Juni Ba, from France and Senegal, is a comics writer and artist behind many works such as Monkey Meat, Djeliya, The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber, and Mobilis: My Life with Captain Nemo. He joins us to discuss his newest work The Boy Wonder, published by DC Comics’ Black Label, which releases May 7th and focuses on Damian Wayne, Robin, as he grapples with what it means to be the son of Batman and Talia Al Ghul.
Zero (GateCrashers): In classic GateCrashers fashion. We like to ask what is your favourite sandwich, but also, what’s Damian’s favourite sandwich?
Juni Ba: Let’s see. There’s a hamburger restaurant here which is called Burger’n’co, and the cheeseburger is the best one I’ve ever had. I order from there way too often. So I would say that cheeseburger would be my favourite sandwich.
Damian. Well, I’m going to try and focus on my version of Damian from The Boy Wonder specifically. That Damian, his favourite sandwich would probably be something made by the mystical creatures that serve his grandfather, who take care of the whole land that they live in. So it’ll probably be a sandwich made with vegetables and meat from supernatural sources, something that he would not be able to get in Gotham because no one even knows that this stuff exists.
Z: So there’s a very specific taste, which sounds like Damian, so it tracks.
JB: Yeah, and I like the idea of how even his favourite food is inaccessible in the new place that he’s in, furthering the whole alienation that he’s experiencing.
Z: Yeah, that is definitely interesting to add to the character. Well, first question, and this is sort of related to both this book and also in general, because I was reading your books before this: What’s the process look like for you when you write and draw a comic?
JB: Whoa. Let’s see. So the origin of every book is a little different, but usually I spend a year or two, maybe more just thinking about the story and putting ideas down and then once I have an idea of how every story step works into each other, I start storyboarding so there’s no script.
And then, because the idea is that I want to see from the get go if the stuff is going to work on the page, basically my storytelling is done in visuals, not in writing. So there’s a lot of stuff that if I was to write it down it would be way too complicated to describe. Even now I’m writing for someone and the big challenge of it is figuring out how to describe what I have in mind without dictating the storytelling of it too much. I don’t want to end up doing that thing where I tell my artist, “You need to put the characters in this specific spot and put the camera there and make them act in a certain way.” I don’t want to be too specific. But when I’m writing for myself, that’s basically what I do.
I don’t write scripts because I prefer to have the storyboard of the thing already made, because that’s where I know if something is working or not. Then once the storyboard has been greenlit and all the corrections are done, the next step is drawing the final pages. I do the sketching on my tablet, and then I print that in blue lines and ink over that. It’s a recent thing, I started doing it the last few months. The Boy Wonder was made that way. It was last year. I used to do everything on my tablet. And now, once the stuff is inked, I scan it, colour it on my computer, and then send that to the editor.
Z: OK, so that means that The Boy Wonder has been in the works for a while now, instead of it being something fairly recent.
JB: Yeah. I mean, technically, I started writing it in 2020 or 2021. Yeah. I’ve been sitting on it for a while, and then I made a tweet about it and it got the attention of Chris Conroy, who basically runs Black Label. He just asked, like, “OK, sure. Show it to me. I want to see what that’s like.” Several months later, the book was greenlit by DC.
Z: That’s cool, because it relates to one of the questions I had. You talked about how Batman: The Animated Series is an inspiration for this, and also because it’s Damian. I assume that the Grant Morrison Batman stuff is also an inspiration in some ways, but what other Batman material were you inspired by, if any, when writing this book?
JB: Well, I wasn’t so much using Batman as I was using other things. Like there’s a bunch of influences from a bunch of different places, but the superhero stuff was mostly influenced by Darwyn Cooke. So it wasn’t so much Batman as much as it was Cooke. Like the thought process I guess was, “What do I like about these characters? Like the concept of the superhero?” Because the idea came from me watching a documentary about The Dark Knight Returns and Frank Miller. They mentioned how he was given free reign to make the Batman book he wanted. I just had the thought of, “Yeah, that would be fun, having a superhero story where you can just do whatever you want. Like, it’s your personal take.”
