Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Absolute Batman, nick dragotta, Portugal Comic Con, scott snyder

Scott Snyder Did Not Think Absolute Batman #2 Would Sell Over 70,000

Scott Snyder did not think that the second issue of Absolute Batman would sell over 70,000 and got Nick Dragotta to lower his expectations

At Comics Con Portugal this past weekend, Scott Snyder took to the stage to talk up Absolute Batman, his mega-hit series with Nick Dragotta, part of the whole Absolute Universe line. Even if it seem inconceivable that to you up any more. But that wasn't always the case. Scott Snyder recalled "When we started Absolute Batman, I was very worried that nobody would read it. I was worried that I was driving DC into the iceberg and was going to sink the company. But we really loved what we were doing. Nick and I believed very strongly in the book, and I believed very deeply in Kelly and Hayden's Wonder Woman and in Jason and Rafael's Superman. Those first books, I just loved them. Even if nobody else liked them, I loved them, and we were really proud of them."

But then… the sucess came, fast and hard, across the Absolute line. "To see it take off this way… there's just no metric for it that any of us understand. We're just kind of writing the way we feel is right. It's a political book. It's big action. It's big heartfelt soap opera. It's very violent. It's all these things mixed together that we love. I'm very, very grateful that it's gone as well as it has, but we 100% didn't expect it."

Scott Snyder had even tried to manage expectations going in.  "Nick was like, after the first issue came out and the sales were good, "Do you think maybe by issue two we can keep it at like eighty thousand or seventy thousand?" And I was like, "Dude, I don't think so." We really thouht it best we be in the middle of the pack. And now it's selling four, five hundred thousand. It's crazy. It's crazy."

And he also talked up their collaboration, and what they are up to right now. "Nick, and I already texted like five times today about Clayface designs. Nick has become one of my best friends in the world and he lives just across the bay from me. Where I live is on the ocean. But it's like a peninsula, you know? He lives on the other side of the ocean, right there. So he takes a boat ferry over, and we work in my office. Like every couple of weeks, we get together in person and do the designs. He designs them,, and we go back and forth. We lay out the issues. It's super collaborative. I can't say enough good things about what a great partner he is. This is the most collaborative "build it together" book I've ever done. It's not like me writing a script and handing it to him. It's me getting on the phone and "hey, what do you think about this issue if we do this?" And he'll be like, "Okay, what if in this issue, Penguin and Two-Face and Riddler and Croc are all going to meet? What if we do it, instead of at  Gordon's funeral, what if we do it in an alley outside this…" And I'm like, "Great, let's do that."It's very, very back and forth. It's scary because it's a lot of trust, but it's the best thing. I hope readers can feel that in the comic,how much fun we're having… and how it is."

So we have Penguin, Two-Face, Riddler and King Croc in an alleyway outside Jim Gordon's funeral? That's how it sounds…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!