Batman: The Widening Gyre

Batman: The Widening Gyre
Variant cover art for Batman: The Widening Gyre #1 (art by Gene Ha)
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Limited series
Genre	Superhero
Publication date	October 2009 – present
Number of issues	6 (of 12)
Main character(s)	Batman
Creative team
Writer(s)	Kevin Smith
Penciller(s)	Walt Flanagan
Inker(s)	Art Thibert
Letterer(s)	Jared Fletcher
Colorist(s)	Art Lyon
Editor(s)	Dan DiDio Mike Marts Janelle Siegel
Collected editions
Hardcover	ISBN 1-4012-2875-5

Batman: The Widening Gyre is the title of a 12-issue comic book limited series starring Batman. The series is being written by Kevin Smith and illustrated by Walt Flanagan. The first six issues were released August 2009 through July 2010; it is unknown when the remaining issues will be published. The title is a reference to the William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming".

Plot

This series finds Batman spending his nights fighting crime in Gotham City, while spending his days as Bruce Wayne romancing former girlfriend Silver St. Cloud, who attempts to teach him to be more trusting. Batman has a series of encounters with a new crime fighter, whom he eventually takes on as a new partner. The first volume ends with a cliffhanger to be resolved in the second volume.

Publication history

In May 2009, it was announced that Batman: The Widening Gyre would be written by Kevin Smith and illustrated by Walt Flanagan; months earlier both had completed Batman: Cacophony. As Smith explained it, the series will have 12 issues split into two six-issue books. Book 1 was supposed to run from August 2009 to January 2010 and, after a six-month hiatus, Book 2 would run from July 2010 through December 2010. However, Book 1 was plagued by several hiatuses and ran to July 2010 and Book 2 has yet to see print.

Smith has described how he creates the scripts. Following Zack and Miri Make a Porno, he had "a sort of nervous breakdown, or as close to a mid-life crisis" and started heavily smoking cannabis, which, he claims, has contributed to his writing of the series:

“

I’m not telling you anything new…I’m far more creative now, you know. I’ve been writing this Batman: The Widening Gyre miniseries, and I’m stoned all the time when I’m writing it. And, I swear, I’ll write it, and then, it’s not so much blackout, but forget, so much so that the next morning, I go to read what I wrote, and it’s, like, I’m that cobbler and elves came and wrote it in the night, because I’m, like, "This is better than anything I’ve ever written before." I mean, like, I’ve done comics, but this is way better.

”

During an August 17, 2011 question and answer session in Calgary, Alberta, Smith stated that he was working on issue four of the second book, and Flanagan was in the process of drawing the third issue.^{[citation needed]}

Collected editions

The series is being collected into individual volumes:

• The Widening Gyre (collects The Widening Gyre #1-6, 200 pages, hardcover, DC Comics, December 2010, ISBN 1-4012-2875-5, Titan Books, October 2010, ISBN 1848569629)

External links

• Batman: The Widening Gyre at the Grand Comics Database
• Batman: The Widening Gyre at the Comic Book DB