INTERVIEW: Enter the darkness of ‘Nocterra’ with Scott Snyder
Image courtesy of Best Jackett Press / Provided by official site.
Welcome to Nocterra, the new world of darkness from the mind of comic book writer Scott Snyder. The creator-owned title, which is set to debut in the coming months, has already raised more than $150,000 on an mega-successful Kickstarter campaign, with 17 days to go, as of this writing.
The new book, which changed its title recently from Nocternal to Nocterra, envisions a world that has gone literally dark, and all living creatures become monstrous “shades.” The means of survival is to stay as close as possible to artificial light, whether that’s a light bulb dangling from one’s hat or candles snuggled away in one’s coat. Of course the rich in this society are able to safely walk around with LED suits.
The protagonist through this nighttime journey is Valentina Riggs, who goes by Val. She’s a “ferryman” who transports people and goods between forlorn outposts on the landscape. She gets more than she bargained for when she decides to take a man and his granddaughter well out of the way and into the Rocky Mountains.
Snyder, known for American Vampire, Batman and DC Death Metal, helped fashion this world with acclaimed artist Tony S. Daniel. Contributors to the Kickstarter campaign can grab a PDF version of issue #1, an unsigned softcover or a signed hardcover — all featuring tons of behind-the-scenes content, from Best Jackett Press, Snyder’s new company.
“I had so many ideas over the last 10 years that I’ve been at DC that I wanted to do as creator-owned books, and DC was always very nice about giving me carve-outs to be able to do a book or so a year,” Snyder said in a recent phone interview. “But my workload was so heavy, and there were so many things I wanted to do in superheroes, that I just didn’t have the bandwidth. But I promised myself that after 10 years of superheroes being my primary focus that I would really rededicate myself to creator-owned, and this story in particular was one that was quite personal.”
Ever since Snyder was a child, he has been deathly afraid of the dark. He remembers standing in the hallway of his house, scoping out the dark corners with a flashlight and challenging himself to ditch the torch and face his fears. Today, he sees his own children going through similar distress about the dark, and he started thinking there’s a story there.
“The idea came to me, what if morning doesn’t show up tomorrow,” he said. “What if the earth is suddenly plunged into this endless night? Nobody knows why. No one knows if it’s supernatural or biblical or cosmic or scientific, but this new darkness has this sinister nature and changes any living creature that stays in it for more about 48 hours into something monstrous like a monstrous version of itself called a ‘shade.’ And so I knew I had something special with that, and the first artist I thought of that would be a great partner on the book — both because we were friends and because creatively I know he has great ideas, and also because his art is such a great match where it’s muscular and bombastic and dynamic, but also very emotional — was Tony Daniel. So I talked to him about a year and a half ago about it, and he was super into it and had the time. So we started building it then.”
The COVID-19 pandemic only made the story behind Nocterra that much more poignant. In a way, the world has now been cast into darkness, with many people seeking shelter and dealing with newfound anxiety. Although conventional wisdom says it’s not a good time for a new artistic venture, these historic times seem perfectly suited for a project like Nocterra.
Helping him out are the fans, who have rallied behind this idea on Kickstarter. “I’ve never tried this before, so I was prepared for it to be in the red for a while,” Snyder said. “To see it really rocket past our expectations has been incredibly humbling and inspiring honestly. … I’ve always been somebody in comics who I think has wanted to try things that push the envelope a little bit. I’m not radical, and I work within the system pretty much. But even on Batman and on events at DC I’ve always tried to do something that’s like a couple notches past what people would expect from the characters, whether it’s creating a possible evil brother for Bruce Wayne or a psychopathic son for Jim Gordon to doing an event that has this almost irreverent rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic, like Death Metal.”
Snyder comes at his creations from the fans’ perspective. He imagines a world and characters that he personally wants to read in a comic book, and hopefully that mimics the same interests held by readers.
“OK, right now as a fan I’m really frustrated by the fact that I can’t see other creators, I can’t meet the people I look up to, I can’t get anything personalized, I can’t get things signed, I can’t go to conventions, I don’t get the same insight that I would when I can communicate with the people who are making books I love,” he said. “And as a creator right now I think one of the worries is that COVID was so disruptive and devastating to the business for those months of March and April, and still obviously it’s really damaging. But luckily things are starting to course correct, but those months when everything just shut down, you realize making independent or creator-owned books, the faucets are all just off. You’re just stuck, and you have to go look for work elsewhere. There’s no safety in it, and so … it was all about connection with us and, for us, on a pragmatic level as creators, safeguarding the book against the uncertainty of the market right now.”
Snyder said there’s no real profit being taken at this time on Nocterra. The Kickstarter will help fund the first five to six issues, and then sustainability is key. This appears to be a passion project for the comic creator (and he’s about to announce another creator-owned title in the coming days).
