In the aftermath of Batman Returns, Gotham has turned against the Dark Knight. As an armored arsonist known only as Firebug wages war on Batman’s allies — the GCPD, the Gotham Globe, and anyone who dared defend the Bat — Bruce Wayne is pushed to his breaking point. To survive the flames, he’ll need to forge something new… stronger… more protective than ever before. But Firebug’s vendetta cuts deeper than Bruce realizes, forcing Batman to confront a painful truth: innocent people have been caught in the crossfire of his war on crime. To save Gotham, Batman must become more than a creature of the night… he must become their Guardian. Set between Batman Returns and the Batman ’89 comic series, this original audio drama explores how Michael Keaton’s Batman earned the gold-armored Gotham Guardian suit later seen in The Flash.
THE ORIGIN OF THE GOTHAM GUARDIAN STORY- THE SUIT
After tackling the first two suits in the Batsuit vault in The Flash, I got to brainstorming what stories could be used for the last two suits in the line-up. Drawing from a Golden Age Bill Finger story for the Caped Crusader suit was a no-brainer in Case of the Chemical Syndicate. Adapting a O’Neil-Adams story for the blue and gray suit was somewhat obvious, but it took awhile to land on specifically adapting A Vow from the Grave.
But here, it was a lot more difficult as the Gotham Guardian suit wasn’t really drawing off a specific comic book look. It felt like there was some influence with Kingdom Come, which is a great story but more of a Justice league one to adapt.
It also seemed like a precursor to the Batman Beyond suit, but aside from the opening of the Batman Beyond pilot, there aren’t really any adventures with Bruce in that suit to draw from.
I looked into other alternate armors over Batman’s comic career, including the Hellbat, before thinking about the function of the specific suit, which was based on concept art by Batman 89 comic artist and Superhero Stuff You Should Know guest Joe Quinones (the concept art in itself based off of Aero Strike Batman).
The face was completely covered, the wings seemed to imply that it was for flying, and the material looked like it gave him extra protection. The story had to reflect these functions in giving him reasons why he would need these.
THE VILLAIN & TYING EVERYTHING TO BATMAN RETURNS
Given its similarity to the fireproof Batsuit from the New Batman Adventures episode Torch Song, it seemed that a fire-based villain would be the way to go.
Firefly felt like an obvious choice, but he was also going to be the villain for the canceled Batgirl movie and I wanted to leave room for the possibility of us adapting that. Then, as I was brainstorming, the first issue of Batman 89: Echoes came out, revealing that Firefly was a criminal whose identity Bruce Wayne would impersonate later on. Since I wanted these all to somewhat fit into a general continuity, I decided not to go with Firefly.
Luckily, he isn’t the only fire-based villain in the Rogues Gallery. I remembered that the NES Batman 89 video game had the lesser-known villain Firebug.
As I looked into it, I remembered that Firebug was the second to last boss in the game (and in the original version, the intended final boss)! The player ends up fighting him in the Gotham Cathedral! Plus the game gave him the backstory that he was looking for revenge against Batman for defeating his brother. These felt like great pulls for the story and I envisioned Batman in this winged suit fighting Firebug in the Cathedral in the final act.
On top of that, Firebug technically predates Firefly as an arsonist villain. While both the Garfield Lynns and Ted Carson Firefly were in the Silver Age, neither Firefly was actually an arsonist. Instead, both versions used bright lights and effects.
Firebug was introduced in the 1980s and, at the time of the Batman 1989 video game, would have been the known fire-based villain.
It wasn’t until Knightfall, I believe, that the Garfield Lynns Firefly was reimagined as an arsonist, which would have been way after the video game.
So I had Firebug as the nemesis. But there was still something missing. What exactly would this story be about? I didn’t just want the story to be “Firebug shows up + Batman has to build a new suit + Batman defeats the villain thanks to the suit + The End.” There needed to be more substance.
The final piece of the puzzle came about when I started covering both the Batman Returns novelization and the comic book adaptation on my podcast Superhero Stuff You Should Know.
There, we had a discussion on how exactly Batman’s name was cleared at the end for Gordon to shine the Bat Signal. I brought up that surely, saving the children from the Red Triangle Circus Gang went a long way to exonerating him. But as I thought more about it after recording, as well as what happened in the Batman 89 comic series Shadows, it was more likely that Gotham would be left divided by Batman, with some still supporting him, like Gordon, and others still hating him. This is something we’d see carry over into Shadows when Harvey Dent declares him an enemy and helps remove Gordon from office.
I then remembered the name of the suit in the vault: The Gotham Guardian.
What if the story was centered around Batman’s identity of being the Gotham Guardian and rebuilding his reputation since the events of Batman Returns? And what if the villain’s motivation was more tied into the events of Batman Returns too?
I considered other villains for this, since Firebug is such an obscure character.
Potentially we could go with the other obscure villain of Night Slayer, who was in the NES game too and had an actual story where he framed Batman.
Or we could go bigger and have Keaton’s Batman fight Man-Bat in mid-air in the winged suit, with Man-Bat’s actions being mistaken for Batman’s.
