The crossover event Dark Nights: Death Metal has come to a triumphant close, setting the stage for the next era of the DC Universe in Future State and Infinite Frontier -- but without writer Scott Snyder... for now.
While continuing to write American Vampire 1976 as part of DC Black Label, Death Metal marks the end of Snyder's run on the main DC line, starting with a Detective Comics run in 2010. While Snyder has plans to return to the main line later, he plans to focus on his creator-owned titles through his new publishing label Best Jackett Press, with a first wave of titles to be unveiled this spring.
"I just always promised myself I'd take some time when I was done with this and be able to devote more energy to my own stuff. I have Best Jackett Press, which is the publishing label that I started myself, and I have almost nine creator-owned books going over there," Snyder told CBR. "The only reason I haven't talked about them yet -- and they're going full steam right now, the ones I have talked about, Nocterra and Chain from Image Comics -- is because we have a plan to announce all of them at once in waves in the spring. In March, April, May, you'll see a whole deck where I'll be like 'These are the books coming out in summer, these are the books coming out in fall...'"
The Best Jackett titles come in addition to Snyder's other creator-owned titles Wytches and Undiscovered Country, both of which are separate from the Best Jackett label. The upcoming wave of books will see Snyder team with some major creative collaborators, including a reunion with Francesco Francavilla following their time together on Detective Comics.
"You'll see a whole thing and you'll see actual material from all of them but I've teased for a long time a book with Francesco Francavilla; that's like 35-40 pages in," Snyder continued. "There are other ones, like with Tula Lotay, and there's some people who I'm going to surprise you with and people who are longtime, huge collaborators. But I want it to be something where I'm not announcing it in drips and instead am like 'Look, this is what we made, this is what Best Jackett is about.'"
Written by Scott Snyder, pencilled by Greg Capullo, Yanick Paquette and Bryan Hitch, inked by Jonathan Glapion, colored by FCO Plascencia, Nathan Fairbairn and Alex Sinclair and lettered by Tom Napolitano, Dark Nights: Death Metal #7 is on sale now from DC.