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Writer Tom Taylor has been instrumental in shaping the current era of DC Comics. From books like DCeased, to his run on Nightwing with Bruno Redondo, to the epic Beast World crossover event, and now to Detective Comics, Taylor has helped usher in one of the strongest eras for DC Comics in recent memory. Case in point: Taylor and Redondo's Nightwing run was the first comic book series that made me go to my local comic shop every month and buy every single cover of each issue. If you don't believe me, I have the short boxes behind me right now to prove it. 

Now, Taylor's career is expanding like never before with the debut of DC's first all-ages, creator-owned comic book series called C.O.R.T.: Children of the Roundtable with artist Daniele Di Nicuolo. C.O.R.T. follows a group of kids in Los Angeles who are nearly crushed by a falling boulder while exploring the Hollywood Hills. Sticking out of the boulder is a mysterious sword, and once one of their buddies manages to pull it out, the sword splits into a variety of weapons tailored to each of the kids. Our heroes quickly discover that their new weapons aren't your typical shortswords: they're connected to an ancient, magical legacy, with each weapon having a voice of its own! With their ancient arms in tow, these Children of the Round Table must face off against a tyrannical force known as Mordred. The six-issue miniseries will begin with C.O.R.T.: Children of the Round Table #1, out in comic shops on September 10, 2025. 

C.O.R.T. artist Daniele Di Nicuolo collaborated with Taylor on the BOOM! series Seven Secrets, and in an interview with Popverse, Taylor elaborated on why Di Nicuolo was the logical choice to launch an all-new group of characters in the DC Universe. If you're a Batman, you'll be pleased to know that our conversation with Tom Taylor wasn't just limited to C.O.R.T.: Taylor also gave us the lowdown on the gnarly upcoming arc in Detective Comics called The Courage That Kills. Read on below! 

This isn't the first time you've reimagined a popular narrative within Western culture - Neverlanders is another example. What drew you to tackling Arthurian legends and the Knights of the Roundtable?

Tom Taylor: I’m not sure what started it, like I’m not sure if it was my desire to tell more stories of kids taking on tyrants in an era when it feels like the next generation has a lot of tyrants to take on, or I don't know whether the horse came first or the car in this instance or the magical sword but it was just one of those things. Obviously I grew up with watching Excalibur and reading these books and I'm a huge fantasy fan as you've probably seen from Dark Knights of Steel and the rest and it just felt like it's one of those things. I think I actually may have come up with this before I came up with Neverlanders so this has been a long time in the pipeline. It was just about finding you know, basically Daniele was a big part of it. It's like ‘Oh you are gonna be the exact right person for this to work in,’ and it just seemed to work out really, really well. 

For sure yeah, and just like seeing their individual little expressions and how they respond to everything, it's just so cute to see on the page.

It is and that is one of Daniele's skills that he has just taken this cast, and in something like this where the issues are twenty pages and so we don't have a lot of time for deep character work and histories and stuff, so having someone who can bring each character to life and give them their nuance and give them their character on the page, that’s a gift.

I see that our heroes are venturing to the Bronson Caves in issue #1. Is that a callback to how the Bronson Caves were used as a filming location in the Adam West Batman show in the 60s?

Not really but having said that, I feel like as soon as I wrote it everybody pointed out, ‘You know that's-‘ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah’ and so quite possibly in the back of my brain somewhere, yes. But I think around the time that I was writing it was about the time I'd probably first did go to the Hollywood Hills and I went to [Griffith] Observatory and I did, you know, the thing and I saw the Hollywood Sign. So I think it was just kind of in my head but yeah, the cave being the place where Batman, where he drove out of his [Batcave] is very funny, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was subconscious.

To return to Dark Knights of Steel, as a writer, you’re a bit of a chameleon. You scared the daylights out of all of us with DCeased, while you reimagined the DC Universe within a fantasy realm with Dark Knights of Steel. Does your process change as a writer when tackling different genres?

I mean, I'm not sure if it changes, no, it must, of course it does. It changes genre to genre but it's always about character first. So it's still you know if you read Dark Knights of Steel, if you read DCeased, there's still a part of Superman there, there's still a part of Batman there, even if they're taken out of different setting, their core is still there. And that’s just me being a huge fan, but wanting to play in these other places. Like I'm not a horror fan at all, but I'm a massive fantasy fan, I grew up reading fantasy books as a kid. I was reading Lord of the Rings when I was nine. I grew up loving all of this stuff and I'm friends with a lot of fantasy authors today and so, being able to bring my two loves of superheroes and fantasy together was great. And again this is something we're doing with Children of the Roundtable. It’s, ‘Okay, I love this era, I love the Sword in the Stone, I love all of these things. How do I make this contemporary, what do I have to say here?’ and ‘Oh my god, we've never really seen superheroes come out of this,’ and in a way, they are superheroes, they get weapons that are magic and powered and they get abilities because of it. So yeah, it was another way to tell that story and bring all my loves together.

