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Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’s Detective Comics run is one of the most celebrated Batman stories of all time. The 1977 storyline introduced Rupert Thorne and Silver St. Cloud and told an adult oriented Batman story with mature themes. Some have argued that it served as a basis for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film (which Englehart wrote early story treatments for).

In 2005 Englehart and Rogers reunited for Batman: Dark Detective, a six issue limited series that continued their story, reuniting Batman with Silver St. Cloud. The creative duo was working on a sequel to that story when Rogers passed away in 2007. After Rogers’s death, DC decided to shelve the series. However, Englehart has always maintained hope that those unpublished scripts could see the light of day.

Englehart says has been in touch with DC Comics publisher Jim Lee, who he says is interested in completing the Dark Detective saga.

“Jim Lee is talking about maybe publishing some of them,” Englehart says during a panel at Dragon Con. “I take Jim at his word. When I say that, it’s not like he’s equivocating or shining me on. He doesn’t know whether he can publish them. The unpublished Batman, the third run that Marshall died while he was doing it, Jim would like to do that. We’re going to make that happen, I think.”

“I went out and started working on it. And then it’s like, why aren’t you working on it. And [Jim Lee] said, ‘We laid off 30% of our staff a couple of years ago. Things take a whole lot longer. It’s got to go through. People go through cost analysis benefits, and it’s got to go through all this kind of stuff.’ So, it’s a different business, I understand that. I think there’s a good chance that you’ll see the third Batman at some point. Some of the other stuff that I wrote might come out from DC.”

After the panel, Popverse caught up with Englehart for an deep conversation, which touched on the unpublished story. Interestingly, Englehart also has another story in mind, which he says would conclude the Silver St. Cloud saga.

“Jim Lee has said that he would now like to publish the unpublished third run, which continues with Silver. I have plotted in the broadest possible strokes, a fourth run, and I have told Jim if we went ahead and did the fourth run, I would somehow bring that relationship to some sort of culmination. Maybe not an ending point, but at least something.”

“Now, quite frankly, I don’t know what that culmination is, and I’ve already had a really good reason for her not to be around. I don’t see Batman as a married guy. I don’t see him settling down. Whether we break them up again, which seems no good because I already did that, or find some other way to resolve that sort of thing, we will get there. I don’t plot things until I’m doing them.”

Englehart says that any future Silver St. Cloud stories he writes would ignore Kevin Smith’s run. Smith killed Silver St. Cloud in Batman: The Widening Gyre #6 (2010). Silver’s death was part of a cliffhanger that has never been resolved as Smith never finished his run. “I just assume that any Silver St. Cloud story I didn’t write doesn’t exist.”

Popverse asked Englehart if he had any artist in mind to finish the issues Marshall Rogers never had a chance to illustrate.

“I looked at a bunch and was looking for somebody that gave me the same vibe as Marshall, that kind of moved the same way as Marshall, and the guy I ended up with was Vasco Georgiev, he’s doing The Flash right now. What I was thinking for it was something where my brain would not disconnect when the switchover came, because Marshall penciled the first issue. It’s never been inked. Never been paid for. He might have been paid for it, but I didn’t get paid for it. And then theoretically, the next five issues would be somebody else, and that’s my choice.”

While nothing has been set in stone, Englehart believes Jim Lee is serious about finishing his Batman saga. “I’m going to trust Jim Lee until I have some reason not to, so I assume we are going to do it, but it’s going to be a while.”

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