Is there a character you weren't interesting in, but ended up liking after getting the chance to wright the him/her?

It happens all the time. I wouldn’t say I wasn’t interested in them, but they weren’t high on my priority list, maybe. Because of Birds of Prey, I got a rep at the DC offices for being able to polish off characters that were languishing a little bit. This included some characters that I love, like Big Barda and Deadshot, but also some characters that I hadn’t really developed a deep attachment to yet.

Some characters like that that come to mind quickly are Martian Manhunter (always LIKED him okay, but was never wild for him until I got to actually write him), Hawk in Birds of Prey, and then the best example, probably, is Bane.

It was felt that Bane had lost his edge. People kept writing him as just a berserker, almost a Hulk-like figure.

My thinking was, the reason he wasn’t scary like that is that he had nothing to lose, nothing he was fighting for. You can’t have Bane robbing banks, it doesn’t work. So you give him a grown woman that he adopts and his daughter, and you show that he can try to be human and humane.

Then when he’s angry, it’s scary. It’s Bane.

These things are often in the characters already, but you don’t really see them until you write them yourself, it happens with writers all the time. The creators put all that great stuff in there but for one reason or another, it doesn’t connect for you until you dig for it with your own shovel.

It’s kind of nifty.