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Scott Snyder's Plans For Absolute Batman, Dick Grayson & The Joker

Scott Snyder's plans for Absolute Batman, Absolute Dick Grayson and The Absolute Joker for DC Comics to come... (Spoilers)

Scott Snyder gave the Comic Watchers YouTube podcast a massive run down about his plans and for the Absolute Universe of titles. We got some sales figures, hints as to what else is coming as well as a crossover, but there was much more besides.

But it is worth remembering that he was never going to do Absolute Batman originally. Bleeding Cool previously reported that Donny Cates was the original choice, before that was impossible. He tells the podcast "Batman was the only book I told them I would not do in the Absolute Universe. I said to DC that I don't want to do Batman, I wanted to do Wonder Woman to be honest. Although I'm so grateful I did not because Kelly and Hayden's version is so much better than what I would have done but I wanted to do Wonder Woman."

And it turns out it wasn't DC Comics who persuaded him. "It really came down to the wire for Batman, and it was almost New York Comic Con 2022; DC was really putting pressure on me about it; you've got to find somebody to do Batman; it has to be somebody with a name at this point. Because they wanted it to be a flagship book and the first one out of the gate, and so James Tynion called me up because I'd been asking him on and on if you have any ideas through Tiny Onion, and he was like, 'I know somebody who should do it'. I was like, who? He's like, 'You should do it', I was like, 'Stop, I'm not gonna do it, you know I don't want to do that,' and he was just like, 'Well, you've been soft pitching this book for like over a year, you've been saying this idea to everybody,  you know you want to do it' and I didn't really want to do it but it was more that I was really afraid, but what James pointed out which was true which was that everyone I went to, the whole idea was let's take a big swing and do the thing you're afraid of, you put this character up against your biggest fears, what's the thing that you think could really make a mark on the DCU? What's your biggest swing sort of challenge? for me, as much as I didn't want to admit it, the thing that was scariest and the biggest swing was to go back to Batman and to do this idea and really flesh it out. And so the next step became like if I did, it would have to be really intensely different than anything I'd done before."
Because Scott Snyder knows who Batman is. "Batman, when I when I really tear him down, all he is, is a boy that suffered a horrible trauma. And ultimately decides that instead of letting that thing break him, he's going to use it as fuel to make the world better. That's really all it is. What to me makes Batman so enduring and makes him so adaptable and all these versions of Batman that we love. And the fact that he wins. There's a certain joy to watching Batman win because he is again like he's human, he's got no powers, no rings, no alien abilities and ultimately, he's someone that we can all relate to in the way that all of us have suffered something traumatic in our lives. Batman is like, I'm not even going to dwell on it, I'm gonna win. He's one of the few superheroes who feels like their resting position is awesome, like f–k yeah!… So if you approach it from that kind of a lens and look at the entire mythology, it becomes really exciting."

Absolute Dick Grayson as an adult

And we get a look at what's happening for Absolute Batman and the Absolute Batmaniverse. Such as Dick Grayson… "You'll see some friendly, familiar faces. You'll see Dick Grayson at some point this year—he's coming. It was an interesting set of choices because it was like, 'Is he a kid, or is he a grown-up?' Because if Barbara is a grown-up and he's a kid, is that too weird? So, you know, what if he's a grown-up? Who would he be? And then that opened this whole door. You'll see some friendly Bat characters and some vicious Bat characters, all coming soon."

Might Mayor Jim Gordon be making a move on Absolute Batman's still very alive and pretty hot mother, Martha Wayne? "A lot of the supporting cast, like Jim and Martha, have a really big plot. I really love what Martha does—Martha's the best. Barbara plays a really big role in the Bane arc coming up too, and Leslie Thompkins is in stuff, too. They learn a lot. We're going for it with this one—with everybody. You hear mentions of a bunch of people too, and there'll be peripheral references you'll see in the next arc to a lot of the villain characters—or not always villainous, but characters you recognize as part of the gallery. So, you'll see references to Kirk Langstrom and all those characters."

