Yesterday, Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel announced, and launched a Kickstarter for, the new creator owned series, “Nocternal.” The first title of Snyder’s new “Best Jackett” line, the series will be released in traditional format by Image Comics come 2021. But the Kickstarter edition is a look inside the creative process, with Daniel’s unadorned pencils and Snyder’s script, side by side. The project was funded in less than 5 hours, and as of press time, is more than 200% funded at just shy of $90,000.
Both the signed hardcover and unsigned paperback editions will be Kickstarter exclusive, except that there will be a special edition softcover available for retailers using Corner Box. From the Kickstarter:
Both editions will ONLY be available to Kickstarter backers. But, if we successfully fund, a unique edition of the unsigned softcover with a separate cover will be made available to retailers at a special price through a separate platform called Corner Box, where 10% of all profits will go to Binc (Book Industry Charitable Foundation) a nonprofit dedicated to assisting booksellers in need. Retailers have been heavily impacted by COVID-19 and we wanted to find a way to help.
I had a chance to speak to both Snyder and Daniel about the series, the Kickstarter, and the state of comics in 2020.
Written by Scott SnyderCover by Tony Daniel
Illustrated by Tony Daniel
Colored by Tomeu Moray
Lettered by Deron BennettImagine that tomorrow the sun simply doesn’t rise. You wait. And you wait, but night just continues… You can still feel the sun’s warmth –it must BE THERE– but for some reason, light no longer reaches the earth. And this new darkness, there’s something strange about it, something terrifying. Because anything (or anyone) that stays in it too long starts to change…
NOCTERNAL takes place ten years after the world is plunged into an everlasting night that turns all living creatures into monstrous “shades.” The only way to survive is to stay close to artificial light. There are rumors of sanctuaries –perpetually-lit bunkers– where the shade-transformation can even be reversed, but most people assume these are just legends. Enter Valentina “Val” Riggs, a skilled “ferryman” who transports people and goods along deadly unlit roads with her heavily illuminated eighteen-wheeler.
When an old man promising sanctuary offers Val a job to drive him and his granddaughter up through the Rocky Mountains, she takes it, hoping there might be some truth to his claim. What she finds in the end, though, is something much more horrifying than any shade…
Thank you to Scott and Tony for their time, and if you haven’t yet, go pick up a copy of the “Nocternal” Collector’s Edition!
I’m really interested in the concept for the book, with the eternal darkness. And I’m wondering how you are planning to grow a world that you can’t see?
Scott Snyder: Oh, it’s fun. And by the way, for artists, it’s awesome because it’s a lot of black. Just a lot of ink on the page. It’s this idea, I was very afraid of the dark as a kid, among many fears. And my kid, my middle kid had similar fears recently a year ago or so. And I just started thinking about it and was like, well, what if I did a book about a world where morning one day just doesn’t come ad no one knows why. The sun is still there, i’s still physically there, but solar light just stops reaching the earth, and so we’re plunged into this night.
And not only this night, but a darkness that essentially transforms you into something called a shade. If you stay in it too long, you get infected and you become this twisted sort of, this twisted predatory version of yourself. So it’s like a real horror, where everybody has to stay lit in different kinds of artificial illumination. So people make all kinds of customized suits with candles or light bulbs or all kinds of stuff.
And I was like, this is my world, I love this. You don’t know what’s in the dark, and it changes every living thing into a shade. So dogs, deer, birds, fish, everything. So it’s just a world of nightmare out there. And I talked to Tony about it. It was like over a year ago, and I was like, this is the one I want to start my creator-owned stuff because it has everything I love, the way “American Vampire” has everything I love. It’s big mythology. No one knows why the darkness started. Is it supernatural? Is it scientific? Is it cosmic? What is it? And that’s part of the driving force of the series.
Continued belowBut it’s also got that kind of big hearted high-octane bombastic stuff I like to do at DC. His art was perfect for it. He’s got the muscularity and yet his acting is really good, his design works great. He was done with his “Batman” stuff at that moment. I’m like, let’s do it.
So, for me, I think the beauty of this book and why this book right now is that it marries the personal with the kind of propulsive and real plot engine kind of stuff that I like. And the big plan really is for 30, 40 issues. The main character, her name is Val Rigs; when she was a little girl, she had really bad cataracts. She was an orphan so she’s adopted by a family and she has a corrective surgery for her eyes. But she remembers that period where she couldn’t see well and she learned all of these kinds of coping skills. And now the world is dark. She drives people from outpost to outpost in this truck that’s all weaponized with different lights and this stuff, and her brother, her adopted brother Em, Emmett, guides her on the CB and builds all of her stuff.
