Chuck Dixon

Chuck Dixon 2007

Charles "Chuck" Dixon (born April 13, 1954 ) is an American comic book writer. Dixon was best known as the author of comic series such as Batman , Punisher or Robin , as well as the creator of the comic series Birds of Prey, which served as a template for the television series of the same name.

Life and activity

Dixon's breakthrough as a writer came in 1991 when he was hired by Dennis O'Neil , then editor of the DC Comics series about the superhero Batman , to write the first ever series on Batman's assistant Robin . After this series, which came out as a six-part miniseries, proved to be a commercial success, Dixon was discontinued as the regular author of the traditional series Detective Comics , one of then four monthly series that told the adventures of Batman, which he hired just under seven Written for years from 1992 to 1998. Together with Doug Moench and Alan Grant , he formed the permanent writing team during those years who directed the fortunes of Batman and the various other characters who populate the fictional Batman universe, writing most of the stories that tell Batman's adventures .

After Dixon had written two other Robin Ministries ( Robin II: The Joker IS Wild and Robin III: Cry of the Huntress ) in parallel with his work on the Detective Comics , he became the author of the first ever consecutive regular in 1993 Robin series, which he oversaw for almost ten years and for which he wrote more than 100 issues. From 1994 to 1996 Dixon also took on the writing job for the monthly series about the professional thief Catwoman, who is also active in the Batman universe, and from 1996 to 2003 the writing job for the series Nightwing , the adventures of Batman's first foster son, Dick Grayson, as the superhero Nightwing told in the fictional city of Blüdhaven.

An independent series concept that proved to be successful was created by Dixon with the series Birds of Prey , in which an all-female team of superheroes / adventurers led by the former Batgirl Barbara Gordon, who was confined to a wheelchair after a serious injury, in her new Identity as a hacker and apparently "omniscient" information broker Oracle is led by her command center in a former clock tower from which she delegates her agents. The team includes characters such as the superhero Black Canary , the vigilante Huntress , the pilot Lady Blachhwak and at times even the eco-terrorist Poison Ivy . Dixon wrote several one-shots and mini-series about the "birds of prey" and then numerous issues of an ongoing series on the subject. The concept was adapted, albeit with little success, by the NBC broadcaster in a short-lived television series of the same name.

During his time as a Batman author, Dixon invented numerous new characters, some of which established themselves as permanent additions to the Batman universe: the best known is the villain Bane , a giant, superhuman who he introduced in 1993 in the one-shot Vengeance of Bane # 1 strong and cunning terrorist from a fictional Caribbean island state called Santa Prisca, who was born and grew up in a prison where he became the perfect criminal through his unusual socialization and experiments with a steroid called "Venom" that the prison administration carried out on him . In the famous Knightfall storyline from 1993/1994, Bane even managed to defeat Batman and at times cripple him. In the meantime, the character was shown as a villain in the Batman films Batman and Robin (played by Jeep Swenson) and The Dark Knight Rises (played by Tom Hadry) as well as in various Batman cartoon series such as Batman: The Animated Series , batman: The Brave and the Bold and Beware the Batman also adapted in other media, so that it has achieved great public notoriety. As the creator of the figure, Dixon receives royalties for transposing his most famous figure inventions into other media in accordance with the author's concessions that DC Verlag and its parent company Time Warner have concluded with the authors of DC Comics. When the film Dark Knight Rises was released in 2011 , he smiled, referring to the investment company of the then presidential candidate of the Republican Party Mitt Romney , Bain Capital, that the donations he received from using the character Bane were his personal "Bane Capital" be. This was preceded by attacks by right-wing talk show hosts who suspected conspiracy theories that the "arch-mean" villain in the new Batman film was named like the company of the Republican candidate in the upcoming presidential election, in order to subtly turn and influence the population against the Republicans. This storm in the water glass was finally caused by the clarification that the character Bane had already been created in 1993 and that the name was therefore by no means specially conceived in 2011, in order to make the name of a screen criminal based on the name of the company of a well-known politician among the cinema audience To awaken subliminal negative associations towards that company and its boss and in this way to create a mood against the company or the politician who will soon be up for election (i.e. Romney).

Other characters Dixon created for the Batman comics include the teenage vigilante Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler, the daughter of a Batman villain named Cluemaster who was introduced in the 1960s, who wants to make up for her father's misdeeds by acting like Batman and Robin fights the crime in Gotham City as a hooded figure at night and who later enters into a long-term liaison with Robin. There is also the "General", a highly gifted teenage student at a military school who claims to be the head of a street gang in Gotham City, the hit man Lady Vic, who is a British aristocrat in her secret identity; Gunhawk, the gun-loving mercenary behind the former US soldier Liam Hawklight; the monstrous steeljacket, the product of a gruesome experiment in which the genes of an unidentified man were manipulated; British gang leader King Snake, who is feuding with Robin from Hong Kong to Gotham, where he leads the Asian street gang of the Ghost Dragons; Snake's former assistant Lynx, a one-eyed Chinese martial artist who turns out to be a staunch opponent of Robin; former corrupt policeman Torque, whose head is twisted 180 degrees after an accident; the Mexican killer Brutale; the pathological allergy sufferer Veezy, who goes by the code name "Agent Organe" or "Allergent", tries to wipe out the entire flora of Gotham City in order to alleviate his symptoms; the criminal Lady Spellbinder, who, through a pact with a demon, has the gift of telephatically instilling hallucinations into their minds so effectively that they perceive the simulated images and other impressions as if they were real; the modern pirate "Captain Fear"; as well as a refurbished version of the arsonist "Firefly", a former movie pyrotechnician who lives out his addiction to starting fires by systematically burning down the sites of his unhappy childhood or setting fires for criminal organizations.

Other series that Dixon wrote for DC were the adventures of Guy Gardner , a bully with a magic ring who, because of his inconsolable demeanor, constantly offends other superheroes, but is basically a good guy, and the series Green Arrow about the archer of the same name who fights crime in his home town Star City with bow and arrow and martial arts skills. Dixon overhauled the series by letting the original Green Arrow Oliver Queen die and replacing him with his illegitimate son Connor Hawke: In doing so, he followed a trend of the mid-nineties to "discard" and "discard" established characters who had decades of adventures under their belt to be replaced by more recent versions of the same concept. What was remarkable about Connor Hawke was that, as the product of Queen's relationship with a Chinese woman he met while traveling in East Asia, he was one of the first characters of Asian descent to become the main character in an American superhero comic.

Dixon often works with illustrators who were or are Graham Nolan , Greg Land , Staz Johnson , Scott McDaniel and Jim Balent .