How has Ben Templesmith not been on a regular Bat-title up until now?

Starting in November, that all changes when the 30 Days of Night co-creator and artist teams up with Batman: Eternal and Constantine writer Ray Fawkes for Gotham By Midnight. And why this wasn’t also a thing before now, I don’t know: Fawkes and Templesmith will be throwing a team of investigators against the paranormal in Gotham City, with GCPD Detective Jim Corrigan (and current host for the Spectre) in the lead.

In a Blastr interview with Fawkes yesterday, the writer laid out the rest of the team, which will include Corrigan’s partner Lisa Drake, “creepy… but very reliable” forensic investigator Dr. Szandor Tarr, and Sister Justine, a nun who will bring some kind of supernatural talent of her own to the group’s investigations.

Fawkes is mining some well-trod territory with the basic concept of the series: that Gotham is a sick city which in turn creates its supervillains like the Joker and Two-Face. Recent books like All-Star Western have portrayed Gotham as a town that’s wrong somehow, with its cultists and such and Grant Morrison linking Bruce Wayne to witchfinders possibly demonic doubles while secret societies like the Court of Owls keep the city low, Gotham is kind of a horrifying mess. For Fawkes and Templesmith’s book, it’s a psychic illness, rooted somehow in the supernatural.

According to the preview, Batman will make the occasional appearance, but like Gotham Central before it, his presence appears to be minimal in order to let the cast do their thing.

DC Comics shared a couple of Templesmith’s character designs for the book along with the interview.

The first issue of Gotham By Midnight launches November 26.

[HT: Blastr]