DC’s flagship Batman writer wants to know: ‘How essential is money to Batman?’

polygon.com:

Since 2006, DC’s Batman series has been a place for the company’s biggest writers to take their biggest swings — to writeThe Batman Story, not just a Batman story. And so from Grant Morrison to Scott Snyder to Tom King to James Tynion IV, the cowl has now passed to writer-artist Chip Zdarsky, who kicks off the new era in partnership with artist Jorge Jiménez.

The co-creator of Sex Criminals and writer of comics like Daredevil, Howard the Duck, and Jughead, Zdarsky has said that his first six issues of Batman, an arc entitled “Failsafe,” are only the beginning. And this May, Polygon chatted with Zdarsky via email about all that beginning entails — namely, a mysterious new villain who hails from the abandoned seat of Batman’s power, the Batcave itself.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for Batman #125.]

Failsafe doesn’t appear in this first issue until a classic final-page reveal. But we get some hints as to their origin in the opening scene set sometime in the past, in which a silent Alfred notices a strange beeping and a red light in the depths of the Batcave. In the final pages we return to the present and the dusty and shuttered Batcave, where that dang beep is happening again.

A black-and-red obelisk rises from the ground and opens to reveal a robotic humanoid form with a menacingly reflective faceplate, as a computerized voice ominously declares, “Failsafe online.”

In initial announcements of his run, Zdarsky described Failsafe as “Batman’s Doomsday,” referring to the alien monster editorially engineered to kill Superman in The Death of Superman. That’s… pretty vague, which is reasonable for an announcement. But now that we’ve gotten our first look at Failsafe, it begs the question: What does “Batman’s