With the announcement of Zero Year being the next big arc in the pages of Batman, writer Scott Snyder has done a couple of interviews with IGN and Newsarama talking about what we can expect in his upcoming story of Batman's early years.
IGN: My first question has got to be: exactly how far back does Zero Year go?
Scott Snyder: Well, it takes place in the continuity that’s established in our issue #0. So it takes place just over five years ago; almost six years ago.
IGN: So is this Bruce’s traveling and training, or is it once he’s back in Gotham?
Scott Snyder: It’s not about Bruce’s training, although I don’t want to give away whether you’ll see any of that or not. With this one, it’s really supposed to explore a period in Bruce’s life that you’ve never, ever seen before. And done in a way that will hopefully surprise you. For me, it was about realizing that there was a period in Bruce’s life that was unexplored, in terms of setting up Batman and becoming Batman that you hadn’t seen in other books. I became more and more invested in this story, telling Greg [Capullo] about it up and down, and he really loved it, so it became about, well, when can we do this story? When can we find the time? Now just seemed like the perfect time to get to tell it. We wanted to try and do something that gives fans of the character something you’ve never ever seen before. So I can promise you that with this one, you might’ve seen the origin or the transformative years of Bruce Wayne done a lot, but this is really our take and something different. While it’s very, very respectful – and I hope you guys agree – of the past and the stories we love the most, it’s also something that is us trying to give you guys something that you’ve never seen.
Newsarama: You mentioned that people are always wondering about the timeline of Batman's history. We always get questions about how Batman could have four Robins in only a few years, and how he fathered Damian. Does "Zero Year" address that? Is it meant to answer those questions?
Scott Snyder: Well, I don't want to give too much away. It's definitely not designed to be an answer to those questions. This isn't designed to be that. This isn't an informational thing about how the Batman mythology works, or how the continuity is held together. It's a really intensely personal story to Greg and me about Batman's transformative years. So there are a lot of things that will be answered in it, in terms of continuity. But I don't want to say what they are, and it's not designed to be that — an answer to questions as opposed to being a story we really love to death.
Newsarama: DC called this an "event." And as I mentioned, Batman #0 did tie into what was being done in Detective and Dark Knight with their #0 issues. Will "Zero Year" involve any of the other Bat-family titles?
Scott Snyder: No. One of the things that's been so wonderful for us is to be able to tie into the other books, mostly because I admire these other writers in the Bat-stable so much and I'm friends with all of them, so it's a great joy to get to do stories where you're allowed to be collaborative. But I do also miss the idea of doing something the way "The Black Mirror" was for me on Detective, where it's a story that is singular and isolated and particular to me — and the artistic team on the book just with me. It doesn't need to provide a platform for the stories in the other books. So this story, it's intensely personal to me.
You can check out the full interviews over at IGN and Newsarama. The first issue of Zero Year will be released in June 2013.
Posted by Dane Haji
