Chip Zdarsky, a massive Popverse Con-versation

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Nobody in comics had longer lines at C2E2 than Chip Zdarsky. Alongside Batman artist Jorge Jiménez, Zdarsky could be found hour after hour signing comics, merch, and art from fans of his ongoing run on Batman and Avengers: Twilight, as well as his beloved work on Sex Criminals, Spider-Man, Daredevil, and much more. Once known primarily for humor comics and a Watchmen 2 pitch centered around Dr. Manhattan's butt, there's little denying Zdarsky is now among the most well-known names in comics.

Before another long day of greeting fans, Popverse had the chance to sit down with Zdarsky for an extended, candid reflection on the recently announced Public Domain spinoff comic (The Domain), some unexpected inspirations for the ongoing Batman run, and of course, Marvel's answer to the Dark Knight Returns, Avengers: Twilight.

Popverse: You recently announced The Domain, a spin-off comic about the comic being made within the Eisner award-winning Public Domain. Why a separate miniseries? When did it become more than, let's say, backmatter for Public Domain?

Chip Zdarsky: It was always going to be its own thing. I had the idea right when I started that eventually our crew was going to form, like, the Avengers, and start a comic company and make comics.

I never even considered the idea of making them backmatter or inserts or anything. Because I like the form of the comic. The fact that someone can hold the comic as if they are in that world. There were a lot of questions as to whether or not we're going to put our real names on it.

Right now, the way the cover is, it's got the character names as the creators, and then scratched out, and we've scrawled our names on it. But the inside has the credits and it has me and Rachel [Stott] and Eren [Angiolini].

I really debated - I want this to feel real. I wanted it to say Syd Dallas, Miles Dallas… But you know, I thought about it more like, well, I am the guy that writes Batman. Maybe I should parlay that into something. So if someone sees my name on it, they might pick it up. So yeah, it's always its own thing. It just made sense that way for the reader.

How do you separate [The Domain] from, let's say, your other superhero work? This is the comic within this universe of corporate IP and commentary on the Big Two publishers - What is the approach that feels unique and different for you in this take?

There's a couple of things. The first is the fact that it stems from the character discussions in Public Domain. So, in issue seven of Public Domain, you're privy to the conversations between a generational divide. Syd Dallas, the father, wants The Domain. He wants the classic superhero.

And the kids are a bit more, well, what's different about it? And they want The Domain to be a woman or a person of color. And the dad's just like, 'But we've got The Domain.' Like, it's the character, right? That's one of the interesting parts, the fact that The Domain, the series, stems from those conversations.

So what they land on is these three characters that share the power. That drama plays out in Public Domain. Kind of a behind-the-scenes look. That makes it different. And also the fact that I've never done a real proper superhero origin story. It is a very classic "Kids find a magic item and they get powers and what does that mean for their lives?"

So getting to do a classic story like that, I've never really had a chance to do.

Do you think it's pretty easy entry for someone who isn't as familiar with Public Domain?

We had to really make sure that that was the case. You can pick it up, read it, not even know Public Domain exists. You're like, oh yeah, it's a fun superhero comic. It's the kind of book you can hand to a kid. Public Domain is a bit more for adults. The Domain, like, if I just saw an eight-year-old, I'd be like, 'Hey, check this out.'

I mean, comics already have enough of a problem of having to know a lot of continuity in order to get into what you're reading. So when we're doing something at Image, you don't really want that at all. It's really directed at kids and adults who love the feel of a classic superhero story.

You're writing a bunch about the historic ills of the industry in Public Domain, and the way the corporations and ownership rights cause issues. At the same time, you're very much able to play those games at DC and Marvel. How do you feel about the state of creator rights with the big two? As somebody who's both investing and commenting on that world. Where do you feel things are at?

Obviously, over the decades, it's gone up and down. There are the periods of getting the original art back from Marvel - That was a huge deal. In the early 80s, Paul Levitz at DC really pushing for greater rights and various payouts over the years.