But I realized that Batman Returns already WAS the story of Batman getting framed and clearing his name. This story was about the aftermath and how fixing his reputation would be a much longer, more complicated process than simply taking down Penguin.
So I went back to the Firebug idea. As I looked into the original appearance of Firebug in Batman No. 318, I found that his motivations were meant to be relatively sympathetic, with him losing members of his family due to buildings that weren’t up to code and seeking revenge on those buildings by burning them down. What if the Burtonverse Firebug lost his family…during the Batman-Penguin conflict of Batman Returns? And what if facing off against Firebug helps Batman reaffirm his status as the Gotham Guardian?
With these elements in place, I was ready to get started.
ADAPTING THE LOST BATMAN CHARACTER ARC FROM BATMAN RETURNS/BATMAN II
For Batman’s state of mind, I ended up drawing from the original Daniel Waters script for Batman Returns, titled Batman II, which had Bruce dealing with his resentment towards the city’s ingratitude, something that wasn’t explored in the final film.
When revisiting the script years ago, I realized that the intended arc for Bruce was to overcome that resentment and see that the city’s hatred of him was a part of being Batman. We even discussed this with Daniel Waters himself in our interview with him:
While a more evolved Batman might just accept all the hits, this Batman might still be enraged by the ingratitude. Batman shared a similar sentiment, after being framed for the supposed deaths of Talia and Ra’s al Ghul, in Detective Comics No. 447, where he overhears a couple of citizens talking about distrusting him and he wonders if it’s even worth being Batman.
Michael Keaton famously cut down his dialogue during the filming of Batman Returns and while a lot of these lines feel hard to imagine his Bruce/Batman saying onscreen, they felt more natural as narration in telling the story.
The Waters script is quoted several times throughout the narration, in a new context. Here are the examples:
Batman II:
BRUCE
Publicity for what? I don’t know who scared me more. Him or the society he so easily makes a fool of.
(darkly)
They deserve each other.
Gotham Guardian:
NARRATOR
He didn’t know what had frightened him more that Christmas: Penguin himself, or the society the villain had so easily made a fool of.
Batman II:
BRUCE
All these years of bataranging two-bit hoods off their tricycles and the real power, the real evil, calmly goes to work in Gotham Plaza and collects “Man of the Year” plaques.
ALFRED
Bruce, this attitude of yours…It makes me…Is it only the memory of your parents that inspires you. It seems like it. You have as much contempt for the people of this city as Max and Penguin combined.
Gotham Guardian:
BRUCE
You know, after all this time cleaning up the streets, throwing batarangs at clowns…maybe we
were looking at this wrong. Maybe the city itself is the problem. Them and the criminals, they
deserve each other.ALFRED
Mr. Wayne, this new attitude of yours. Is it only the memory of your parents that keeps you
going? You seem to have as much contempt for the people of this city as this Firebug fellow has
for you.
Batman II:
BRUCE
You don’t understand, Alfred. I do care for the weak, pathetic, and gullible people of Gotham City. Because I’m one of them.
Gotham Guardian: To give more context for Bruce calling Gothamites “weak, pathetic, gullible,” I had Firebug say it first so that the narrator was quoting him back.
As frustrated as he’d been with Gotham’s citizens, as angry as their betrayal had made him…he did care for the so-called “weak, pathetic,
gullible” people of this city.
Because he was one of them. And so was Joseph Rigger.
Batman II’s script had this exchange, which I also recited back to Daniel Waters:
BATMAN
I understand. I protect the people of Gotham City. From themselves. That means I must love. And despise. I must be the Light. And the Dark.
Gotham Guardian:
He protected the people of Gotham City—from criminals, from corruption, and sometimes from themselves. He had to love them and despise them in equal measure. He had to be the Light for the innocent
and the Dark for the guilty.
CHANGING FIREBUG’S STORY & ADAPTING THE NES GAME
For Firebug’s story, I took a look at Batman No. 318 and took some of the general structure. In both the comic and our Gotham Guardian story, Batman arrives at a burning building, saves someone, and confronts Firebug on the rooftop, where he’s nearly killed by the fire. Firebug leaves Batman a clue in his words, though, which leads Batman to investigate his identity. Later, Batman confronts Firebug in a newer flameproof suit at the scene of his next crime. Then they have a final confrontation.
My original version of Gotham Guardian was a little more true to the comic in the beginning, where Batman rescues a little girl in the fire from a residential building. Batman would then encounter Firebug on the roof, but find the roof familiar. He’d later discover that it was the same roof from the opening of Batman 89 where he took down the two muggers.
Firebug’s M.O. would then be burning down the buildings of Batman’s successes, with him targeting the Flugelheim Museum and the Gotham Cathedral next.
It sounded cool, but I couldn’t wrap my head around Firebug legitimately believing this was a way to get revenge on Batman. It felt like an excuse for me to revisit different locations from 89 than something he’d do.
So I decided to make it more about Firebug targeting Batman’s allies to draw him out. I changed the opening, then, to be Batman saving a cop from the GCPD headquarters and being reminded of Gotham’s attitude towards him when the other cops try to arrest him afterwards.
