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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse offered the greatest gift to writers - and helped shape Matt Fraction's Batman

One particular moment in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has helped Matt Fraction deal with a problem of Batman comic book writing

There’s one piece of classic Batman lore that, if new Batman writer Matt Fraction has his way, fans won’t have to deal with again for quite some time — and it’s a superhero from an entirely different company that we have to thank for it.

“I'll give you a real spoiler. I never say never — it’s always dangerous, right? But I hope I never portray the murder of the Waynes in my run,” Fraction announced during his Sunday afternoon Batfraction panel at Rose City Comic Con 2025. “It feels really well trod. The biggest gift of [Spider-Man:] Into the Spider-Verse as a storyteller — as a Spider-Man fan, as a visual feast, it's a whole other story, but as a writer. That movie started off with ‘Peter Parker, Spider-Man, blah, blah, blah, you know the story.’ Like, yeah. I do! There's already been three Spider-Man 2s, I got it! [Retelling the origin] bores me to tears, and it's been done so wonderfully well that everything after it has felt like parody.”

Considering that we know that Fraction is already planning to team with artist Becky Cloonan to revisit the entire history of Batman for a special issue in the near future, it’s even more exciting knowing that that story will be told without rehashing some of the Bat-history that everyone already knows all too well.

Coming on the heels of a Superman movie that didn’t feature a scene of a rocket being sent from Krypton, maybe we’re reaching an era where everyone accepts that there are parts of these stories we don’t need to be retold all the time, and instead focuses on doing something different with the iconic heroes, instead.

Batman #1 is available now. There’s no dead Waynes to be found in the issue.


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Graeme McMillan

Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.

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