While we await any concrete news on The Batman – who’s going to be starring in it would be nice to know, for one – director Matt Reeves has engaged with fans on Twitter and revealed what comic books from the Caped Crusader’s 79 year history he rates as his favorites.
Taking to the social media platform, here’s what he shared:
There are many… I love Year One, The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Ego… Many others… Neal Adams is awesome… Love the original Kane and Finger… I could go on…!
Most of Reeves’ choices will be very familiar to Bat-fans, as they’re often cited as being amongst the best Batman comics in the character’s long history. Several of them have also previously served as loose inspirations for the Dark Knight’s on-screen adventures. For instance, Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One informed parts of Batman Begins, while the influence of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween can be felt on its sequel, The Dark Knight.
Darwyn Cooke’s Batman: Ego is a slightly more underappreciated pick from Reeves, though, which could perhaps tells us how he might approach the character. The one-shot depicts a mental battle between the two halves of Batman – the billionaire orphan and the violent vigilante. Maybe Reeves is planning on digging deep into Bruce Wayne’s psychological make-up?
This is all just speculation on our part, of course. In fact, fans naturally pressed the director for info on if any of those comic book arcs would inform his own movie, but obviously he knows better than to give anything away and replied only with the fitting choice of a bat emoji.
The last real update Reeves gave about how his work on The Batman was progressing was a positive one, as he teased that it’s going “really, really well.” Not that this means it’s going to come together quickly, mind you, as word has it that Warner Bros. has entrusted the filmmaker with a lot of freedom and creative control, which indicates that the hero’s solo effort will arrive whenever the director’s got it in strong enough shape. It also sounds like the studio’s learned from when they jumped the gun on the project back when Ben Affleck was in charge, which is certainly a good thing.