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You’re listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about science fiction and other fantasy genres. I’m Eric Molinsky.

They say you should never meet your heroes because you might be disappointed.

But what happens when you’re that told from now on, you need to become your childhood hero -- just don’t disappoint everyone else?

I know for a lot of people, that sounds like a metaphor. But that really happened to Scott Snyder.

SCOTT: Right now this city, ruined and beautiful it’s ours and ours alone, its fears, super storms, madmen with private ideology come at us with weapons of every magnetite out of nowhere, these are fears haunt our city but we will face them together. Because right now, this is our Gotham, not our fathers or sons, ours, our fears are great but so are our hopes, our ambitions, our resilience, because we’re fighters.

Scott Snyder writes Batman. There are lots of DC Comics that feature Batman, but he writes the one with Batman in the title. It’s consistently the best selling title for DC -- and all of comics.

To say I’m a Batman fan is an understatement. But I could really never explain why I feel such a connection with Bruce Wayne, or why my obsession started at the end of high school, not when I was a kid.

I’ve devoured every version of this character from Frank Miller to Tim Burton to the animated series to Christopher Nolan to the Arkham video games. What’s different about Scott Snyder’s Batman is that he isn’t dark, edgy and tormented. He’s raw and vulnerable, but sometimes kind of charming -- without loosing the darkness.

Scott Snyder is a busy man. We had trouble finding a time to meet in Manhattan. So he very generously let me come to his house in the suburbs. In many ways, he’s not your typical comic book geek. Most of the toys in the house are for his kids, not him. His wife is a doctor.

SCOTT: She’s great and I call her with all my science questions, which makes her mad. She’ll be in the ER and I’ll be like, this is very important, if Bruce 2

Wayne’s wrist was hit by a mutagen, she’s like click, that’s not my branch of medicine.

Scott’s expertise is literature. He has an MFA in fiction from Columbia. He loves to write dense monologues full of existential ideas and arcane trivia, which you can’t cram into a speech bubble.

SCOTT: Like I wrote Swamp Thing problem when he talks it’s orange caption much more obvious when you’re talking a blaze orange caption and when you look at page that’s beautiful and green, and there’s orange, orange, organ over, it’s like God this guy does not shut up!

The artist he works with now -- Greg Capullo – still gets annoyed at him.

SCOTT: He just emailed me this morning, are you serious? I’m like I’ll cut it. You know you’re going to cut it.

But I love the ambition of his writing. I recently read an independent comic he wrote called The Wake, which is about a watery apocalypse brought on by giant sea monsters. Afterward, I had this overwhelming feeling that life is so precious and fleeting. I had to go tell my wife that I love her – which is not a feeling I get from reading comic books.

SCOTT: I’m constantly obsessed with idea time of how quickly passes. Ever since I was a little kid, my parents tease me because we’d have family get together and tape-record them. I still have these tapes. I don’t know anxiety how quickly pass or something that was less negative and more loving, it’s always been there.

ME: I want to ask you, grew up in NY. I grew up suburbs kids in the movies dreamed of big bad exciting city, there’s this anxiety, ‘80s and ‘90s in THAT much more scary dangerous NY influences you?

SCOTT: Completely I think my Gotham is the antagonist for me in every arc in Batman. The thing for me growing up in NY in the ‘80s Batman important to me, Dark Knight Returns and Year One when I was 10 and 11.

In case you don’t know, Year One was a Batman origin story written by Frank Miller in 1986. He also wrote The Dark Knight Returns, which was 3 about an old Batman who comes way out of retirement. They were both really gritty and really badass.

SCOTT: Suddenly Batman was walking a city I recognized. I was not allowed to go to Central Park, not allowed to ride subway, went to Times Square fake ID, so it was a different city and it was dangerous for a kid it was scary weren’t allowed to do things. Suddenly Batman walking city you knew, gangs, prostitutions, graffiti, and it made it viscerally real and relevant.

But moving to the suburbs didn’t stop his anxieties.

SCOTT: And I went through a period when I got very depressed when moved out here to Long Island, I was used to living in the city, public space and I didn’t anticipate how depressing it would be to be isolated, vision have one car, walk to supermarket along highway half a mile. Walk along highway in winter when no one walks is really depressing, it got worse and worse I got very bad where I was not functioning well. Eventually I started seeing something and got help had periods like this recognized and I began to see in some way that there were parts, things that I was deeply afraid of or react to being alone suddenly understanding in new stage of life when things were past, things were over.