And so, she’s a great character like Pearl Jones [from “American Vampire”]. She’s a really strong but guarded hero for the series. And what happens in the first arc is her brother becomes, not to spoil too much, her brother becomes infected. And she starts to get desperate about finding whether or not there actually are places where you can cure this thing. She goes on kind of a Hail Mary mission. And as she does, she learns more about her background, about what caused the darkness and that leads things forward for the second and third arcs.
It’s a big adventure. It’s like “The Walking Dead” and it’s a big adventure story that takes you through a world where the driving mystery is why did this happen? Is there any way to get things back the way they were? Can we even survive another day to figure all that out?
Tony, the premise of the series presents an unusual challenge for an artist, as the world of the book is so…well, dark. What has your approach been in creating a visual world for this series?
Tony Daniel: I’ve gotten accustomed to drawing stories that take place dark from my many years on “Batman,” so I had great practice already! We actually still see a lot, we see various people of all shapes, sizes, a good representation of the real world we live in, all finding unique and individual ways to keep themselves illuminated, whether it be by crudely attached lanterns, or decked out space suit outfits, to fairy lights wrapped over ponchos. I’m having so much fun with all the background characters I have to be careful not to overdo it because I’m so enthusiastic about this world that it would be pretty easy to do.
Did I mention the crazy transportation we’ll see in this series? Big rigs, trucks, hot rods, monster trucks, and of course, they’re all lit up, which is an added bonus. The darkness really is what is always surrounding our characters, especially when they’re out on the road, or lost in a forest. The shades, the creatures they will eventually turn into when their lights run out, are always creeping out of shadows. A shade can be as small as a dragonfly, to as big as a bear, or maybe even bigger if anyone wanted to investigate the ocean. It’s really a scary world we’re creating here.
When you’re tasked with creating the ‘shades,’ or any monstrous creatures, where do you start? For you, is it more important to find something that looks unique, or something that looks scary?
TD: Both.For me the starting point was finding the common denominator on what these different beasts would look like. Because one might be a toad, another a hawk, and another a buck, then we have the humanoid shades and some of them will sort of have mutated to all kinds of shapes and sizes. They’re very dark, with beady eyes and teeth, sometimes in extra places, bones jut out everywhere, seemingly growing bone on bone and reshaping the animal or person they once were. Something like this, I can play with, coming out of the shadows and where you see just enough to be scared out of your mind.
Continued belowIt’s crazy to me that the comics landscape has changed so much as of late, in terms of how creators are able to get their books financed/made. So I think the idea to do this Kickstarter is an interesting one. What was the impetus for this plan?
SS: The goal with the campaign isn’t to make a lot of money. We’re not doing a lot of bells and whistles, we’re not doing toys and all kinds of stuff like that. It really is trying to give you something personal and collectible that you wouldn’t be able to get because cons are shut down. And also, it’s designed around inclusion. So it’s a black and white edition of the book. It’s unlettered, so it’s just the art. And then it’s my script, which I don’t usually give those away or show those. And it’s got designs. It’s basically a process book. It says, this is how this book is being made. We want you to feel a part of it. And you can get it signed by us, we’ll have it signed and sent to you.
And then all the tiers of the campaign are really kind of centered on this idea of inclusion and connection with fans. I mean, creator-owned books by their nature I think are built around the idea of connection and trust. When I do Batman or Superman, those characters have a built in audience and appeal from the go. But when you do creator-owned, you’re asking your fans to go someplace unexplored and build from scratch together.
So the campaign is supposed to reflect that, where all of the different tiers are things that are about taking a class with me, getting a sketch from Tony, being drawn into the book, doing Q&As with us. Just trying to be part of a team. We want it to feel good and feel like what you’re getting for pledging at any capacity is being part of our creative collaboration and that you’re involved in part of nocturnal in general.
And what I’m hoping going back to your question is that if it works, maybe other creators will try it as a way of kind of safeguarding their creator-owned books against the uncertainties of the market today before they get started, because what happened to me was we were working on the book and we were sort of going along. And then when COVID hit, it was sort of like, is Tony going to have to take work again at DC or Marvel and take a break from this? And it was like, you know what, I know people think working on Batman or all of that stuff, you make millions of dollars, but you don’t.
And on top of that, I can’t really afford his rate and the colorist and that stuff for multiple issues myself. And to ask Image to help us with it felt like it would be taking away from books that need it more than us. So we felt like this was a really good sort of solution. It would give everybody kind of a way in to connect with us in a time when real life circumstances are just keeping everybody apart. And it would help us safeguard the book against the uncertainties of the market right now in that way, and allow us to make it something that when it comes out from Image in February, we’ll be able to continue monthly unstopped, regardless of what kinds of ups and downs the world faces.
