Dick Grayson becoming a spy and joining Spyral seemed like a pretty crazy idea. Tim Seeley and Tom King really made it work. If you haven't been reading the series, the good news is you can pick up the first trade in comic shops today, AGENTS OF SPYRAL. For those that have been reading, we had a pretty insane cliffhanger in March's issue #8. GRAYSON #9 is on sale June 24.
We talked to Tim and Tom about the series as a whole and tried to pry some information on upcoming events in the series.
COMIC VINE: We’ve seen Dick go on a few different missions now throughout the series, has your view on his role as a spy and in Spyral changed or evolved at all?
TIM SEELEY: I think we actually stayed remarkably on point with the themes and ideas we wanted to cover, even before we started the book. If anything, I think the plot has bent to meet the themes we wanted to start with that ended up working so well.
TOM KING: I think in terms of how he changes as a character, he’s coming to this slow realization that he likes being a spy. He enjoys this kind of work. He’ll never be the world’s greatest detective. That title’s taken. Dick Grayson could be the world’s greatest spy. But he still works for an organization that’s not all good. That could create a conflict in the series.
CV: What’s been your favorite things about taking Grayson in this direction away from Gotham?
SEELEY: I like the way it changes the action scenes and the way it changes how he encounters villains. I think there’s a sort of inherent thing when you’re doing a story and a guy is running across rooftops in Gotham and you default to a Batman style story. I think with GRAYSON, we really figured out a way to not do that. It allows us to do crazy stuff when we start in medias res. We’ll do a cold open in the middle of some crazy story, and then we go from there. That allows us to go bigger and take him to crazier places in the world. We can really change up settings and and who’s fighting Dick. It’s totally been a awesome thing to take him away from the usual kind of Dick Grayson story.
KING: That’s exactly right. When you write a Gotham story, you’re like, “Okay there’s a rooftop, there’s a bridge, there’s a dock, there’s a Batcave…”
SEELEY: Gargoyles...
KING: Yeah. Here, like every issue we ask, “Okay, where is the coolest place in the world that I’ve ever seen and been too? Now that I can picture it in my head, what would it look like with someone jumping off it?”
Because comic creators are now international creators, we can tailor it. We did an Irish issue with an Irish artist. He got to draw his hometown pub in Dublin. We’re going to do some stuff in Madrid because we have a Spanish artist with Mikel [Janin]. We can play to their strengths. They can show the world what their neighborhood looks like.
CV: Since Mister Minos’ long running plan to uncover all the superheroes’ secret identities took a slight turn in issue #8. Will we find out more on his background anytime soon or is that something for a later time?
SEELEY: Yeah, his story’s not done but I think you can definitely see it took a bit of a turn for him. [laughs] We’ve set up a lot of interesting things for that character. We didn’t really feel the need to…tell you everything. I think that’s kind of cool because we know most of it. I think that’s a good way to approach a story like this. We can keep it back because we know it. We don’t have to fake it. When it really fits with the story, we’ll definitely use it.
KING: What I love about Minos is how much of a Bat-villain he is. He has a silly face. He has a silly obsession with secrets. As we were developing him and developing him into this Bat-villain and it looked like we were creating another cliché, what was actually happening was Agent Zero was creating this cliché to lure Dick Grayson inside. All that stuff we were doing serves this greater plot that we have.
CV: Will the tone or direction of series change now that Helena is in charge?
SEELEY: A little, yeah. I think we found a formula and a vibe that we really like. The book will also be about being unpredictable and changing. That will maintain that going forward for sure.
KING: I’m fairly new to the comics industry and I got to randomly sit next to Scott Snyder and try not to ask him for his autograph and instead ask him what kind of wine he recommended. I told him, “Dude, the one thing I admire about BATMAN is people are always talking about it.” He said, “Yeah, you have to reinvent. You can’t just get into villain-of-the-month. You have to keep reinventing yourself. You have to make the stakes big. If people pay a bunch of money, they don’t want the same thing over and over again.” I think that’s dead on and what we’re going to try to do with the series.
CV: What sort of missions or threats will they deal with now?
SEELEY: Going forward, I think we play around a lot with identity. That’s been a big theme before this. It’ll definitely come into play in a different way in the next arc. The first storyline is a three-issue. It’s the longest one we’ve done in the book. We’ve tried to purposely do the one-offs or two-offs at most. Right off the bat, you get a three-issue story that I think is a pretty awesome open to the next “season.”
KING: And as the world knows, Batman is off the table. Batman was the only person who knew that Dick Grayson was undercover. He was the only one that knew all the spying he’s doing was just a front or performance. We start issue 9 with Dick calling home and no one answers the phone. He’s thinking, “My mission is done. I’ve completed what you told me to do. Can I come home? What am I supposed to do?” And no one answers.
CV: Was having Grayson get a new partner with Agent 1 something you planned for back in issue #3?
SEELEY: Yes, absolutely. We knew how the first part of the story would ended and what it meant going forward. Now you’re going to see the fruits of all our hard work pay off.
KING: Issue #3 seemed like a one-off. What happens in that issue is Dick is plays a role in the death of Agent 1’s partner. Now the two of them becoming partners is going to play out over the next long while.
CV: Will we see more of Agent Zero and what her plans are?
SEELEY: [pause] Yeah. [laughs] We’re on strict…we can’t talk much about that storyline stuff but yeah, that’s something we definitely plan on getting back to.
KING: I loved writing that, that scene was so cool, right? [In issue 8] That was from an old TITANS issue, the inspiration, from George Perez had a close up of Dick and it kept switching back and forth.
SEELEY: That’s a good place to get inspiration.
CV: I won’t ask if we’ll find out sooner or later since you can’t tell us. We’ll just have to sit on the edge of our seat.
Be sure to pick up GRAYSON: AGENTS OF SPYRAL available today in comic shops and every where else on June 9. GRAYSON #9 is on sale June 24.