I guess from then, my brain started imagining a story with Damian because he’s my favourite Robin and I have a lot in common with him in terms of his backstory. I think it was this sense of sympathy towards the kid and the story grew from wanting to talk about the feeling of “You’re not good enough to be a part of the group you’re in or the family you’re in.” So being a superhero was more of an allegory of, “I don’t feel good enough to be a part of those great people who seem so perfect.”
Then the Darwyn Cooke stuff came. He was probably the biggest superheroic influence, because he’s kind of the epitome of superhero storytelling to me. He makes all his stories very easy to understand, very accessible to someone who maybe has never opened or barely knows what that character is about. His storytelling is also strong on its own artistic terms and most of all, he has this great sense of making superheroes this idea of the ideal version of ourselves, like those people who, even if they have bad thoughts or flaws that they have to overcome, they always do the right thing and they represent the best in all of us, and there’s a sort of sense of joyful fun in the superhero stories that he does. He also can talk about very serious subjects through that at the same time. My favourite superhero comic is The New Frontier, and I kept reading it over and over again when I was rewriting the book just to look at how he was managing that balance of joyful, superheroic, and inspirational fun, and the more serious themes. So yeah, the biggest influence would probably be him.
Z: Right, I ended up reading The New Frontier, I think like two years ago and I never watched the animated movie or anything. I was so moved. That’s a book I want the hardcover of on my shelf. But outside superhero stuff, were there any influences that were working on you as you were writing this story?
JB: Yeah, there’s a bunch of stuff that I tend to go back to. I mean, there’s the Belgian character Spirou. So a lot of comics from the 60s and 70s, from France and Belgium.I have a thing for like 80s and 90s movies, including movies that I was not supposed to watch when I was a kid, so stuff that’s drama-oriented. The point of this book is, it’s basically a character study, mostly of Damian, but also Damian through his interactions with other people in his life. So, mostly the other Robins, but also his parents and more so his mother.
The events that happen are really just a setting for you to observe how the characters interact, and there’s a bunch of movies in the 80s that were really good at doing that and showing you a very flawed person and the way that they react to the world around them. So yeah, that’s more of a tone thing. The aesthetic aspect was really taken from 60s and 70s French and Belgian comics as well as very old sci-fi, fairy tales, and black and white photography.
Z: I think it’s really cool cause I don’t think we see a lot of Big Two work that has that sort of artistic vision. So that’s going to be really interesting to see how that pans out, and that’s also interesting to me reading your books.
Since we were talking about Damian’s mother, there have been questions surrounding characterization and stuff, especially for characters like the Al’Ghuls, whose stories unfortunately do have a lot of racist elements in their origins. Are you doing anything to combat or alleviate those concerns in your book?
JB: Stories often dehumanize them, so I try to do the opposite. I think I have a very character-driven style of storytelling, and a lot of the time I try to give the point of view of as many people as I can in the story.
There are five issues. Three of them have the Robins, and then eventually we get to my 2nd favourite team up, which is with Talia and it’s done from her perspective. The main goal was to try to give her more of a voice, because you start this story with a kid who tells you “My parents are messed up,” he was essentially raised to kill people, but we see how she was raised too, and the faults that she can see in her father’s philosophy.
Ra’s gets a bit of that as well later on, but the main goal was, I want to make it so that when you start the story with Damian, he has a lot of preconceived ideas about both sides of his family, which make his relationships to everyone very difficult. Every adventure he has, he gets to understand things in a different light by the end of every story, and one of them was, “What is his relationship to his mom like?” And you get to see it from the mom’s point of view and understand that she loves her son, but there are a lot of complications that come from being raised by someone like Ra’s.
Beyond that, this is an older Talia, more mature and less sexualized than the usual I’d say. As for Ra’s, I can’t say much, but a lot of what you see of him at first is rooted in Damian’s childlike, heightened, and scared perception. Just like the rest, it gets explored later.
