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I was on Batman with "Superheavy" or "Zero Year" where there was a lot of fun and bombast, but it was also personal. In All-Star, I wanted to take that to its complete extreme, like the end of the Earth extreme, where it's over-the-top humorous, yet at the same time really deeply about what I think is of this particular moment in time, at least for me. The things I'm terrified of and the things I'm hopeful about. My life is the page.
Scott Snyder -
With this particular series The Cursed Wheel I'm going farther in that direction than I've tried before in terms of the elasticity of the mythology.
Scott Snyder
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- If I tell you, will you let met go? - You bet, partner. [...] - You promised! - Nope. I said "you bet." You did ... and you lost.
Scott Snyder -
I love The End of the Batman story. I have my original copy, the hardcover, at my house from when I was a kid, whenever that was,'88 or '89. It was very influential to me because it was so explicit in touching on the notion that Batman might be mad and that he might belong in the mad house.
Scott Snyder -
Bruce sees a lot of himself in Batman, you know? You could argue that something even worse than what happened to Bruce happened to Duke's parents, who are now Joker-ized. They're not just gone or irretrievably lost. And I'm NOT curing them, so you can put that out there! There's no relief from that.
Scott Snyder -
"The Cursed Wheel" is the heart of the whole year on All-Star. All-Star is a series that's largely compartmentalized so that every artist can reinvent a villain and have Batman go up against the villain in a way that's pretty singular.
Scott Snyder -
"The Cursed Wheel," which Declan Shalvey is starting here, is the one constant. It's a story in the backups that will go through the whole year and be the one consistent narrative. It anchors the entire book.
Scott Snyder -
I spoke to Geoff Johns a lot. We went back and forth, and found a way to bring up the best qualities in his personality and psychology and also fill a niche in Gotham that we've never seen. It became about is there a way to really plant this hero in Gotham and say this is someone you haven't seen before - both in terms of who they are as a person and who they are as a hero.
Scott Snyder
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I really wanted to make sure that if we set Duke up, that he's set up the right way and he's his own hero for the right reasons.
Scott Snyder -
Bruce sees in this character - who fought all the way through "Superheavy" when his parents were missing, and now is determined to fight even though his parents are telling him he's worth nothing - the essence of Batman.
Scott Snyder -
Vampires as creatures have evolved over time as different vampire bloodlines have hit different populations of humans. Every once in a while the blood will make something new and mutate into a new species with different powers, abilities, weakness, physical characteristics, and so on. I don't want to give anything away, but there are whole species and branches that date all the way back to pre-modern times.
Scott Snyder -
I think thing that makes Batman so endlessly interesting is that he's one of the most flawed and deeply human characters, even though he seems completely the most inhuman and infallible in costume. Psychologically he's one of the most complicated in both his strengths and his weaknesses. For me, one of his great strengths and weaknesses is that confidence. His emotional self-protection is one of the things that makes him heroic and sacrificing; he doesn't have a personal life. He sacrifices those to be the best hero he can be.
Scott Snyder -
Having that North Star for every story about Batman is really key for me. It allows me to go farther and farther off the reservation.
Scott Snyder -
Beware The Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed speak not a whispered word of them or they'll send the Talon for your head.
Scott Snyder
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First of all, what made him Duke in "Zero Year" captivating is this sense of somebody who wants to save the city regardless of whether Batman wants to or not, but has been inspired by Batman. He's always been - not combative with Batman or anything - but I think he has a sense that what Robin is and what heroism is in Gotham is something that's inspired by Batman and sort of separate from Batman.
Scott Snyder -
Duke is the same way that Harper Row is a character who doesn't want to know who you are beneath the mask, and that makes her interesting. She'll show up and help Batman, but she never wants to know if he's Bruce Wayne.
Scott Snyder -
KGBeast starts chasing our heroes in a big way, and you get the return of an old character from the mythology that I think people will be really excited to see.
Scott Snyder -
On this global stage, Superman is someone that we can all look up to and he's almost kind of ultimately American.
Scott Snyder -
If I know what something's about, and I can always have that touchstone, I feel like I can reach for really ridiculous humor and also go really dark in terms of the things I'm afraid of.
Scott Snyder -
That's what everyone thinks--they think being a cop is about punishing people for doing wrong. But that's not true. You know it isn't. It's about believing in people, believing in the good. In the will of people to do what's right despite their own instincts.
Scott Snyder
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I got fascinated by the idea that our universe itself is comprised mostly of dark matter and dark energy. Things that we can't perceive at all, and we've only discovered that relatively recently. So it's almost as if our universe is the foam on the ocean of things that we can't see, or know, or perceive, and yet we feel the affects of those things right and left.
Scott Snyder -
Does it matter how long they were together that night? To lovers, an hour can last a century. But even for lovers, every hour ends.
Scott Snyder -
Duke is a character who believes that heroism and the Robin mantle can exist entirely separate from Batman himself.
Scott Snyder -
The thing with Superman is that he's completely emotionally open to the reader. Meaning what he tells you is what he's feeling; there's a transparency there. And what he tells other characters is usually as transparent as can be. What he says he believes in. So there's an honesty that is both really inspiring writing the character. One thing I love about Clark Kent is that there is a badassery that you don't see a lot. Even as Superman, he's always kind of restraining himself. When you challenge him, I think there's nobody that has a stronger spine than Superman.
Scott Snyder