Scott Snyder Explains Justice League #17's Big Revelations

WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Justice League #17 by Scott Snyder, Jim Cheung, Mark Morales, Walden Wong, Tomeu Morey and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.

Things aren't looking too good for DC's Justice League right now. First, they are somewhat responsible for the cracking of the Source Wall in Dark Nights: Metal. Next, the Legion of Doom was successful in stealing the Totality from the Hall of Justice during the "Drowned Earth" story arc. Finally, when the Justice League tried to repair the Source Wall in Justice League Annual #1, it resulted in the Source Wall completely exploding, with the fate of the Multiverse unknown.

However, a plot point simmering in the background is the budding rivalry between Martian Manhunter and Lex Luthor. Both are the figureheads for the Justice League and Legion of Doom, respectively, and writer Scott Snyder finally addressed what links the two together in this week's Justice League #17.

Snyder spoke to CBR to discuss the major changes made to Lex Luthor and Martian Manhunter's backstories, what it means for them going forward and what fans can expect from Justice League for the remainder of the year.

CBR: Justice League #17 looks to be a pivotal issue for your Justice League run, and is huge for Martian Manhunter and Lex Luthor, with the revelation of their shared history. What made you want to make them opposing forces on the Justice League and Legion of Doom, because I find it fascinating.

Scott Snyder: Well for me, it really came down to the characters. I’ve always loved Lex as a villain and I’ve gotten to write him a few times but what I wanted to do with Justice League is broaden his ambitions and give him this new pathos that tied into his core arrogance that makes him who he is.

What we learn through the course of Justice League is that man had an original role that was different from what it is now. It speaks to this feeling that a lot of us have that we’re never going to understand as much as we want to. We don’t live as long; we’re not as powerful as we want to be. All of those longings are part of the human condition, and what Lex has fought against his whole life is that smallness. He refuses to be humble. And what he learns in the secrets of the Totality is that man had a different role in the original universe that was created by Perpetua in this Multiverse’s first form.

So Lex becomes obsessed with this; that man was meant to be much more powerful than he is right now. And the idea that he is capable in this form of being a great destroyer, being a conqueror, all of this is hugely important to Lex and speaks to this idea of selfishness and singularity. He really believes that humanity should embrace its nature, and its nature is predatory. And we’ve been defanged and declawed by the Celestials, and instead, we should go back to what we’re supposed to be -- these great, conquering lords of the universe.

Martian Manhunter, on the other hand, represents the exact opposite impulse. Even his powers speak to this. He’s connective, telepathic, communal. He’s always longing for community and home and family. The reason we made him the chairman of the Justice League was to have the League really represent those values. I wanted the League on Earth with the Hall of Justice because the series is very much about facing these problems that are seemingly insurmountable and the only way we get through them is by being humble, and communal and collective. To understand we’re all in this together and we have to put aside our differences and work together.

And Lex is like, “No no no, that’s how we got into this problem in the first place, thinking we’re these small, insignificant beings.” We need to embrace our evil, villainous nature.

NEXT PAGE: Lex Luthor and Martian Manhunter's Shared History, Revealed

During one of the flashback scenes we got to see J'onn and Lex playing together as kids. The visual of a young Lex flying through the sky like Superman really stood out to me. Even though these memories were wiped from his mind, do you think they subconsciously played a role in his hatred for Superman and superheroes in the present-day?

All of it matters. To me, Lex feels a need to avoid smallness all the time. He has to be the greatest and have everyone know he’s the greatest. His ego is unstoppable in that way. What happened to him as a child, both with Martian Manhunter and more importantly with his father, the way his father treated him and was broken after this with how he took it out on his family, created in Lex this hatred of humility and of an ordinary life, a lack of importance. He feels this strange desire to be bigger than anything else. That influences how he ends up seeing Superman.

What Martian Manhunter is so desperately trying to reach in this issue is this boy who is flying bigger, and sees heroism in those games they play as believing in something bigger than yourself and being small in the face of the good you're trying to do, which is the opposite of Lex on the Legion of Doom.

I want to jump back to another flashback scene. J'onn asked Lex what the scientists wanted from him. Lex said they're either making something or trying to bring something back that's made from martian and human DNA. Can you talk a little about what Lex's father had stumbled upon?