I’ve been trying to get back to creator-owned for a long time, and I still to be really clear, I still have a foot in DC and I have at least one big project coming out with them in 2021 that I’m really excited about. I’ve told Jim [Lee] and everybody there before they got fired that I’m planning on going back to creator-owned more thoroughly. Luckily the editor I work with most, Marie [Javins] was promoted, she’s amazing, she deserves every bit of it. And I’m excited to be working with her really closely.
In one way, I have quite a footprint still at DC. And on the other hand, everyone knows that I’ve wanted to just do more of my own stuff. So, what I’m trying to do, what I’m not talking about too much today, but we’ll talk about more tomorrow on social media is that the campaign is also designed where, my guarantee is I’m taking no profit from it. So, when we fund the book, when we get enough to do those first four to five issues, which will allow us to make the book until it starts coming out, and then we see returns from the actual book coming out and then we’re self-sufficient from that point forward, anything we make past that, that I make personally past that, goes to paying the next artist as part of a new label that I’m setting up called Best Jackett Press. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, Best Jackett is jacket, it’s my company that I’ve been paid through for DC for awhile, but Jacket is Jack and Emmett, my two sons.
Continued below
I was wondering about that second T.
SS: I know, we have Quinn and now I don’t have a Q in there because he came along too late. So I got to figure out how to do it, but it was like Jackett with a QU just sounded too weird, so I was like, whatever. I’ll figure out a way. But my goal with that honestly, is not only to be able to do my book, and I’m going to announce the next, I have about seven books in production with them right now with different artists. So, my goal is to be able to just, everything I make will go towards funding artists on the other books and I will announce the next book pretty soon.
And the whole goal with it is to be able to challenge myself to be exciting to myself and also work with people, some of whom I’ve worked with before but do it in new ways. And some of whom are brand new, never worked with them, they’re emergent creators as well, and try and make an effort to once Best Jackett is up and running, be able to really try and be a better part of the community. I know it sounds hokey but I’m calling it Best Jackett because I call it, because I want it to be like you’re putting on your best jacket, your big boy jacket. And I want it to be my best work but I also want it to signal me being a better part of the comics community. I’ve tried to be the best person I can in the community. I’ve certainly made mistakes along the way and yelled at bosses and had all kinds of things. I’ve been open about that and the moments that I’ve really had trouble with my own anxieties and all that stuff.
My goal with this is really to try and make books that I’m proud of and start using the company as a way of also bringing in new creators and working, and eventually if it’s solvent, honestly past the first few books, help other people publish their work as well. So, that’s the goal. I always loved doing the workshop, the talent stuff and teaching. That’s the big ambition.
My promise to people is that I’m not sitting on a fucking stack of cash. I’m not rich from “Batman” and all of that stuff, but I don’t need the money from the campaign. The money from the campaign goes to paying for art on other books and making sure that if I have enough, I can do things like paying artists, I can pay an artist and then not even recoup that page rate from the royalties, which is standard, paying artists and then recoup their page rate from the royalties and then give them royalties afterwards, but try and do things like that.
So, not to get too granular in the weeds but it’s all those kinds of things that actually go back to what you were saying about making comics a place where you have more job security, where you can feel better about having a war chest to be able to make sure people know that nothing’s going anywhere even if things go sideways again.
I’m just proud of it, dude. That’s all. I’m proud of it. I want this year to be a year where we’re making stuff we’re excited about and that we can also try and create good conditions for people we’re bringing in and make sure that things are safeguarded against the uncertainty out in the world.
With this Kickstarter, you’re releasing this insider’s look at the book before the first issue is available to the public. This is the first time I can recall anything like this being done before. What do you hope that the fans will get out of seeing how the comics sausage is made?
TD: I think we’re offering an intimate hard look at how we create and collaborate together. Especially when you see Scott’s script page next to what I actually deliver. You can see where I followed to the T and where I strayed to do something I thought would be a better storytelling image, as well as little touches I add throughout the story that shows how writer and artist should collaborate when creating comics together. A sort of give and take needs to be there. Scott wants me to elevate the script, not follow a paint by numbers format. And this being the first issue of bad ass new series, people can see how Scott and I go about creating something we feel will be truly grand and magical and inspiring and exciting all at once, and we really intend to make the readers feel like they’re part of this too, they’re along for this ride with me and Scott.
Continued belowHaving your pencils showcased in their raw form is obviously a very cool thing for an artist. However, the pencils are just one part of the visual storytelling. Do you have any reservations about showing “incomplete” work?
