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 – July 2010
No. of issues	6 (of 6)
Main character(s)	Batman
Creative team
Written by	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 6-issue comic book limited series starring Batman, released August 2009 through July 2010. The series is written by Kevin Smith and illustrated by Walt Flanagan. The series was initially planned as 12-issues, with a long break planned between issues six and seven. After issue six was published, Smith and Flanigan's work on their reality show, Comic Book Men, extended this planned break further than expected. It was decided in the interim to release the remaining issues as a seperate series to be called Batman: Bellicosity, due in 2014. The title is a reference to the William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming".

Plot

While Bruce Wayne romances his former girlfriend Silver St. Cloud, Batman has a series of encounters with masked vigilante Baphomet, whom he takes on as a new partner.

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 was pushed to late 2013. Ultimately, after further delayed on Book 2, Smith decided to turn the second half of Batman: Widening Gyre into a separately titled mini-series called Batman: Bellicosity.

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.

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 1-84856-962-9)

External links

• Batman: The Widening Gyre at the Grand Comics Database
• Batman: The Widening Gyre at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)