Something that immediately struck me, because I’m a ‘90s baby, I thought of Power Rangers, which makes sense because Daniele has worked on that book. And just everyone having their own color and their own little specialty and then also being friends, I was like, ‘Oh wow this is like fantasy Power Rangers.’

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good take which I hadn't actually thought of, and I've written Justice League/Power Rangers. But you’re absolutely right, they are a team. And so when you’re writing something that you really do want to be for everybody, like we want adults to read this book and love it, but we really want this book to be accessible for everybody. We want this to be the book that every massive comics fan goes, ‘I will get something for my niece and my nephew or my kid or my friend’s kids.’ I want this to be their gateway into the greatest storytelling medium on the planet is CORT. 

So yes, you're thinking you need to find those simple tricks to delineate who's speaking, which weapon is speaking, simple things like that, and that's the joy of having a letterer like Wes Abbott, there's a reason I work with him so often. He just tells a very good story, he’s just very readable. 

I heard that there might be some killer rabbits up ahead in CORT? Are you able to confirm or deny the whispers we’ve heard?

Sadly there are no killer rabbits in CORT, no matter how much I have been influenced by Holy Grail in my life, I have not added a killer rabbit. But look, we do hope that this is a book that won't just be six issues. We hope that this is a book that you know, I wanna use that Percy Jackson model of having them grow up a year every series, if we get more series. Obviously that all depends on the popularity of this one but then there may be a chance for a killer rabbit is all I’m saying.

So now I need everyone to show up and get this book so that we can see that eventually, because I found out recently that killer rabbits have this crazy, recurring thing in medieval art, which is what Monty Python was poking fun at, where they have weapons and stuff.

Support us, and we’ll bring you a killer rabbit.

This is DC's first all-ages creator-owned comic book series. You could have done this at any publisher - why did you feel DC was the best place for this?

I think it was just talking to them and just getting that sense of, ‘Oh, we have a real opportunity here.’ It may not work but if it does work, we have the opportunity – like, this is the company that do the best super hero teams you know, this is the place where the Justice League is here, The Titans are here, Young Justice is here. Obviously, you know, it’s been a help that I’ve also signed an exclusive to DC recently, but having said that, I wasn’t obligated to do this, it really did feel like a good match. They were excited to do this and I was excited to do this, and Daniele really was, and I was coming off of Nightwing, and Daniele joined me on Nightwing, he joined me on some Titans, this feels right. And we really hope it is.

To switch gears for a moment to Detective Comics, first of all, I read issue #1100 and that dog story, I cried, it was so sweet. And obviously you’ve written about dogs before, like we all love Haley. Do you have a specific dog in your life whose relationship you put in your stories?

Oh yeah. Do you want to meet her?

Oh my god I would love to.

[walks in with dog] This is Shadow. She’s very young. If you ever saw our Suicide Squad [Bad Blood] with Dogshot?

Yes.

So Dogshot was a combo of Shadow here and Bruno’s dog who looks very similar but a little bigger. 

Ohh, she’s so good. September 24's Detective Comics #1101 begins a new arc called 'The Courage That Kills' that from what I understand has Gotham become a city where everyone is fearless - not that all the stuff we should be afraid of is gone, but that people don't have the natural fear response. What can you tell us about that?

Look, it was playing with that idea, it comes from a lot of different places, but it was playing with that idea  of - we've seen that Scarecrow attack so many times, we've seen this city gripped by fear. Can it be just as scary, or even scarier, if a city has no fear? What is the danger of that, of losing and inhibitions… and ultimately, yes.

I don't want to give too much away about what's coming, but it's a big story. A new villain, a new costume for Batman, which is always exciting, which Mikel [Janín] is just drawing the hell out of. Yeah, it’s a story that just seems right for the moment as well.

It’s going well. I was getting pages in earlier today and showing them to friends and going, Oh my god, look at this, look at what Mikel is drawing. It’s amazing to work with an artist like him, he is just extraordinary and the blue suit is cool but the way he's depicting it is so cool, it works in so many ways. 

And so that’s the blue suit that is spinning out of Matt Fraction and Jorge’s [Jimenez] book?

Yeah, so it debuts in Batman #1 and Detective #1101, and we kick on from there.

Hell yeah. So speaking of Matt Fraction, he told us recently that he’s been involved in some group planning sessions. So how would you describe the Batman brain trust right now, and what excites you in Batman, besides your own work of course?

