This week sees the release of “Batman” #44, an issue focusing on the beginnings of Mr. Bloom, a new villain who seems to be a real giver. To help tell this stand-alone story, series writer turned to long time collaborator Jock, as well as Brian Azzarello and Lee Loughridge. To celebrate such a star-studded creative lineup, we asked Snyder and Jock to talk a little about the issue and the collaboration behind it.
Switching gears between projects is something that a comics professional needs to be able to handle, right? But I’m wondering if switching between projects with the same collaborator changes anything? What was the creative shift between producing “Wytches” and working on this issue of “Batman” like?
Jock : I would say not really. I really value that the people that I work with over the years are friends, and that we work together a lot, and I think that creates a synergy that works really well in comics, because it’s such stripped down creative process where it’s only a handful of people. So Batman is a different gear perhaps, but to me it didn’t really feel any different. We have Brian [Azzarello] of course helping Scott with some of the script, but that kinda came after. I think the initial germ of the issue was pretty much the same approach as any of our other comics. Would you agree, Scott?
Snyder: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things when you find somebody that you love collaborating with, and you’re lucky enough to be come friends the way i feel like Jock and I have become, whatever project you work on, i think the reason you gravitate towards each other has to do with the common subject matter. So for me, with an issue like this, I know that Jock is going to respond to the material, as an artist, more than maybe other people I work with in different ways. I know that the emotional, psychological sort of stuff like this material is going to be this thing that he really loves to work on, so it’s not a big change. For me, even though “Wytches” is horror and this is more noir or superhero, the stuff in “Wythches” is kind of the murky, difficult, and complicated kind of emotional and psychological stuff that happens when you care about something, but you realize that the way that you care about it also brings tremendous problems and dark under currents. And here its similar, Batman wants to be a hero, but the way that he’s going about it is problematic. So for that reason I feel that, even though on the surface it looks like very different things, it’s kind of similar subject matter.
Jock: Yeah, I totally agree.
That leads me right into something I was wondering about, can you talk a little about writing the same characters for two artists? Does your working relationship inform the story at all? Is the approach to Bruce different for Jock than Greg? Do you put him in different scenarios or focus on different traits in the character?
Snyder: Yeah, completely. I think working with different artists immediately gives you a different perspective on the material. Working with Greg, he’s 100% one of the best in the business and I feel incredibly grateful to work with him everyday. There are things that I know he gravitates towards though, and I know what he enjoys drawing. I feel like whether I was working with Francesco Francavilla, or Jock, or Greg, or Rafael [Albuquerque], I know how to get to the same emotional or psychological material, but you take different paths. The other thing I’d say is that you share a love for the material that you’re working on, not just the character. So for example, Greg loves bombast. He loves drawing both intimate acting moments between characters and over-the-top, epic, almost ridiculous action scenes. So I wouldn’t do this issue with Greg because, he’d kill it and do a great job on it, but it’s more that I feel his strengths and enthusiasm lie in different neighborhoods of Batman. So for me, I wouldn’t do this issue, I’d do a different type of issue that gets at the same material for him.
Continued belowOne of the great things about working with different, both right now with this issue and in the past working with Jock and Francesco, and planning on working on Batman material with Sean Murphy and other people in the future, is that it allows you to tell different kinds of stories that might even be kind of confluent with the stuff you’re doing now. I’ve always been concerned about Batman as a character that’s relevant for some reason to us even when he doesn’t necessarily solve problems that we face every day. So “Zero Year” he’s facing off with terrorism and gun violence, even though its cloaked in comic book language. But with Jock, it’s fun because I can cut straight to the core and say here’s batman facing off with these entrenched and systemic problems in a way that isn’t maybe done through more colorful comic book language, which i love. I love doing those types of stories, and I wouldn’t be comfortable if this was the only type of story I could do, either.
So, for me, I guess the answer is yes. Working with different artists gives you the opportunity to approach the character from very different places, and yet strangely get at the same material. As a writer thats the big joy, challenging yourself or having the opportunity to get to try and rise to the occasion of getting to work with these great artists that come at the character from very different places.
I’m interested in how the addition of Brian Azzarello played into how the two of you work together. By now you both must have a feel for how the other approaches story, so did the introduction of a third voice produce anything unexpected?
Snyder: (sarcastically) It was awful.