He put all those feelings into a book of short stories, but he eventually went back to his first love – comics. His big break at DC was on a storyline for Detective Comics where Dick Grayson – who used to be Robin then went out on his own to become Nightwing – has to be Batman because Bruce Wayne has gone missing.

SCOTT: He’s a character who wears his heart on his sleeve feels the way you do writing Batman as Batman, he’s bewildered by it, he’s completely intimidated, giddy, so it was the easiest Batman to write, I can’t believe I’m Batman. Dick, I can’t believe I’m writing Batman. We’re going to get along great!

DC approached Scott to write the main Batman title, and they were going to reboot the entire DC universe from scratch – because after 70 years, you needed Wikipedia to follow the plots. So Scott’s first issue of Batman would be Batman #1.

SCOTT: I really remember being up in his house late and night I’m going to call in sick, and she was like all year? What are you going to do? You can’t hide, it’s 4 so paralyzing so many stories that matter to me, not just write comics, are Batman stories.

EM: I’m realizing what a great match for Bruce Wayne, fear, vulnerability, loosing the family, he’s a father figure to other characters, you’re describing Bruce to some extent and that’s probably why it’s such a good match for you.

SCOTT: Thanks, honestly, I cannot think of another character I’m as connected to, feel badly got dream job first where is there to go but down? Other characters I feel affinity but Bruce is the one close to my heart for those reasons, growing up the thing that was so fascinating about him in comics was that he was vulnerable and human, most heroic superhero put his own body on the line all the time for his city and he has no powers. So he’s constantly scarifying himself seen as admirable most heroic and most altruistic thing but does it at expense of thing you would need to be happy, self destructive and pathological so interesting deeply flawed in conception from go, he’s human, he’s just totally vulnerable.

Scott decided to make this work, his anxieties had to becomes Bruce Wayne’s.

SCOTT: I had to decide – decide, decide – I’m going to write this character like I made him up because if you try to write Frank Miller’s Batman or Grant Morrison’s Batman, you’re going to fair.

But if you’re trying to pretend that you invented Batman or The Joker – and you’re a fan -- how do you block these voices out of your head?

MONTAGE

SCOTT: It’s very hard! I mean the Joker, I was only ready to write him when I knew I had a different take and I had to really think about it for a while and come up with something that was my own and spoke to my own fears and my Joker story came about when we were pregnant with our second kid and I was terrified that I didn’t have – I just wasn’t going to be a good Dad and I remember thinking well Batman has this family like you said, this extended family and I wonder if he feels this way I wish I didn’t worry about these characters, and then I thought, oh, what if a villain came along said I just heard you wish your family was dead well let me do that for you so you can go back to the way things were. Then looking into this notion, why a clown? The natural enemy of a bat isn’t a clown, what’s so 5 scary? Looking at history of court jesters they were trusted confidant of king bring bad news to ruler and make him laugh even when horrible, do the Joker as the jester he served the Bat king and was his role, make him stronger by challenge with terrible scenarios and he was making him stronger by attempting to murder him over and over.

ME: I thought you were going to kill them off. When you opened the box and we saw all their faces!

SCOTT: Well thanks, it’s hard some days I think if wrote out of out continuity you would do things, it’s almost the laziest way out to do those things, because the thing is DC has given me latitude if I wanted to kill Alfred or a character in the Bat family I could get away with it at this point.

That’s a lot of power for a guy who was afraid of taking on a corporate cash cow. But after all the acclaim he’s gotten from fans – who are very picky fans -- he still feels so much anxiety about the job.

Like remember when he was growing up, the big touchstone for him was an origin story called Year One. Well, DC asked Scott and his collaborator - - the incredible artist Greg Capullo -- to recreate Batman’s origins for the 21st century. It was called Year Zero.

SCOTT: It really hit me the weight of what I was doing because it just hit me I’m touching sacred material, doing scene bat through window, redoing murder in alley what am I thinking? I knew my heart was in the right place and Greg’s was and we had a great chemistry and we had a take that was important to me, that it was going to look punk rock, with pinks and greens, where Year One was gritty, this was going to be bombastic and silly. I got panic attacks, waking up in the middle of the night, I could not do it, I was sweating. Greg was the guy -- he was so great. He had always been my partner on the book. What’s the matter I don’t know anything. I don’t care if they like it! Big muscular wrester guy handle bar guy, you’re going to write that story it’s going to be awesome and you’re going to kick some ass!

They did. The Riddler is a cyber terrorist who hacks all of Gotham and turns it into a pre-industrial jungle. It’s really fun and even silly sometimes - - but there’s a scene at the end that just made my jaw drop.

