Despite being predominantly known for his work on characters including Thor, Wolverine, and the Punisher, when superstar writer Jason Aaron started reading comics, his publisher of choice wasn’t Marvel, but DC — and it’s because of how varied their catalog was at the time.

“In the '80s when I got into the comics, DC was publishing such a great diverse array of different genres and different characters,” Aaron tells Popverse. “There were still war books. There were so many great DC Westerns, there were a lot of fantasy books they did in the '80s that I loved in addition to some of the were offbeat superhero stuff. So that diverse array of stuff really appealed to me.”

In fact, Aaron is a man who has declared that his favorite comics as a kid were Blue Devil, a comedic superhero title about a stuntman trapped in a robot suit by a literal demon, and Atari Force, a space opera very loosely based on video game titles published by the Atari Corporation — both of which he says influenced his first big project upon returning to DC late last year.

“[They] certainly fed into what I am doing with Batman: Off-World, and that being my first Batman book and first, what I feel like is my debut as a DC writer,” Aaron admits. “I knew that I wanted to do something different and something that spoke to some of those books […] that made me a fan as a kid.”

Of course, as off-kilter as Batman: Off-World is — and it really is, gloriously — it’s still a Batman book. That’s also purposeful, Aaron said, noting “I’ve been reading Batman and Detective regularly since I first developed my pull list.”

At a separate point in the conversation, he explained, “when that opportunity came up, I knew as soon as I started working for DC like, okay, I'm going to do Batman first. That makes sense.” The Dark Knight is, after all, a global icon and arguably DC’s most valuable and high profile character… but, nonetheless, he joked, “I would've preferred to have done Blue Devil and Blue Beetle, but Batman and Superman are not that bad [as ways to start as a DC writer].”

Keep your eyes out for the full conversation with Jason Aaron in Popverse later this week. Aaron’s first issue of Action Comics, #1061, is available now.

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