I'm both lucky and cursed in the sense that I came into comics after a lot of friends of mine had already gone through the system. I'm friends with Ed Brubaker, for example, so I saw him struggling with, you know, wow, Winter Soldier's really taken off in these movies. And, he worked out a deal with Marvel and got paid, and that's great. But having witnessed those, I'm so at peace with whatever happens. It doesn't matter to me as much as it does to other people.

On a personal level, I enjoy helping people fight for what's theirs. I've done it behind the scenes, weirdly, in a lot of creator-owned situations where a creator's been ripped off by another creator. I'm just like, oh, no, let's get the lawyer on that because that's no good. But for myself, it's like, I was lucky enough that my first big comic was Sex Criminals, which I fully own with Matt [Fraction].

That didn't set me up financially for life, but it definitely provided a nice solid base where when I do stuff at Marvel and DC, I'm not as reliant on the back-end stuff. Whereas, obviously, there're GoFundMe's for creators from the 80s for hospital bills or, you know, a lot of terrible situations. So for me personally, I'm more okay with it because I know the deal when I sign up. I've seen it happen to others. I know what happens when I sign up.

When a various property at DC or Marvel gets picked up, I know what the phone call is going to be, I know what the amount's going to be, and I'm at peace with it. Because my idea is like, okay, parlay that into your creator-owned stuff, right? Because that's where your future is for every creator. It's a thing you own, obviously, you're not at the whims of an editor who could fire you and just hate you and never hire you again. And there're only so many places you can work at in comics.

Also because the editors that I work with, they recognize - well, they're not fat cats. If I'm dealing with, like, Tom Brevoort, he's not sitting on a pile of money, like, 'Haha, I'm going to screw you over for your rights!' Those discussions are far above them. Everyone that I deal with loves comics and they want to make sure people get paid and they do their best to make sure people get paid.

You were part of the wave of creators who were publishing first through Substack. How's that experience going a little deeper into it? You have your Hickman or Tynion IV who are running their own publishers in a way. Did you feel like you needed to become a publishing company? Or did you never feel that pressure?

I don't have the grand ambitions of those creators. I just don't have the brain for it. I think James [Tynion IV] is maybe the smartest guy in comics. Like, he understands marketing, brand, building, everything.

I'm just a guy who likes to make comics 9 to 5, and then I clock out at 5 o'clock. I didn't want to do anything grand, but it was a great opportunity to start Public Domain there. And the fact that it was a book about creator ownership, and Substack allowed us to own the work, that was super important. My newsletter was there before the grant. So I was already used to the system and that level of interaction. And now, two, three years later? Like, the grant's done. But I shut off social media. Like, I turned off Instagram, I turned off Twitter. I'm not accessible anywhere except for the Substack.

Did Substack get you off social? Or did being on Batman push that?

No, if anything, the Batman thing is like, 'Oh God, like, I've got to parlay this, I've got to reach more people.' I think that never goes away for a creator.

Just seeing how people are treated online, not even just myself. I never search my name online, but I search other creators to see how people are treating them, and it's, like, oh my god, it's horrible, just horrible. And so, the nice thing about Substack is, I can control that. I've got my newsletter, and the only people that are allowed to comment are people who pay the 35 bucks a year or whatever. And the shocking, perhaps unshocking thing is, nobody wants to pay money to shit on someone. Unless they've really lost their mind.

The internet is a great place to be an asshole for free. As soon as you put any kind of dollar amount in front of a person, then they won't, right? They want to find somewhere else to be an asshole. But they're not going to pay money to be an asshole. So all the comments are from people who are just, like, they have questions. They're interested in the work. The money part isn't even - I'm not raking in money, it's just that it's a nice barrier to entry.

But the fact that it's my own thing - it's a joy. It's weird, but maybe my favorite times of the week are when I sit down to write my Substacks. Because I get to say whatever and do whatever. And Substack also allowed me to make my Chipclass videos. Which were some of the most fun I've had in comics in years.

