Scott Snyder On The Return Of Vertigo: “I Literally Teared Up”

Scott Snyder New York Comic Con 2024 interview

Scott Snyder is a busy guy. From writing the multiple-sold-out Absolute Batman to launching new titles through Comixlogy, to books through DSTLRY, to writing an animated adaptation of his book Wytches, to his work with Tom Hardy and Frank Tieri on Arcbound, the guy is everywhere. When Comic Book Club caught up with Snyder, he was on the roof of a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, having just wrapped up an extended breakfast hang with students for one of his other ventures, Our Best Jackett, where he teaches the intricate art of comic book writing.

While we were there to talk primarily about Arcbound, which is coming from Dark Horse Comics on November 13, and to Kickstarter for a Deluxe Edition at a later date, we had to ask Snyder — whose comic career really blew up with the release of Vertigo’s American Vampire — what he thought of the return of DC’s beloved label at New York Comic Con.

“I literally teared up,” Snyder said. “It means everything. They’re being really creator-friendly with their deals and everything. This whole All In initiative, everything about it is trying to be why it’s so fun to love DC Comics all around and to invite everybody in on every level. This wasn’t part of it that I organized. It was a long time coming from amazing people there, but to see it roll out at the same moment we’re trying to do this very big comprehensive, ‘Welcome to comics. Everybody’s included. There’s every kind of book. Everything starts here.’ [It] feels great.”

For much more from Snyder including the success of Absolute Batman, his deal with Comixology, and how Tom Hardy called him on his family vacation in Hawaii, read on. Or, listen to the podcast version below.

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Comic Book Club: We’re ostensibly here to talk Arcbound, but you’ve been all over the place [at the con]. You have Absolute Batman that just came out, a monster hit. We saw you the other day at Comixology, where you’re doing a bunch of titles. So what is this like for you, given that you have your finger in so many pies at this point?

Scott Snyder: It’s really interesting. The summer and fall were really hard, work-wise, because I’m in the writers’ room for Wytches, the animated series. And I love it. I love the show, I love the people. But it was supposed to happen, like, six months ago, and the writers’ strike pushed it on top of all the DC stuff and DSTLRY stuff. And so this last summer to fall has been like a blur of just working nonstop. I kept feeling like, if I can just survive until October, it will be okay. So I’m here now and to get to the con, even though it seems like I’m doing a lot… The writers’ room is just ending. We love what we’re doing for season two. And now I just have Absolute Batman, my DSTLRY work, which is creator-owned, and with friends and manageable. So I’m actually entering a period where I feel like I can relax a little bit more and hang out with the kids and wife. I feel like I missed the summer and all that. So I’m very excited for this period.

What does it feel like when you’re at this con? Is there sort of like a click in your brain, like, “Okay, now it’s Comixology time. Now it’s DC time.”

I’m at a point in my career where I’m lucky enough not to have to work anywhere that I’m not excited about so working at. Comixology, I really, really believe in the idea of digital browsability. I was very excited to be a part when they were expanding, and now, even after the contraction, they’re starting to build back up, and they’re starting to release new books again, and they’re more integrated with Amazon Kindle. But I’m still really fascinated with the idea of creating books, creating a digital platform that’s cross-company, that allows kids and people to escape a high price point. You get a subscription, you can browse comics, and so that’s something I really love and believe in.

It’s fun for me to make books at DSTLRY, I really believe in [it] as a company, I love the idea of all of us owning a share of it, supporting each other, betting on each other, and doing a very curated line. I love doing that. So it’s not even so much like flipping a switch. It is, in the way that I have to compartmentalize, “don’t say Batman.” I call everything Absolute thing. Absolute White Boat, Absolute, you know, whatever. But the fun is, I really love each place, so I feel comfortable going in and speaking about them really sincerely. I enjoy that I can I really love the projects I’m on, and I love what they represent to me. They’re very different legs of the stool, but they’re all things that I hope are a net positive for the industry. In addition to being projects I like creatively.

When you talk about different legs of the stool you’re working on, which is the same stool with a different leg? How do you switch between those two things?

Oh, that’s really different. But at the same time, the thing that attracted me to animation, which, I don’t have ambitions. I’m very clear with them at Amazon. I’m not trying to write live-action and go into TV. I don’t have any desire to do that. But when they came to us with the animation department, it’s the people that do Invincible. And they’re like, “We love creator involvement. We’d like you to be involved in the room. We’d like Jock to be involved in the design,” all of that. He’s, I forget his title. It’s like art director, but “we want you to be in control of the tonality of it all.

