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

[Bruce] sees a lot of himself in [Batman], you know? You could argue that something even worse than what happened to Bruce happened to [Duke's] parents, who are now Joker-ized*. They're not just gone or irretrievably lost. And I'm NOT curing them, so you can put that out there! There's no relief from that.

The thing with Superman is that he's completely emotionally open to the reader. Meaning what he tells you is what he's feeling; there's a transparency there. And what he tells other characters is usually as transparent as can be. What he says he believes in. So there's an honesty that is both really inspiring writing the character. One thing I love about Clark Kent is that there is a badassery that you don't see a lot. Even as Superman, he's always kind of restraining himself. When you challenge him, I think there's nobody that has a stronger spine than Superman.

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.

I love The End of the Batman story. I have my original copy, the hardcover, at my house from when I was a kid, whenever that was,'88 or '89. It was very influential to me because it was so explicit in touching on the notion that Batman might be mad and that he might belong in the mad house.

With this particular series [The Cursed Wheel] I'm going farther in that direction than I've tried before in terms of the elasticity of the mythology.

Bruce sees in this character - who fought all the way through "Superheavy" when his parents were missing, and now is determined to fight even though his parents are telling him he's worth nothing - the essence of Batman.