In terms of things to put on your resume, CIA Agent and writer of Batman both have to be near the top. Tom King has been both.

Beginning his career as an intern at Marvel Comics in the 90s, Tom King made the rather unorthodox leap after 9/11 from the comics industry to spycraft, working as an operations officer for the CIA for much of the past decade, before retiring, and like Ian Fleming before him, turned his attention back towards writing, publishing his first novel, A Once Crowded Sky in 2013. For the past three years however, it’s been his return to the comics industry that’s been turning heads, becoming one of the biggest writers in the industry seemingly out of nowhere. Starting by taking Dick Grayson out of the cowl and into spy work in Grayson, he went on to work on the recent run on The Omega Men, The Vision, and Sheriff of Babylon. Now, he’s the writer behind Batman, and if the past two years are anything to go by, we haven’t seen anything yet.

As it just so happens, I had a chance to sit down and interview Tom King at VA Comicon last weekend, where we talked about everything from the future of the Batman title, his past work, the transition back to civilian life, the dearth in good war comics, and over if working for the CIA or working for DC Comics is the tougher gig.

So my dear readers, without further adieu, let me introduce Tom King!

Korsgaard: First things first, how are you enjoying Richmond, Tom?

Tom King: I love it! To me it’s somewhat of a local convention. I’ve lived out in DC for most of the last 15 years so, and I come down here pretty often for family, friends and stuff so I’m familiar with Richmond. I don’t know it’s nice to be here, I feel like I grew up here since my first con I ever did was here, so in a way, I feel like I’m coming home.

Korsgaard: I’ve heard a bit of that from Brett who manages the convention. That a few years back you were buying tables here and now they’re paying you to come here so…

King: I know it’s…it’s a little insane. I know I came here for the first time, I paid for a table, I was selling a novel instead of a comic book. Just trying to get people to come over to me and trying to make sure they bought my novel because if I didn’t sell enough, my wife would kill me.

And now to go from that, to making a good living writing Batman, and they asked me to come back. It’s a crazy transition. It’s just an honor, that’s what it is.

Korsgaard: I guess before we get to the meat and potatoes then, what’s it like making that leap from fan to guest?

King: Oh no, I still feel like I’m a fan. I don’t know if I’ve made the connection in my head like…

(points to the artists at the tables beside him)

I’m sitting next to Joe Staton, who is a famous comic book writer that I admired growing up. On the other side of me is Mark Waid a famous comic book writer, who I nerd out to all the time, so I’m still sitting here right now, and I’m still sitting here trying to get stories out of them, bugging them for autographs. Doing the same thing I did on this side of the table as I did on the other side. So, to me in my head, I haven’t changed that much at all, I feel like I’m the same person, just on the other side of the table now.

Korsgaard: That thrill never goes away, does it?

King: It really doesn’t.

Korsgaard: Let’s start by talking about Batman. What was it like when you first got the offer to take up Batman after Scott Snyder?

King: I feel like I’m supposed to say I’m honored and…I was excited, but the biggest emotion was that I was frightened and scared. Definitely a mix of these sort of negative and panicky emotions.

Korsgaard: Really? Why was that?

King: I didn’t want to mess it up. Batman was a character that wasn’t broken. I didn’t have to fix him in any way, I just sort of had to carry him forward. And to me, that was a tightrope. I knew I was gonna have to go out on a tightrope and the wind would be blowing and I could fall at any moment. But I just took one step after the next and just see how it went.

Korsgaard: And so far, I think it’s gone pretty well. You’ve reintroduced, of all the people, Psycho Pirate as a big bad. You’ve brought back Bane, in a big way too. You’ve worked with characters like Calander Man and Colonel Blimp. Is there any reason you like dealing with some of the more obscure villains?

King: I love the big bads like the Joker or Two-Face as much as the next Batman fan, but there are lots of really great villains that maybe don’t have that don’t have that notoriety, but you can get a lot of mileage out of.

Take Psycho Pirate. He was in Crisis on Infinite Earths, he killed Barry Allen, he’s the one guy who remembers the existence of the multiverse. There’s a lot of history there, and he has a very interesting power set, which makes him an interesting character to work with.

As for Bane, I can’t say too much, but there is a reason my third big arc is “I am Bane”. I’ve got even bigger things in store with him, count on that.

Korsgaard: I gotta ask – quite a few of these villains are pirate-themed, and now you’ve got Batman making a raid on an island… do you have a thing for swashbucklers?

