A post-9/11, modern take being Batman training people to be the heroes they know they can be on their own.

It's one of the worst nightmare situations we could create for a young character, having the people who are supposed to believe in you keep telling you you're nothing.

Beware The Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed speak not a whispered word of them or they'll send the Talon for your head.

What Batman is saying is that, "I want to try something new that's more about this era and this moment." And I do think that it speaks to a modern take [as opposed] to a 90s take or a 2000s take being maybe the older program about having a sidekick.

Batman is the one you go to for answers and Clark Kent is the one you go to to really do the right thing. He stands as a shining example of what to do in any situation.

Having that North Star for every story [about Batman] is really key for me. It allows me to go farther and farther off the reservation.

I was on Batman with "Superheavy" or "Zero Year" where there was a lot of fun and bombast, but it was also personal. [In All-Star], I wanted to take that to its complete extreme, like the end of the Earth extreme, where it's over-the-top humorous, yet at the same time really deeply about what I think is of this particular moment in time, at least for me. The things I'm terrified of and the things I'm hopeful about. My life is the page.