Speaking of shocking stories, Denys, in Batman Confidential, you’re penciling a story fans have been waiting for forever—the definitive origin of the Joker! How do you feel about that?
COWAN: I feel incredibly fortunate to be doing it. It’s one of those things where BET Animation is a full-time job. So I’m doing it literally in the hour that I have before I hang out with [my family] or the hour before I have to go to work or whatever, and so it’s been a long process. DC Comics has been incredibly patient with me. That being said, I think that it’s a privilege to be working on the character. Batman is one of my favorite characters and the Joker is the Joker we know. I’m working with a writer named Michael Green. Michael Green is executive producer and one of the writers of NBC’s “Heroes.” He and I got together and came up with the story, and I’m drawing it. It’s as simple as that, and I get a chance to contribute to Batman history. It’s so cool!
HUDLIN: Once again, people forget that a big part of “Batman Begins” is based on characters and foundations that Denys laid down years ago. I mean, those middle years between the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents and the time when he became Batman, those storylines came out of Denys.
COWAN: Yeah, it was a series that Sam Hamm and I did. It was Detective Comics’ 50th anniversary. So what we did was come up with the character of [Henri] Ducard, who’s played by Liam Neeson. All of that stuff with [Batman] training in the monastery and him working with ninjas and all of that stuff was Sam and I. So they got that right from those books. So, thank you very much “Batman Begins.” I was privileged to be in the right place at the right time.
