With the release of Dark Nights: Metal #1 Wednesday at midnight, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo will bring the hard-hitting style they gave Batman to the rest of the DCU.
Introducing a new realm of the DCU called the Dark Multiverse, Metal will center on Batman's pursuit of dark mysteries but will involve the Justice League and a wide variety of other existing and new concepts and characters. From the return of long-unseen heroes like Plastic Man, the Blackhawks, and the Shazam/Marvel family to the use of pre-historic DC concepts like the Bear Tribe and Wolf Clan, Metal promises to provide DC with an event-level story - evidenced by the many tie-ins and one-shots that DC is publishing in the coming months.
Newsarama talked to Snyder and Capullo about the one-shots and tie-ins, the involvement of the entire DCU, and whether Capullo thought "that's cool, right?" when Snyder brought him the ideas of Dark Nights: Metal.
Newsarama: Greg, I don't think we've spoken since Metal was announced. What did you think of this story idea when Scott first told you about it?
Greg Capullo: I was at Scott's house when he laid it out, and I believe we were drinking - that tends to happen when we get together.
He said, "I've got this great idea!" He said he had written something specifically for me, and he said he thought, "How do people identify with Greg? You know? He's like this heavy metal guy." And that was the genesis for it.
Then he started fleshing it out for me. And you know, Scott always goes, after he tells you something, "It's cool, right?" To which I typically respond, "Yeah!"
So the conversation sort of went that way. It was like, "And there are seven evil Batmen! That's cool, right?" "Yeah!"
Nrama: I've heard that before! "That's cool, right?" Good impression.
Capullo: Yeah, so it went like that. One after another, he just laid it out for me and asked, "It's cool, right?" And I said, "Yeah!"
Nrama: Scott, there are so many mysteries that you've presented in The Casting and The Forge, and people have come up with some theories for what was implied in the one-shots. Did you want people to figure many of these things out beforehand?
Snyder: It's really just the opening shot. The story gets more and more expansive, in terms of how far the mysteries reach into the past, into the cosmological map of the DCU, and all this other territory.
And then it all gets answered.
I'm writing a part right now in issues #4, #5, and #6 where all of the answers kind of come flooding in, and I think they're scarier than the questions in a lot of way for Batman.
Nrama: And that's the character who's chasing these mysteries for now, right? Batman?
Snyder: Yeah, at heart, it's a story about a mystery that Batman picks up from Hawkman that spans human history that he starts investigating. But then he realizes it's sort of the first mystery he doesn't want to get to the end of, because he's kind of afraid of what he'll find.
So it really - the story follows this trail that he follows, along with the Justice League, where it starts to give you clues and answers about the Dark Multiverse and what it is and what's coming from it.
And then when you see what's coming from it and what it means and what's there, and how it all started, it's worse for him and the Justice League - it's more dire than they expect.
Nrama: So the concepts to which we've been introduced in the one-shots are just the beginning?
Snyder: Yeah, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The cast gets bigger. You can start to see it, I think, in the solicits and the stuff for the tie-ins, which I'm really excited about. I mean, for me, what DC did, organizing them the way they did is so great, where essentially we have three sets of books that tie in.
Nrama: Can you define what each set is?
Snyder: We have these one-shots that are the origins and the present-day in the DCU plans for these Dark Knights, which are the seven nightmare Batmen that have been collected from the Dark Multiverse to be the first wave of invasion here in the DCU.
And then you have the "Gotham Resistance," which shows how Gotham falls and how the characters there fight to save it from all the powers of the Dark Multiverse, where it's been transformed into this kind of crazy Game of Thrones nightmare land, where every villain gets a territory. Like, Mr. Freeze takes over a section and it's all, like, Frost Giants and craziness.
Then there's the last set, the "Bats Out of Hell" one, which are the knock-down, drag-out fights in sort of evil Batcaves between the Dark Knights themselves - the nightmare Batmen - and the Justice League.
Snyder: It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Nrama: Scott, I know with All-Star Batman, we talk all the time about why you chose things to draw for certain artists. As you delved into this Dark Multiverse and all the possibilities, did Greg's abilities as an artist play into that?
Capullo: He knows I can draw anything. That's why he throws it all at me. [Laughs] He just throws everything at me. He still hasn't beaten me.
Snyder: He can! He's like the ambidextrous, all-talented artist.
The thing that I know is his, when I'm thinking of all the different things we can do in the story - we have a really similar sensibility, I think, to what we think is fun and cool. That was always the way it was on Batman. It began where we were starting on the ground with the "Court of Owls," then it got bigger and crazier as we went, and nuttier and nuttier. We got to explore the elasticity of it.
And I think here, with the DCU, when I think of things that I think are awesome, my first thought is usually, out of all the artists I work with, I know he's going to think they're awesome. So I'm always like, "Oh man! Seven evil Batcaves! And each one has its own dinosaur! Greg what do you think?" It's like that.
We're different people in a lot of ways. We're almost like brothers from another mother, where we have very different psychologies, but at the same time, he's like my twin in a lot of ways - especially when it comes to what we think is cool and what's going to make fans excited. With that, we land really close together.
If I think it's awesome, the first person I want to tell is Greg.
Check back with Newsarama after Dark Nights: Metal #1 is released for the spoiler-y part of our discussion with Snyder and Capullo about their much anticipated new mini-series.