what did you want to do when designing that new Robin suit? Because that is a very sleek, and very different style of suit for the character.
Sean Murphy: Yeah, so with Gan's Mongolian background, I think we have a suit of armor or some weapons hanging on the wall, and she steals this small bow and has a slingshot as a nod to Frank Miller. But we wanted her costume to be very pieced together. So she wears like a towel for a cape, and she's stitched her own 'R' on her chest, so you can kind of see the stitching. She has rugby socks, and dirt bike armor on her shins... She's doing her best to be her own Robin, and when we see her she's literally riding around on a bicycle, trying to stop crime in her neighborhood. She's just a big Batman fan. That's when she bumps into Jason and she realizes, "Holy s***, I think this guy used to be Robin, for real." She geeks out, and she begs him to teach her the ropes. And he does.
But I wanted to try something different where she is a larger, thicker woman. She's not good at gymnastics, she's not good at aerial stuff, she's actually afraid of heights. She's built more like a female rugby player. So Jason tries to teach her to be Robin by doing flips and stuff, but she can't do it. Then he realizes the secret to training her will be to work on her ground game. She would rather shoulder check people, you know, and throw her weight around like that, rather than fight in the traditional way a Robin would. So there's a couple of different things I'm trying with her that I don't think we've seen Robins do before. I'm curious to see how people respond to it, but I think everyone will like it.
Oh, that's so cool. So she's more of an MMA style wrestler.
Sean Murphy: Exactly. That's a better way to say it. She's more like a Serena Williams body type, so she's really strong and... thin, but thicker than most Robins have been, you know what I mean? There's a great cover that Simone Di Meo did for the first issue of White Knight: Red Hood, where she's basically just on a bicycle pulling up to a crime. You've got to see it, he's such a great artist, he did such a good job with her, with her sneakers... it's like she's cosplaying Robin, but she's also really good at it. So I'm thinking towards the end of my book, maybe I'll have to upgrade her costume with an unused Robin costume, or something more high tech to protect her, or something.
Or at least provide a cosplayers guide for this particular suit so people can go to town, because that will be a favorite.
Sean Murphy: Whenever I design these suits, I always try to think like, what would a cosplayer really go after? I don't know if there's a way to design something that's cosplay-friendly. Some of the stuff that other artists design, it's like, "Man, that's great, but it's so complicated. I don't think a cosplayer's ever going to be able to design that stuff."
But if you sort of dumb it down a bit and make it more tenable than I think you're going to get the cosplay people hopefully into it. So if I'm in line and I see some Mongolian girl dressed as Robin, I'm going to freak out, it's going to be awesome.
Batman: Beyond The White Knight #1 arrives in physical and digital comic shops on March 29, 2022.