WARNING: The following interview contains major spoilers for DC Comics' Dark Nights: Metal event.


The second issue of Dark Nights: Metal, Rebirth's first major event, has hit shelves, and from extra-dimensional demons to baby New Gods, there doesn't seem to be much that's off the table in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's superheroic rock opera.

RELATED: Dark Nights: Metal #2: The Secret Weapon Justice League Doesn’t Want Batman To Use

We sat down with Snyder to get the inside scoop at just what the future of Metal has in store for us, as well as take a closer look at the pantheon of evil Batmen that have finally burst onto the scene in spectacularly violent style.

CBR: I hope you don’t mind that I jump right into the nitty-gritty right off the bat, but this issue gave us a pretty clear look at how the story of Metal ties into your work on Batman with the Court of Owls and Barbatos. But as I was reading, I couldn’t help but remember that Bruce isn’t the only one with really strong ties to both of those entities. Even now in Rebirth, Nightwing’s been given a lot of movement in that direction. Is that a coincidence or foreshadowing?

Scott Snyder: I don’t want to put any words in Tim [Seeley’s] mouth, but ultimately, Deathwing and all the kind of stuff that he’s been doing in Nightwing was done in conversation with Metal from the start. We had a long talk, all the way back last year, during a summit and Tim came up with so many good ideas with the whole Dr. Hurt story and about evil Nightwing -- all of this stuff.

Deathwing

Nightwing’s ties to Metal run really deep. He’s going to be one of the big stars in the “Gotham Resistance” crossover that’s happening, so he’ll be battling his way through the city as it’s been taken over by The Batman Who Laughs, trying to get to the Court of Owls, to see if there’s anything that they might have left behind -- maybe some kind of weapons store or something that would work to fight the evil Dark Knights.

We can’t not talk about Baby Darkseid --

Baby Darkseid is my favorite thing, by the way. “Baby Darkseid” is the name I would take for my band, if I ever have one. It’s my favorite.

Well, that almost answers my question! I was going to ask what influenced the choice to bring that particular plot point back into the spotlight -- I mean, clearly it would have been a shame to lose something so fun, but I don’t think anyone would have blamed you if you chose to politely ignore it.

[Laughs] Nobody puts Baby Darkseid in a corner!

Kids today
Superwoman and Baby Darkseid, from "Darkseid War"

Really, what happened was, I was planning Metal when Geoff [Johns] was working on Darkseid War. We were in confluence back then, because Metal needed to be planned quite a ways in advance. I knew I needed Darkseid, and that Batman was going to basically kidnap him because he would want to go back to the moment everything began with Barbatos. So then Geoff told me how Darkseid War ends, [Laughs] and I was like, “God, how am I gonna do this?”

Then it hit me that -- you know what? That’s actually perfect. Because, for me, Batman with Baby Darkseid in a bjorn, holding Hawkman’s mace, in the Tomb of Hath Set -- this is exactly the spirit of what I want in Metal. The line where he’s like, “Stand back, or I’m taking off these God Wave goggles!” -- these are my absolute favorite moments. Those lines, and where Morgan le Fay is like, “you will take the astral brain of Anti-Monitor and fire it through the core of the multiverse at the Rock of Eternity, it has been decided.” And Shazam responds, like, “It shall be done.”

This is what I got into the business to be able to do. From the moment Darkseid became a baby, I’ve been wanting to write these scenes. I couldn’t wait.

If you look closely -- you can always tell when Greg [Capullo] loves a scene, because he’ll hide characters throwing up the rock’n’roll horns. So if you look at that page, it’s actually Baby Darkseid who is doing it, which just makes him even better. When the Robins first show up? He’s like, doing an Omega Curse! It’s awesome.

I hope this comes through when you read it, but I genuinely have never had this much fun doing a superhero comic book before. All-Star Batman really primed me for this -- it’s really the most fun I’ve ever had doing a Batman comic -- but [Metal] is easily the most fun I’ve ever had doing a superhero comic as an extension of the whole universe. All-Star was really kind of the training ground for me getting to tell this kind of story.

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The Secret Origin of The Batman Who Laughs' Horde of Cannibalistic Robins

Speaking of things that are totally bonkers, can you talk a little about where the idea to have The Batman Who Laughs have a squad of cannibal Robins came from?

[Laughs] That was actually my idea. It was late at night and I was sitting there thinking, like, “...Joker...ugh, this Batman Who Laughs...would he have any henchmen?” I had literally just put my kids to bed, so it popped into my head, like, “Oh, he would have kids!” But then I had to go further like, what if they’re like...cannibalistic, crazy Robins?

I literally called Capullo then and just said, “I have an idea that might be the darkest thing I’ve done.”

batman-who-laughs-header

The Batman Who Laughs was actually one of the earliest elements in Metal. Those Dark Knights one shots? I’m so proud of them and what those teams have done. Each one is about one of Batman’s nightmares about going too far. For example, the Batman Who Laughs is Bruce asking, “What if I killed the Joker and I found out that he has a toxin in his heart that essentially made whoever kills him the next Joker, and that’s why he’s always tried to get Batman to kill him?”

It’s one of the darkest stories that we could do. What happens then, what happens to the family, all of that is in Batman: The Batman Who Laughs one-shot.

Similarly, the Red Death is asking “What if there was a catastrophe in Gotham that I wasn’t fast enough to stop and I started experimenting with the Speed Force and it all went to hell?” Murder Machine is looking at a world where Alfred passed away, so Bruce asks Cyborg to upload his consciousness into the Alfred Protocol, and the first thing the Alfred Protocol does when it comes online is kill every villain in Gotham like, “You’re welcome, sir!” When the superheroes try and stop it, it kills them too, and absorbs Batman into it as an extension. So, yeah, each one of them actually has a really emotional story.

So those are these Dark Knights one shots, and then we have the "Gotham Resistence" tie-ins which are about Dick and a team of heroes trying to take on the Batman Who Laughs as he kind of transforms Gotham City. He’s got these creepy Joker cards that seem to kind of magically do things through the metal on them. They fight back and it almost becomes like Dungeons & Dragons or Game of Thrones.

Dark Nights: Metal #2, by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia and Steve Wands, is on sale now from DC Comics.