Scott Snyder is a prolific comic book writer for famous characters, like Batman. He’s known for inventing entirely new comic book universes. He’s also a Long Island resident. WSHU’s Aidan Johnson got Snyder to open up about how the island has influenced his works and what his fans mean to him.
WSHU: You're writing for Absolute Batman, which takes a new version of Batman, and sets him in a new universe, along with Superman and Wonder Woman, powered by Darkseid, one of the Justice League's greatest enemies. Some of Batman's key characteristics have changed, including his size and his mother being alive. Was it hard changing these while keeping the meaning of Batman alive, or is there something that connects every single version of Batman?
Snyder: When we moved out here, I had a hard time adjusting initially. I didn't really know how to drive very well, for example, because I grew up in the city, and we always used public transit.
We only had one car. My wife took it to go to med school, and so I was kind of alone in a condo in Coram all the time. One of the first things I did was find a comic shop. I was like, you know what, I just need to have some place that I can go when my wife gets back from school where it's the equivalent of having a bar you love to go to, but a healthier version of it. And so I found 4th World Comics over in Smithtown, and I've been going there ever since. I was there way before I broke into comics. I remember running in the day I got to pitch for Marvel and DC, being like, 'Oh my God, guys, you'll never believe it.'
It's the same people who work in the store now as then, almost 20 years ago, but what I learned, what I love about going to the store is the culture; it's people that care about these heroes and what you learn when you really talk to fans, and retailers are that these heroes are designed to go up against your worst fears. They don't mean anything unless they're being applied to the problems that you're afraid of right now.
People think of comics — and superhero comics especially — as escapism, but I'd argue that they're the opposite, that they really only function well when these heroes are fighting the things that we are afraid of in the zeitgeist. That said, those things can be coded into comic book lunacy and a language that's so out there that you might not recognize them as the same; that you might not recognize them as a corollary to something in the news at that moment.
Instead of being worried about inflation, it might be an evil alien who comes down and steals everything, so the whole world seems post-apocalyptic. But the feeling of it, the thing you're addressing, that sense of helplessness is the same.
What I learned early on was that the only way to make anything meaningful and original was to be vulnerable on the page. It's not about coming up with the craziest plot. It's not about what's the coolest, biggest thing. Everything has kind of been done, but what hasn't been done is your personal, passionate expression of the things that you're most afraid of, that you're most hopeful about, and to funnel it through these characters that are designed to elevate those things or, or expand those things or make them so epic that this battle feels larger than life.
So, for me, with Batman, the key was always burning him down to his basic thing. I've always loved Batman. He's always been my favorite, not just in comics, but in literature. I realized the reason is because he's just a kid who experiences the worst thing that can happen to a kid. Both his parents were killed in front of him, and instead of becoming bitter, instead of becoming closed off from the world, instead of becoming apathetic, even though he's pampered by wealth and all of this, he decides to use it as fuel to make sure that that thing never happens to anybody again, and he uses it as a way to effect change.
If you take that as the core of Batman, everything else is flexible. The wealth is flexible. I believe he doesn't need it. I believe he doesn't need any of it. All he needs to be is Bruce Wayne, who suffers something horrifyingly traumatic as a child and decides he's going to use that as motivation to make the world better. If you can do that, everything else is kind of cosmetic.
WSHU: For stories set in your own original universes, like Undiscovered Country, do you find that your surroundings here on Long Island inspire those?
Snyder: Oh yeah, very much. I love driving out on the north shore all the way out to Greenport and all that, like my wife and I, and the kids. We love the rural aspects of it out here, too, in addition to the great towns. And so for us, I think I'm working on a book a while ago called Witches, and we're working on the cartoon for that right now for Amazon. We're really excited, and we are the same people that do Invincible. But one of the things that I love about being out here is that it inspires a lot of horror for me. Because again, I think what horror comes from, in my opinion, it's your deepest fears manifest in different ways. And what I love about it out here is that there's this intense beauty and warmth and this feeling of nurturing in your own neighborhood, but there's also a real feeling of isolation.
Growing up in the city, it was different because you're constantly forced together with people and it's a great thing in a lot of ways, like people of all different walks of life, but here it feels like you get together and then you go back to your house. And when you're back alone, In your own space, that's when your fears come. That's when you're not out and sort of seeing and being exposed, and so for me, horror comes from those deep things you don't want to admit, those things you don't want to say you're feeling, those things that you are afraid are happening that you're unaware of, all of that.
WSHU: You used to shop at comic book stores around here, like 4th World Comics, and now you do signings and events there. What’s it like being able to connect with local fans?
Snyder: Oh, it's the best. I mean, comic book fans, to me, are just the greatest fandom where you have people from across the spectrum; you have kids coming up, but it's tons of adults, and it really is like to me, it's people that are looking for stories that make them hopeful, that express their fears; and do it on this epic, almost ridiculous size stage.
And so when they come up, and they say I read this and it and it meant something to me, it's so personal, and it's one of the strange things because when you do books, like when you do novels or that stuff, you don't write novels but once every few years, and you go on a small book tour to small bookstores and, and that, and that's wonderful, that's great. But with comic fans, like, you have a comic coming out every single month, like every month of your life, there's a comic coming out that you wrote.
So you're constantly in contact with fans, whether it's on social media, multiple times a year we're at comic book conventions, we're at stores, we do signings, so I do five or six signings a year.
You do at least three or four conventions a year in San Diego, New York. And so it's this conversation that you're always in with your readership, and you know, it's wonderful because you grow up, they grow up with you, they know you, and you see them multiple [times]. I've had people I've seen hundreds of times at this point.
And so there's just real connectivity with your fan base, and you know, I don't change anything I want to do for them. I don't think about what fans want versus what I want necessarily at all when I'm doing it, but they mean everything to you as they're who you work for ultimately. They're the ones buying the books, showing up, and that, and you have so many opportunities to say thank you and to get to know them.