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Bruce and Alfred are at Wayne Enterprise. We see a pretty young woman, waiting in the lobby.

There’s someone I’d like you to meet sir A girl, Alfred? You knew her as a boy, dated. Julie, says Bruce. No harm in reconnecting. Sure bring her over but Alfred I’ll let you know never quit. You say that now sir, you’re 25, you should have hear me talk about acting. Alfred something you don’t know. Sir? After they died, hard time, everywhere I saw them, my parents in every face, the world was nightmare hall of mirrors, paid someone to be you, paid doctors in Arkham Sir, I you needed treatment. I wanted to sot being me, rebooted, shock me until I was someone else Sir, I? I came close, I…came so close, seconds away and in the flashback he yells, wait, stop And could you describe also what we’re seeing? Yeah, you see Bruce has checked himself into Arkham he’s 14, 15 years old on the table get electroshock therapy he has rubber stopper in his mouth and electrodes on head and said stop, we’re in present, I knew I had to find some way to fight through it, crazy thing to keep me going crazy, Bruce.. No in the city today evil men, stick men step from shadows and Batman will draw their fire, show people in Gotham not to be afraid it’s the thing that makes me happy. You say that because you don’t know, joys you haven’t experienced, deeper types of happiness. And Bruce looks at him and says not for me.

Yeah, where did that come from the imagery, the idea, everything?

SCOTT: Well. It came a pretty personal place those words, that’s how I felt, I’ve felt at times when I’m depressed you don’t have any energy you want someone to fix you, close to suicidal someone turn me off and fix me and I can’t be this way, it’s driving me crazy and exhausting me. For me Zero Year retelling Batman in modern age, make modern and face threats that I felt were relevant to now so 7 he faces gang random violence a cypher for random gunmen, super storms, break down of resources, black out, what I’d be afraid of growing up in city now, Cold War, gangs, nuclear annihilation, the same fears that don’t haunt us today. But the second goal was to follow in spirit of those books, best origins like Year One deeply personal for me I wanted to show why Batman mattered to me and my children, he’s not force of intimidation, he’s a force of inspiration and to be able to say I overcame this terribly dark moment in my life where I wanted to die and I used it as fuel to be pinnacle of human achievement. I am the most badass, kung fu fighting, detective, Sherlock Holmes, engineer everything you could imagine I also dress like a Bat in the nuttiest way and I also swing around the city with these incredible gadgets. If I can do this you can do whatever you’re afraid to do, that’s where the story is leading it was very gratifying that DC let me do that, a big change to show he was that vulnerable as a teenager.

Afterward, when I was driving home, I realized why I became so fixated on to Batman in high school and college. At the time, I was a moody, self- absorbed teenage boy. I really wanted to turn myself into a responsible, self-sufficient man. I just didn’t know how. I think Bruce Wayne was an inspiration to me. He still is.

After all of Scott’s success, he fell into another funk because he felt like he had strayed too far from his roots with indie comics. And from now on, he will always write original material alongside the big titles.

He recently launched an original series called Wythces for Image Comics. It reimagines witches as these monstrous tree-creatures that only devour people who have been sacrificed, or “pledged,” by their fellow humans in sort of a Faustian bargain.

SCOTT: They’re a twisted reflection of the human capacity for evil, for selfishness. They’re emblematic of the kinds of things we don’t want to admit that we feel or think a lot of the time.

His whole journey started when he was a kid, scared by the big bad city, looking to Batman as a hero. Now he’s a parent, writing Batman, and he says, it’s no coincidence that Wytches is about a father trying to protect his kids from scary monsters.

SCOTT: All the things you’re afraid for other people. Now you feel nothing but vulnerable because this thing is out in the world that feels like part of you, 8 something happens to it never recover, it’s almost infuriating love sometimes where you, it brings such joy but so angering I wish I could stop worrying about these kids.

Even if those dark feelings are fueling his creative energy.

Well, that’s it for this week’s show, thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Darby Maloney, David Hyde, Pamela Hovarth and Scott Snyder.

If you like the show, please leave a comment in iTunes, that would be great. You can also like the show on Facebook, I tweet at emolinsky.

Scott had a lot more to say about the comic book industry, which is booming thanks to digital downloads.

SCOTT: I have friends in literary world, I keep telling them the water is so great over here, just come over if you’re having any trouble because it’s a great time in comics.

I put a link to that conversation – and another version of this story which appeared on a show called The Frame from KPCC – at my website, imaginary worlds podcast dot org.