Writer Scott Snyder has revealed that We Have Demons was inspired by his work on the DC Comics event titles Dark Nights: Metal and Dark Nights: Death Metal.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, the Eisner Award-winning writer discussed the genesis behind We Have Demons, and how playing with DC's characters helped inspire the series. "Batman was very personal to me, but Dark Nights: Metal and Dark Nights: Death Metal, as strange as it sounds, had a lot of spiritualism and science married into it for me." He later expanded on this sentiment, stressing that he believes these ideas aren't contained to any one project. "We have to not be in these camps where science and faith are different but it's actually one big, wondrous and terrifying story."
We Have Demons is a new series that follows a young woman named Lam, who discovers the secret history of the world in the wake of her father's passing. After learning about the three billion year-old war between good and evil, she becomes humanity's last hope against an army of demons. It is the second title in Snyder's creator-ownded imprint Best Jackett Press, which began earlier this year with the release of Nocterra.
Since his days creating the Court of Owls, Snyder has made a name for himself by exploring comprehensive new concepts in his books. However, We Have Demons may be his most ambitious project yet, as Snyder constructs the atomic building blocks of the universe from scratch. "The mythology of the book imagines that there are these two competing elements: The Lightest is the very first element created after the Big Bang with an atomic number of zero and subatomic particles as its nucleus." On the other side of the equation is the Heaviest, which Snyder describes as "the most superheavy material forged in the universe naturally in the outermost regions of space."
These ideas are clear echoes of the Dark Multiverse, a concept that originated in Snyder's Dark Nights: Metal. While the Multiverse explores unique worlds that change DC's history, the Dark Multiverse is the twisted underbelly of creation in which everything imaginable went wrong. The Dark Multiverse led to the debut of the Batman Who Laughs, who became a featured player in the DC Universe for years. However, after the events of Dark Nights: Metal, the Dark Multiverse has been replaced by the DC Omniverse, which continues to play a crucial part in DC's Infinite Frontier today.
The launch of We Have Demons is the first part of comiXology's "Scottober" event, which is being used to launch multiple books from Best Jackett Press. Earlier this year, Snyder initiated a partnership between comiXology and Dark Horse Comics that will see his books published across digital and print media. As part of the deal, all Best Jackett Press titles will be available to Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited and comiXology Unlimited subscribers, as comiXology continues to improve their user experience. Snyder is enthusiastic for both the partnership and the new series, saying "We want [readers] to love the mythology. We put a lot of work into it and it's an intimate and robust book."