Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani talk about bringing a madcap, all-ages friendly vision of Batman’s rogues gallery to life in ArkhaManiacs.
Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, the Eisner Award-winning creative team behind the universally acclaimed Tiny Titans series are back with their latest original graphic novel, ArkhaManiacs. Focusing on Batman’s extensive rogues’ gallery, the all age-friendly comic book has a young Bruce Wayne venture into Arkham Apartments to join in the fun of all its zany inhabitants, from the Joker to Catwoman and more.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Baltazar and Aureliani talk about the continuing importance of crafting family-friendly fare, what gags were ultimately cut from the graphic novel and which rogues galleries they would love to tackle next.
Fresh off Superman of Smallville, how was it doing this full exploration into Batman’s rogue’s gallery with ArkhaManiacs?
Art Baltazar: When we did Superman of Smallville and DC said they had plans to a whole line of books for kids, we were called into a meeting, and I immediately asked for Superman and they said “Yeah, sure, because you know more about Superman more than anyone else we know. Take him, go with it, you know him very well.”
With ArkhaManiacs, it was one of those where you wait for that question: After Superman, they said “What else you got?” That’s kind of how it was. We had ArkhaManiacs in the back of our idea book since we were doing Tiny Titans. It went from Tiny Titans to Superman Family Adventures to Super Powers to Superman of Smallville and then we went back to ArkhaManiacs. We created that when we were doing Tiny Titans around 2009 maybe and it was, at that time, the same question with DC Comics asking what else we had. Somehow it didn’t go through and greenlit or whatever and our editor said to start putting the ideas in Tiny Titans, and hopefully, we could have a spinoff. So right when you saw Killer Croc start showing up in Tiny Titans and the Penguin and things like that, that’s when we had the idea for ArkhaManiacs. When we started pursuing it now, we didn’t even think of Superman of Smallville versus ArkhaManiacs, it was more like we were bringing back the Tiny Titans style so it was real different.
This book really inverts the classic Batman relationship with his rogue’s gallery: Instead of being a force of vengeance, he just wants to fit in and play. How did you guys develop that inversion for this story?
Baltazar: It all starts because Bruce Wayne is not vengeful yet. He didn’t get hurt; he doesn’t have those Batman feelings yet. That had a big part with this story, everything is still good with him.
Franco Aureliani: Yeah, we pushed it from the angle of what would he be like at this age and what kind of things would be open to him. We wanted to play with the idea of his imagination because, later, this is the guy that comes up with Batman. He puts on the costume and defends Gotham City and we were like “Where did he come up with that idea?” We know from the origin but we kind of wanted to make our pre-origin, if you will. [Laughs] How does he use his imagination? Well, he looks over at the people of Arkham Apartments and says “Who are all those colorful guys and why are they having so much fun?”