Z: I was already sold on the book obviously, but this sells me even further so that helps! When I was doing research for this, I noticed that this isn’t your first time with a Damian comic. It was the “Happy Birthday Damian” story for Truth and Justice. Even over there, there’s a lot of similarities in terms of the character design, and even to some degree, Damian’s own struggle with his family and all that. So did that story help inform or define where you wanted to go with the characters for this book?
JB: Well, no actually because basically when they asked me to do that story, the way it happened was that I was originally approached for something else, and I said, “I don’t really want to do that, but I’ve been writing this Damian story just for myself. Would you like to take a look?” Truth and Justice was kind of a test like, “We already have this story written by Andrew Aydin, and the idea was, do you want to draw it? It’s kind of a test run.” So I just used the designs I had already made for my own book. The fact that the themes are very similar is kind of a coincidence and it was kind of funny actually. It was a good way to sort of try my hand at drawing these for the first time, get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. I would say my story is a lot more complex, and delves a lot more into the psychology of most of the characters.
Z: This book is an anthology like you said, where it’s about Damian with all these characters. But in terms of the structure of the story, is there like a connection beyond that, like Monkey Meat is all about the corporation. So is there a connection like that in this story?
JB: Yes. It’s a narrative cut into different, contained stories, basically. Because the idea is that Damian is on a quest to try and prove his worth by defeating an enemy, and it’s really more of a set up to allow for him to meet all the different characters that he does. But the goal is that every story progresses that main plot that he’s on and getting closer to the final showdown against the big enemy.
The whole point is this kid needs to grow up and understand the familial context that he was born into on both sides, like a lot of it is him learning how complicated his parents are, and the effect that they’ve had on the people around them and learning to move beyond the trauma and the more negative impact of being the son of a guy who dresses like a bat, or the descendant of a selfish egomaniac. The big plot of the thing is a young boy wants to prove his worth and every story is a step on that journey towards the final end.
Z: For Damian, you said he’s your favourite Robin. You relate to him a lot, but was there anything beyond that that made you want to sit back and think, “Okay, this is the character that I want to give my own spin on?”
JB: I love the concept of Robin. When I was a kid, that was probably the thing that I liked the most about the Batman world. The reason why Damian worked so well is that it was such a perfect way to also tackle the previous ones, so every one of them represents some aspect of what being a Robin is like, and you can use that as an allegory for being part of a group or family with a code and stuff. You can talk about being part of a group with specific ideas of how you should behave, what kind of things you should uphold as good.
Damian’s the runt of the family. He’s the kid who just showed up. He doesn’t really know these people. He has a lot of preconceived ideas and it was a good way for me to be able to also talk about the previous Robins through him. It’s not a meta commentary, it’s more like, “Why do you like these concepts? What speaks to you as a person when you watch those beacons of goodness do things?” Damian is kind of like the audience surrogate in discovering that aspect of things at the same time.
Z: That’s interesting! Speaking of characters, this is obviously like you said, out of main continuity, it’s Black Label. So does that mean Alfred’s alive in your universe, or is he dead just like in the main universe?
JB: No, no, he is alive! And I mean, I’m completely divorced from any other versions or reality or anything like that. There’s no prior continuity to take into account.
Z: That means like if anybody just wants to pick this book up, they can do that without prior history.
JB: Oh, yeah. It’s very much designed for that. The biggest thing probably was every time I was talking about this book to people, it was kind of a test because most of the people who you will talk to will tell you that they don’t even know that there are multiple Robins to begin with. I don’t write stories, even if there is an already established world, I don’t write them for just the people who already know that stuff.
I’m writing it for anyone who would want to open the book and be able to follow and the big thing that was very reassuring was that I was always describing the book without mentioning any of the Batman stuff. I was only talking about character interactions and the themes and the journey that the character is supposed to go on. And it’s really encouraging to have someone who listens to all that and tells you. “I don’t even like superheroes. I’m not interested in comics at all, but I would really like to read this one.” Because that tells me that I was doing something where: I like superheroes, I wanted to do something that sort of condenses a lot of what I like about them and it already sounds like it could be infectious.
