Scott Snyder's first issue of Batman hit stores just last week, and on the heels of DC announcing that it has joined both Justice League and Action Comics in the 200K club, some questions are still in the air. The LA Times interviewed Snyder about his work and what we can see in future of the title now that the first issue has been released.
LA Times: How about your new Batman universe? Are you mainly focusing on core characters, or are you shaking things up?
Scott Snyder: Yeah, it’s funny, because everyone is so nervous and excited about the changes in the DCU. The other day, somebody asked me if Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred was still going to be Alfred, and I just Tweeted, “Yeah, of course he is, except that he’s a cyborg.” And I was just kidding, and like all these people got so mad. They were like, “What do you mean you’re making him a cyborg!” And I was like, “Well, all his robot parts are inside though, so you’ll never know it’s really a cyborg.” And they just did not let it go for a while. So, in terms of the changes of the Justice League playing into Batman, you’ll see a little bit. My story that was pitched to Batman editor Mike Marts was six or seven months ago, before there was a relaunch. Again, it’s a big, epic story about Bruce Wayne coming back to Gotham after all of the events of [Grant Morrison’s] Batman Inc., although you don’t have to have read that series to enjoy this at all.
LA Times: Can you tell us more about it?
Scott Snyder: Bruce Wayne is back in Gotham, totally bad-ass Batman with new tech, but the same guy in the way his history stands. He just feels great about the city belonging to the Bat, super-confident about his skill set as Batman at this point, before a set of murders suggest that there may be this ancient evil in Gotham. Not something supernatural at all, but an organization that may have been there since the colonial days and actually, that Gotham belongs more to this symbol of an organization than it does to the Bat. Bruce Wayne begins to realize that he’s only been Batman a short time in comparison to the history of Gotham City, which is 400 years old. So, maybe the city belongs to something else historically. Thus we get all these enemies who have been there from the beginning.
This is the kind of history Bruce won’t admit that possibly exists because, one, he has a secret history that we reveal later with this organization, meaning that he investigated it at one point and came up empty-handed, but, two, he just can’t accept that something that big, something that dark exists on his watch without him knowing it. It really goes after his confidence as a protector and legend of Gotham. Along with it, there’ll be a lot of revelations about the Wayne family, about the Grayson family too, and it will all tie into “Nightwing.” The epic storyline will be 11 issues long, really about a war for Gotham’s soul between the Bat and this other organization, with some shocking new enemies for him built out of this mythology we’re going to develop.
So the ties between Nightwing and Batman are planned and there is a ton more in store for fans. For the entire interview, head over to the LA Times. Batman #2 is in stores next month.
