Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen are just one of the all-star teams with a story in the upcoming Detective Comics #1000. Their eight pager, titled “The Legend of Knute Brody,” is about a henchman who’s worked for various villains including Poison Ivy, Riddler, and Harley Quinn; the bad guys now each tell his tale from their point of view.
The pair spoke with Newsarama about the milestone issue and their part in it.
On how they reunited:
Dini: Last year, they did Action Comics #1000, and it stood to reason that they would follow it up with a Detective #1000. I got to do a short story in Action with Superman, and that was a lot of fun. I worked with Jose Garcia Lopez on that. And I had a good time doing that story.
And because I wrote a lot more for Batman over the years than for Superman, I thought there might be a chance to get in on Detective #1000, and I thought it would be great to do it with Dustin, because we did so many fun stories together. And I thought maybe we could get Derek [Fridolfs] in also, and just recreate the fun we had doing Detective and Streets of Gotham.
So I brought the idea to DC, and they were very receptive to it, as was Dustin when they asked him.
Nguyen: Yeah, I remember seeing the email. I think I just saw the part that said Paul Dini and said, “Yes.” I’ve been waiting to get back with Paul on something Batman-oriented, and this was perfect.
On “Knute Brody”:
Dini: I thought of something like, what if we concentrate on the villains instead [of Batman]? So we came up with a way to show a lot of villains at once, which is in the form of a TV report, like one of the crime shows you see all over cable TV now where, you know, they profile certain types of criminals, bank robbers, everything…
Then I thought, what if the guy is so bad that he’s actually terrified of Batman? And every time Batman shows up, he just runs in terror of him. It would be a domino effect. Not only would it end badly for this guy, but it would end badly for whoever employed him.
So I made him this sort of local legend. He’s like this bad joke among other henchpeople and super-criminals and crime fighters. Everybody knows this guy. Everybody knows he’s the absolute worst. Then suddenly it was funny.
Nguyen: The fact that you can fit so much story in eight pages, that’s what I love. There’s so much story.
On whether fans might see more of this team:
Nguyen: Hopefully! That’s up to DC.
Dini: Hopefully, yeah. I think that’s to the fates and scheduling and things like that. Over the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of short stories and one-shot stories, which is fun. And I’m very thankful that the fans and the readers enjoy those… If our schedules free up and it’s something we want to do, I could definitely see us doing another one or maybe a one-shot or a graphic novel or something.
You can read the whole conversation HERE.
Detective Comics #1000 hits comic stores March 27.