Z: Yeah, for sure. I’m the biggest comic fan in my family. So when I talk to my mom about a story I really like, it’s hard for me sometimes to be like, “You should read this too!” If it’s superhero stuff, it has continuity baggage. It’s so much easier to give her indies and books that aren’t held back by continuity because it’s easier for a new reader to read so you know, maybe with this I can introduce her to a side of Batman that I really like that she’s not particularly into. So that’s fun.
Well, since this is your own thing, I assume that must mean that you’re giving your own spin on these characters. Is there anything without spoilers that you can tease that is going to be different? Like if you’re a long time reader going into this you’re going to be surprised by it.
JB: I’m someone who really likes a more fairy tale and magical side to storytelling. Something that I added a bunch of, I mean, they talk about demons in the solicits of the first issue. It’s both an allegorical thing and a very, real thing that the magical aspects of certain parts of that world have been pushed more.
The other big thing for me was Damian is the heart of the story, so everything is seen from his point of view. So Batman looks a lot more like a dad. Talia looks a lot more like a mom, and with every one of the Robins, I try to take a core concept of every one of them and push it to the forefront to contrast it to Damian. So like, I would say that the more fun part of it would be observing how Damian interacts with what’s essentially kind of a mirror put to himself every time. But overall the idea is a sort of cartoon-making logic, of taking the general elements in various iterations of a character, synthesizing them for the story, into something recognizable but digestible.
Z: It’s cool, because you say perspective and these characters are seen from the perspective of Damian. It’s one of those things about comics, right, where because it’s a visual medium, it’s only here where you can show them off in this manner that you can’t with like other mediums. Finding out that your story is really utilizing this medium to its fullest and doing those things is really cool. On that note, is there a character other than Damian that you’re particularly excited to be writing and/or drawing?
JB: Jason and Talia, by a lot. I think because the core of it is this is a world of people who seem very perfect. Damian works as this kid who feels like he’s not good enough for that. But aside from him, there’s Jason, who’s really a well-intentioned, good hearted person who really bad stuff happened to, and he’s struggling to get out of the traumatic impact of that. And I think the story works really well in showing that.
Talia is kind of the same. It’s someone who has a very idealistic view of the world and wants to essentially, be allowed to shape the world into what she thinks it could be, but she has to be under the boot of someone else who is not very reputable, and it has impacted a lot of her life in ways that she did not intend, including her relationship to her son and that’s also probably why those two characters also get like an issue told from their perspective. I really wanted to show you the inside of their mind and dispel a lot of the prejudice that Damian has about the way they are.
Z: Final two questions. The first one is, since we went back to you talking about how much you liked Darwyn Cooke’s comics and even like old European comics, what are your favourite comics that you go back to that you like reading?
JB: Let’s see. So Spirou is one that I’m going back into right now. There’s The Great Beyond by a French creator, Léa Murawiec, which I read often these days. I have a shelf of stuff that I just keep there. I’m rereading the Parker books from Darwyn Cooke. It’s mostly French comics though, so I think my answer, in a more global sense, would be that if anyone wants to read good comics, there’s a whole French or Francophone side of things that is very interesting to discover.
Z: I hope our readers take that in mind. I will take that in mind because I need to expand my worldview out of American and British comics, so maybe when I get time for sure. Finally last question, what works of yours should people be reading as they wait for The Boy Wonder?
JB: Well, last year had Mobilis and The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber. Like I said, I’m very character driven in the way that I tell stories. So I would say Djeliya, Mobilis, and Felix and Maccaber. Mostly because I think those are probably the closest in terms of what The Boy Wonder would be like.
Z: Cool! Thanks for joining us!
Mobilis: My Life with Captain Nemo, The Unlikely Story of Felix, and Macabber & Djeliya are available both physically and digitally!
FOC for The Boy Wonder #1 is on 14th of April, so consider pre-ordering at your local comic book shop!
