- Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Rick Bass, Joy Williams, Elizabeth Mc Kracken, Stephen King, Tobias Wolff, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Frank Miller, H. P. Lovecraft, Zack Snyder, Todd McFarlane, Mystery-detective films, Mystery-horror films, The Iron Age of Comic Books, The Dark Age of Comic Books, Death Metal
Scott Snyder (born 1976) is a comic book author, best known for his Vertigo Comics indie series American Vampire and his run on Batman. Snyder cut his teeth with his short story Voodoo Heart before doing his first comic work with Marvel in Iron Man: Noir. He eventually joined Vertigo and in collaboration with Stephen King wrote the Eisner Award-winning
American Vampire. He went on to write 11 issues of Detective Comics to critical acclaim.
He wrote the Batman main title for the duration of the New 52 relaunch, including the critically acclaimed arcs Night of the Owls, Death of the Family, Batman: Zero Year, and Batman: Endgame. He also wrote the first 18 issues of the New 52 Swamp Thing, which was similarly acclaimed, and Superman Unchained, one of the most positively received Superman stories of the New 52. In 2017, he returned alongside Greg Capullo to write the quite dark 2017 Crisis Crossover Dark Nights: Metal, and went on to write the Justice League main title that headlined the current DC Universe initiative, which deals with the fallout and consequences of Metal. He, alongside Greg Capullo once more, later wrote the DC Black Label three-issue miniseries Batman: Last Knight on Earth, which serves as an effective "finale" to his Batman run. In 2020, he and Greg Capullo teamed up once again to create Dark Nights: Death Metal, the culmination of his current saga.
He has no family ties to DC films director Zack Snyder, albeit Zack mentions Scott's work as some influence to his films in the DC Extended Universe. Scott mentions this works vice-versa with the scale and tone of his comics invoking Zack's style.
Selected bibliography:
- American Vampire
- Barnstormers
- Batman
- Book Of Evil
- Canary
- Clear
- Duck And Cover
- Dudley Datson And The Forever Machine
- Iron Man Noir
- Justice League of America
- Night Of The Ghoul
- Nocterra
- Severed
- Superman Unchained
- Swamp Thing
- The Wake
- Wytches
- Undiscovered Country (with Charles Soule)
- Voodoo Heart — prose; short short collection
- We Have Demons
Tropes associated with Scott Snyder's work:
- Darker and Edgier: While modern Joker was never a lighthearted character, Scott took the darkness and dialed it up a few notches. We get things like Joker running around his severed, rotting face crudely attached in Death of the Family and Joker being built up as a fake Humanoid Abomination in Endgame.
- Lighter and Softer: His take on Batman, in spite of his Batman run being noteworthy for its darkness. Batman is noticeably far more quippy and willing to have fun with his crimefighting compared to more traditional stoic portrayals that precede Snyder's writing.
- Production Posse: He has partnered with artist Greg Capullo on several Batman projects, including Batman (2011) and Batman: Last Knight on Earth, as well as the indie book We Have Demons.
- Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: From his Batman run to works like Dark Nights, Snyder's DC tenure has noticeably shifted from dark and psychological to epic, cosmic, quippy, and running purely on Rule of Cool.
- Signature Style: Bird and architecture motifs. Fangs as well.
- He also has a tendency for his characters to spout Little Known Facts. It reached a point where in Batman: Zero Year, the Riddler talks about so many of these that Batman tells him to shut up.
