Batman artist Lee Bermejo, who has worked on comic books like Batman: Damned and Joker, is taking his previous work and taking it in a new direction for a new story titled Batman: Dear Detective.
As reported by IGN, Bermejo is taking his previous Batman covers and repurposing them into a 56-page graphic novella. The images will mostly be variant covers from Detective Comics and will include letters written to Batman. The events will be set up in a detective noir story that will see the Dark Knight on the hunt for a foe who’s taunting him.
Bermejo discussed how the original idea came about and what makes the story so special.
“As soon as the variant cover editor at the time offered me the Detective Comics gig, I knew it was an opportunity to do something different with a cover run. I wanted to push something with the covers that wouldn’t necessarily be sequential but that readers could interact with and follow as some sort of narrative. The nature of the book just immediately brought to mind classic pulp imagery, the classic detective story on the search for some foe who is taunting him.”
The award-winning artist was inspired by Jack the Ripper as well as Zodiac letters and revealed the story wasn’t just an afterthought. While Bermejo was creating the cover art, he was also forming stories that would accompany it in order to tell a cohesive story from beginning to end.
Although he had the main idea from the beginning, Bermejo had to do some rearranging as the story gradually evolved. The first and last images were sent first, and new scenes had to be added to complete the story.
Previously, Bermejo had written and illustrated Batman: Noël, set in 1843 and based on Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol.
DC fans can get their hands on Batman: Dear Detective when it releases on September 6.