War Rocket Ajax #148: Josh Williamson Talks ‘Young Bruce Wayne!’

This week on War Rocket Ajax, Josh Williamson -- the co-creator of the Craftsman Technician! -- returns to the show for a chat about Masks & Mobsters and his upcoming Legends of the Dark Knight story about a young Bruce Wayne traveling the world. He'll tell us all about what made him want to write a pre-Batman story, chat about his influences, and of course, argue with at least one of the hosts over a bit of trivia -- and you can listen to the entire show right here at ComicsAlliance!War Rocket Ajax #148: I'm Like Castle with Josh Williamson

(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

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This week, Chris is gearing up for a trip to New York, while Matt is marveling at the wild world of Russian dashboard cameras. There is also fretting about the weather, and as fun as all of this might sound, keep in mind that you were the ones that complained about all the wrestling talk. To make up for it: A special all Justice League comics review segment.

When Josh joins us, we talk about Batman. A lot. More than you might expect.

I've always had a thing about Batman. It's an obsession. It's one of the early comics I read as a kid, obviously, like everyone else.

It's weird, because you look at Untold Legend of the Batman, and so much of that is not how it is now. Especially Joe Chill, you know? In that book, Joe Chill becomes a crime boss and runs away from Batman and gets hit by a car, which is not at all what we have now. It's not even close to that. So my obsession with Batman started with that.

I was in college for like three weeks, and I was living in the dorm. When you're in the dorms, you meet best friends, and I went to an art school, so everyone there liked comics or liked comic book art. I made friends with this guy, and he was a big Batman fan too, so we started talking about Batman in the laundry room, just going back and forth, talking about the history of Batman, and we got a crowd, because people were walking over and hearing stuff that were like "wait, what now?" And I was like "Yeah, then No Man's Land..." and I had to explain No Man's Land to somebody. It got to the point where we had like 20 guys sitting in the laundry room with me explaining the history of Batman from the beginning, the changes from Crisis on Infinite Earths, the changes from Zero Hour, all the way up through No Man's Land. I had to explain it all to this room full of people, and I nailed it. I just taught a class on the history of Batman, sitting there for hours.

So doing this, Legends of the Dark Knight, I have been pitching this story for years. I pitched it before there was Legends of the Dark Knight. Ever since I heard they were doing digital stuff, original content for digital, I have been pitching this. "I want to do Young Bruce Wayne." Because there hasn't been a lot of stories about him at that time period.

Show Notes:

Follow Josh on Twitter and check out his website!

You can grab both Masks & Mobsters and the LOTDK series at Comixology.

Never read the "Garfield Dies Alone" story from 1989? Here you go:

Chris's Rec: Speculoos Cookie Butter

Matt's Rec: House of Cards

Comics Reviewed:

Justice League #17: "Here's a crazy thing. This is the fifth part in the story, right? I didn't feel like anything had happened before this." "The entire thing is very clearly and very obviously meant to make Aquaman a super badass, to the point that a frowny cop goes 'I never thought I'd say this, but he's DANGEROUS!' In case you missed that he's a super-cool badass now, they go ahead and tell you."

Justice League of America #1: "While Justice League was not a good comic and didn't service any of its characters except one, it was nowhere near the morass of confusing, weird, why-is-this-happening kind of stuff that Justice League of America #1 is." "This could not be more like a 1994 Image comic. This is whatever the team that was put together to take down Youngblood would be. Bloodblood. This could be Bloodblood #1."

Justice League of America's Vibe #1: "Vibe #1, shocker of the year, is enjoyable. I mentioned this back when they announced they were going to do a Vibe series, once I was done laughing, I do like Andrew Kriesberg. He is the guy who wrote Helen Killer, the book about Alexander Graham Bell inventing special glasses that give Helen Keller her sight and hearing back and also turn her into a ninja, which is ten times better than that premise should be. I ended up really enjoying this; he and Johns work really well together."