New Batman will be black, DC Comics announces | Comics and graphic novels

The next hero to don Batman’s cowl will be a black man, named Tim Fox, DC Comics has revealed.

The identity of the new Batman, estranged son of Bruce Wayne’s business manager Lucius Fox, was announced by the comics publisher on Thursday. The new series will be written by John Ridley, the screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave, with art by Nick Derington and Laura Braga. It is set in a future Gotham City controlled by the villainous Magistrate, where all masked vigilantes are outlawed and Batman has been killed. Fox, as a new Batman, will rise up to save the day.

Ridley had previously revealed that the next Batman would be a person of colour, telling the New York Times that it was the first time his two sons had been “genuinely excited” about his work. “They appreciate the things that I do. They’re happy for me. They’re great supporters. But they would much rather see Black Panther than 12 Years a Slave, let’s be honest,” he said in November. “So to be able to write the next Batman, for them to know that this next Batman is going to be black, everybody else on the planet can hate it, have a problem with it, denigrate it, but I have my audience and they already love it.”

Fox first appeared as a character in Batman in 1979. In the most recent Batman storyline, his father Lucius has acquired the Wayne fortune and technology. Fox will make his first appearance as Batman in the four-issue Future State: The Next Batman in January, with his story to continue – with a new sidekick – in February in the Batman: Black & White anthology series.

The series is part of a two-month “event” called DC Future State, in which new characters are taking up the mantles of the comic publisher’s key characters. As well as Batman, Clark Kent has been replaced as Superman by his son Jon, and Yara Flor, the daughter of an Amazon and a Brazilian river god, will become Wonder Woman.

As a one-off special in 2001, Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee was asked to reimagine classic DC characters. His version of Batman was the African American Wayne Williams, drawn by Joe Kubert.