That was so exciting because our journey with Wytches was, we optioned it for a live-action film, and we love the people we work with at Plan B, but we were not involved. We see the iterations of different attempts at it, and then it doesn’t work. As you know, 99% of the stuff that gets optioned [doesn’t] happen. But the excitement was, we can actually be a part of it, and animation felt like a place where we actually knew what we were doing because it’s so similar to comics.

What I found working in the room is that the people are also really similar. It’s very collaborative. It’s a lot of pirates, [who] feel like we got our dream job. We’re making this stuff really tactilely. It’s very tactile, very immediate. There’s not a lot of, you do it, and nobody knows how anyone feels for months and months and months, or if it’s ever going to get made. So I love that environment. I really enjoy animation, and I also am interested in it as a lane that I think is not only adjacent to comics, but part of the same trend right now. Maybe I’m talking out of my a** or whatever. But I really believe that there is an audience right now for things that are less traditional than they were before, stylistically. You see in animation in spades, with like Spider-Verse, the stuff Sony’s doing with Mitchells Versus The Machines, the stuff that Pixar is trying, but also the adult animation that you see Invincible, you see with Scavenger’s Reign, that you see with Vox Machina, that you see with more and more and more of these shows that not only push the envelope in terms of content and adult content but also push it in terms of style.

And all of a sudden in comics, it feels the same. I was really hesitant to to bet on the sales margin of something like Absolute Batman or Absolute Wonder Woman. I really love the books, and I knew that they were going to do well, but Nick Dragotta and Hayden Sherman, artists that are a little unconventional, you don’t know on big books like that if it’s going to hit, because sometimes retailers will order the same as the last book. When I did Wildfire and Dungeon with Hayden, those books aren’t designed to sell 80,000 copies, 60,000 copies, so they might just hit reset and be like, 20,000 copies. Which would be disastrous on a big Absolute thing. But it was James Tynion who, when I was considering all of it, literally two years ago… He was like, “I really believe that the vision that you have, and Josh [Williamson] has, and for it is where the market is headed. He is just such a genius about everything that I believed him.

And then all of a sudden, Dan Johnson is on Transformers, and it’s a big hit, and you see it coming true. It feels like there’s room for not darker, grimmer content, but really passionate content that’s not pandering, not corporate driven, not part of big tent machinations, but instead feels pushed by creators. They’re personally invested, and they are artistically invested with styles you might not have seen before. And animation feels really similar to me, so I enjoy the energy of it over there.

I like the idea that there’s a whole new audience for both comics and animation, twinning together and developing is so exciting. Since it feels like the big temtpole movies are in panic mode right now, and that could be the future, which is more creator-driven and creative.

I have a lot of faith in — having gotten to see what James Gunn is doing and that stuff in a small way, getting to go to the set [of Superman] with friends and hear his vision for it. I mean, the guy is so passionate and so died in the wool comics that I have a lot of faith in the universe really taking off. But there are these moments that are lulls that I think people point to, and they’re like, it’s a down moment for comics, or it’s a down moment for the market. We’ve been inflated for 15 years between the corporate influx of being bought by places, and then injected with money, and then movies and TV having this thing, and then all of a sudden, the success of The Walking Dead, and there’s options and streaming and that balloons, and then COVID balloon, the speculator market. So we’ve been living in a 15-year bubble, in my opinion. This is where the real market exists. Not a down market. The real market, good news, is f**king awesome when you see what you can sell with passionate stuff like this. I’ve never had a book sell this much on launch as Absolute Batman. And I just can’t believe it, but it confirms everything that we’ve been feeling about the market.

Let’s talk Arcbound. So it’s you. It’s Frank Tieri. It’s also Tom Hardy, who I haven’t met in person, but I did see about the Venom panel the other day, and he also seems like a madman.

I get to play straight man in some way to them. But the fun of it was, it was two years ago when these guys came to us and we’re like, Tom Hardy has this idea, and he loves comics, and he really wants to do it. Do you want to be involved? I couldn’t do it myself, but I’m always up for something where it’s like, why not? I love his work. I love his work ethic and his sensibility about the roles he chooses. And so I was like, let’s do it, let’s try it. [But] is he actually really gonna get on the phone with us? I don’t really think [so, he] will probably send a one-sheet.