The thing we’re trying to suggest is this Legionnaire’s Club led by Lex’s father, Lionel, was following the path of the Totality as it crashed in different pieces throughout time. When it came here in the now, it was moving so fast and so powerful, it phased through time as it was getting closer to Earth.

So it landed in different fragments in the history of the DC Universe. Lex’s father and his group traced it and tried to unlock its secrets and one of the things they were able to learn was that human nature isn’t what it once was. It was something bigger in its original form than it is now. It was more of a combination of different genetic material and DNA. Humans were something other than what they are now, so he’s trying desperately to find out what it was and recreate it here to see, for scientific purposes, to find that out. In the process, they make something that’s very similar to white Martians.

The moment Lionel and Lex's memories were erased changed both of their lives; Lionel’s career was ruined, which in turn impacted how Lex grew up to be the man we know today. He'll obviously look to confirm if what J'onn told him is true. Will readers have to wait long to see that search begin?

Oh yeah! The next issue is a special Legion of Doom issue that traces Lionel’s history and the doorknob that Lex uses, which is a piece of the Totality. Lex’s journey and everything he learns is in Issue 18.

Great! So fans won’t have to wait long.

We want to give you all the answers now because this begins the next big act of the series as we keep building and building to the Sixth Dimension with Jorge Jimenez. We’re doing a big six-issue arc that takes us to the Sixth Dimension, which is this secret control room of the Multiverse where the heroes go to try and save everything as Lex is waking Perpetua.

And then we build even bigger to some of the stuff we’ll be announcing for the May 25 cent issue, and it all culminates in the fall with something huge. This is the point where I want you to see we’re revealing answers to the mysteries we’ve been laying over the last six months so the reader, along with the heroes, suddenly know how dire the stakes are and what they’re up against, and where we’re actually going with this thing.

NEXT PAGE: The Rise of Perpetua, and the Justice vs. Doom War

You brought up Perpetua, and fans got a chance to see her in the Justice League Annual #1. Who came up with her design?

It was Jim Cheung and Jorge Jimenez. Jim Cheung did the original sketches and Jorge Jimenez took it to a whole new level when he came in and designed her based on some of the original descriptions. It’s really a team effort. When you see her, her braids and head almost looks like DNA with the double helix structure around her ears, neck and eyes, and around her fingers; universes are formed and destroyed if you look closely.

To me, she screams “powerful, Celestial goddess.” One of the things I’ve said is we don’t want Perpetua to feel like just a regular evil character. She’s got a really interesting, deep point of view from my standpoint, and that always makes the best villains. She really believes the universe should have been built a different way, and for reasons I think will appeal to people as well.

Jumping back to Issue 17, some fans will look at this issue and hope that it leads to a redemptive arc for Lex Luthor. How do you see his character? Does he work best as an anti-hero, or is he better served as a supervillain?

I really feel the power of Lex Luthor as a supervillain is that he has a really sympathetic streak. So I like him as a supervillain, personally, rather than a hero, because I think the core element of Lex is his ego [Laughs]. I think having an ego goes against being a superhero.

I love when he tries to be a hero, cause it makes him a much richer character. But I think at the end of the day, what makes him such a great villain and one of the best in all literature, is that desire to help the human race, which I think he’s all about. He wants to get us up and out of this quagmire of our own existence, but his intense need to be the one that gets all the credit and to be recognized is what makes him villainous.

And to wrap up, you’ve laid out Justice League into the fall, but are there any specific issues or story arcs that fans should look out for?

Absolutely. First I’d like to say thank you to the fans for being so supportive of this series. We see it all day and it means the world to us, so don’t think we don’t notice. The big keystone moments coming are Issue 19, where we start a big six-seven issue arc called “Journey into the Sixth Dimension,” which puts the entire team back together for the first time since “Drowned Earth.” It’s all drawn by Jorge Jimenez. It’s his big arc and it takes the team to the secret control room of the Multiverse, where Crises are made and the Multiverse was formed, and only super-Celestial beings are supposed to be able to go there, like the Monitor, Anti-Monitor and the World Forger.

So it’s somewhere they’ve never been and it’ll unlock a lot of secrets, not only about the Totality, but the Multiverse itself. Then the biggest thing we’re building towards in the summer and fall is the Justice vs Doom War that will encompass a lot of things.