Before comics, I used to work in a newspaper and I would do dumb videos and weird projects and stunts. While comics is fun, it's very monotonous. Cause your every day is the same. You sit down, open your laptop, start typing, send it in, review pages, draw. It's a bit of Groundhog Day, in a sense. So having something different like that, being afforded a chance to actually spend some money and make some fun videos was great. I want to do more - there are plans for me and some friends to do more videos because I just want to have fun.

Switching gears a little bit. You mentioned recently on the Off Panel podcast you were first offered Ultimate Spider-Man with Marco [Chechetto]. You had to turn it down. Why don't you say why? Why did you choose to turn it down?

I should never have mentioned that [laughs]. I always like to mention in public the things I turned down that went on to be successes. But I never mention the things I turned down that ended up being failures. That's harmful to the other creators and makes me sound smart when I'm really not.

The editor on the Ultimate line, Wil Moss, contacted me because he's like, it just made sense, right? I'm known for Spider-Man, Marco loves Spider-Man and wants to draw it desperately, so [Wil] approached me with it. He gave me the outline for Hickman's alternate universe idea, and where he had a picture of Spider-Man fitting into all of it. And I read it, I'm like, this is awesome, I love it, I'm the number one Hickman fan. And so when I read it, I'm just like, this is a great Hickman story.

Like, he should be doing it. It's a no-brainer to me. He's never written Spider-Man. I don't think he much cares for the character as he exists in the Marvel Universe. Like, fine for a cameo, but I don't think he's ever had a desire to write Amazing Spider-Man. But to make his own version? It's the perfect opportunity for him to be on the biggest character and also be able to do his own thing.

And so I read all this and I talked to my editor, and I'm just like, I love it and I want to read it. I don't want to write it, I want to read this. I think it would be foolish to not have Hickman doing it. I think it would fail without him on it, frankly. Because these are very much Hickman ideas.

Was [Hickman] already doing the Ultimate Universe set-up at this point?

I was brought in a little early in the process where I think maybe I'd read, like, two or three issues of script for the Ultimate mini that kicked it off. But Hickman likes to plan, so he kind of had the long game for what the world looks like. So, yeah, I told the editor this is a Hickman book. And also I'm on Batman - it's very hard to do other things. It would have been awesome, to be like, yeah, I'm doing Batman and I'm doing Spider-Man. Who gets to say that? But it was the wrong move and I knew it, and so I told my editor that.

And then, months later, I was on the phone with Hickman about something else, and at some point, he said, 'Oh hey man, like, thanks for turning down Ultimate Spider-Man. I'm having so much fun on it.'

And he was surprised, I think, at how much fun he was having. He's like, 'Yeah, I'm five issues in on script.' He's ahead on script. Just because he was enjoying the process so much. I was so looking forward to that issue one. You have no idea. I love him and I love Marco.

Seeing all the pages to issue one early, I was just blown away. Even without the text, I'm like, oh, this is a hit. You can just tell. I saw the Uncle Ben stuff in there, and I'm like, oh yeah, this is gonna be amazing. I'm super, super happy, especially for Marco. It's his dream project, and he's killing it. And the fact that Hickman gets to do his own thing. You just get out of Jonathan's way, and he'll make you money.

So really anyone who is enjoying the book should be thanking you.

[Laughs] I guess so. You're welcome. I turned it down.

When people look back on your Batman run, how do you hope they will remember it?

Quote-unquote, 'Not too bad.' That's a good question. I don't know. I never think of legacy, or anything like that.

I just want people to think it was fun. Even at the convention, people would bring me issues that Jorge [Jiménez] drew that I wrote, and I just love flipping through just to see Jorge's art. It's a total joy.

I try to put something fun and big or cool in every issue. Because as a reader that's what I want. There are many ways to do Batman. In the future, I might focus more on, like, smaller kinds of detective stories and darker things. But I'm a huge Morrison fan, and so the idea of going big and wild with it, and tapping into the Zurr-En-Arrh stuff really appealed to me.

