A new Dark Knight rises.
A new villain emerges.
Evil is in bloom.
This week in Batman #43, a mysterious rogue hits Gotham City.
James Gordon is the all-new Batman in high-tech armor. Someone has been giving superpowers to Gotham’s underworld bad guys and thugs.
Mister Bloom is the source behind the outbreak.
Writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo reveal the origins of Mister Bloom in a new DC Comics interview:
“Scott had this idea for a character who’s like a weed. He’s just running rampant across Gotham, coming up through the cracks. When he talked to me about this originally he told me to picture him with a flower on his face, but flowers don’t really strike me as scary. But the first thing Scott started sending me were those painted skulls, the ones with the very ornate designs painted on them and often they have a flower motif. I looked at them, and I thought they looked cool, but actually drawing something like that and making it work wouldn’t be the easiest thing,” Capullo told DC Comics.
But when he told me about the idea of weeds—well, weeds to me can be creepy. I initially started trying to move him away from the flower idea and at one point I did something with these weeds that were interwoven on the face that almost looked like this macabre bridal veil or something—it was pretty freaky looking. But Scott kept on with the flower thing, “Something like a big sunflower with a Cyclops eye.”
What sold me was that Scott found a picture of a flower that at the center looked like it was a meat-eater. It had all these spiny teeth in concentric circles in there. I knew I could make that work, and that’s how the mask came to be while keeping the costume really simple. We had the idea that he can elongate things and one of the things that came in at the last minute were the fishnets [that cover his exposed skin]. That was my end of things, and now it’s just continuing to try and make him look creepy and scary.”
After the creative team took on the Court of Owls, Joker and Riddler – how did the decide on this new villain to throw at the new man behind the Bat:
“I wanted him to be kind of like a weed that grows in the cracks between neighborhoods when things don’t go well in the city. I wanted him to be this thing that’s kind of slender and unassuming, but that’s extremely deadly once he unleashes himself. Greg came up with a bunch of great designs, and any one of them would have been wonderful, but the final one I just think is just amazing. It’s really hard to design something that’s both really simple and iconic, and I think he did it.” said Scott Snyder.
“I’m very excited. I love how deadly Mr. Bloom is. He’s really spooky to me. Growing up in the city, he kind of represents all the things that I was afraid of as a kid.”
Not only is Gordon dealing the the mystery man behind the wave of empowered underworld thugs…there’s the mystery of Bruce Wayne?
When will Wayne return to the Cape and Cowl? Snyder says this week’s issue is key to Gordon and Bruce’s near futures.
Batman #43 arrives this week.
By Editor