King: Who doesn’t like swashbucklers? (laughs)

Korsgaard: So you’ve completed the “I am Gotham” arc, and the next one is “I am Suicide” I believe?

King: Yeah, that’s our next big arc which just started, and I’m so proud of it, I can’t talk highly enough of it. I told people this at Comic Con and I’ll say it’s good, but if you hate that story…I’ll leave the book I swear. I’ve got so much faith in it. The basic idea is it’s Batman forms his own Suicide Squad to invade Santa Prisca and take the Psycho Pirate back from Bane.

Korsgaard: So what can we expect in the next few issues from it?

King: It’s like your favorite heist movie. It’s Ocean’s Eleven plus The Dirty Dozen with Batman. There’s gonna be twists, there’s gonna be turns. There’s gonna be people dying. There’s gonna be blood spilled. And at the end of the day you’re gonna see…I dunno the right word, if you can print it in the newspaper, but it is going to be a badass Batman. You’re gonna say “Batman Hell yeah!” at the end of this arc.

Korsgaard: Fantastic! Well, I guess before moving on from Batman, this is a character, like you said that have had dozens of some of the biggest names of comics attached to it. Everybody from Neil Adams to Scott Snyder. What’s it like following in their footsteps and I guess when the time comes when you leave what would you like the legacy of Tom King at the helm of Batman to be?

King: That’s… (laughs) You know, nobody’s ever asked me that, I’ve done a thousand interviews, nobody’s asked me that question.

Korsgaard: Those are always the kinds of questions I love to ask.

King: Well… as for what it feels like to follow these guys, it feels humbling, and it feels like I’ve been given a responsibility. I think about it all the time because I feel like I have to write a comic that…that eight-year-old me wanted to read, the comic that twelve-year-old me was gonna read…the kinds of readers who are picking up Batman for the first time, where my Batman is the first time they see the character. That’s a huge responsibility.

At the same time, I also have to write a comic that my friends and colleagues who have been reading Batman for a long time, and meet their expectations. And I feel a responsibility to do both of those things as best I can.

As to what people are going to take away from me… I just hope take away that they wanted more. I think that’s…that’s all I want. That when I leave the title, people will say “Man, I wish he wrote one more issue.” That they’re happy with what I did, and still wanted more. That’s what I want for my legacy writing Batman.

Korsgaard: It’s always good to bow out with folks asking for an encore.

King: That’s the dream, right?

Korsgaard: Let’s go back to the beginning for a moment. You got your start interning at Marvel in the 90s right?

King: I started at Vertigo, where I did photocopies on Preacher, then I interned at Marvel, where I worked under Chris Claremont. It was both a dream and a nightmare come true, because this was right before the worst of the industry crash at the time, and that was all the folks in charge could talk about at the time.

I remember right before I got out, I’d sold my first story to Marvel, I was so excited. It was a Black Knight story, and I still have the check. Two weeks later, Bob Harras and Chris Claremont got fired, and Marvel wasn’t answering my emails.

Not long after that I moved to DC and briefly worked for the Justice Department. Then 9/11 happened, and I went to work for the CIA.

Korsgaard: You’ve certainly got one of the more interesting career trajectories in comics – you went from interning at Marvel Comics, to working for the CIA, to writing at DC Comics. Tell me a little bit about that transition.

King: (laughs) The funny thing in my life is I always wanted to be a comic book writer, and I thought I would be, and then comics collapsed when I was younger and sort of nobody was paying for comics anymore in the early 2000’s.

So the CIA stuff is the divergent stuff, it’s a thing I did in my 20’s and I just did what a million other people did I tried to help out in this stupid war on terror that’s never ending. And it was probably the best job I ever had, because you get to sort of make a difference and fight some real bad guys alongside some real good people. And it was painful leaving that, it was real painful. And I still don’t know if it’s the right decision and I think about that a lot.

But I had kids, and I sort of couldn’t be the dad I wanted to be and also the CIA officer I wanted to be. Some people can pull it off, I couldn’t I wasn’t sort of strong enough for that. So I left, and I don’t regret it in the fact that I get to spend a lot of time with my kids, and I get to do what I love. But I do regret it in like…whenever something explodes or some dumbass terrorist does some dumbass thing I just want to punch them in the face and I used to have the opportunity to at least contribute to face punching. So I don’t know, I have mixed feelings on the whole thing.

Korsgaard: Well before going too on, thank you for doing what you did.

King: You serve?

Korsgaard: Yessir, US Army.

King: Well thank you for saving the world man. Mind if I ask you something?