So yeah, I just went with it. I wanted to hit the ground running and just not stop. The unfortunate side effect of that is it's very hard for the other writers to figure out where their stories fit into the continuity because there's been no break point in my Batman run.

There's no point where he's like, ah, all right, now time to rest, and then the next issue picks up a new story. He's just constantly going from one calamitous thing to the next, and I've enjoyed writing that pace.

Is Year One, the Joker stuff you're doing now, is that a chance to catch your breath a little bit, and be like, well it's a flashback and set in the future?

That was a chance to have Jorge catch his breath a little bit because Jorge desperately wants to draw every issue. We always have conversations with him saying, you can't, like, you physically can't. Because it’s Batman, they always do 18 issues a year or whatever. He's a page-a-day guy, but even still, it's impossible.

I've had this Joker story planned from the beginning, and I was like, oh, if I can really section it off and make it its own thing, then I can buy Jorge some time to get ahead. But the plan backfired. Because it's three 30-page issues. And my Batman editor was like, oh this is great. And then he started to get cold feet about three issues focusing on the Joker and not focusing on Batman. The title's Batman. And I kept saying, well, Batman's in it. He shows up.

But he was still nervous. So he was like, we should put them all out in one month. Make it a big event. So I had to write 90 pages of comics to buy Jorge one month. Massive backfire on that one. I loved working with Giuseppe and Andrea. That was a lot of fun, to see their work was a joy, but it did not help us schedule-wise the way I'd hoped it would. These are all the behind-the-scenes things that I don't know people need to know, but it was pretty funny. He was like, 'We're going to do it all in one month!' I'm like, 'Oh, God damn it.' [Laughs.]

You mentioned you're pulling in Zurr-En-Arrh. Why do you think that concept resonated so strongly? It seems like sometimes Morrison's concepts can scare away creators. You saw it with X-Men for a long time, Batman for sure. Zurr-En-Arrh is one of my favorite things from that whole run, but what made it something you had to dig into?

It evolved pretty naturally because the whole point of the Failsafe arc was Batman's backup plans. And so, as soon as I tapped into the idea that he made this robot, in case everything went wrong, I'm like, well, he has another backup plan.

And that backup plan was always Zurr-En-Arrh. So how do I wrap that into this, and slowly make it the more Batman-y Batman that is sick of Bruce Wayne and all these goddamn kids running around. So yeah, it tied into the theme of Bruce getting older, slowing down a little bit, and having more family around him. And what his plans are to save himself in that situation. Zurr-En-Arrh just fit the bill perfectly. And I was like, I wasn't necessarily nervous. I respect Grant's work so much. But also, I love the fact that Grant is known for playing with stuff that came before, right? Zurr-En-Arrh obviously was a 1950s Batman thing that they updated for the run.

So it would be a disservice to the reader to avoid that step, I think. Because Grant played with continuity. Everyone plays with continuity. It's the joy of these kinds of comics. So to not play with that… Grant's stories are Grant's stories. What I do doesn't change them retroactively.

If everyone hates what I've done, fine. I'm not ruining Grant's stories. Those are still the best Batman stories, I think, of all time. So they stand on their own. And it was the same with when I brought in the Dark Knight Returns version of Batman. You're walking on sacred ground a little bit, but it's also like, well, it's comics, who cares? Have some fun. You wait for DC to tell you that you've gone too far. Or the creators themselves. If at any point Grant reached out and said, 'Hey man, dial back the Zurr-En-Arrh stuff, please,' I would have done it. I think they understand the game, the system, and the joy of continuity.

You're referencing a lot of stuff in here. You were very lovingly referential with Daredevil too, with the Nocenti / John Romita Jr. run, which I think is a favorite of yours. Here you have Zero Year, you have Three Jokers stuff even. Is there anything from the Batman lore that you think is super underrated? Anything where you've gone back and you're like, Oh, this stuff doesn't get that same level of attention?

