Scott Snyder Says ‘DC K.O.’ Warner Bros. Crossovers Meant To Show Comic Books Have “Something For Everybody”
According to DC K.O. scribe Scott Snyder, while the addition of various Warner Bros. characters like Homelander or Annabelle to the event’s roster of fighters certainly came out of left field, their appearance is meant to showcase the off-the-wall adventures and overall fun the comic book medium can offer any and all audiences.
As revealed during this year’s New York Comic Con, while the tournament to harness the universe’s Omega Energy in defense against Darkseid is only properly open to a Who’s Who of DC heroes and villains, a special “bonus issue” will see a number of ‘exhibition matches’ between said combatants and a number of third-party, WB-owned characters, including Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat, Annabelle from The Conjuring, Homelander from The Boys, Vampirella, Red Sonja, and the unbearably sinister Samantha from Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees.
A curious choice to be sure – and one that feels more than a bit cynical given that Warner Bros. is, in fact, DC’s parent company – Snyder offered his insights into these crossovers (or at least, his execution of them), during a recent iappearance on CBR’s Heroes Journey interview podcast.
Pressed by host and CBR deputy editor Sean O’Connell as to his creative process in determining the tournament’s match-ups, Snyder detailed, “I mean, then a lot of them are still secret because even though you’ve seen you, see the main pairings in the the fight month, things happen within those issues and things happen, like even within issue three that I’m writing now, where – I think it’s okay to say – that are like tag teams.”
RELATED: Sony CEO Says ‘No’ To Buying Warner Bros. Discovery, Would Rather Focus On “Global Market For Anime”
“So they can bring back characters that have fallen, to be part of the their team, so I mean there’s all kinds of crazy stuff coming that you don’t expect, where it gives us second opportunities to have characters have big moments and
characters you don’t expect coming into the series that make you go ‘Wait, what the what?!’ We really wanted it to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon on steroids.”
“Because ultimately, two things: One, with events like this, like I learned with Dark Knights Metal, you kind of have to have, three things. [The first is] A story that we feel strongly about on a very personal level, that feels resonant, and feels like it makes a good statement about [the lead character].
“Secondly, [I have to ask myself] does the event kind of stand for who we are at this moment at DC Comics and have our priorities? Like with Metal, we wanted to show like Kirby-esque fun at a moment when it felt like things were going grim. With this one, we want to show that we’re a company where, you know, we’re inviting everybody in to the store to have fun, trade guesses on who’s going to win.
“Here’s some free brackets! Here’s, you know, if you want a giant issue where Joker fights Annabelle, and Vampirella is fighting this, and Homelander is fighting Superman, you have that. If you just want the main story, you have that. If you want to see Red Hood get his revenge on Joker for death in the family, you have that. There’s all this fun stuff and what it’s about ultimately is it’s a celebration of how fun and inspiring and how crazy comics is, but also how unifying and inclusive and how there’s something for everybody. That’s what we want this event to feel like, and we want retailers in particular to feel like we’re inviting people into their stores to enjoy.”
“The third thing is utility. That we want to do an event like this if it has something on the other side that makes the line better. that has functionality beyond just being like making money for us in one quarter. And so with this, it definitely does.”
At present, the specific WB crossover ‘bonus issue’ has yet to receive an official title or release date.
Meanwhile, the second issue of the overall DC K.O. event is due out on November 26th.
