As much as comic book fans enjoy the ongoing stories in their individual books, most everyone gets excited about an event. Team ups, crossovers, and galaxy-spanning collaborations bring larger audiences under the tent, as they say, and give fans the opportunity to see certain characters interact in ways we never imagined possible.
Events like Crisis on Infinite Earths for DC or Secret Wars over at Marvel broke significant ground when it came to multi-issue event storytelling. And both companies, ever since, have had to up the ante to keep readers invested. This escalation has led DC Comics to its current all-out battle to prevent Darkseid from taking over basically all of reality. It’s a knock-down, drag-out fight between the denizens of DC to prove who is the greatest warrior of them all.
It’s called DC K.O., and it’s a current Must-Read on a monthly basis.
Scott Snyder is writing the main DC K.O. storyline, with multiple tie-ins stemming from other authors and artists. November stories will build to December’s introduction of DC K.O. All Fight Month, which the company has described as “a brutal eight-part spotlight on the second tier of the competition bracket where competitors get a chance to power up with Omega Energy.”
While juggling both DC K.O., as well as his work on the critically acclaimed Absolute Batman series, Snyder stopped by CBR’s official podcast Heroes Journey to break down the exciting events coming to the all-out brawl. And he got us very excited by teasing how certain who were eliminated from the tournament could be brought back!
Here’s Scott Snyder on CBR’s Heroes Journey:
Take me inside the conversations about the pairings that you guys dreamed up. We’re starting to see some of them now, as we look ahead on the release calendar, of some of the A versus B. But was there one or two in particular where you were like, ‘Well, we have to see how this plays out if these two go against each other.’
Oh yeah. I mean, a lot of them are still secret because even though you see the main pairings in the Fight Month, things happen within those issues.
Even within issue 3 that I’m writing now, where… I think it’s okay to say that it’s tag teams, so they can bring back characters that have fallen to be part of their team. There’s all kinds of crazy stuff coming that you don’t expect, where it gives us second opportunities to have characters have big moments, and characters you don’t expect coming into the series and being like, ‘Wait, what the what?!’
We really wanted it to feel like Saturday morning cartoon on steroids. Because ultimately, like, two things. One, with events like this, I learned with Metal, you have to have three things, if you can. One is just a really good story that you love. And with this, as much as it is nonstop circus-like, ‘please join us in this insane cage match,’ it’s also a really personal Superman story. Metal was Batman. Death Metal was Wonder Woman. And this is my Superman story with Josh.
Ultimately it’s about Superman being in a competition where the only way to win is to become the thing that you hate. But if you can do that… and on the other side, you and your friends and the people you care about could dictate the rules of the entire universe, unchallenged forever? Is that what you want? It’s about him being tempted by all of these other heroes and villains in particular.
Darkseid attacks in DC K.O.Credit: DC Comics
Luthor makes a really cogent, in my opinion, argument to (Superman) in issue two coming up where he’s like, “I used to hate you because I thought that you did too much for humanity and you killed our own heroism by saving us all. But what I’ve realized in these times is that you do too little.”
People want you to take over. They want you to help cure cancer, and they want you to take down corrupt dictators, and they want you to fix everything. But you don’t, so you do too little, and I think you’re a coward. And I’m going to do it. …
Secondly, does the event stand for who we are at this moment at DC Comics, and have our priorities? And it does. With Metal, we wanted to show Kirby-esque fun at a moment when it felt like things were going grim.
With this one, we want to show that we’re a company where we’re inviting everybody into the store to have fun, (and) trade guesses on who’s going to win. Here are some free brackets. If you want a giant issue where Joker fights Annabelle, and Vampirella is fighting this, and Homelander is fighting Superman, you have that. If you just want the main story, you have that. If you want to see Red Hood get his revenge on Joker for Death in the Family, you have that. There’s all this fun stuff.
And what it’s about, ultimately, is it’s a celebration of how fun and inspiring and how crazy comics are. But also how unifying and inclusive and how there’s something for everybody. And that’s what we want this event to feel like. And we want retailers in particular to feel like we’re inviting people into their stores to enjoy.
The third thing is utility. We want to do an event like this if it has something on the other side that makes the line better, that it has functionality beyond just making money for us in one quarter. With this, it definitely does. We already started to announce at New York (Comics Con) the Next Level. We have new books coming into the main line. We’ve already discussed Lobo, which we can’t wait for you guys to see, and Batwoman. And then you saw a bunch of titles, you saw a bunch of amazing creators, and again, this line in Next Level is really about a creator-forward line that’s in continuity, powers the main line, but gives really accessible, really fan-friendly takes for these fan-favorite characters that don’t always get the spotlight, but their biggest, epic stories. So we want the event to spark people to want to go to the store and then we want to hand them the best books on the shelves with these amazing characters.
Batman in KnightfightCredit: DC Comics
The event will have lasting effects, in really fun ways, in some of the existing continuing books, as well. Justice League, among other ones. You’ll see impact within the books that wind up, again, giving them a jolt of energy. Not that that one needs it. It’s doing great, but just give them story to run with. If something gives them pieces that they’ve asked for, some of the creators, to make the book even more invigorated.
We’re doing some new Absolute books in the Spring that we’re really excited about. Absolute Green Arrow, Absolute Catwoman. So yeah, just, I don’t know. I keep waiting for the call to come from Jim Lee where it’s like, ‘You can’t do that.’ Or, ‘We’re not doing.’ Or something terrible. The sky is falling. But it really has been the opposite. It’s been not only supportive and encouraging, but really great constructive criticism internally… from everybody.