Dark Nights: Death Metal is over, and with it so ends the tenure of Scott Snyder as DC's flagship writer for the past decade. Although he's contributing some to the upcoming Infinite Frontier #0 one-shot (as an extension of the Death Metal finale), Snyder's own 'future state' (pardon the pun) involves more creator-owned work than ever before - but he's not leaving DC completely.
"I'm starting to take a bit of a backseat for a while," Snyder tells Newsarama's Kat Calamia. "I have two big projects at DC that I'm doing in 2021, but at least for a few months, I'm going let Josh Williamson, James Tynion, and all the great creators on so many books from Ram V, Joëlle Jones, to Tom Taylor, so many people I love and have faith in to just make the DCU brighter and more exciting than we've seen in a long time."
Snyder's intent to take a 'backseat' to the main DC line is something he announced with Newsarama earlier in late 2020, but he will continue to work at DC elsewhere - such as on the current American Vampire 1976 and these two newly-teased "big projects." It's not clear what those would be, but they could be more akin to his Black Label book Batman: Last Knight on Earth or perhaps more original concepts like The Wake.
Since the recently-concluded Dark Nights: Death Metal was a sequel to another event, we asked if he and Capullo would consider returning for a third Metal story.
"In terms of whether or not we would do a sequel ourselves, I mean, sure," Snyder says. "At the end of the day, we don't have any plans to, and it was funny because I've done a few interviews so far for about Death Metal and I've gotten asked that every time. The funniest part is that until I first was asked it, I promise you, I was talking to James Tynion earlier today, and I was like, did I ever mention anything about that? And he was like, no, you've never considered it. I was like, I didn't think I did.
"So, there's no plans for one, and Greg and I have a lot we want to do together outside of this kind of mantle of Metal," Snyder continues. "We're doing a creator-owned title, and then we have stuff that we want to do with DC ourselves outside of it. So, if we did do it, it would be quite a long time before we'd be back for it."
Snyder and Capullo have teased their creator-owned project for years, and it would now seem to function as what the writer previously told Newsarama was "a new phase of his career" - focusing almost exclusively on creator-owned comics.
Earlier this year Snyder set up his own company - Best Jackett Press - to organize all his upcoming projects his mystery project with Capullo, the announced Nocterra series with Tony S. Daniel at Image Comics, and further planned projects with Becky Cloonan, Jock, Francis Manapul, and Francesco Francavilla.
Read Newsarama's interview with Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel on their upcoming creator-owned series Nocterra.