TD: I’ve been inking the majority of my pencils for the last few years as I’ve gotten more comfortable with the various new pens and brushes that are at our disposal these days. Comic art in general has evolved and I feel there’s a great sense of freedom in inking your own work. It doesn’t technically need to be a perfect line. It just has to be 100% your vision, that’s my approach and it keeps me happy and saves my sanity. So generally, I put in as much detail as I need in pencil and start inking from there. I use various Pigma Micron pens, Japanese brush pens and good old brush and ink. I’m able to get what I want out of my tools.
Scott, I wanted to talk to you about your scripts for a second because you said you normally don’t make your scripts available like this. Why do you keep that stuff guarded? Are your scripts just super personal unique to you? Has there never been an opportunity before? Why haven’t we seen a Snyder script out there?
SS: I don’t put them out because they’re really tailored artist to artist. The funniest thing is the scripts that have been out there, like in “Court of Owls” Absolute Edition and stuff, were before I learned how to write the way I write now. One of the biggest things for me and the reason that Greg [Capullo] has been such an incredible partner and friend is I feel like he’s been a real mentor about how to be a better writer throughout the years. And when I came in, I was so scared. I got thrown on, not thrown on, I said I wanted it when they asked, but “Detective Comics” for 12 issues when I was a baby. I had a couple issues with “American Vampire” under my belt. And it was like “Detective Comics” for a year, front back, the whole thing.
And I had the story in my head that I wanted to do, but I was so scared, and I didn’t know how to write, I mean, for comics, in terms of understanding that you adapt the way you script for your artists so that you’re getting the best out of them. And weirdly, my style of scripting at that time, which was massive full script, it was like panel one closeup on boots walking in the rain, rain dripping off the, and like panel two, we pull back a little bit. It was like full on movie direction worked well for Jock and Francesco Francavilla because they liked that kind of stuff and then they veer off from it where they feel they can do better visual storytelling is fine with me.
But then Greg came along and Greg liked to work for, he showed me an outline for Haunts that he was working on at the time. And it was like a five page script that was like, for these pages, it’s like fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. It’s really gory, have fun, and then here’s the important emotional stuff. And I was like, oh my God, how does he expect me to do this? And we got into this huge fight that almost broke us up before we even started where I was like, he was like, “Just give me the important words.” And I was like, “They’re all important, Mr. Capullo.” It was like that.
But what I learned over the years working with him, and it was the issue, the seminal issue that I feel like you can see it is issue five of our run, where the book turned around. That was Greg’s idea when I finally was like, this guy is just drawing so well. You know what, I’ll do what he says. I’ll give him one scene, I’ll give one scene where it’s like, just do whatever you want. And it was the labyrinth scene. And he just like, he came up with these brilliant ideas. It made me realize very quickly that I had been really wrong about being rigid with the way I script. And so, a script for Greg Capullo is wildly different than a script for Jim Cheung. Jim Cheung likes full script the way I used to do it. Greg Capullo likes really casual back and forth.
Continued belowThe key is always giving the artists for anyone interested, the emotional, psychological, and tonal beats of what you need scene to scene. So let’s say if I’m doing it for Greg. I’ll be like pages two to five, in this scene, Wonder Woman learns that she’s not alone. [Insane spoilers for “Dark Nights: Death Metal” redacted as to not ruin something dope] At first it’s down and it’s meditative and she’s like, “we don’t have enough people.” And then [more redaction] So here’s the whatever, and here’s the dialogue, go. And it’s like that much for like five pages.
For Jim Cheung or whatever, it would be more like panel one, we’re looking at Wonder Woman. The feeling is down. This is the night before she’s about to lose. She’s sitting there with her head in her hands, dah, dah, dah, dah, panel two. So, the reason that I’ve avoided giving scripts is more like I don’t have format. I don’t have one that’s like this is how Scott writes a script, because what I’ve learned is and what I’m proud of him honestly, is to be really adaptable to try and bring the best out of the artist and say, how do you like to work? What do you like? And if they say like Marvel style, I work that way. If they say full script, that way. That’s what I’d say to any writer out there is the best advice I can give you is adapt to your artist and learn how to write in different ways so that you feel comfortable that you’re getting across the point of each thing, but you’re not constricting your artist in a way that’s going to make them feel boxed in.
So, I don’t like to give them out because they’re so wildly different. It’s like a Greg script can be 10 pages for a 30 page issue. And a Jock script could be 25 pages for an eight page issue. It’s just a weird, erratic thing. But with this one, I felt like if we’re really saying we’re going to let people in and be part of the process, then I’m really proud of the script. And on top of that, Tony likes a pretty detailed style. So it’s not just like a small thing. That’s why the book is actually like 70 plus pages because the first issue is 32 pages. The script is 35 pages or so. They’re match page to page. So it’s a lot of fun because you can see where Tony went off the rails and did different things than I said and made it much better for his ideas. And at the back, I’m going to have a whole thing that explains all that stuff that has an annotated thing. And like, this is how we work.