Well, he has been writing ahead. "I hope you can tell it's really plotted for a long time. The Bane arc is all plotted, and that takes us all the way through issue 15. The next couple of issues—I know what they are because they're part of the launch of that series I was telling you about, the third-wave stuff. Then the Joker arc—I've had that in my head since I conceived of the look, what happens between these two. It might get pushed back—we might wind up doing some stories in between. That's always what happens on an ongoing, with American Vampire, with Batman itself. Sometimes you plan on doing an arc right away after another arc, and then you get an idea, and you're like, 'Actually, this will create an even bigger crescendo for that arc,' and I don't want to do that before I do more with this character."

What about Absolute Joker?

And what about the Joker? "I can already feel that kind of brewing where it's like, I don't know if I want to get all the way to Joker. Joker isn't the end of the series; it is just a big tentpole moment. But I don't know if I want to get to that before I explore these other characters that might filter into it. So, it's planned out, but the minimum amount is through issue 24. The maximum amount, if I added some of the things I'm thinking about, would be closer to 34, I guess."

And where is he now? "Well, we're plotted through 24. The second interstitial arc, meaning the ones between the Big Arc, is a two-issue story about Mr Freeze that ties into what you read in the first Arc and sets up the second one, um, by Marcos Martin. You get the new design of Mr Freeze. He's part of the whole Victor/Nora thing, but, um, I won't give away exactly how he works, um, but he's vicious and everybody in the book is meaner and, like, the villains are just tougher and meaner. I love it."

So what comes next? "Starting with #9, it's a Bane Arc, which I'm very excited about, and it really deals with Ark M. Bruce is desperately trying to figure out what they're building there and what it is underneath this prison, and it's like a real horror show. So you get, you get a bunch of villain revelations that go #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14. And then #15, #16, and #17 are sort of another interstitial Arc with the return of a character who you've seen a little bit in the past, and then after that, we have Joker."

So we are getting Joker, then. "Right now, that's where we're planning our Joker story is. After that, I haven't decided yet. There are a couple of things we might want to do in between, like a little Scarecrow thing, and I'm not sure. I keep having other ideas. Nick and I both keep having ideas of, but yeah, so it's planned for a very long time. I just wrote #10, so we're well ahead in terms of in terms of what's coming."

Winners And Losers

And thematically, for the Absolute Universe, he says, "These heroes are not getting to win right away, not getting to know that their actions are going to win, and having villains in tremendous positions of power, so I just cheer harder for them. I think they're more awesome, you know what I mean"

One example comes in Absolute Batman #6, which Scott Snyder describes as his favourite moment. "At one point, Batman is fighting Black Mask. There's a lot of funny moments that I love, but there's this one moment where he's fighting Black Mask, and Black Mask starts to tell him, if you think this is going to have any impact, you think what you're doing will do anything except bring down all the forces of the state, the system on your head, and Bruce just doesn't even let him finish a sentence. He just, like, rams him through the floor into a bowling alley and starts hitting him with bowling balls and, like, he punching him in the head, and he's just, like, tell me again that I don't matter, and he's, like, I love it, boom, I f-cking love it, and he's just beating on him, saying, and I was just, like, that's who he is, like, that's who he is. He's, like, tell me again that I don't mean sh-t, that none of this matters, do it, because all it does is fuel me. I don't give a f-ck what you say, I'm still going to do it, even if I know this boat is sinking, and I'm going to die, I don't care, I'm still doing it. And that, it's so exciting to me to write characters like that, you know, where you, there's just a different energy, because the universe has tilted against them in a big way, like, they're not, they don't have the ability to win or form a Justice League or that stuff, really, not, I mean, even in the smallest way…"

No Justice League? More on that to come, I am sure… And the knowledge that Che Grayson is writing an Absolute Batman-related comic. "Che Grayson, who I love to death, is doing one book that we haven't announced yet. He's a good friend of mine, doing some stuff at Tiny Onion and has done some stuff at IDW. I can't wait for you guys to see it—it's sort of in the Absolute Batman universe."

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