Imaginary Worlds - Scott Snyder

Episode Date: August 10, 2017

If the previous episode was all about villains, this one looks at the other side of that equation. In 2014 I interviewed the writer Scott Snyder whose run on Batman comics is considered one of the best in long history of the Dark Knight. It was a difficult interview to pare down, and a lot of good material ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. So this week, I'm playing a fuller version of that conversation, which has always been one of my favorites. I was interested in Scott's approach to Batman because it's so personal to him -- not just as a longtime fan that finally got his dream job but in the way he infuses Bruce Wayne with his own hopes and fears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds. I'm Eric Malinsky. So I mentioned before, sometimes I'll do an interview, and there's so much good stuff.

But because the nature of my show is I try to craft an arc and a narrative, I end up cutting a lot of stuff that I really kind of liked. And so for this late summer episode, I want to open up the vault and play an extended cut of one of my favorite interviews with Scott Snyder, who's been writing Batman comics for the last six years. Now, I mentioned before that Batman is my favorite character in all media. I will watch any version of him.

Well, almost every. I mean, Batman and Robin was terrible. But otherwise, I'll watch Bruce Wayne, whether he's made of Legos. I don't talk about feelings, Alfred. I don't have any. I've never seen one. I'm a night-stalking, crime-fighting vigilante and a heavy metal rapping machine. or if he's played by Ben Affleck, with a little bit of a Boston accent seeping through.

I'm older now than my father ever was. Yes, your father would be wicked proud, Bruce. This may be the only thing I do. And I'll watch Bruce Wayne if he's a kid, like in the prequel series Gotham. Bruce, you wanted to talk. I know you. I've seen you at Wayne Enterprises events. You tried to kill me. The main story arc on Gotham this past season involved a shadowy, ancient group of blue-blood aristocrats called the Court of Owls

that were taken directly from the comics of Scott Snyder. And that's pretty impressive because, you know, Batman's been around more than 75 years. A lot of writers have taken a crack at him. And so for a writer to have created something that is now Batman canon is pretty impressive. But one of the reasons why I really connect with Scott's work is because he uses his personal fears and anxieties as a well to draw on as a storyteller. And where a lot of writers have tried to make Batman the grittiest, darkest night possible, Scott Snyder's Batman is really the most emotionally vulnerable version of the character that I've ever seen.

Now, I know that Scott grew up in New York City in the 80s, when the city was synonymous with crime and urban decay. And I asked him if that's where his identification with Batman started. Oh, completely. The thing for me growing up in New York in the 80s, you know, Batman became incredibly important to me because the books, The Dark Night Returns and Year One both came out when I was about 10 and 11. Suddenly Batman was walking the streets of a city that I recognized. I mean, I wasn't allowed to go to Central Park at all, ever. You know, you couldn't ride the subway. I wasn't allowed to ride the subway. There was graffiti. We went to Times Square to get fake IDs. And it was like a rite of passage to get flashed in the arcade that used to be in Penn Station, the downstairs arcade,

you know. And so it was just a different city. And it was it was dangerous. I mean, for a kid, it was scary. You weren't allowed to do a lot of things. And all of a sudden there was Batman walking the streets that you knew with graffiti and prostitution and drugs and and gangs and all of this stuff that you were afraid of that you hadn't seen in a comic book before and it made it viscerally real and it made the world of comics relevant so for me I think writing Batman and writing Gotham it's a big priority so for example the first arc I did on Batman Court of Owls or even before that actually the first arc I did on Batman Court of Owls, or even before that, actually, the first arc I did on Detective when I was writing Detective comics, The Black Mirror, the story focuses on Dick Grayson, who was the first Robin, who now is in the midst of Batman's disappearance at that time in comics, becomes Batman. becomes Batman. So he's suddenly Batman for the first time ever, and he's Batman in Gotham City. And the story was largely about how the city is becoming his enemy, how it's changing and creating new enemies that are extensions of his fears, his psychological sort of profile,

the way that Batman's enemies are reflections of his own fears about himself, the Joker's, you know, a sort of twisted version of him, or a twisted fear that he's just crazy in everything he does. The Penguin is sort of a commentary on his class, the fact that he's just a rich boy masquerading in this world of thugs. And that to me is what Batman is about. As much as he's about scaring criminals

and being intimidating, what he's really about is what he was about to me as a kid, seeing somebody overcome fear and overcome trauma and say, don't be afraid to walk these streets. Don't be afraid to reclaim them. Don't be afraid of the things that, you know, you think are going to sort of overtake you in life. And I can overcome these villains that are, that are reflections of my own deepest fears. You can overcome the things that you, uh, the city is throwing at you. of my own deepest fears, you can overcome the things that you, the city is throwing at you.