(Laughter)
Jock: I would say, I said to someone yesterday, me and Brian have been talking about doing something since I was on “The Losers,” which is, like, more than ten yard ago now. Brian is so good at street level dialogue, and that kind of gritty edge that he gives to urban characters. When Scott mentioned the possibility getting him on board, I thought it was a really great idea. And sure enough, he was kind of quite brutal with a couple of things.
Snyder: Yeah!
Jock: He kind of hacked a couple of scenes apart, but I have to say it was the right move. The scenes became just far more intriguing and enigmatic, I’d say, in that great way that he does. For me it was just a really good experience to have his voice as a part of the group.
Snyder: I totally agree, and I am very grateful to him for coming on board. He and I have been lucky enough to become, I think I can say pretty honestly, good friends over the last year or so as he’s been coming to New York to work on the Dark Knight project. And we were friends before, but now that he’s been visiting we’ve had a chance to get closer. When I knew I was going to do this issue I approached him pretty quickly and said, “Would you help me out?”
One thing for me is that as much as I feel like people, lately especially, have been making a lot of the fact that we’ve been on “Batman” a while, me and Greg, I still feel very green. I’ve only been in comics five or six years, so guys like Brian, when they come in I learn tremendous amount from them, as I learn from Greg, as I learn from Jock, who was the first person to take me on and he helped me tremendously through “Black Mirror.” So getting to work with someone like Brian is an honor and a pleasure, because I learned a lot from working with him. I feel like I still have a lot to learn, and this issue is exponentially better for his involvement.
Jock, how closely do you work with your colorists? DO you find yourself changing how you approach to the page when working with different collaborators?
Jock: I work very closely, actually. I don’t know whether other artists do, I hope that they do, but that’s something that I’ve always liked to do. Maybe its because of the person I am, but I like to know the person I’m working with. I’ve always believed that, if you’re going to have someone on the team, then let them do their thing, you know? With Lee, I’ve worked with him on lots of things. All the way from “The Losers” to the “Wolverine” strip for Marvel, the “Superman” story with Max Landis, I’ve worked with him on a lot of stuff. He sends me pages and actually, for a couple of projects, we end up tweaking the stuff together. I’ll kind of put some texture on it, or change a few color choices, so it was really great to work with him on this one. I just got home yesterday to see that the physical copies, the comps, had arrived, and the color is just great. All the way through the present sequences the color desaturatres and become more and more washed out, and there’s less and less color. Things like that are just really smart choices that help tell the story. And then with Matt, it’s a different style, a different thing, but still we work very closely. And I feel like that just has to help the end product really. If you’re speaking to each other, and you’re on the same page, an youre helping each other out, then that helps make a better story. A better comic.
Continued belowSnyder: And I would just say, to credit them as well, working on “Wytches,” and then working on “Batman” with Jock, one of the great things about working with friends is that you can talk to them openly about your fears and your ambitions for an issue like this. Or really any issue. On “Wytches” I did the same thing with Jock. I’ll call these guys up and ask tham, ‘do you think I’m going too far,’ or, ‘do you think this is far enough,’ and having people like that, that you trust as collaborators, is just priceless. Because you’re vulnerable to each other, you ask each other the things that you’re not necessarily comfortable asking an editor sometimes. With Mark on “Batman” I’m comfortable asking him, but I mean, you can share things in the creative process that you might not with someone you don’t know as well. And so there were many, many elements in a story like this that I approach Jock or Brian and just said, ‘is this too much, is it too little,’ and I am very very grateful for their input. Because it is truly collaborative. It can say that it was written by all of us and I would be fine with that.
Jock: Scott actually drew most of the pages.
(Laughter)
Snyder: I’m going to ask for a page rate
(Laughter)
A few familiar names were dropped in this issue, can we expect any other classic rogues to make their way into this arc?
Snyder: Yeah, you’e going to see a few that I haven’t used before, very briefly. But, you know, largely it’s a story, because we’re using Gordon as Batman, I felt like it was an arc that needed new villains and new threats. And since we did “Black Mirror” together, me and Jock and Francesco, I feel like my take on Gotham City is that it’s a place that adapts itself to be an antagonist to whoever stands up to it and tries to be a hero. Not because it’s an evil place, but because it’s pure burned down conflict. It’s a place that says, ‘I’m going to throw your worst nightmare at you so that if you over come it you can become the hero that you knew you could be when you came here.’ So that sort of demands new villains, new threats and new challenges. But yes, as a total negation of that, in issue 46 and 47 you’re going to see some villains, some gotham crime villains, that I’ve never had the chance to write before, too. so it’ll be fun.
