It’s been years now, but Dustin Nguyen still remembers what it was like to illustrate his first-ever issue of “Batman” — No. 626 in 2004 — as a young artist for DC Comics.
“It was really intimidating,” he says from his home studio in Fountain Valley. “My first Batman run was right after Jim Lee’s Batman — no, Eduardo Risso’s Batman, who was another hero of mine. So super-intimidating.
“But you know, the great thing about jumping on Batman is so many artists have worked on him that you kind of bring your own flavor to it, but at the same time, Batman is Batman no matter what.
“So even working on the dark, gritty Batmans and jumping over to the Li’l Gotham Batman, there’s something about him that stays true to him. There’s something about Batman that makes him him no matter who draws him.”
“Batman: Li’l Gotham” is the series Nguyen created at DC with writer Derek Fridolfs in 2012, the art and style an almost whimsical portrayal of the Batman universe and its characters as smaller versions of themselves. While their newest book, the recent “Batman Tales: Once Upon a Crime,” isn’t officially branded a “Li’l Gotham” release, it is in all but name.
“I wanted to keep the style familiar so when people see it, you know, to give us kind of a built-in audience,” Nguyen says. “We kept the look, a lot of the dialogue felt the same — basically we felt like ‘Li’l Gotham’ was like a cast for a high school play, and we can do different stories just for fun.”
And it isn’t set in Gotham so much as in a world of fairy tales which it adapts with crimefighters and villains from that metropolis. The story “Waynocchio” sets Damian Wayne, the genetically engineered son of Batman and Talia Al Ghul, into an adaptation of Pinocchio. “Alfred in Wonderland” places Batman’s trusty butler Alfred in the surreal world of Alice in Wonderland.
“Derek loves fairy tales and so do I,” Nguyen says. “And our first Batman issue together we did a thing where it tied in the Wonderland Gang, which is like the Mad Hatter and all the (Alice in Wonderland) stuff.”
“Batman Tales” continues the same watercolor illustration style of “Li’l Gotham,” painted on smaller pages so that the chunkier Li’l Gotham character designs don’t lose the crisp lines Nguyen adds with color pencils.
“The last story, with Mr. Freeze and the Snow Queen, really stepped away from traditional comic books,” Nguyen says. “We did the entire story in prose every single page was a splash (full-page illustration). That one was very fun.”
Nguyen has worked for DC since 2000, having left a solid career in 3-D engineering for his true love of comics, but like many in the comic business he’s also branched to work on other projects, most prominently as the co-creator with Jeff Lemire of “Descender,” and now its sequel, “Ascender,” at Image Comics.
The creator-owned sci-fi series “Descender” followed the adventures of the robot Tim-21 in space. Nguyen’s watercolor work on it won him his first two Eisner Awards as best painter/multimedia artist. (He’d previously been nominated for “Li’l Gotham.”)
“It’s really crazy,” Nguyen says. “You do this and you hope someone likes it, Unlike Batman, where there’s that built-in history, this one you’re just kind of swinging. Every month it comes out, every time I draw a painting, I go, ‘Well, I hope I got this one right.’
“The thing that separates it from working on something mainstream is that there is nothing like it before,” he says. “It makes it easier so that you don’t have to reference back to anything. Everything you create is new, and you can kind of just make up things along the way. And being that Jeff and I are the only people that ever worked on it, it’s like there’s really no mistakes.”
Nguyen was talking not long after WonderCon announced it wouldn’t take place as planned in April because of the spreading novel coronavirus pandemic. He’d previously canceled his trip to Emerald City Comic-Con in Seattle shortly before that one postponed too.
It’s ironic, perhaps, given that he says he doesn’t usually like to do many comic conventions, but he had decided this year he’d get out there and signed up for a bunch.
“With the conventions gone, it really sucks because of the travel and it’s fun,” Nguyen says. “But hopefully I’m just like everyone else who is sitting around hoping for some good news.
“The industry is a little bit put on hold, but creativity and creating things, it doesn’t go on hold. If anything, this is my chance to get caught up with the rest of the work.”