The next building for Firebug to target would naturally be the Gotham Globe, who likely supported Batman’s crimefighting activities. This gave me an opportunity to bring back Alexander Knox. In my mind, Vicki Vale left Gotham before the events of Batman Returns, as stated in the original Daniel Waters draft, but Knox stayed and saw Batman in action (as seen in the Crisis on Infinite Earths CW episode in one potential future). It also gave us a reporter who could call Batman the Gotham Guardian in the news at the end.
Knox being a bit of a hero in helping the other reporters is simply an extension of him helping to fight the Joker thugs at the parade in 89.
But then news hit when I was working on this – John Jackson Miller was writing Batman Resurrection and setting it in between Batman 1989 and Batman Returns. A character who’d be in it…was Alexander Knox.
I grew paranoid that Knox was going to get killed. After all, that was Sam Hamm’s original plan (along with Daniel Waters for the sequel) and Knox did not appear in Returns nor the Batman 89 comics, though he did have the cameo for Crisis. But who knew if people were counting that in continuity since it also had the wrong style Bat Signal and claimed that Batman was fighting the long-dead Joker. So I had to consider a version in which Knox was eliminated and came up with one in which Batman saves Harvey Dent at City Hall instead, with Harvey encouraging Batman to stop Firebug. In the end, though, Miller turned out to be a fan of Knox and kept him alive, writing him off as leaving Gotham on a new assignment, partially thanks to Bruce Wayne. This opened the door for him to return, which I had him do, using the explanation for his absence from Batman Revolutin.
As for Firebug himself, I liked the idea of Batman suspecting that Firebug is the brother to one of the criminals he put away (the NES video game backstory), only to discover that Firebug is someone else who had a family and a more sympathetic reason for revenge (the comic book backstory).
For the NES backstory/red herring, since Firebug faces off against Batman in the cathedral, it was natural for me to select his brother as the big henchman who nearly kills Batman in the tower. It also made the Gotham Cathedral a more natural setting for them to fight, with Batman believing that it’s where he fought Firebug’s brother.
I gave the brother the first name Clive after the actor/stuntman Clive Curtis who played him. The last name Sanders actually came from the NES video game, where the Japanese manual gives Firebug the name “General Sanders.” And Clive’s backstory of being recruited from a martial arts studio comes from the Batman 89 novelization.
I didn’t outright say that Batman killed Clive like in the movie since the Neuverse version of Batman 89 did not have Batman kill him.
The red herring got the name Leonard, after Len Wein, who wrote the original Firebug story.
The real Firebug then got the comic book name of Joseph Rigger, with him losing his family due to the Penguin taking over the Batmobile, rather than because of the buildings.
WEAVING IN BATMAN 89 SHADOWS
Gotham Guardian gave me a chance to build more of a bridge between Returns and the comic series Shadows.
To give a face to the anti-Batman side of the police force, I had Barbara Gordon make a prequel appearance. In Shadows, she spends a good chunk of time helping Harvey gather evidence against Batman and is pretty anti-Batman in the beginning of the sequel, Echoes, so this felt natural. This also allowed me to bring in a bit more of Gordon defending Batman, since we just didn’t get enough of their bond through this universe and I’d like to do more with their dynamic so that his death has more emotional impact in Shadows.
One subtle thing but I also added in the private communication line that Batman uses to contact Gordon in the first issue, with the backstory that they needed a more clandestine way to talk now that Batman’s more of a controversial figure.
As for the ending, on Superhero Stuff You Should Know, we once ranked different Batmen by heroism and compassion. Keaton’s Batman ranked the lowest, not just due to his kill count but also the lack of scenes of him really outwardly showing compassion. It felt right, then, to display that side now and for him to have a moment with Firebug and offer his help, adding some poignancy to the story and making Bruce accept the hate he gets if it means doing the right thing.
This story was put on hold as it was announced that the novel Batman Resurrection was coming and would involve Batman encountering arsonists, as well as the return of Knox. I told Tim that we’d put it on hold for a bit and see what it had in store so that the story would fit the same continuity.
Around the same time, Batman Caped Crusader premiered and debuted Firebug…who was basically an adaptation of Firefly, with the characters even acknowledging this. This gave me further incentive to make sure that the original Firebug storyline was honored since the character is much different from the pyromaniac that the series presented him as.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
This story was originally written similar to A Vow from the Grave in Batman/Bruce Wayne narrating it, with no dialogue from the other characters. As we went further in the process, however, it was Tim Maxwell who saw the potential of this being a full cast audio drama. I revised the script accordingly and then, we discussed the possibility of having a third person narrator and keeping Keaton’s Batman to just his dialogue.
Tim was the one who ended up rewriting the narration to third person and adding his own flourishes that I thought really brought everything together, so wanted to give Tim credit here for writing the final version of the narration, while the story, previous version of the narration, and the dialogue come from me.
Out of the Batman short stories I’ve done so far for Neuverse, this felt like the one I had to make the most creative license since very little of the original comic made it in, aside from the opening. But I was happy to combine the different elements of the original comic, the NES video game (for those wondering, yes, there are plans to bring in more NES game elements in the future), and the unused material of the Daniel Waters Batman Returns script.
Now, I just have to figure out what to do with that Arctic suit…