BARCELONA.- “In the beginning, we doubted whether to take Batman to Barcelona or Manchester. For our luck, we chose a winning city. It would have been very depressing to have this press conference in Manchester today”. The win by soccer club Barcelona inspired Jim Lee, a specialist in avengers, capable of selling 8 million copies of the X-Men series, during the presentation of Batman, Dragon’s Knight at Casa Batlló. The author of the cover was joined by writer Mark Waid (Captain America, Fantastic Four) and by Diego Olmos and Marta Salvador, responsible of the drawings and giving color to the new adventure.

“I love this city and a character so gothic as Batman fits right in here, said Californian Waid. Batman and Barcelona are a prefect visual mixture”. The writer has avoided making a tourist guide, even though Batman goes through different locations in the comic’s frames.

This new edition, which has been released today in Spain, Italy and the United States coincides with the opening of the Comic Salon, it is a reinterpretation of the myth of Sant Jordi and the dragon and the story happens during the Diada (Catalan national day). Batman confronts villain Killer Croc far away from Gotham City. Both cities share a gothic style of architecture that goes well with the character.

Jim Lee on the process of making the cover: "I wanted to pose Batman more upright, almost in parallel to the spires of the magnificent Sagrada Familia and took an artistic liberty of posing him on an arch "erected" entirely so he would be on the same height as the cathedral. I made the cape more cloak like, made of heavy material, billowing in the wind and spotted the blacks in horizontal swatches of triangular shapes to contrast with the more up and down vertical lines of the spires and the torso and legs. Batman can not be bigger nor more imposing than the cathedral but reflective of its power and majesty."

"Spain has a big tradition in publishing and love for American comic books," Olmos told CBR News. "But it's also a very diverse market that sees editions of manga, French BD and comic books created in Spain.