Oh man, that's hard to say because Batman just in general gets a lot of attention. As a teenager, I think Norm Breyfogle was maybe the best Batman artist. He and Alan Grant - It was amazing. It's just such a cool stylistic change from what Batman looked like before. I sketched it all the time in my notebooks in high school. And there were a lot of fun elements in that run that really hold up. But yeah,Batman as a whole, I can't say, like, oh, Tom King's underrated, or, you know, Scott Snyder's underrated, or James, like basically everyone that ends up on that book does quite well.

Joker's origin seems especially hard. There's Killing Joke, and then there's Three Jokers, and there's a lot of Red Hood gang story. How do you navigate doing an origin for a character that is kind of defined by not having one?

There are a few points in Joker: Year One, where I let the reader know that, oh, maybe Joker's playing this guy. Daniel Captio is the Batman mentor who infiltrates Joker's mind a little bit, and Joker approaches him as being, you know, quote-unquote broken - but it's like, oh, is he broken? Like, was this a plan all along to get his knowledge? I like leaving things a little bit vague.

With the Three Joker stuff, that's technically not in continuity. It's a weird thing because Geoff [Johns] and Jason's [Fabok] story is technically not in continuity because it's Black Label and there's swearing, and sex and things that you don't really have in the Batman comics. Everyone was kind of in the wrong costumes because it took a long time. So when I started on Batman, my editor was like, hey, just so you know, that's out of continuity, but there's something really interesting in the fact that Geoff teed it up in DC main continuity with Batman and Metron's chair and there being three Jokers. So he's like, do you want to play with that and make that the DC universe version of Three Jokers? Kind of playing off the idea that's happening in this other universe? So I was like, yeah, sure!

So you're doing your own Three Jokers based on that setup?

Yeah, exactly. And to not copy and to not get in the way of Geoff's thing because it's his own thing and it's great.

Do you like that concept?

Yeah. I mean, as long as it's done with mystery. It's very similar to the Joker: Year One stuff where it's like, okay, we don't necessarily need to know Joker's tragic backstory and stuff like that.

I think the three Jokers concept actually makes them a bit more mysterious. Cause like, what the fuck? When you're reading that, you're like, how? Why? My reveal in Joker Year One for anyone who - sorry if you haven't read it yet - but the fact that they were the three personalities within him, his Zurr-En-Arrhs, in a sense. It was fun to thread that through. But it's also a way to explain why he shows up differently. I broke it down to, like, there's classic clown Joker, there's the dark, subdued serial killer Joker (which is like the Tom [King] / Mitch [Gerads] kind of version that you see in their Joker story that they did in Brave and Bold), and then there's the demon, which is I think Scott [Snyder] and Greg's [Capullo] version. Which is very much like, has he been alive for hundreds of years? Is he a supernatural creature? So I gave him those three personalities.

That was my version of Three Jokers. These are things he accesses from time to time to rise to whatever occasion he needs to. That was fun. I don't think anyone saw it coming. That helps too.

I totally did not - I had not made the parallel that this was the Zurr-En-Arrh of the Joker, but using the Three Jokers idea. That's pretty good.

The red herring was in Batman 900. We had multiple Jokers created within the world thanks to the multiverse adventures. But then at the beginning of the Joker Year One, you see them basically murder the other two. Maybe.

I like keeping that vague as well because, again, for Joker, keeping it vague is good. But also down the road, whoever follows me on Batman might be, like, 'Oh, that one Joker is still out there.' You know, he's hurt, maybe he's got a scar or whatever. He's something different. And then Matt Rosenberg played with the idea of multiple Jokers. So, yeah, there's a lot… Maybe too many Jokers? I don't know.

Can you ever have too many? I think DC would say no.

DC would say no.

On Avengers Twilight, Tom Breevort has talked about it as the answer to Batman's The Dark Knight Returns. You're writing Batman, but you're also doing a lot with origins and endings. You're doing Year Zeros. You're doing Dark Knight Returns style, end-of-the-universe-type stuff. How do you feel about the challenge of doing Marvel's Dark Knight Returns? Did you ever view it through that lens of their evergreen end of the Avengers?

