Dini and Nguyen Talk DETECTIVE #1000

by Kevin Sharp
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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.

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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.

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