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Last Friday DC announced Batman: Dark Patterns.

This is very much a passion project, the book I've wanted to make since I started working with DC. 12 issues of Batman solving grisly, street level crimes. I've been quietly working on it with editor Arianna Turturro for over two years, and with art team Hayden Sherman, Triona Farrell, and Frank Cvetkovic for almost a year.

It features a stripped back supporting cast: Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and two new characters we're introducing to assist the Dark Knight. One a forensic pathologist, the other a sensationalist tabloid journalist. One who can read the patterns in the bones of the dead, the other who can read the patterns in the superstitions in the psyche of Gotham.

To me, this book is pure Batman. A violent witch doctor in a sick city, with little to rely on but his burgeoning experience, his detective skills, and a handful of relatively crude, lo-fi gadgets. Hayden's cover for issue 1, above, is very much a mission statement. This is a Batman who bleeds and suffers and pulls muscles. Learning what his limits are, and trying to press beyond them. A book about as grounded as I think Batman can or should get, while also heightening elements of Gotham.

There are different approaches to that city, and the logic of why anyone would chose to stay there when stepping out your door each day is to risk being dissolved in acid by a cackling clown or dosed with fear toxin until you claw out your own eyeballs. My thinking is that many of the people who land there simply can't afford to leave. It's the darkest mirror of New York; full of people who came to the New World to make a better life for themselves, to instead find a dangerous, savage place with few prospects and even less hope.

I've also been thinking about Germany post-World War II. As the country reeled from the horrors it had wrought, under rationing from the Allied forces, there was an outbreak of witchcraft accusations and trials, and a notable rise in celebrity faith healers. Under intense stress, their reality breaking under their feet, people retreated into old ways and beliefs.

The title Dark Patterns refers to a few things. The wound patterns Batman will pour over to find causes of death or injury. The folklores carried from foreign places to a new home to resurge anew. And a few other things that will become apparent as the series wears on, but would be rather giving the game away this early on.

Batman: Dark Patterns releases December 11th in comic stores. It is a beautiful, beautiful book. If you like Hannibal, MPD Psycho, or bat-books such as Legends of the Dark Knight, I suspect you'll like this.

Finished Yuri Herrera's 10 Planets, and it was as good as I hoped it would be.

Alex Paknadel turned me onto Herrera when he sent me a copy of Three Novels which blew my head off a few years ago.

10 Planets is a collection of 20 stories told in under 100 pages, each one an exhilarating injection of concept and character. It's easy to invoke Borges and Calvino here, so I will. Easily one of the greatest writers working today, even reading in translation.

Both books I've read by Herrera include authors notes decrying the difficulty of translating him from Spanish as his command of the language is so exacting and beautiful. However I've found it harder to track down Spanish editions of his work, once dragging my Spanish-speaking wife around multiple bookstores in Medellin in vain to hunt them down.

'Grief tech' remains one of the worst expressions I've ever heard, and I want to write a book about it.

'Seance AI.' 'Digital Afterlife.' 'Project December.' Jesus H Christ, someone stop us.

New comics are out today, and this is a busy release week from me:

ABSOLUTE POWER: TASK FORCE VII issue 7. A one shot I've written as part of Mark Waid's Absolute Power event, and the last in this series of one shots. Amanda Waller's Amazo robots are draining heroes of their powers left, right and center, and here one has been tasked with taking out the Global Guardians, the international hero team who seem to never catch a break.

We're really trying something with this one- the Global Guardians have always had something of a fractured membership, so we decided to fracture them even further. The red tape of international bureaucracy has led the Guardians to split into 4 distinct teams, some legitimate, some far less so, all rather at each other's throats. It was a difficult needle to thread in 20 pages, but I'm proud of the result.

Very much of that is down to Fran Galán, artist on this issue, who did incredible work here. He handled a huge cast and big action in limited space and made the whole thing read so extremely clean, stylish and coherent. This is the first time I've worked with Fran, and I very much hope it won't be the last.

Also this week, Detective Comics 1089. Your friend and mine Ram V brings his spectacular Gotham Nocturne opus to a close, and he's brought me along for the ride. What I've written here isn't actually quite a backup, but more of an interlude in the heart of the issue. A backup didn't quite make sense here. The issue brings Ram's whole opera to a swelling emotional close, so to end that with a backup would have felt like popping out under the curtain once the applause died down to blurt out an a capella Blitzkrieg Bop.

Since we're doing an interlude, I suggested calling this one Luftpause in keeping with the opera theme of the story. A breath in musical notation; and an opportunity to check in on some old friends with artist Chris Mitten.

I'm going to miss writing these backups. Once a month I've been carving a day out to write 8 pages in Gotham, darting between characters I've written extensively, and ones I'd never even broached before, and always with wonderful artists. Adding little notes to Ram's piece and watching him pick them up and fold them into the main plotline. A really lovely gig. But now I do get to go write my own two bat-family books.

Also also from me this week: Doctor Who issue 3. The penultimate issue of this 15th Doctor story with Kelsey Ramsay, and possibly my favourite issue of the story. A godlike being toys with the Doctor, and some lovely surreal imagery with Kelsey's rusted, Shinya Tsukamoto-esque Cybermen. My good friend Will O'Mullane was kind enough to send me some preview pages for the issue, so here they are:

I was almost too busy to write to you this week, but between a heavy release week and the Dark Patterns announcement, it would have felt imprudent to skip this letter.

I'm up to my eyeballs in the script of Nightwing #123, which was fighting me initially, until I began to suspect I may have taken a wrong turn in one scene back in #122. I then received notes from editor Jess Berbey on that issue which confirmed exactly what I was thinking. A few nips and tucks there and #123 is flowing, shaping up to be my favourite issue of the book so far. That's been true of each script I've written for Nightwing, which is hopefully a good sign. The character has such a life of his own that he surprises me sometimes.

I also owe a script rewrite for the final issue of an unannounced miniseries, an outline for a one shot I'm putting together with DaNi, and a short piece to Kieron Gillen that I've almost finished. Then I get to move onto a TV thing which also very much needs done. I try hard not to overwork, but I am typing most of this at 2:30 am.

I don't think I've mentioned here properly yet, but I'll be at New York Comic Con, signing in Artist Alley at table A-32. I'll post signing times here nearer the date.

I haven't actually tabled at a convention since Thought Bubble 2022, so I'm really looking forward to this one, and catching up with many people I haven't seen in years. I did try and attend Thought Bubble last year, traveling up to Harrogate and then immediately testing positive for COVID. So I got to spend the weekend listening to the distant parties from my Airbnb like a sickly Quasimodo. NYCC should go better.

Also at NYCC I'll be on DC's Gotham City panel alongside Hayden, Christian Ward, Tate Brombal, and Alex Segura. I'll be talking about Nightwing and Dark Patterns, inevitably. It suddenly strikes me that I've somehow, without noticing, become something of a Gotham veteran. With how I described the city above, it probably says something about me that this is my happy place. A happy place of toxic waste, mad scientists, and black magicians, but then again that does describe most of my favourite pubs.

This has been thedeadairchannel. A transmission from the desk of Dan Watters. Please do subscribe.