No, because it was pitched to me as they wanted a future Avengers story. And then Tom's gone on record saying Dark Knight, but I'm pulling from a lot of different future stories. Like, obviously, the heroes all being attacked, and secret identities exposed in the flashbacks, that's very much an Old Man Logan reference. Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, for sure. Which is really funny because I got a fan email from Mark Waid. When issue one came out, he was like, 'Hey, this is great. I think it's the best thing you've done.' I wrote back, 'Yeah, of course, because I'm copying you.'

I mean, there's so much freedom in doing these kinds of stories because you can design and create the whole world. The one thing that was funny: Tom, the editor, kept having to remind me this is its own thing. You can really fuck these characters up. You don't have to be so precious. I'm like, oh yeah, okay. I have to be reminded no one's picking this up after me. Like, I don't have to tee up the next writer because it's its own series.

So that allowed me to kind of go a bit wilder.

You started writing Avengers Twilight in 2019. Do you feel like any of the commentary and the social commentary, does any of that make you cringe?

I wrote the outline and then the pandemic hit, and so much of the commentary is about 'Don't trust the government.' Don't trust them just on the face of it. You have to keep an eye on the people in power or else they'll just get away with stuff.

And I firmly believe it. I think that's an important part of a democracy, keeping an eye on the people who you've elected. But then the pandemic hit and I was just like, 'Please trust your government! Oh God!' I'd already written the first couple of scripts, I think, at that point. I'm like, do I go back and rethink this whole thing? But no, you can't write for the thing that's happening in the moment. You have to write for the overall belief that you have.

Cause all the stuff about misinformation and the reframing of the Red Skull, I mean, I think that hits now as hard as it would have five years ago.

A lot of people were like, 'Oh, hey, is James Stark your Elon Musk?' I'm like, no, cause I didn't think of Elon Musk back in 2019, really.

Does that feel good though? For people to have these connections and you're like, 'I wrote that five years ago.'

Kind of, yeah. It helps to make you at least hope that it's going to be a timeless thing that people can pick up years from now. But the misinformation, disinformation thing is very much from my past as a journalist. And also my wife works in that field developing curriculums to teach kids about spotting misinformation and disinformation online. Because kids aren't really taught to interact with the internet. Parents just assume they know how to do it. But they're just accepting whatever they see as just real.

It's easier to hit the kids than it is parents and grandparents. All that stuff resonated then for me a lot. Because I was kind of privy to a lot of it. My wife was doing a lot of research and the things she told me were just blood-curdling - how easily swayed and fooled people are by stuff.

Then the big thing was issue five. Our big fight-climax was literally Nazis storming the capital. And I wrote that in 2019, 2020.

Before January 6th?

Yes, far before. So when January 6th rolled around, I'm watching it on TV from Canada and I was like, 'Oh my God, this is insane.'

And then my next thought was, 'Oh shit, this is what I wrote.' And so, I talked to Marvel, my editor, Tom, and he's like, 'All right, we've still got some time, but the story is the story - you've got the story.' I said, yeah, I don't want to change that because even changing locations didn't make a lot of sense. Like, I don't want them storming the White House. That's not a good scene for the fight.

To Marvel's credit, they were just like, 'Alright, we'll massage some language here and there.' Just to make sure it doesn't seem like - I think they were more worried about me looking like a hack. Like I was writing it after the fact, and people could say, 'Oh, so obvious.' So I rewrote it a bit to make it not as direct, but to Marvel's credit, they were just, like, stay with this idea, stay with the idea of literal Nazis and the Red Skull storming the capital, soldiers being fed misinformation, all of that.

I haven't seen any discussion about it. So, for all I know, I'm being torn apart by right-wing mobs. I don't really want to know. I'd like the work to speak for itself, but, rest assured, it was written before that. In a lot of interviews leading up to the book coming out, I kept stressing, 'This was written several years ago.' Because I knew this part was coming.