TMS: I’ve really enjoyed how different Zero Year is from Frank Miller and David Mazuchelli‘s Batman: Year One, rather than retreading old ground. I try very hard to make each project something that challenges me, otherwise you’d see through it pretty fast. Things are exaggerated and almost cartoonishly fun. I’m intercutting, making it symbolic and cacophonous and odd, and I’m trying to make everything colorful and bright. I’m not using narration, I’m not using the same sort of cause-and-effect storytelling. Now with Zero Year and redefining Batman’s early days in Gotham, we’re going the other way. But then Death of the Family is very intimate.

Court of Owls though, I thought let’s create a threat that’s really shaking the city, that’s operatic and huge. Dick Grayson was Batman and the city was coming to get him in this punishingly dark way. Snyder: The Black Mirror was me trying very hard to do a straight detective noir. And right now, Zero Year is a new version of Batman’s origin that feels like a high action blockbuster. Your early Batman story The Black Mirror is a suspenseful thriller, while Court of Owls is all about conspiracies and doubting things you take for granted. TMS: Even when you’re working with the same characters, you go into very different atmospheres for your story arc.

The Wake by Scott Snyder