It’s not that it’s superhuman, it’s that it is a coping mechanism. So then leaning into certain realities of that…I don’t think that we talk enough about the mental health of Bruce Wayne. On the one hand, it’s visually cool and exciting to dress up as a bat and go beat people up and at the same time, that’s deranged. The point that so many creators and fans bring up about how Bruce Wayne should be in Arkham along with all of the villains, I don’t necessarily disagree with that. So it just kind of felt like, lean into that a little bit more, let’s be a little bit more honest about what’s going on with this guy. DC Publicity (July 14, 2021). "Batman: The Imposter - A Gritty, Noir Version of Gotham City Greets the Dark Knight!". DC Comics.com. DC Comics . Retrieved February 17, 2022.

There are lots of ways to explore Bruce Wayne's early years as Gotham's Caped Crusader, as evidenced by everything from Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman: Zero Year, but Tomlin wasn't interested in telling another origin story. What he was interested in was an in-depth exploration of Bruce Wayne's motives and drive, something he achieved by immediately putting the character in conflict with a new version of Gotham City staple Dr. Leslie Thompkins. There are characters who mirror one another, whether it is Batman facing a version of himself that doesn’t mind the bloodshed, or Bruce forming a dynamic with Blair, who went a similar trauma as a child like Bruce’s. Considering how emo Bruce gets in the story, Blaire serves as a nice counter as she serves as a co-protagonist and their relationship brings out the emotional core, as well as showing a life that Bruce could have outside of the Batman. Rolph, Ben (July 14, 2021). "Batman: The Imposter Will Feature DC's Grittiest Dark Knight Yet". Screen Rant . Retrieved February 17, 2022. Imagine Batman growing up without his other father figure an angry, brilliant, and still very young in his crime fighting career. He has made his mark, but things have changed. Does the city still need or want a Batman, let alone two. Foil: Detective Blair Wong serves as one to Bruce Wayne. They were both orphaned at an early age, with their parents being murdered by criminals. However, while Blair followed her father's footsteps into the police force, waging her war on crime on the right side of the law, Bruce chose to become an outlaw vigilante. Blair is also far more emotionally healthy than the damaged and disturbed Bruce.It’s tough to talk about because of the the Writers Guild of it all. I had a wonderful time working with my friend and then found myself in this place where I was like, “man, I love Batman and I’m still thinking about it and I have all this brain energy that I’ve put into it, and nowhere to put any of this stuff.” So it was a while later, months after any of the time that I had with Matt Reeves. It then became, “actually, I think that there’s something that I could do here that could kind of be its own thing” and give me my time in Gotham where I really can go “this is what I have to say about this character.” And in a way that was really rewarding and lovely for me to get to go into it on my own terms like that. But it was definitely disconnected from from any of [the movie stuff]. Early in his vigilante career, Batman stumbles into Leslie Thompson's office on the edge of dying. Leslie helps stabilize Bruce and gives him an ultimatum: Come talk with her for an hour after every night or she will turn him into the police. Meanwhile, there is a Batman impersonator in Gotham but is taking the extra step in killing his victims. Otis Flannegan commits suicide in the police department, but not before revealing the Batman imposter had a hideout in the sewers. Batman confronts the imposter but the Gotham Police arrive and start shooting at Batman. Batman is wounded heavily and caught by Detective Wong. Batman reveals his identity to convince Detective Wong he isn't the killer, and she lets him go. Bruce Wayne meets up with Leslie Thompkins to tell her he won't be attending her therapy sessions. Leslie tries convincing Bruce that Batman isn't the solution to the crime