Scott Snyder Sheds Light on Batman's Night of the Owls

IGN: Going back to what you said about "The Fall of the House of Wayne" and the story that's seeped into the history of the Wayne family, it reminds me of what you did in Batman #4 with the story about Bruce as a kid trying to hunt down the Court. Is that the kind of thing we should be expecting from that story?

Snyder: Yeah, but it's even deeper in history, it's like 30 years ago. It is that kind of thing where in some ways it really does inform the Wayne history with the Court. It reveals why they matter to the Wayne family and to Gotham at that particular moment, but there'll also be a straight-up action and mystery story happening in and of itself where that piece in #4 was really the heart of the issue where he's trying to explain to Dick why he's so resistant to believing in the Court. Here, there's a framework where Jarvis is scared for his life and for the life of the Wayne family and his son. There will be a lot of suspense and action to it as well.

IGN: Sounds great. I don't know how much you can say, but the announcement-within-the-announcement of the Batman backup was Night of the Owls, a Batman crossover that's coming. Can you say what the scope of that story is and what books it'll be hitting?

Snyder: It's going to crossover into Batman and Robin, Batman: The Dark Knight, Catwoman, Batwing, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Nightwing, All-Star Western, Batgirl and Birds of Prey.

IGN: Oh, wow. The All-Star Western aspect is really interesting. Even in the comments for the article we put up talking about the crossover, people were hoping for an ASW tie-in.

Snyder: Yeah, I'm super excited about that one. That's been one of my favorite series since the New 52 launched. I really think what Jimmy [Palmiotti] and Justin [Gray] are doing there in terms of creating a deep history in Gotham and interweaving it with the history of Jonah Hex and the west has been terrific. So I've seen that story and I'm really excited. I've seen the stories already for Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman, Batwing, and I just think they're great; I'm really excited.

I'll say also that the nature of the crossover – just so people understand, because I think this is always the first thing on their mind – you do not have to buy all of them. You don't have to buy any one to understand another. They're designed to be as self-contained as possible. Without giving too much of the story away, the way that the whole thing was designed was I started writing this Court of Owls story, and I realized there was a point around issue #9 where because of the scope of the attack that the Owls are going to make on Gotham, the whereabouts and the status of the other Bat-family members was going to need to be addressed.

I realized there would be an opportunity, if other writers wanted to, to tie into some of the things happening across the city that way. What I tried to do is say to everybody, as a writer, "Here's the story that's coming, are you interested or do you have something going on in your own book that you don't want to interrupt?"

We tried to make it really organic that way, so there was a lot of lead time. At the same time, people that had stories going on that they felt were going to be ramping up at that time and didn't necessarily want to crossover right then – like Tony Daniel on Detective and J.H. Williams on Batwoman – those books we were totally fine to do their own thing. So if it felt like the crossover element was going to interrupt the story, everyone tried to be really respectful at DC about letting those writers do their own thing and not crossover if they didn't want. I love what's happening in those books too and wouldn't want to interrupt it.

For me, the exciting thing was to get to see a lot of Bat-writers that I'm friends with like Pete Tomasi and Gail Simone and Kyle Higgins like the story and get involved. It's supposed to be a story that allows them to tell the story they were telling or to give them room in a way that makes it feel organic to the series and doesn't feel imposed. It gives them a chance to explore Gotham's history in those series as well.

That's one of the things we haven't talked about much yet either, is that the Court of Owls are so deeply embedded in Gotham historically, that each book has a chance, if they want, to explore different aspects or moments in Gotham's history. It's a lot of fun and I'm very excited about it. Everyone's had a lot of creative latitude, also.

The last thing I want is to be designing an event for people at all. I'm just writing a Batman story, from start to finish, and my point was there's a moment that if you want to tie in, you can, and you can do it however you want. I tried to be extremely clear that everybody would have plenty of room and that it wasn't about forcing anyone to buy issues where the story was dependent on another series, or forcing the writer to tie in to such a way that it changed the story they were telling, or forcing to the writer to adhere to really strict guidelines.

Hopefully it's a different kind of event that's big and colorful and fun and delves into history but at the same time is contained and isn't something incredibly sprawling and isn't something monstrous.


IGN: Sounds great, Scott, I can't wait. That really covers all I've got for you, is there anything you wanted to add about Night of the Owls or the back-up?

Snyder: I guess just that I can't wait for people to see it, you know? It's a story that I want to say thanks to everybody reading us because the response so far to what we've been doing in Batman and the Batman Universe in general has been really inspiring. I just want to say thanks, as always, for picking us up and we promise to do everything we can to deliver the best story we can in the Bat-world. So stay tuned.

Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator himself. Follow Joey on Twitter, or find him on MyIGN. You may or may not discover a profound number of cat pictures.

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