The fun of it is having a place where you can actually explain it as well and be like this whole book is about what the creative and collaborative process is like.
A lot of your creator-owned stuff tends to veer towards the horror side. I have noticed that as your career has gone on, you’ve seen this, there’s been this divide where your creator-owned stuff definitely has its own vibe and tone that is not necessarily the same from what you do when you’re working on a licensed property, whether it’s DC or whoever else. So, what is it about horror that sparks your imagination? Why is horror the thing you’re leaning into?
SS: Man, that’s a great question. I’ve thought this a lot because as a kid, I had such anxiety and I loved horror movies, and then they would freak me out. And I never understood what the connection was. We had this video store, I grew up down in the lower East side and there was this video store called The Video Stock, which was one of the last video stores up until about 10 years ago was still there. And they would rent, they wouldn’t rent R rated movies to kids but they would deliver them if you called. And so it was a neighborhood secret. And all I got was like Sleepaway Camp 2 and Friday the 13th Part 5. And I remember I saw, one day we rented Night of Living Dead and I was so disappointed that it was black and white, and I was like, this is not going to be scary. And the movie riveted me and it upset me. I had nightmares and all that stuff and I hated it for a long time. I was like, I don’t like that movie.
Continued belowAnd when I eventually came back to it years later and was like, it’s now my favorite movie. What I realized is that horror gave, what it did was it showed me the good horror makes you face the monstrous extension of your real fears, your real anxieties, when it’s done well in the most kind of pure conflict way. So horror is you facing the things you’re most afraid of for yourself, for your kids, for the world in like this pure burned down primal way where it’s a monstrous, predatory horrifying thing usually that embodies all of that. And drama, it’s just a fuse. You can still do it, I love drama, but it’s almost like a more genteel version of the same raw fight that’s happening in horror.
Horror is more concentrated.
SS: Yeah. Horror is like a concentrated shot straight to your brain blast of conflict, when it’s done well. When Stephen King makes the places that feel safe to you, the American town, your family dog, your car, suddenly flips them and makes them the totemically scary things. Or George Romero makes this slow march of death reveal the ugliness of human nature. Or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the idea of the South rising up in the spooky way, all of the sins of the past, all this stuff. All of that, to me, when it’s done right, brings you face to face with the things that you’re most terrified of and gives you a way of reckoning with them whether you win any Emmy or you lose, that’s active to other people, that’s communicative.
So horror to me is almost just like my touchstone because as somebody with a lot of anxieties and fears, it main lines you right into how to deal with them or not deal with them or lose to them or win to them in a way that I feel is like pure cocaine drama.
I was looking at my office, it’s here somewhere. I have a postcard, a Dawn of the Dead postcard autographed by Romero and Tom Savini because when I was in college, I went to, I went to college in Pittsburgh and I went to Dawn of the Dead reunion at the Monroeville Mall where the cast walked us around the mall and showed us where all the things were, it’s one of the coolest things I ever did.
SS: I know that movie back to front, where it was like this place must’ve had some meaning in their lives. All of it. I love that. I love that movie.
One of the highlights of my life was, I got to know Stephen King. We were visiting with him. He invited my wife and I to his place in Florida when “American Vampire” was coming out. And we went and stopped by and he’s like, come in, come in. And I swear to you one of the days we were there, he was on the phone with George Romero at one point, and he was like, “Oh, I’m taking this call, I’m talking to George Romero.” I think it was [when Romero was doing]Land of the Dead.
He was arguing with him about the need for fast zombies. And he was like, “George, zombies got to move fast now. They can’t be slow anymore. You need fast zombies.” And I was like, “I can die right now.” Hearing this argument is like peak life. That’s it. I’m done. Those movies meant a lot to me. They really taught me a ton. Horror to me is just, when it’s done well, it’s just the best. I bring it with me into everything else I do.
Tony, if you could see one comic from the past published in this matter that you, as a fan, would want to read, which issue would it be?
TD: I’d probably like to see Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen done like this. I remember working with Alan on a Spawn miniseries called “Bloodfeud” back a ways, and he supplied me with page by page thumbnail drawings of the entire story. As a very young artist, I learned so much from those four issues with him, I can only imagine having this sort of access to the making of Watchmen, how that could be a study for creators and fans on how to create a masterpiece.