problem, Bruce Wayne could donate to charity to make Gotham City a better place but Bruce ignores her. Bruce Wayne realizes the imposter is using guns from Lawrence Loman who wants to be the Kingpin of Gotham City. Batman meets up with Detective Wong to ask her for help and asks her to meet alone. They meet up, but Blair is shot by the Batman Imposter. As Batman fights the imposter, the Imposter reveals himself to be Blair's partner Hatcher who tells Batman the reason why he's killing the criminals is because of Batman and Gordon's mistake. Batman and Blair manage to defeat the imposter, and allows himself to be arrested by Blair. Batman asks Blair if she arrests him, would Gotham City be safe, and Blair decides to let him escape. Batman meets up with Arnold Wesker, but instead of turning Arnold in Batman leads him to Leslie Thompkins and visits his parents grave before vowing to help Gotham City as Bruce Wayne. [3] Publication [ edit ] This is such an intense book, but do you think there’s ever a point in this character’s career where Batman becomes well adjusted? Where he’s able to make peace with some of these more troublesome elements of himself, but is still able to continue his career? Because all through The Imposter, Leslie Tompkins is making appeals to Bruce Wayne as a “force of nature.” I don’t know that I’ve seen that before. Is there a point where these two elements can resolve but Batman can continue to be Batman? Or does Batman only exist if those two things are in conflict? The story is an Elseworld of a kind with a younger Batman so there are a few discrepancies with the regular series. It is very dark indeed, with a lonely Bruce Wayne consumed with the inner rage he fights to control and who chases after the imposter threatening to ruin what he’s built as Batman.

I spent a lot of time in the Imposter universe thinking about what the hell Robin would look like. Just kind of thinking about this guy taking on a surrogate child and what that all means. We’ve seen so many different interpretations of it and …there’s a lot of darkness there, and also a lot of light. I haven’t sat down to actually write that story yet. But I certainly find myself daydreaming about what it might look like in this universe. This kind of take on the character is going to feel different from some of the other things that we’ve seen before.Holland, Dustin (October 18, 2021). "DC's Batman: The Imposter #1 Comic Review". Comic Book Resources . Retrieved February 17, 2022. Andrea Sorrentino's european and peculiar style adds a lot to the whole ambiance of course. The funny thing with Sorrentino is that I don’t even like his style but can’t help being fascinated with it. It catches up your eye, whether you like or not, and never lets go of you. Still, some panels are not always clear and the storytelling, though ambitious, is sometimes confusing. Tomlinson is the writer of the upcoming batman movie of 2022 (as of this time) and it seems like this story takes place there and its amazingly done and he sets up a lot of easter eggs and the main story is an imposter going around murdering people and how does Bruce react to it or stop them and I love the way he handles it with Leslie and this new detective Claire wong and also showing how similar they are and pushing the romance angle and then the revelations and all the drama that comes from it and finally the big reveal and its handled so well and leads to great ending which makes you think a lot of things! Bittersweet Ending: Tends towards Downer Ending. While Batman does stop the murderous imposter, his legacy remains tarnished, perhaps irrevocably, since it's impossible for the authorities and the public to really know which Batman did what. The wealthy and the powerful of Gotham remain opposed to Batman, so he's unlikely to ever enjoy again the limited leeway he once did with the GCPD. Detective Blair Wong knows his true identity, and is ambivalent about him at best, further complicating his situation. The one positive for Bruce by the end of the story is that he's come to some kind of an understanding with Leslie Thompkins, and even sends Arnold Wesker to her for therapy.