Yeah, I'm curious, the things that you, that made you afraid as a kid, do you find that you have very different fears now? Or are there certain fears that are just sort of the same, but just they've gotten more grown up versions of the same fears? Well, I think as a kid, I was very frightened of losing my family. I was afraid of my, what would happen when my grandparents passed away? I was very close to them. What would happen when my parents passed away? Now as an adult, I think there's similar fears, but you're on the other side of that mirror somehow where I'm more afraid of how quickly my children are growing up and seeing them grow up and the fear of not just them growing up and moving away, but something happening to them is just so paralyzing sometimes. I'm realizing what a great match you were for Bruceuce wayne i mean in terms of like fear vulnerability losing the family

and he has also become a father figure to you know all these different other characters that i think that's probably why it's such a good match for you thanks i mean honestly i cannot think of another character i'm disconnected to as bruce wayne i I feel badly. It's almost like you got your dream job first and now where is there to go but down in some way. I mean, there are other characters that I feel an affinity for. But Bruce really is the one that's just very close to my heart for those reasons. I mean, he exists at this point. Because growing up, I mean, I think the thing that was so fascinating about him in comics was that his books were always one step ahead of what I was ready for. They were psychologically more, they were dark and more layered books like The Dark Knight Returns or Year One. And the thing that was pointed out over and over again was that he was vulnerable and human. He was pathological. He's the most heroic superhero in the way that he puts his own body on the line for his city all the time and he has no

powers. But he does it at the expense of all of these things that you would need to be happy. And there's something incredibly self-destructive and pathological in that too. And that's what's so endlessly interesting about him is that he's deeply flawed in his conception from go. He's somebody who is human. Yeah, he's just totally vulnerable. Actually, I wanted to read, this is, I mean, I love the whole series, but this particular issue has got two of my favorite. In fact, at first I forgot they were actually in the same issue. This sort of monologue he has here in gray, I was wondering if you could read this.

Oh, sure. This sort of monologue he has here in gray. I was wondering if you could read this. Oh, sure. He says, right now, this city, ruined and beautiful. It's ours and ours alone. It's fears, they're ours too. Superstorms, cataclysm, madmen with private ideologies who come at us with weapons of every magnitude

out of nowhere some morning. These are the fears that haunt our city. But believe me when I say that we will face them together. Because right now, this is our Gotham, not our father's, not our son's, ours, this generation's. And our fears are great, but so are our hopes, our ambitions, our resilience, because we're fighters. So did you feel that way as well in terms of this is your Batman, given the incredible legacy of people who have written this character, that sense of responsibility too? Oh, completely. I mean, I had a really terrible time adjusting to the idea of writing

Batman. I mean, the first time I wrote anything Batman related when I wrote Detective, as I was saying before, it was Dick Grayson. So he's a character who wears his heart on his sleeve and feels the way you do writing Batman as Batman. He's bewildered by it. He's completely intimidated. He's kind of giddy. So it was the easiest kind of Batman to write where he's like, I can't believe I'm Batman. And I'm like, Dick, I can't believe I'm writing Batman. We're going to get along great. And then suddenly I realized I was going to be writing Bruce Wayne. And I really remember being up in this house late at night with my wife just being like, I think I'm going to have to call in sick. And she was just like, all year? What are you going to do? You can't just hide hide because it's so paralyzing because so many

of the stories that you for me that matter to me that made me want to write not just comics but write or batman stories but yeah i mean uh i i i had to decide you know just decide decide i'm going to write this character like i made him up and i'm going to pretend that i made him up because if i try and write frank miller's batman Batman or Grant Morrison's Batman, or I try and even play along with those Batman, I'm going to fail. It has to be something where you make up a birth and a death for the character that's your own. And he's going to exist shoulder to shoulder with those Batman. He might be worse. He might be, you know, he might stand somewhere near the hem of those, but in some way it's going to be a different character.

