After the release of Batman #16, Newsarama had a chance to talk with Scott Snyder about that issue, as well as the finale of "Death of the Family" in Batman #17, and what's in store for Batman after this event.
Newsarama: Scott, we found out in this issue why the villains were recruited, but heading into issue #17, Batman is invited for dinner and the other Bat-family members are in peril. So everything comes down to this last issue?
Scott Snyder: Yeah, definitely, the next issue is the big finale. With issue #16, Joker is essentially making his point to Batman. This is the issue where he presents his notion that the family is a weakness. This whole arc, I really wanted to make it so that Batman was thinking, if I can just get there fast enough, if I can just get to him before he expects it, like I have in the past, I can beat him. I can stop him from doing whatever he's doing to Alfred, I can beat him to his own punchline.
Newsarama: And he succeeded in issue #16.
Scott Snyder: Yeah, this is the place where he does that. He gets to Arkham before Joker expects it. He makes it to the room before Joker's prepared. And then he outwits him in the room. But then Joker has this ace up his sleeve, which is the point of the whole story: As long as you have them, and as long as you care about them, you'll never beat me. You'll never beat me to the punchline. You'll never outwit me anymore. In that way, he makes his thesis. And Bruce loses.
The finale is now Joker saying to Bruce, you've lost, so close your eyes and let me give you what you want. The finale is really the terrible thing that it's all been building toward. And I'm really, really excited and proud of it. It's like a 30-page issue, just me and Greg. So we took the back-up and didn't do a back-up, but made it one giant feature. So it's like a really big, oversized finale. It brings everything that's been building to a head.
Newsarama: Not to skip too far ahead of ourselves, since we don't know the outcome of this storyline yet, but since you can't reveal what happens in issue #17, can you give some clues about what comes next? Can you talk about what you're looking forward to for the next storyline?
Scott Snyder: Yeah, issue #17 is what we've been building toward from go, so hopefully everyone will hate it and love it and be excited and upset and all of those things at once with it. But it will set the tone for what's coming up after, in Batman for the next few issues. The issue right after this, #18, is drawn by Andy Kubert. I'm really excited. And it brings Harper Row back, and you see the aftermath of things through her eyes.
And then we're going to do a really fun two-part story, me and Greg. And it focuses on another favorite rogue. And then we're going to launch into our biggest thing we've done in awhile. Bigger and longer and more ambitious than anything we've done since "Court of Owls," and it will make up a large part of our 2013. I don't want to give it away, but I tried to hint before that, like, Riddler is a character that we're really going to be focusing on in 2013.
You can check out the full interview over at Newsarama. Batman #16 is in stores now.
Posted by Dane Haji