Korsgaard: Of course.

King: You know what it was like right? Making that transition back?

Korsgaard: Absolutely.

King: When you’re inside. It feels like you can push on the world and it will move. That’s part of….people forget that’s part of PTSD, the idea that you used to be involved in something really important and you’re kinda walking away from it. That’s one of the things that sort of drives you a little bit insane afterwards. Or it’s a challenge for everyone to overcome.

Korsgaard: I’ve had some struggles with that too. A lot of struggles at first.

King: That’s what I’m saying. It’s rough.

Korsgaard: If you don’t mind me asking, going into the CIA coming from comics, did you get any hell from that from the guys from the agency? And coming out now that you’re back in comics, if you ever meet them for drinks or anything is it like “So, how’s the comic book industry?” Anything like that?

King: They’ve been real nice about it, the agency. I mean I don’t talk to them officially, because they’re not allowed to talk to me because I publish things and they’re not allowed to talk to people who publish things. I published one series called Sheriff of Babylon, it’s about the Iraq War and that, they approved that one. Just because I get a little close to the edge there. Not anywhere near it, but…but just so I’m not going over the line.

And yeah, my friends, they tease me. Yeah, they tease me that I do this for a living. You know though, it’s funny, the comic guys tease me just as much for being former CIA.

Korsgaard: And I guess before going into Sheriff of Babylon coming as a guy who’s done that side of things: worked for the agency, been overseas, had a whole lot of experience that a lot of writers might not. How has that shaped you as a writer and helped you and…any kind of impact on your work?

King: Yeah, it shapes every word I write. I don’t ever want to become a writer that just writes about writing. I have to draw on experience. See when you write, whatever you do, you try to get as far away from yourself as possible, but you never get far away from yourself. You’re writing yourself in everything, every character is you and so that experience that sort of formative years…I mean it’s going to be with me hopefully…and sadly for the rest of my life and I’m going to try to do my best to turn that into something that entertains people and also gives them a little meaning.

Korsgaard: And I guess, transitioning to “Sheriff of Babylon” does that draw much from your experience?

King: Sheriff of Babylon a lot of that’s from my experience, and I try to write only about stuff I saw. I mean I can’t write directly about being there…I was there…I don’t want to overplay it because a lot of guys did a whole lot more than I did. I was there for five months in 2004, so I just write about those 5 months. And sort of write about what I saw and what I…not what I did, but the environment and sort of this idea. I was there in 2004 and like when I got there we were kind of winning and when I left we weren’t winning as much anymore. And I feel like we’re still not 100% winning. So I try to write about that in “Sheriff’ and make it as real as I can. So that people who have been there can see it and say “OK, that guy. He’s telling the truth about some of this stuff.”

Korsgaard: Well, I’ve loved it so far. Anything on where you’re taking it now?

King: The first season is done now, and the second season is plotted and done y’know as we’re gonna launch it but um, we’re gonna take a break for a little bit to do sort of a special project we want to do. And then we’re gonna come back to it and the next season will come out.

Korsgaard: You mentioned a special project?

King: Oh yeah. I’m working on a big old project, but I can’t talk about it. It’s one of those things.

Korsgaard: Fair enough. Well, I guess just…one of the things that’s been popular with me and I know a lot of the guys off base is that… Sheriff of Babylon is one of the few big war comic titles these days. I think it’s between you, Terminal Lance, and whatever Garth Ennis is doing these days. That’s pretty much the market for war comics these days.

King: (laughs) Yeah. Sheriff sells alright, so maybe there should be some more of them out there. It’s hard to write war comics. I think people just make a lot of assumptions about what war is now. And war is not like…it’s not like it was you know? It’s something different today, and if you haven’t experienced it, I think it’s tough to write about it.

Korsgaard: Now one thing I’ve always found interesting is every military base I’ve ever been on has a comics shop. The comics industry is very popular with the guys in uniform. Yet for whatever reason, I know DC attempted rebooting Men of War, G.I. Combat and a few different other war comic titles during the New 52, but none of them took off.

Why do you think that is, and what do you think the big two can do differently to appeal more to a market that is very much there?

King: I know comics are big with the troops, because that’s part of what got me back into comics. I’d stopped reading in high school, and got back into them around 2004 because my mother sent me a care package with comics in it when I was overseas. A lot of guys I know did, we wanted escapism, and comics delivered. I wanted to read Spiderman, I wanted to read The Avengers. When your every day is full of gray, it’s nice to read some black and white. It’s nice to read some heroes rising above. Realizing like how much bullshit you have to go through to do that, it’s nice to see them do it easily.