I love everything that Matt and Jorge have planned, like obviously I can't give it away. But yeah, we, I think, started talking months ago just to make sure everyone's on the same page, but just to hear of the plans and for him to go, ‘What do you think?’ as well, ‘So yeah this is cool,’ and ‘What can you work with?’ whether that's me or whether it's whoever is writing Batman and Robin at the time. It's great to have that Gotham Group and to be able to just send someone a message and just say, ‘Hey does this- you’re Kelly Thompson, you're running Birds of Prey, can we do this,’ or ‘PKJ, you're doing Batman and Robin, can you use this, or is there anything you're doing that-’ It just means we don't interfere with each other and it also means we get to play in the same sandbox. And we like the idea of Gotham being the same sandbox. And these stories all coming together because sometimes Detective is just its own thing and what's happening in the wider Gotham universe doesn't affect it, but we all want to be in the same city at the moment.

October's Detective Comics #1102 will serve as your one-year anniversary on the title. You've written Batman before in several places, but this is the main historical franchise title - what have you learned about Batman and DC from doing this for a year now?

It's a very interesting question. Look, I think there's always something daunting about taking on a book like this. There is one writer of Detective Comics in the world and at the moment it's this guy from Melbourne, Australia who used to rummage in back issue bins for Detective Comics. I remember trading a bunch of what were probably very expensive Transformers toys, without knowing that they were expensive for some sore who gave me like twenty five Detective Comics for them. That was it. And I just thought it was the biggest prize in the world to have that. Like to be in the pages of this book, you really do feel like you’re walking in the footsteps of giants. And writing Batman in a solo book, in a book that’s not very like- you know I tend to gravitate towards more group dynamics and family dynamics and things that make this feel real. You can feel the pull of Batman.

You feel like, ‘No, Batman wants to be more of a loner than that,’ Like yes it’d be great to do a Bat-Family book but that's not happening right now. And if that's not happening then Batman wants to narrate this. He wants to grimace a bit, he wants to feel this pain, he wants to wallow. See, it's just a vastly different hero to the sort of heroes that I think that I’m sort of more known for, whether I’m writing Spider-Man or Nightwing or Superman or Jon Kent. This is just one of those characters who is so quintessential, and it’s an honor as well. It’s scary but it’s great and I am having a really amazing time.

And that shows through a hundred percent in the books.

So the thing that stops me in my tracks with Mikel and Daniele, because I feel very fortunate to be working with such incredibly professional people that are vastly different comic book artists. I mean Daniele is very heavily inspired by manga, but his kinetic energy, expressions, and the joy he brings to every page is incredible. And Mikel I think, we’ve all seen his art, but he’s never colored himself before. And he’s coloring himself for the first time ever and that’s just bringing his art to another level. Because I think it’s finally, everything he’s ever seen in his art. But he is drawing some pages at the moment, I mean, we are about to see Batman find a literal boatload full of dead people, like forty people, and he's Batman amidst all this death with this blue chest, and he’s in the shadows but the blue’s always shining through. Every page he does is striking, and the sky is striking, the atmosphere, the buildings, architecture, it’s incredible.

Daniele, I think, there are times I look at Children of the Round Table and these pages coming in from Daniele and I just go, ‘I love this book.’ I feel absolute joy seeing these pages coming in from him and seeing these characters come to life and their battles and their fights and their epic, incredible angles and wide beaming faces and big heavy emotions. Once you start meeting Connor’s grandma and the story starts building past the first few shocks, I can’t imagine anyone but Daniele drawing that. I just look at it and go, ‘This is just perfection.’ It’s so friendly. He’s changed his style quite a bit for this. He’s sort of made it with thicker blacks and the characters just inhabit the space, and then you’ve got Rain Beredo on colors. He’s just brilliant. He’s doing this thing where all of Daniele’s characters are slight – not flat – but they’re colorful and they’re present and almost simple, but that complements Daniele perfectly.

But then you look everywhere else on the panel and every environment is textured, all the light that’s playing through leaves in the background, and just this team on Children of the Round Table, with Wes as well, and Chrissy Quinn, it is such a great team to have on this book. And everybody on this book loves this book, and loves these characters, and wants the best for them and doesn’t want terrible things to happen to them. And you can’t ask for more when you’re working on a book like this than for the entire team to be in love with the book and the characters and the story, and desperately want to tell more. ‘And then we could do this! And this! And that!’ ‘We got six issues if we get there, yes.’

We want to see them age up. We want to see what they’re like when they’re twenty, we will see if we get the chance. I feel very, very lucky, I wrote to Mikel earlier today actually, I just said, ‘Man, I don’t send you a lot of notes because you never do anything that I disagree with. I engage with a lot of artists because I have notes for them, I don’t have notes for you. So I just want to say I’m so grateful and you’re incredible to work with and I love this book.’

C.O.R.T.: Children of the Round Table #1 will be released on September 10, 2025.