But I wonder, is it even harder to write the Joker given that Mark Hamill animated series and Heath Ledger have been so iconic in those voices? It's very hard. It's very hard. And it's hard to block those voices out of your head. I mean, basically the way I thought of the Joker was this, my Joker story came about when we were pregnant with our second kid. And I was terrified that I

didn't have the, the, I just didn't, I just wasn't going to be a good dad. And then I was already stretched to my limit with our first son. And I remember thinking, well, Batman has this family, like you said, this extended family. And I wonder if he feels this way sometimes where he thinks, I wish I didn't worry about these characters. And then I thought, oh, what if a villain came along and said, I just heard you think you wish your family was dead. Well, let me do that for you so you can go back to the way things were. Then, you know, looking into this notion too, it was so interesting at the time, I was like, well, why a clown? The natural enemy of a bat is not a clown. I mean, what's so scary about this and why would he do that?

And looking up the history of court jesters and realizing that in some ways they often were this really trusted confidant of the king because they could be trusted to bring the bad news of the kingdom to the ruler and make him laugh about it even when it was horrible. Again, I just sort of, I had this mythology in my head where I was going to do the Joker as the jester and that he served the Bat King and that was what he saw his role as. And he was making Batman stronger

by challenging him with these terrible, terrible scenarios. I thought you really were going to kill them all off. Well, thanks. I really, you know, it's hard because some days you think if you wrote out of continuity, you would do those kinds of things. And then other days you just think it's almost the worst way out, like the laziest way out to do those things for me, at least like, because the thing is, DC really has given me a lot of latitude.

I mean, if I wanted to kill Alfred or kill a character in the Bat family, I could probably get away with it at this point. That's interesting. You think that's a lazy way out. Well, I mean, maybe that's the wrong word. It's just that it's such an easy way to hurt Batman, I guess is what it is, and Bruce in some way. In the way that you kill someone, you get all of that grief over and over for issues and issues and issues. The thing that I don't like is that in comics, everybody always comes back from the dead in some way. you get all of that grief over and over, you know, for issues and issues and issues.

The thing that I don't like is that in comics, everybody always comes back from the dead in some way. So it's not that it's lazy. That's probably the wrong way to say it. Because there's so many stories where characters die that I love, you know, the way Grant did in Damien and Jason Todd death. And I don't mean to belittle it. It's more just that my goal sometimes is to find a way of being scarier than that to Batman or damaging him in a way that's worse. Because if you lopped off Alfred's head in front of him, of course that would be horrific. But it's almost like grief and vengeance are his super... To give him more grief and vengeance

is just like to throw Superman into the sun. Yeah, well, it's like, how can you scare him? Is there a way to create a story that adds to the mythology, but is just as damaging and scary to Batman? That was the goal with something like Court of Owls. Can you create something that isn't about knocking someone off, but creating a new threat, making something that's always going to destabilize him somehow? Yeah, if anger and vengeance are Batman's superpower, then his kryptonite is happiness and contentment. How Scott Snyder explored that aspect of the character is just after the break.

Scott Snyder's run on Batman with the artist Greg Capullo culminated in a really interesting storyline where Bruce Wayne has lost his memory and he finds happiness with an old girlfriend named Julie Madison. Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon has to step in and be Batman, but he can't, so he's wearing this robotic bat suit. Eventually, Bruce learns the truth. But the only way he can become Batman again is to go through a process that will restore his memories from before the accident, which means he won't remember this happy life he's had with Julie.

You can pretty much guess what he decides. with Julie. You can pretty much guess what he decides. Now, Scott first introduced this character of Julie at the beginning of a long story arc called Zero Year, which is a retelling of Batman's origins. In the last issue of Zero Year, Bruce Wayne shows up at the office for what he thinks is going to be a pretty normal day. And Alfred tells him there's a young woman waiting for him in the lobby. there's no harm in reconnecting sir we are relaxing today you said so yourself sure bring her over but alfred i have to let you know i'll never quit and then alfred kind of looks at him and he says you say that now sir but you're young you're 25 years old you should have heard me talk about acting at your age how i'd never alfred there's something you don't know. Sir, not long after they died, mom and dad, I was having a hard time. No, more than a hard time. Everywhere I looked, I saw them. My parents in every face. I couldn't live. I couldn't function. The world was like some

nightmare hall of mirrors. So I paid someone to pretend to be you, Alfred. I got papers and I paid the doctors at Arkham. Sir, if you needed treatment. I didn't be you, Alfred. I got papers and I paid the doctors at Arkham. Sir, if you needed treatment. I didn't want treatment, Alfred. I wanted to stop being me. I wanted to be rebooted, started over. I wanted them to just shock me until I wasn't myself anymore, until I was somebody else. Sir, I came close. I came so close, Alfred. I was seconds away, but I knew. And then he, in the flashback, he yells, wait, stop. And can you describe also what we're seeing? Yeah, what we're seeing, you see Bruce. Bruce is essentially, he's checked himself into Arkham Asylum,

and he's only about 14, 15 years old. And he's on the table, and he's about to get electroshock therapy. And he has the rubber stopper in his mouth. And he has the electrodes on his head. And all of a sudden, he turns. And he says, stop. And he's crying. And then we're back in the present.