That is what I think the big issue with so many other war comic titles has been. I respect the guys writing them, but most of them have never served, never been over there, they just don’t know what it’s like for the people who have. Most of the Golden and Silver Age war comics writers did, even Stan Lee and Jack Kirby served in the Army. You can’t write about what you don’t know.

I think the obvious solution is just to hire veterans, and that’s 100% the solution. We have two whole generations, my generation and your generation, of people who went through this war, and we’re still going through it, and those men and women are going to become writers, and they’re going to use their experiences from the War on Terror, and they’re going to be like the generation after World War I that sort of redefined literature.

It’s gonna happen so, we just gotta find those people and hire them. I mean, I think it’s as easy as that.

Korsgaard: Music to my ears, and I guess before moving on from that are there any war comics you’re a fan of? You look like a Terminal Lance guy.

King: (laughs) I do read it every now and then, and I love it, but like I said, the older I get I tend to stay away from the realistic stuff because I tell you what, if I read a war comic I really like…I want to be back there. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable. I really don’t want to be back there but there’s like…it’s like jealousy, it’s a thing that’s like jealousy. It’s not as good as jealousy. Or as evil as jealousy. I don’t know what the right word is.

Korsgaard: I know what you mean.

King: And then if I read something that’s bad, then it’s just bad. So, I’m not really drawn to that kind of material anymore. Like I said I want to read a great superhero comic. I kinda want to get away when I’m getting away. I got three kids, when I’m reading a comic book, I need to not feel every emotion in the book. I want to escape…which is funny because I write these really emotional comics so I don’t know, that’s just how I am.

Korsgaard: You can definitely see that emotionality across your comics.

King: I wrote these three books, I wrote Omega Men, The Vision, and Sheriff of Babylon. They’re three 12 issue series and I think of them as one trilogy called “The Trilogy of Best Intentions”. And those 36 issues I think I’m trying to say something about terrorism and about living a modern life post 9/11. And I like all three of those works, I think they work well together. I’m proud of that.

Korsgaard: The other thing about your work is that a lot of it’s really unconventional. You did a Vision title where he’s a family man dealing with just everyday issues and existential angst. You did a Dick Grayson title where he hangs up the cowl, leaves Gotham and becomes a super spy. To start with, how do you come up with these kind of out of the box ideas?

King: (Sigh) I don’t, I don’t know. If you write what everyone’s already written….if you write a superhero book that’s just about…bad guy of the month and they fight him and they win, then there’s no stakes and that’s not fun. So it’s all about finding the stakes. Finding what makes it real to you. Because the more it seems real the more you think “Oh man, something really bad could happen” and the more invested you are.

So I always look for the real in something, something where the world around the reader disintegrates and they’re in the story. Then when a character feels pain, they feel that pain. When a character feels joy, they feel that joy. So you have to go outside the box or else you’ll get trapped in that box. If you just do the same thing everyone else is doing it just feels like noise. If you’re a little bit off then someone’s like “Okay let me get sucked into it”.

The other thing that helps is to draw upon personal experience. My original pitch for The Omega Men was the same weekend that Guardians of the Galaxy came out, and I thought that was the direction DC wanted, so that’s what I originally pitched. They said they wanted something more based off my CIA experience, so I pitched “terrorists in space” and they loved it.

Korsgaard: You took The Omega Men, that was this campy space opera, the comic that originally gave rise to Lobo, and turned it to this sharp tale of guerilla terrorism. Like I said, unconventional, even when it initially spooked readers. I remember when Greyson first launched, you had a lot of people like “Hey, why is Dick Grayson giving up being Nightwing? What is this?” and then by the end you had people begging DC to keep The Omega Men running for the full 12 issues.

So first thing’s first, what’s your take on that? And what was it like watching readers go from resistant to being your biggest supporters?

King: (laughs) Yeah, when everyone – when anyone talks about Grayson the first thing they say is “Man, I thought I’d hate this book.” Tim Seeley who co-wrote with me we joke all the time like “I thought I’d hate this book but it’s alright.” Now I get the same thing on Batman “When Snyder left I thought I’d hate this book but it’s pretty great.”

I have confidence in what I write. I don’t know why, but I do. I’ve been reading comics since I was 7 years old, I like to think I can see good ones from bad ones. I’m not saying I always write good ones, or that I always will. I’m happy with what I write, so I’m confident that people will catch up and people will like my stuff, even if it takes them a while to warm up to the idea.

