At times, it can be a dance between the creative team and the publishing company when deciding what will work best for a story. While working on Batman, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo taught DC Comics to have a little faith in the two and the risks they were taking.
Towards the beginning of the duo's tenure on the title, Snyder and Capullo were learning how to best work together and tell the story of the caped crusader, the writer loosening his full-script reins on Capullo for the series' fifth issue, which featured the protagonist trapped in a labyrinth. "Greg, he was just killing it on the book," Snyder reminisced during a panel at 2021's New York Comic Con, saying that for the issue, he asked Capullo, "Can you come up with a way of making it feel really disorienting?" The artist ran with the opportunity, designing the book so that the reader would have to change its orientation while reading, which led to some initial pushback from the higher-ups at DC.
The fear of the company, according to Snyder, was that readers would "think it's a misprint," but Capullo believed that "smart kids" would "figure it out" if the book landed on the shelves. Fans not only read the issue, but loved it, Snyder noting that it is the one issue "that everyone talks about when they bring that arc ['The Court of Owls'] up, where it turned around." The story's pages would go through a full rotation by the end for that disorienting feeling (and if you really want an experience, try reading it digitally without rotation lock on your device). For Capullo, it became the trump card that could be used any time a creative decision was questioned by DC.
"So then, when DC would give me trouble, you know, or us [him and Snyder] trouble?" Capullo jokingly asked of the panel audience. "I just go [coughs] 'Issue Five.'"
Snyder attributes that issue as a point where the two really began to be in tune with one another. "Yeah, it's funny because that was also, I feel like, a moment when we had to really stick up for it together at DC, and it was like where we became really arm locked about, like, if we both believe in something, we'll stick together on it. So, that was really formative."
"Formative" being the key word, the Batman arc in question was only the beginning of the creators' ongoing partnership, as well as their monumental contributions to the world of DC Comics. After crafting other hit stories for Bruce Wayne, such as "Death of the Family," "Zero Year" and "Endgame," the two would add on to the canon of the Multiverse by forging the Dark Multiverse in the event Dark Nights: Metal, later laying the groundwork for the new Omniverse following the encore event Dark Nights: Death Metal.
Snyder has since launched a creator-owned publishing imprint, Best Jackett Press, which will pump out plenty of new titles for readers to dive into on comiXology, later to be published in print by Dark Horse Comics. The duo's partnership continues with the series We Have Demons, the first issue now available. Written by Snyder, We Have Demons #1 features pencils by Capullo, inks by Jonathan Glapion, colors by Dave McCaig and letters by Tom Napolitano.
Source: New York Comic Con 2021