I was away with my family because we were on vacation and we were in Hawaii, it was this huge trip we were taking. And they were like, “This is where you gonna get a phone call. Tom Hardy wants to talk.” And I was like, “Oh, awesome.” So I went to the lobby, and I’m sitting in the lobby, and before I know it, my phone rings and it’s FaceTime and it’s Tom Hardy, and he’s there.

He goes into all these ideas he has for Arcbound. And he was so into it. He walked all over his property, talking about it and going into it. He talks about how he chooses his roles, and how those roles are all personal to him, and why this is personal. And it was just so cool. He’s such a smart guy, and he really lives and breathes storytelling, inhabits everything. So it was a blast. You know, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a big space epic. It imagines in the future, we synthesize the human body. We create these Arcs, and they’re dependent on a certain kind of fuel, but ultimately you can transfer your consciousness into them, and then these things can last forever. You can customize them however you want. So you can look like anyone, be like anyone, any physique, any gender, anything you want. So you suddenly have total subjectivity over your own life. It’s about a guy who is in the military and winds up discovering this very big conspiracy about how these things really work. And it sort of blows up the whole social structure. It’s a lot of fun. It’s an old-school big epic.

And that is going to come out from Dark Horse in single issues, and then also be on Kickstarter as a deluxe edition.

Yes, we’ll sign it and that kind of thing. You’ll be able to get it in the stores. And if you want the extra beautiful hardcover signed by everybody, you’ll have those options.

Yesterday at Jim Lee’s panel, he announced that Vertigo is coming back. That’s pretty much where you started your career. I’m curious to get your feelings on it.

I literally teared up when James [Tynion IV] — I mean, I knew about it for a while — [editor] Chris Conroy told me, but James told me that Nice House was going to get the Vertigo label. Because when I started, James was a student, and I was his adjunct teacher, and we were all Vertigo died in the wool heads. And when I got American Vampire, it was like, “Yeah!” It meant the world to him. And as his friend, to see him get that. And the DC star thing was so cool, too.

It means everything. They’re being really creator-friendly with their deals and everything. This whole All In initiative, everything about it is trying to be, why it’s so fun to love DC Comics all around and to invite everybody in on every level. This wasn’t part of it that I organized. It was a long time coming from amazing people there, but to see it roll out at the same moment we’re trying to do this very big comprehensive, “Welcome to comics. Everybody’s included. There’s every kind of book. Everything starts here.” [It] feels great.

And are you going to do anything for Vertigo?

I can’t say. But, I mean, I would love to, but I have my hands full right now with Absolute Batman, which I never expected to take off this way. I just can’t wrap my head around it. So thank you to everybody out there, because it means the world. Nick and I are really doing it as a really personal project for us, and it’s been in the works for a long time. I brought him in, it was summer ago. So we’ve been working on it since June of last year, and it’s the first time I really, totally under-calculated how a book would do entirely. It really was overwhelming. And more importantly than the book selling well was the fact that Absolute Wonder Woman sold out at high six figures. Absolute Superman is too, or will too. And the other books, the smaller books, and mainline big books, all of them are getting a boost. People are really buying into the idea of this celebration of superhero comics. It means a lot to be a part of it, and that the retailers and fans were right that the market is out there. It’s exciting.

What’s it like going around with Nick at this con when he’s blowing up?

It’s the best feeling, man, because he’s such a great guy, and he’s just such a consummate craftsman. Every decision in that book, he pours over… We work together in a different way, where he lives right across the sound in Connecticut, from where I live. He takes the ferry over, and we work in my studio, and he puts the pages up, and it’s such a blast. So I know him well now, he’s one of the guys that founded Creators for Creators. I think it was his idea, [it] funds new creator’s books. He’s just so died in the wool, indie comics. And so for him to come over and start on superheroes and see him blow up, we walked in the con like, “Dude, I have a big line.” And I was like, “welcome to the circus.” So I’ve gone a little hard this weekend, not drinking hard, but staying out late to get to soak it in with him. Because he deserves it so much, and I’m so proud of the work he’s doing. I feel like I’m riding his coattails. It’s easy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Arcbound #1 hits from Dark Horse Comics on November 13, 2024. You can also sign up on the pre-launch page for the Kickstarter for the Deluxe Edition.

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