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Scott Snyder On The Absolute Universe Crossover Being All About Losing

Scott Snyder, on how the Absolute Universe Crossover for later this year will be all about the art of losing.

Scott Snyder gave the Comic Watchers YouTube podcast a massive run down about his plans for the Absolute Universe and more. We got lots of Absolute Batman plans, some sales figures and hints as to what else was coming, but there was much more besides, including an Absolute Event for the end of 2025. "We're planning, without giving too much away, but big spoiler, we're planning a second beat of that meta-story, a big event towards the end of this year."

So what does that mean? "We'll eventually see some crossover between, you know, Batman and Superman and, you know, the Trinity for the Absolute Universe. Yeah, 100%. We actually planned that just a few weeks ago. We had a big Summit, all the Absolute writers… so there will be a crossover sort of storylines in 2025 between the Absolute books, the first three especially, because they all, they've been around at that point for, for longer."

As for the other titles, it will be smaller but "there will be crossover with them too. There's definitely a whole storyline, and we're going to do a special villains issue and all kinds of stuff coming in 2025, where you get to see more of the history of this world and more of the way that Darkseid's essence is kind of woven into the very tiniest particles of it to the huge cosmic macro elements of the universe as well."

What else will the crossover involve? "So there'll be a whole story about that and the people discovering that this is a universe that tilts towards losing, tilts towards villainy. This is my thesis about the Absolute Universe. One of the things that was inspiring to me and Jason [Aaron] and Kelly [Thompson], when we were kind of architecting the first three books, is that I look at my kids, right, and this is a big inspiration for Absolute Batman. My oldest son is 18, he's going off to college next year. I feel very guilty about the world he's inheriting, I feel very bad about the way things are right now in all kinds of ways, economically, politically, all of it. He and his friends are unwilling to accept the world such as it is and believe that they're going to change it, and they're very idealistic and, and wonderfully so, and that's kind of the inspiration for Absolute Batman."

Because Scott Snyder is taking this very personally. "I'm Alfred, he's Batman, he and his younger brothers. In the main Universe, there's an immediate reward, the heroes always win, and they win quick. It's very, very rare that the heroes lose in a story in the main Universe, and, or even that you have to wait for them tp win. Avengers Infinity War to Endgame was a shock in superhero storytelling, that you had to have them lose, only to win later, but because you're so used to the immediate gratification. But in this universe, the thing that was interesting to me is they realize, even if they might win, you never know. But what if they realize that the Universe makes it impossible for them to win. What's the point of being good if everything is stacked against you, and ultimately, what they realize is that being good isn't a matter of the reward of winning, it's the hope."

This does remind me somewhat of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's take on the Crime Syndicate Of America in JLA: Earth 2. But that was just a one-shot, this is a whole line. Scott Snyder continues, "It's even more heroic, in my opinion, to be good when you honestly think it, you'll lose, but you do it anyway because not only is it the right thing to do, but that you hope that it will inspire a little bit of, a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of joy, happiness in someone's life that needs it, and that it will change things eventually. It will reverberate down, even if you never get to see it, and, you know, you'll never get to see it in your lifetime. What does it mean to do good if you're not going to get to know or see the effect of it, but you hope, you have faith that it will do something, and that, to me, was, like, in Jason and Kelly, was, like, that's what the Absolute Universe is. These heroes not getting to win right away, not getting to know that their actions are going to win, having villains in tremendous positions of power, I just cheer harder for them. I think they're more awesome, you know what I mean."

We do Scott, we do! More and more and more Absolute comics coming to dominate the Bleeding Cool Weekly Bestseller Lists it seems…

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