A good dog story

For the Holidays

Five years ago, incredible Bat-editor, Mark Doyle and I were trying to figure out what to do with our first Batman annual. I was crazy busy at the time, and we knew we’d need to do an anthology, but what kind of anthology? After throwing out many of my bad ideas, we settled on doing a Holiday special, a tribute to the great Batman Holiday stories of our youth. Which was awesome, but left one problem. Now I needed a holiday idea. And I had nothing.

As I do most days, I complained at dinner to my family about how hard my job is as they pretended to listen. “Yes, yes, making up stories, so tough…some of us have real problems.” My daughter, who was 7 at the time, clearly tired of my whining, suggested that I write about our new rescue dog, Roxy.

Roxy was a Pit-mix from a mysterious/not-good background, who was having some trouble getting used to her new world of love and safety. She was wonderful to anyone who would give her food (us!). But anyone who might take her food (dogs, strangers) got a lot of barks, growls, and (if she could) bites. We were working with her every day to get her to be the best dog she could be, which turned out to be just the very best.

Faced with a blank page, I stole my daughter’s idea and Roxy’s life and wrote a story about Alfred getting Batman a Rescue dog, Ace, for Christmas. The concept was easy enough: Alfred does for Ace what he once did for Bruce: through kindness and love, he shows the dog that the world is not all horrible, that you can do and be good. In the end, Bruce and the dog come together, two rescues united and happy. Two good boys.

A sweet little story…I hoped.

I was lucky enough that the script was given to David Finch, one of the masters of our medium who decided to ink it himself. David is known for huge action/horror comics. He does epic summer blockbusters as well as anyone ever. So it was thrilling to see him tell this intimate story of just a dog and a butler and tell it with that same passion and energy he’d put into the biggest events in comics.

And a bunch of months later, David and I won our first Eisners for a this Batman story about a dog, a story my daughter had so casually suggested just to shut me up. A July Christmas miracle that was weird and wonderful.

And so here, in time for Christmas, is the short script David brought so beautifully to life.

Like all these scripts, it is available as a bonus for paying subscribers. If you’d like to join that level, we’d be grateful, and you can do it here: