It's no small feat to tell a Batman story that readers haven't seen before -- after all, the character has starred in thousands of comics over nearly 80 years, not to mention being featured in a number of television shows, movies, video games and more. Yet with the upcoming wedding between Batman and Catwoman in the pages of DC's flagship Batman series, it feels like uncharted territory -- and fans are eager to see how it plays out.

That was one of several topics during DC's Batman panel on Saturday afternoon at C2E2 in Chicago, with Batman writer Tom King, Batman artists Joëlle Jones, Tony Daniel and Clay Mann, Batman: White Knight writer and artist Sean Gordon Murphy, Bat-family veteran writer Tim Seeley and Batman group editor Jamie S. Rich, serving as moderator, all in attendance.

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King talked the recently released Batman #44, and said, "What makes these characters modern is also what makes them classic. What makes continuity fun is it doesn't quite make sense. It's crooked and weird." Which is similar to how he views his own life, the writer shared.

"The Catwoman that's getting married is not a new, reformed Catwoman," King said, saying that marriage isn't about changing someone else, it's about accepting them for who they are. "This is Catwoman. She has 78 years of stealing shit."

Jones talked designing Catwoman's wedding dress. "She's such a complicated, interesting character, that it would break my heart to see her in a boring white dress," Jones said. "I wanted something that would reflect her personality." She disclosed she didn't have a specific idea in mind going into it, just started doodling and arrived there.

Batman #45 sees the return of Tony Daniel to Batman, with the artist inking himself. "It's been a while," since he inked himself, Daniel said, adding that it's been about five years since he was on Batman.

"I wanted to come back as just the artist, and devote 100 percent of my efforts to just the art," Daniel said. "I'm very critical of my own work. I just felt there was something left unfinished for me with it."

The Daniel-illustrated arc sees Booster Gold looking to give Batman a "For the Man Who Has Everything"--type gift that will lead to a world where Batman's parents were never killed. The series will "live in three issues in a world where Batman's parents were saved, and the world sucks," King said.

"What I love about Batman is, every two or three issues we're switching tones," King said. "Whatever's coming at you, the next thing will be entirely different."

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DC Nation #0, a 25-cent comic which DC shared has sold a million copies, features a Batman story by King and Mann, with a variant cover illustrated by Mann, featuring Batman and Catwoman -- both with Joker smiles -- getting married with Joker as officiant. "DC Nation #0 is going to be a 25 cent comic with three stories in it," Rich said. "The story we have is an eight-page Joker story."

"I worked with Joker a little bit in 'Jokes and Riddles,' but this is modern Joker," King said. "Joker's not like any other character in fiction, because he doesn't have motivations. He doesn't care what he's doing. You could write a 12 issue series where he wants to get an egg the whole time, and he gets to the end of it and says, 'I don't want this egg.'"

Batman: White Knight was described as a "really unique and different take" on Batman and the Joker. "It's sort of a What If? story," Murphy told the crowd. "What if Joker was cured and sane? Would he be even more of a threat to Batman?"

"It talks about politics, but it's not political," Murphy said. "I just wanted to talk about, what if Gotham was hit by politics like we are?" Murphy said that at first the idea of Joker winning an election was dubbed far-fetched by DC editors, but after the 2016 presidential election they changed their mind.

Murphy teased a possible announcement at New York Comic Con about returning to White Knight.

Tim Seeley is writing five Batman: Prelude to the Wedding one-shots, each featuring one hero versus one villain. "Tom and I worked together on Grayson, so I knew I could just call him up and ask him what he was doing," Seeley said, saying that King had ideas he couldn't get to in the main story. "The Bat-family is reacting the way you would emotionally to a family member getting married. The Joker's dropped in, and he's the crazy-bomb pushing all the villains in different directions." So it involves both typical questions associated with weddings -- like Nighting wondering if he'll be Batman's best man, or if he'll ask Superman; or Damian wondering what it'd be like for Catwoman to become his stepmom -- along with plenty of hero vs. villain action.

Jones, Daniel, Mikel Janin, David Finch, Frank Miller, Jim Lee, José Luis García-López and more are all contributing to July's Batman #50.

Here's news: Joëlle Jones is writing and drawing a Catwoman ongoing series starting in July, colored by Laura Allred.

"I had come off of writing Lady Killer, and [DC] contacted me to be in a class and I jumped at the chance," Jones said. "I wasn't an experienced writer and not really interested in writing at all -- it was just a means to an end, really. In the class, I wrote one issue of Catwoman, and they really liked my take on her. I really like embracing the dark side of her. They jumped on it, and said, 'Why not do a pitch for a series?'"

Jones cited Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman as one of her favorite versions of the character. "I'm really looking forward to just making her awful," Jones said with a laugh.

Catwoman #1 will be on sale the same day as Batman #50, but Rich stressed that Batman #50 should be read first.

Moving to fan Q&A: Will there be resolution to the "three Jokers" tease from 2016's DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot? "It is underway," Rich said. "Jay Fabok is underway on pages now. There are some scripts from Geoff [Johns]. It's coming."

King told the audience that the "secret to comics" is to take the over-the-top conceits of superhero genre seriously, and for what they are. "It's an absurd, crazy medium, but it becomes something deep and poetic."

Lee Weeks, who collaborated with King on 2017's Batman/Elmer Fudd Special, will reunite with the writer to illustrate Batman #51-#53.

(CBR's coverage via Syfy Wire's livestream.)

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