We’re not a Sponge Bob. But even Sponge Bob would have a hard time, I think, if it came out now. Going back to your other thing, it’s weird because, for a while there, they were skewing cartoons definitely younger. DRAW!: Batman had to be young. He couldn’t be old, because... And I always point this out when people will talk about that, because when I was a kid my brother and I would watch the Adam West Batman. When you played Batman, nobody wanted to be Robin, so there would be two Batmans. [laughs] JT: Yeah, exactly. DRAW!: You always want to be the hero. You never want to be the kid. JT: And you know what? I never was interested in seeing how the guy became the hero. I never understood this whole fascination with Bruce Wayne when he’s not Batman. I don’t get that. I want to see the guy in the costume. All I need is one page saying he studied in Tibet and is really smart. I don’t need any dull backstory. And now it seems like, even if you look at the fan fiction and all that crap, everybody wants to know a dossier on the character rather than just see them in action having an adventure. They’d rather read a superhero’s diary than they would read an adventure that the superhero’s having. DRAW!: Well, I think that that is part of the nature of the “babyman,” the fanatic. JT: Thanks for that, by the way. [laughs] So we had a lot of good producers. [laughs] DRAW!: Yeah. And that’s something I actually had talked about for many years amongst friends.
A rough, dramatic Batman pose.
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DRAW! • FALL 2009
JT: I remembered it not being a new thought. It was something you had brought up before. DRAW!: I think that that aspect, while it’s good because people really love and respect the medium and all that, it’s also like a choke collar, because it basically says “Nothing can change,” and “Everything has to be exactly the same as it was when I fell in love with that character when I was 15 years old.” JT: And also it’s very selfish. For them it’s disingenuous, because they don’t want it to be exactly the way they were when they were kids, because Adam West was Batman when