upshot

It's a magical thing, being a writer–especially a writer of comic books. Because you get to think up these incredible scenarios, these impossible situations, and then someone goes and draws them.

For example. I wrote a page where the Batman stalks through the streets of Gotham, as he's trying to find the Scarecrow. He's already been dosed by the Scarecrow's fear gas and he knows his body well enough to know it's had some effect, but he can't tell how much it's had. As he walks, he's talking to Commissioner Gordon, and without even noticing—or, not overly consciously, as he subconsciously notices pretty much everything at all times—he stops a fight between drunken idiots outside a bar...just by walking by. He doesn't say anything to them, he certainly doesn't do anything to them, he doesn't even look at them. He just walks by and they freeze.

Here's what the first three panels look like:

And here's my script for the final panel:

Not sure how you want to shoot this. I see the dark knight walking right towards us and we see the former pugilists in the background, but maybe you want to reverse that? Anyhoo, it’s clear that even with the Batman gone and still ignoring (while not ignoring) them, all the fight’s gone right the hell out of them. Are they shaking hands? Are they shrugging at each other? Are they simply walking away from each other, in opposite directions? Who, other than the artist, can possibly say?

So that's what I wrote. And here's what I got:

Come on. That upshot through a sewer grate, the shadow showing us what the reversed letters reveal (Kelley's subtle reference to Plato's Cave, without question), underscoring the importance of Gotham to the Dark Knight in general and this story in particular, the upshot accentuating the Batman's inherently heroic stature, the location of the camera emphasizing the nature of the city.

Yeah, I get paid to write this stuff and have the brilliant Kelley Jones turn it into that.