Cartoonist/graphic novelist Judd Winick has no immediate plans for returning to reality television; the “Real World” veteran is right at home chronicling the adventures of DC Comics’ iconic character Batman — be it in comic books and/or animated movies. “We have jobs and responsibilities and really don’t need the money or the humiliation,” said Winick, a 1992 University of Michigan alumnus. “And most importantly, we had a fairly extraordinary and terrible experience during the show and still came out positively. We are very lucky in that way, and I would not assume to tempt fate and do anything like it again.” Winick was a cast member on MTV’s “The Real World: San Francisco” in 1994, where he met Pam Ling and the late Pedro Zamora, both of whom would have a big impact on his life. Ling became Winick’s wife and Zamora, Winick’s HIV-positive roommate and AIDS educator, died of an AIDS-related illness at 22 in 1994.

Zamora’s plight inspired Winick — whose deal with United Press International to have his “Nuts & Bolts” comic strip, which was published in U-M’s Michigan Daily student newspaper, appear in syndication fell apart prior to “The Real World” gig — to write and draw “Pedro and Me,” an award-chronicling semi-autobiographical graphic novel that chronicled their friendship.

That paved Winick’s way into comics, where he worked on “Batman,” “Green Lantern,” and “Green Arrow,” the latter being a title also written by his fellow U-M classmates Ben Raab and New York Times best-selling novelist Brad Meltzer.

In 2005, he wrote “Under the Hood,” a controversial “Batman” story where he resurrected Jason Todd, alias Robin, who becomes the villainous Red Hood. (This was the second character with that name since the original Robin, Dick Grayson, outgrew the role and became Nightwing.) The Joker, Batman’s arch-nemesis, brutally murdered Robin II in 1988’s “Batman: A Death in the Family” storyline. This death has haunted Batman in numerous subsequent stories.

“Under the Hood” and portions of “A Death in the Family” were adapted into “Batman: Under the Red Hood,” for which Winick wrote the screenplay, the eighth of DC Universe Animated Original PG-13 Movies. Warner Home Video released it recently on Blu-Ray and DVD. Winick is also writing DC’s “Red Hood: The Lost Days,” a six-issue mini-series tying into the movie’s release.

“I had to take two years of story and boil it down to 75 minutes of film, and that’s both a challenge and liberating at the same time. It forces one to cut out all the fat and get to the heart of it,” said Winick. “I’m happy the emotional core of the story is still there. We don’t really get to tell stories like this in animation. The opera of it all is usually reserved for live action. This story is about characters actually emoting and dealing with horrible situations. Animation usually gets just the action and the visualization, and not the characters actually feeling anything. So it was nice we got to do that.”

The cast features Bruce Greenwood (“Star Trek”) as Batman; Neil Patrick Harris (TV’s “How I Met Your Mother”) as Nightwing; Jensen Ackles (TV’s “Supernatural”) as Red Hood; Jason Isaacs (the “Harry Potter” films) as Ra’s Al Ghul; and John DiMaggio (TV’s “Futurama”) as the Joker.

“I’ve been writing these characters for years, and it’s remarkable the job those actors did,” said Winick. “Greenwood is about as Batman as you can get — which is exactly what you want.”

Watch a clip from “Batman: Under the Red Hood”:

Meltzer has high praise for his friend, fellow alumnus and colleague. “As undergrads at (U-M), Judd and I spent many a late night coming back from the comic store, plotting how we’d want to write the stories. I never knew if it’d happen. I couldn’t anticipate it,” said Meltzer. “But the one thing I did know, even back then, was that Judd would be doing animation. He always had that visually moving eye. And he knew that those stories could be told in so many formats.”

Judd Winick isn’t the only U-M alumnus working in animation. Dwayne McDuffie, who has degrees in English and physics from U-M, has written for the following animated series: “Justice League Unlimited,” “Static Shock,” and “Ben 10,” as well as the straight-to-DVD animated movie “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.” On “JLU,” where he eventually became story editor and producer, McDuffie either wrote, produced, or edited 69 of the series’ 91 episodes.

“Warner Animation bought Static (a character McDuffie created for Milestone Media) and turned it into a series. (‘Batman: The Animated Series’ writer) Alan Burnett asked me if I was interested in writing animation, which I didn’t know, so I tried it. It worked out really well,” recalled McDuffie. “I wrote 2-3 episodes for ‘Static.’ Then Paul Dini couldn’t finish a ‘Justice League’ script. They needed someone to write it quickly and I’m pretty quick. That worked out very well, and they asked me to come on (‘JLU’) to be a story editor in the second season.”

His main job these days is writing and producing “Ben 10: Evolutions,” the current incarnation of the “Ben 10” franchise, which has been nominated for three Emmys.

There is a downside to working on these popular characters.

“If you haven’t written for TV, you don’t know what rewritten is,” said McDuffie. “Being a TV writer is like having homework for the rest of your life; you always owe somebody something. Very few evenings are yours.”

However, there’s also an upside: “I can work in my pajamas and I get paid for telling stories.”