@’s by Comic Book Writer Scott Snyder!!!
CHRIS MASSARI (CM): Recently, I saw you spoke in an interview about ENDGAME, anything you can mention about it? I know you wanted to keep it a secret for a while, anything you can or want to mention?SCOTT SNYDER (SS): Well yeah, now that it’s out I feel ok. I feel bad spoiling it, it just came out Wednesday but it has a very big twist on the last page that I think, that I hope, people will be happy about.
CM: It seems like from what I read about ENDGAME, that the Joker is more in the background, rather than directly known or in the front of the story, is that true or is he not so much background?
SS: No, no, he’s coming back pretty big, it’s really his story. I mean it’s meant to be sort of his conclusion to the arc in our run. This is really him saying I’m burning everything down and you and I are done playing together.
CM: How much influence do you have on BATMAN ETERNAL or is that something separate, right now you are DC’s Batman guy, so how much are you involved?
SS: Well I mean I wrote the story of it, with James Tynion, so like the outline of it, the shape of it, we came up with and the other writers umm, Tim and Ray and Kyle and John and James, they sort of do the issue to issue writing, but also sort of figured out the smaller mechanics of it. So I kind of oversaw the bigger story with James and we had a lot of meetings, on how it could work well, with all the writers and they came up with a tremendous amount of really good story, to kind of make the whole thing come to life. And they’ve just been killing it, it’s really their work that makes it shine, we just sort of did a big overarching 30,000 foot outline.
CM: I saw the selfie with you and Jim Lee the other day, in reference to the SUPERMAN UNBOUND finale, what’s going on with that? Scott: Well it’s coming out, our final issue, I think it comes out the first week of November, I just finished lettering it or doing the lettering script for it, so it’s very hard to say goodbye to it. I really had a good time on it but it’s time is coming out really soon.
CM: Anything with BATMAN, obviously EDNGAME, that’s bigger picture you can talk about or you guys haven’t gotten that far yet?
SS: Well ENDGAME is a pretty big game changer, so I think for the next six months that’ll really be the center piece, but I’d love to just say like this month, starts so many good Bat-books and story lines in Bat-books, with the new take on Batgirl by Cameron, umm Babs and Brendon. And GOTHAM ACADEMY with Becky and Brendon and Carl, GOTHAM BY MIDNIGHT next month with Ray Fawkes and Ben Templesmith, Catwoman I mean, ARKHAM MANOR I have to say by Gerry Duggan. I mean all these series are brand new, that start developments in the Bat-world, that start brand new sort of genres in the Bat-world, we haven’t tried yet. I am so proud of the editor Mark Doyle for bringing them in and the teams are great to work alongside, so Batman has some crazy stuff happening with those books and they’re just terrific, you should really take a look at them.
CM: You work with DC, you work with Image, you work on a lot of different projects, how difficult is it to keep up with everything you’re involved with?
SS: It’s been a little hard, I have admit the last couple months have been rough getting everything done before the Con, but they bring very different pleasures. I mean DC, working licensed on Batman stuff, the challenge is to make it personal, since it’s their character they own. And it has all this history and it’s an icon so you have to try and figure out a way of writing it, like you create and own. When you’re doing stuff with Image, it’s just naturally what you’re interested in, what you like, what you love, what you want to write about and the challenge is more accessible or universal what you want it to be, how plot driven you want it to be and those sorts of things. So they’re almost inversions of one another in some ways, in terms of the challenges. But I love doing them both, I mean I really do. CM: Anything upcoming you would like to talk about?
SS :Well, I’d love to talk about WYTCHES in the way that I’m really proud of the book and just started me and Jock and Matt Hollingsworth, it’s the first time that I’ve done a book by myself and Image. And I just love, love the freedom it allows and just how the book really can be anything I want it to be. So I’m trying to make it extremely personal, dark horror and I think, there will be a lot of really fun twists for people who like any kind of dark stuff that I’ve done on AMERICAN VAMPIRE, SEVERED, or even on BATMAN, this one goes really black so I’m excited for you to see it.
CM: My last question, any advice you can give to someone who wants to break into the comic industry, what should they do and what shouldn’t they do? What is your take?
SS: Yeah sure, if you’re a writer, I can speak to that better than if you’re an artist, but if you’re a writer and you want to break in, honestly now a days what they expect is that you make your own comic. Literally, find an artist at a place like this or at PencilJack or DeviantArt or anywhere. And hook up with an artist and make an 8 page comic or a 20 page comic, hopefully a full comic, like 20 pages and it’s really hard to make it happen, but you do that and put it out there, that’s your resume that you give editors. There’s such means now a days to doing it yourself, it wasn’t like that way when I was a kid, with digital, just all of it, audience reaction to it, you can KickStart things, so all I’m saying is make a comic and that’s your entry way. That really is, you get in by getting in, you know what I mean, by yourself and making yourself a comic book writer.
CM: You should check out all of Snyder’s work; WYTCHES at Image, BATMAN: ENDGAME, SUPERMAN UNBOUND, and AMERICAN VAMPIRE!
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
