Tim Seeley is a veteran of the comic book world with great hits like Hack/Slash, Revival, and Love Bunny and Mr. Hell. Seeley is working at DC with a slew of titles that had great success, most famously is his spy thriller comic he co-writes with Tom King, Grayson. The book has been very successful since its debut, but its future is up in the air with the upcoming DC event Rebirth. While he couldn’t tell much about Dick Grayson’s future, Seeley happily looked back on the series and its success.
“They had a series that they were going to do, but they decided not to go in that direction anymore, so they had a very short amount of time to figure out a new idea,” Seeley said. “And someone at DC said, let’s try a spy idea. So they said, ‘what would you do?’ and I was like oh man I don’t know.”
Seeley eventually found inspiration from the Batman INC series from Grant Morrison and Chris Burham. He found that the organization Spyral would be the perfect venue for Dick Grayson’s new career as a secret agent, and give the agency a new home after Batman INC.
“So, I pitched the idea that Dick should join Spyral, that he was working with Helena Bertinelli,” Seeley explained. “And Tuesday the next week they were like, ‘we like it, we have another pitch we like from a guy who was a novelist, but he was actually in the CIA.”
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DC liked both pitches from Seeley and writer/former CIA agent Tom King and had both writers work together on creating the Grayson series. They combined their ideas effectively to create a highly reviewed, entertaining series that was a fresh new take on the character. While the series was full of classic spy tropes, and high-octane adventures, Seeley and King, wanted to incorporate real elements of what being a spy can do to you. Specifically focusing on the ideas of loneliness, and isolation that comes from being in a secret organization.
“Tom’s experience in the CIA was obviously nothing like Spyral, it’s completely not realistic,” Seeley joked. “Except for the moments, he brought where it was like, this is what it’s like to be away from your family and friends. This is what it’s like to not be able to tell anyone what you do anymore.”
Seeley described that the general experience of spies was to sit in a room and wait for a phone call. Certainly against the notion that spies run around getting shot at and having choreographed fights on speeding trains. But, Seeley wanted this comic to balance out the crazy escapist adventures with the real world psychological toll it takes.
“When we could get that genuine emotion, how it really feels to do that stuff,” Seeley said. “I think that’s when we did some of our best stuff.”
While Seeley was more than happy to talk about Dick Grayson’s past, he wasn’t as revealing about the future of Grayson after the upcoming Rebirth event. But, he did assure us that there would be big reveals from DC coming up soon.
