‘Absolute Batman’ Writer Says Comic Book Fans Are Tired Of Everything Being “Connected To Some Giant Ecosystem Of TV, Movies, A Million Different Things”
In giving a voice to the legions who are just done with the concept of ‘multimedia synergy’, Absolute Batman scribe Scott Snyder says that according to his observations over the past year, one of the most consistent sentiments he’s found among comic book readers was an absolute exhaustion with every issue, character, and even costume design being forcefully connected to whatever silver screen ambitions their respective publishers may have.
Putting a bat-shaped bow on 2025 with a “Year in Review” edition of his ongoing newsletter, Snyder followed a brief sharing of his optimism towards DC’s upcoming Next Level publishing initiative and a look back on his favorite comics of the past twelve months by taking a beat to share his overall thoughts on the current state of the Western comic book industry.
“I got asked a lot by creators this year about what I thought of the market,” he began. “The thing I’m excited about with this market is is that it feels like there are fans out there that are desperately hungry, whether they’re new, whether they’re returning, whether they’ve been there all along, for things that feel transgressive and dangerous and risky and their own. Above all, their own. They want to feel like they’re getting on the ground floor of something that is only happening here, doesn’t feel like it’s connected to some giant ecosystem of TV, movies, of a million different things.”
Moving to offer insight as to to the recent appetites of readers, the Dark Nights: Deathmetal scribe further explained, “It feels like the MCU and Star Wars and a lot of other franchises took what we normally do in comics with multiple stories, multiple series tying together and did that over the course of the last 15 years in all kinds of macro and micro ways. And it feels like there’s a cynicism right now about things that feel like they’re part of a larger ecosystem in that way that aren’t being built right off the ground now, starting in a way that’s organic and strange and new and dangerous and weird.
“And that’s why the Ultimate Universe and the Absolute Universe feel different. And that’s really exciting. There’s new fans that are hungry. There’s a whole discussion on social media, on TikTok and other platforms that don’t normally engage with comics quite as dramatically as they have this year. There’s a real energy and I see it in the stores. I see it at conventions all around the world.”
And it was as a result of this energy, Snyder then admitted, that he considered 2025 to be “one of the most shocking, invigorating, energizing, inspiring times for me in my whole career, if not the most, because it is the validation, honestly, of a thesis that I think a lot of us have had over the years: When you take a risk and you try something that makes comics feel special and exciting and not safe, not going back to the things that we’ve done before, not trying to sort of give everybody just comfort food, people show up.
“And you can give them big, safe comfort food also. In a lot of ways that’s fun to do both at the same time. We can give you something that speaks to stories that you’ve loved in the past and repackage those or do classic kinds of stuff while also giving you brand new stuff.
“For a long time in economic anxiety moments like it is now, the inclination of corporate bosses was to go backwards or to try and recapture what we did before and try and recapture fans that we had lost by trying to do the types of stories they had already read and liked. And I always had trouble with that. And my feeling is that to recapture those fans, you do something exciting and new. But I don’t think there’s a problem with doing something exciting and new in the format of classic, epic in-continuity storytelling.”
To this end, Snyder pointed Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez’s ongoing Batman Vol. 3 relaunch as an example of “what we’re trying to do with a lot of the continuing series at DC,” as the book “is new and fun but it isn’t trying to change the mold of what it’s doing.”
“It gets to a point with that story that you’re going to see things that you’ve never seen before. But it’s in the classic style, the same way Detective Comics is, right? And that’s awesome. So you can do both.”
Drawing his battlefield report to a close, Snyder ultimately asserted, “My point is, it’s a really fascinating and thrilling market. But it is a tough market also.”