And he's holding Alfred by the shoulders. And he says, I knew I had to find some way of fighting through it. I had to find the crazy thing that would keep me from going crazy, if that makes any sense. Bruce, says Alfred. No. In the city today, Alfred, now more than ever, evil men and sick men, they step away from, they step from the shadows to terrify, and Batman can draw their fire. He will be their lightning rod. He will show the people of Gotham not to be afraid. It's the thing, Alfred. It's what makes me happy. It's all that makes me happy. You say that because you don't know master

bruce you don't know that there are there you you don't there are joys you haven't experienced they're deeper types of happiness and bruce just looks at him and says not for me yeah where where did that whole come where did that come from the whole the imagery the idea everything well i mean again it came it came from a pretty personal place and that you know that's how those words that's how I felt you know or I've felt at times when I feel really depressed you just want someone to you just don't have any energy and you want someone to just fix you you want you want to just you know it's close to being suicidal or you just feel like someone just turned me off and fixed me because I can't be this way all the time it's close to being suicidal or you just feel like someone just turned me off and fixed me

because i can't be this way all the time it's driving me crazy and it's exhausting me that to me this story that story zero year the two goals of that story you know which was a retelling of batman's origin in the modern age one was to make it modern and to have him face threats that i felt were relevant to now. So he faces a gang that's all about random violence, you know, like, you know, basically a cipher for random gunmen, super storms and a post-apocalyptic Gotham, you know, because of a fear breakdown of resources and blackouts and all the kinds of things that I think if I was growing up in the city today, I'd be afraid of the way I was afraid of the things that were in Dark Knight Returns, Cold War, gangs, you know,

nuclear annihilation, all these things that aren't the same fears that, you know, that I think haunt us today. But the second goal was to try and follow in the spirit of those books that the best origins like year one by doing something that was deeply personal. And for me, he's not a force of intimidation. He's a force of inspiration. And to be able to say, I overcame this terribly dark moment in my life where I wanted to die, basically. And instead, I used it as fuel to become the pinnacle of human achievement. I am the most badass kung fu fighting, you detective sherlock holmes engineer you know

everything you could imagine i am that and i also dress like a bat in the nuttiest way and i will swing around the city with these incredible gadgets if i can do this you can do whatever it is that you're afraid to do so that's where that that was always sort of where the story was leading in some way and it was it was very very gratifying that DC let me do that with him because it was a big change, you know, to his history to be able to show that he was that vulnerable, I think, as a teenager. Yeah, it's fine.

I mean, he's my character. I still have not quite figured out exactly why, what that is for me. But I was going to ask you as well, you write long monologues you know that illustrate a lot of very big thematic ideas and i loved i listened to the interview on um well there's you were you're on kevin smith and greg capullo yeah and then we went together yeah and i love when greg capullo talked about like getting these like blocks of dialogue

from you and being like are you freaking kidding me yeah is that something like when you started out were people trying to knock that out of you have you had other artists uh like write you back and be like are you kidding me yeah yeah and and honestly i do greg just wrote me we're become best friends like greg is one of my he's actually i'll say this one quick thing i'm working on zero year it's the i'm always anxious and neurotic you know i've always just been nervous and i get very sort of i i get very passionate about doing a story and I'm convinced it's the right way to go and I fight DC to get it through.

And then as soon as it goes through and they're all excited about it, I have a breakdown and I'm like, oh my God, what have I done? This is gonna be, I'm gonna get laughed out of comics for this. It's always pretty, it goes pretty quick. But on Zero Year, it did not.

Zero Year, it really hit me the weight of what I was doing when I started writing the beginning of it, because it just hit me just all of a sudden I'm touching this sacred material. I'm redoing the scene where the bat comes through the window. I'm redoing the murder in the alley. I'm redoing all of this. It just, I just could not do it. It just, I got panic attacks and I was waking up in the middle of the night and I just couldn't do it. I was sweating. Greg was the guy.

He was so great. He'd always been my partner on the book, but then he was just like, what's the matter? I would talk to him and I'd be like, I don't know if anyone's going to like it. He'd be like, I don't care if they like it. If you've ever seen him, he's huge. He's this big, muscular kind of wrestler guy. He's got a handlebar mustache.