Set in the early years of Batman's career, the story grew out of Tomlin's experiences working on the script for writer/director Matt Reeves' upcoming The Batman, which tells its own story of the crimefighter's early battles. For Tomlin, who wasn't part of the entire writing process on the film, it was an exercise in generating a lot of ideas, but not necessarily having a way to fit them all on the screen. So, he turned to another medium. BURBANK, CA (July 14, 2021) – This October, Batman fans get a new and different look at Gotham’s guardian as he begins his war on crime in Batman: The Imposter, a three-issue Prestige format series from DC. The series will debut in print and on participating digital platforms (English-language version) on Tuesday, October 12, 2021. In addition, the series will be collected in a hardcover format, available February 22, 2021. This was utterly disappointing after having a solid start. It got so boring that I just slogged through it for the sake of reading. This is official sequel/prequel to the recent Batman movie. It's is written by one of the screenwriters of movie. This book is good example of how writing for comics is not same as writing for movies. It doesn't read like a comic and the dialogues are uninteresting and feel lifeless.The story begins with Batman being seriously injured and on the verge of death following an encounter with armed store robbers—the kind of low-level criminals whom, in more mainstream adaptations, he would be able to take down almost effortlessly. Here we see all too well the very real physical risks involved in even the smallest acts of vigilantism. Instead of using an ostentatious vehicle like the Batmobile, Batman gets around Gotham inconspicuously using an elaborate network of ziplines and hidden motorcycles. Even this isn't inconspicuous enough, however, since the GCPD finds and confiscates many of the motorcycles and cuts the ziplines. The iconic partnership between Batman and Jim Gordon ended in this continuity with Gordon being discredited and drummed out of the police force for working with a vigilante—a far more realistic outcome for a cop in his position than the usual status quo. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Deconstruction : In taking a punishingly realistic approach to Batman and his world, this mini ends up deconstructing several conventions of the Batman mythos, including Bruce's relationships with his close friends and allies, his equation with the GCPD, his skills as a fighter and the logistics of his one-man war on crime.

Although I initially thought this comic would tie in with Reeves’ film, Batman: The Imposter is ultimately doing its own thing, albeit yet another grounded, gritty take on the Batman mythos. The story centres on Bruce Wayne, who has only Batman for a couple of years, and during one night after being a bloody pulp, he finds himself reunited his old childhood psychologist, Dr. Leslie Thompkins. As much as Thompkins is determined to help Bruce with his mental state, a Batman imposter is causing chaos in the city through murder, making the real Batman a target of the GCPD, including Detective Blair Wong. All the property destruction and chaos caused by Batman's war on crime is unlikely to endear him to Gotham's wealthy and powerful, who in turn pressurize the police into taking a tougher stance on the vigilante. Mattson Tomlin employs shifting narration to allow the central mystery ("Who is the second Batman?") to play out from multiple perspectives. This narrative element works superbly, keeping the reader on their toes as bits of knowledge are revealed. Batman himself isn't necessarily a bit player, but he's also not the lead - always welcome. I like a Gotham City that's populated with more than just superheroes and freaks. Frankly, it scares me, because I know it’s territory that could upset a lot of people in the same way that taking Alfred out the way that I did. I knew that that was gonna upset a lot of people and at the same time it feels narratively earned. I think that I just have to kind of go there, and if people hate it, they hate it. Otherwise, they might appreciate that there’s something different here. So yeah, that’s a long way of saying I would love to do lots more in this universe.At first, I thought this was going to be a boring deep-dive into the Batman origins. I've seen that a thousand times before. However, it ended up being much more original. I’ve worked on Batman as a supporting character in a couple of books, but this was the very first time I had the chance to work on a Batman title, and it was amazing,” added artist Andrea Sorrentino. “I’ve been a huge fan of Batman ever since I was a kid and saw Tim Burton’s Batman movie in 1989, so having the chance to work with Mattson and Jordie on this take on the Caped Crusader was like an early Christmas present!” Bruce has a bit of a dopey interaction with a psychiatrist, which isn't great. However, the rest of the narrative through the Batman and the main detective is quite interesting. The entire imposter angle also creates a lot of interesting questions and presents an unexpected perspective. Couch, Aaron (2022-02-22). " 'Batman: The Imposter' Writer Mattson Tomlin Hasn't Let The Dark Knight Go". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved 2022-11-22. It's the] idea of [taking] away all of these friends that he has, because that's what it would be like, and then instead put him on a head-on collision with somebody who is legitimately as smart as he is," Tomlin said. "These two people who are both kind of vying for the mantle of World's Greatest Detective just kind of slam into each other. A big part of it was just making a kind of adversary for him that would create interesting complications for later in the story."