Korsgaard: Well then, do you mind if I ask a few fun, rapid-fire questions?

King: Let’s do it!

Korsgaard: What’s more challenging, writing novels or writing comic books?

King: Comic books, not just because of little things like deadlines, but because most of the time you’re dealing with continuity and characters with a history that goes back decades. Writing a novel has plenty of challenges, but in most cases, dealing with 70 plus years of prior history won’t be one of them.

Korsgaard: Favorite superhero?

King: Dick Grayson.

Korsgaard: Dick Grayson, okay. What are some of your favorite comic creators?

King: Um… can I name more than one?

Korsgaard: Of course!

King: Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Alan Grant, Mark Waid who’s sitting next to me right now. Louise Simonson, I think doesn’t get praised enough enough.

Korsgaard: I loved her run on Steel as a kid.

King: Right? I just met her, and she is a huge influence on me. Scott Snyder, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis. Bruce Timm and Dwayne McDuffie, for what they both did for the animated stuff.

Korsgaard: For the heroes that you’ve written, most of them are in the Batman family. But for the ones that you haven’t yet, which ones interest you the most, and are there any you’d like to write sometime in the future?

King: Superheroes that I would like to write in the future? I’d love to do some Fantastic Four especially with Thing, I love Thing. That’s my…I love that character, I always have.

Sticking in the DC universe though…I’m working on a project with the character I’ve really want to work on so I can’t say that one.

Korsgaard: Not even a hint?

King: Sorry. As for another one though, Adam Strange. I’d love to do an Adam Strange story in the future.

Korsgaard: He really needs some love.

King: I love that original costume, that classic sci-fi look with just the one gun and the jetpack. I love that, I’d write the crap out of some Adam Strange.

Korsgaard: Now, being the guy on the Batman title right now, they’re working on the Batman movie. I want to know, being the guy behind the comic, any words of advice for the guys behind the movie?

King: Well the guy writing the movie is my boss on the comic, Geoff Johns. So I can’t give him advice, you don’t give your boss advice, that’s rule number one.

Korsgaard: Fair enough.

King: So I’d say “Geoff, you’re a good writer, be true to yourself.” And he knows that already.

Korsgaard: Well then, not as a writer, but just as fan, what do you want to see in a Batman movie then?

King: What do I want to see in a Batman movie? Mostly small things. Outside of the cartoons, it’s been a long time since we’ve gotten to see the World’s Greatest Detective do some detective work in a movie, or tinker around with gadgets and toys, and I’ve love to see a return to that.

The big thing though? I want one of those big fanboy moments. Like… you never forget the first time you hear Kevin Conroy say “I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman!” A moment like that, one of those lines that hits you like a thunderbolt, makes you say hell yeah. That’s what I’m looking for in a Batman movie.



Korsgaard: Maybe also not shooting people or getting triggered by his mother’s name?

King: (laughs) No comment.

Korsgaard: I guess to circle back around, one of the things I’ve noticed throughout your work is you do have a lot of those callbacks to those big moments. You brought back villains like Psycho Pirate, Calendar Man and Bane. You open your run on Batman with the Hugo Strange lines from the 1940 Batman #1.

King: I love how many people caught that. “Observe the clock Batman.” It’s a great, classic line.

Korsgaard: How do you bridge that gap between being the fan and being the writer and striking a balance between the honoring the old and creating the new?

King: The magic of comics is that it’s a continuous story that’s been going on for 75 years. Or more in some cases. That’s what makes these stories great is that when you’re reading a Batman comic, you’re not just reading my stuff, you’re reading my riff, my conversation with a dozen other creators who had this book before.

At the risk of getting all literary on you, TS Eliot said “All poetry is a conversation between poets.” Comics are the same way. It’s the conversation between writers, you’re seeing people bounce off each other and that’s what makes it good.

I’ve written a novel. That’s all by myself. When you read Batman you’re reading something that’s been created by generations of people who worked on it, and that’s what makes the stakes so high that I could mess that up. But that’s also what makes it so good, is that the stakes are so high.

Korsgaard: And I guess any final comments or things you’d like to say?

King: Just that I want to say thank you to this incredible audience that’s supported Batman and made it a big success. I know y’all could have jumped off with Scott Snyder, and you didn’t. You gave me a chance and I’m forever grateful for that.

Korsgaard: Thank you for your time Tom!

Tom King everybody! Be sure to follow Tom King on Twitter, check out the latest issue of Batman on newsstands, and look for his trade paperbacks at a book store near you.