You know what I mean? He's like, you're going to get up and you you're gonna write that story and it's gonna be awesome we're gonna kick some ass you know and i'd be like all right we're gonna do it you know and he but he was a really great friend and we become so really super close but he just emailed me actually literally this morning being like are you serious with this because i was like greg you've got i've got i left him we have a new way of working now where it works really well for us, where I'll call him up and tell him the whole issue before I write it. Is there anything that stands out?

And then when we get to a very talky part, I'll be like, this part's going to be talky. Do whatever you want. But here's the dialogue. Here's what I basically need room for. And with this, this was like, it's definitely one of the biggest speeches I've ever done. And he's just sort of like, are you serious? And I'm like, I'll tell you what, I'll cut it. I'll cut it. And he's like, you know, you're going to cut it. And

I was like, I'm going to cut, it's going to be much shorter. And there's a tank in the scene and it's like, go for it. And he did. And it's great. It's like, literally you'll see when the issue comes out, there's like this huge tank battle. So I'm like, go for it. So we found a really good chemistry, a way of working around it. But yeah, you know, I think, I think that was really a holdover from prose at first. And there are definitely issues I look back at. Like I wrote Swamp Thing for a while and I loved writing that book. But one of the problems with Swamp Thing is when he talks, it's orange. It's like an orange caption.

And it's much more obvious when you're talking because it's like a blaze orange caption. And when you look at a page that's beautiful and green and there's orange, orange, orange, orange, orange, orange over it, it's just like, God, this guy does not shut up. It's fun. Yeah. But it's funny though, because so many other things you worry about, but then when it comes to this, you're not like, oh my God, why do I do these monologues? You're like, no, that's kind of my thing. I write really long, you know, I write monologues, deal with it. Well, I mean, I just think, I don't know how not to do it sometimes with it because it's a prosaic medium also, as much as's a it's a visual medium and the fact that the story or something that someone delivers like a speech can move you or can take you to someplace you didn't expect

it allows me to you know what it is the part of it is this like comics can be they're silly in the best way like in zero year in the same story where I just talked about, Riddler is basically controlling, he's turned the city into a post-apocalyptic jungle. He's got balloons full of toxic gas everywhere. And he's got Riddler bots, these robots running around that will kill you if you defy him. And it's ludicrous. It's totally ludicrous. You know what I mean? In that way. And for me, part of the goal is to make them personal and balance those things with a level of seriousness because I love them. It's not to sort of apologize for those elements. It's that those elements are, it's all part of the stuff that I love, but it's also saying it can both be at once childhood joy of seeing Batman fight a Riddler robot on top of the building

and then, you know, figure a way out with a laser cutter and a glider. And it can also be a speech at the end that is about overcoming serious depression and this. And it can be all those things at once. Also, just to say for a second, I mean, one of the things I would just stress for a second is how exciting comics is right now. If anyone out there is sort of

listening and is wondering about, you know, the world of comics, I mean, it's only been a few years that they've been digital, but ever since you, they become accessible digitally, you know, on your phone or your iPad or any of that stuff, and you can go to comiXology and get them, that sustainability that the, these new audiences providing this kind of, this very diverse, you know, diverse when it comes to sex and race and demographics, it's making, it's changing comics day by day. It's like a seismic shift that's happening right now that's so exciting to be a part of. It really is like, I have a lot of friends

still in the literary world and I keep telling them, I'm like, the water is so great over here, you know, just come over if you're having any trouble because it's a great time in comics. Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks, of course, to Scott Snyder and David Hyde, who helped arrange the interview. I want to hear about your wife being a doctor. That's that's so I mean, that's like the farthest thing from, you know, I mean, is she is she the sort of the no nonsense, you know, kind of person in relationship? She's definitely the no nonsense person. You know, my, my dad,

my, my father is a doctor and my grandparents, there's a lot of doctors in my family. And so I always joke that she's like the son that my dad never had, you know, where they get together and they can talk medicine. She's great. And I often, I call her with all my science questions, which totally makes her mad, but she'll be in the ER or something. And I'm like, this is very important. You know, if Bruce Wayne's wrist was hit by a mutagen, whatever, and she's just like, click, you know, that's not not my branch of medicine. By the way, if you want to explore more of Scott Steiner's work beyond Batman, he has a terrific series called American Vampire, which looks at vampires in the Old West,

among other places. He has a graphic novel called The Wake, which is about life, human and otherwise, in a flooded Earth. And he has a really creepy horror series called Witches.

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