Goodbye, Gotham City: it looks like everyone's favorite dark knight is bound for the Old Country, with the announcement that the long-awaited Batman: Europa is finally hitting stores.

Created by artists Jim Lee and Guiseppe Camuncoli and writers Brian Azzarello and Matteo Casali, the series was "[inspired] by a year Jim Lee spent in Italy... [and] was planned as a four-issue painted series with artists working in concert on a story written by [Azzarello] and [Casali]," according to Comic Book Resources, which named the delayed project as one of "Comics' Most Notorious No-Shows."

Batman: Europa was originally announced on October 2004, a little more than a decade ago. After years of silence, the project was again announced at New York Comic Con in 2010 with a January 2011 due date, which ultimately never transpired. After a third announcement, the book is slated for publication in November 2015.

In an interview with CBR back in October 2010, Azzarello described the prerogative for taking Batman out of his native Gotham and placing him in Europe:

"We picked some cities in Europe that are really sort of iconic, that have a real personality... [so] it's similar to Gotham. Batman wouldn't work in [Superman's] Metropolis, so we didn't put him in Metropolis. We put him in Prague. It's about bringing the personality of each particular city to the character just like Gotham does for him."

Here is a synosis, according to a press release issued by the DC Comics blog back in 2010 in conjunction with NYCC:

"In the pages of BATMAN: EUROPA, the impossible has happened — the Batman is on the brink of defeat, at the hands of a virus with no cure. Surely there's someone that can help him? Well, there is — the Joker. Who infected Batman with the virus? What does the Joker have to do to save him? And how can it all happen before the Dark Knight collapses? Together, the unlikely teammates and arch-foes travel through Europe cobbling together clues while the clock ticks down."

Batman and The Joker in Europe? Sign me up.

Via: Comics Alliance

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