What writing for Nocterra has given Snyder is another chance to enter the voice of a female protagonist, and Val has proved to be a memorable character. “I’ve always loved writing a female protagonist, from Pearl Jones in American Vampire to Wonder Woman in Death Metal, and for this series, I knew I wanted somebody who had grown up in darkness in some way,” Snyder said. “So Val is the character who before she was adopted by her family she had terrible cataracts, and her vision was very poor the first years of her life. And she had corrective surgery later than she should have, but when she did, she still kind of remembered this time of living in almost darkness. So she has these skills and has this adaptability from when she was very young that serves her really well now in this darkness, and she’s particularly adept as a ‘ferryman.’ She drives this 18-wheeler, and it’s all armed with weaponized lights to get the ‘shades.’ She takes people from outpost to outpost along these unlit and deadly roads, so she came along very quick as somebody who has a mystery about her background, somebody who has a talent for this world, who is almost like a ‘man with no name’ and dreams of how tough she is and how confident she is. But she’s also vulnerable.”
After the Kickstarter is complete, Image Comics will pick up the series, likely launching Nocterra for non-Kickstarter fans in February. The plan is to make this an ongoing series with at least 30 issues (two-and-a-half years of Snyder’s creative life). The writer said the individual arcs will run five to six issues, and the first arc will take readers from issue #1 to #6.
“So that by the time we’re done with the first arc, that’s when the book is really underway in terms of publishing, and so it should be self-sufficient at that point,” he said. “In terms of the big plan for the book, we’d love to go to issue #50 or #60. I mean, the drive and mystery of the whole thing that Val and [her brother] Emmett are trying to solve is the nature of this darkness that fell upon the earth, where it came from and ultimately whether or not there’s a cure for it, whether or not there’s some way out of it. So that kind of big mysterious question and that drama is there from issue #1 all the way until the end of the series. That’s kind of the big engine.”
He added: “I love this kind of a story. These are my favorites because the pressure-cooker aspect of them that throws all of humanity into this situation where the best and the worst of who we are kind of immediately comes out because of the uncertainty of things, the nastiness of things, the dire nature and high stakes of things. I love these kinds of Night of the Living Dead situations. I knew right away that it would have a long runway.”
The look of Nocterra is extremely atmospheric, playing on the theme of darkness and shadows. Daniels, who has worked on Batman and The Tenth, was intent on selecting the perfect colorist for the project. They eventually landed on Tomeu Morey, who is working on Batman right now.
“[Daniels] was like, ‘All that matters is the right look,'” Snyder remembers. “We really want to communicate to people that this is a world where the only thing that matters is staying in the light, staying illuminated, so you’re going to have people that don’t have a lot of money or resources that make suits with candles on them, and people that have light bulbs hanging from hats, nd then other people that are mercenaries and so on with these expensive LED suits that have these futuristic, sci-fi aesthetic to them.”
As far as Daniels’ work, Snyder believes these pages are the best the artist has ever done. The writer called the “look” both sharp and intricate.
“This is the kind of book that I would line up for, not something that has bells and whistles and toys and things that you’re selling, but instead a book that gives you access to how something like this is made, gives you an inside peak,” Snyder said of the special behind-the-scenes edition. “I don’t give my scripts out really or sell them. This has the full script in there, has his line art that is unlettered, uncovered by balloons, and has a whole thing at the end where we’re going to explain how we made the book together and what our process is like. We just wanted to offer people a way in, a glimpse of how we work and an offer to be part of the team creatively and collaboratively.”
During these pandemic days, Snyder finds that most of his creativity is focused on responding — directly or indirectly — to COVID-19 and these historic times. He wanted to tap into the shared anxiety and uncertainty that so many people are facing, and that inspiration comes out on Nocterra’s pages.
“I think we’re in a real crossroads where we’re at a moment when we have to decide who we are going to be as a nation, but also globally,” he said. “There’s a real impulse for us to retreat into solipsism or retreat into individual silos or even toward groups or neighborhoods of people that agree with us. Instead we’re facing these really big, entrenched and systemic problems, and the only way to do that is through collectivism, the belief that we’re all part of the same story somehow, regardless of how much we differ. Most of the stuff that I’m writing right now across different media touches on some aspect of that fear and that worry and that moment that we’re at a real tipping point. This book I think the aspect that it focuses on the most is the sudden uncertainty. Everyone is suddenly plunged into something that they did not expect, and that makes life really dangerous and scary, like COVID does. Again it just brings out the best and the worst of human nature, so I think the book is a referendum on whether or not we as creators believe in people’s ability to make it through and join together, or whether it’s going to be something that shows that we were never capable of getting along in the first place. We lean toward the first.”
There is, of course, uncertainty surrounding the comic industry at the moment. Yes, sales are brisk, and comic book stores have largely reopened for their regular customers. However, the industry has taken a hit with no in-person conventions or autograph signings. It’s almost unthinkable to envision a year without Comic-Con in San Diego and New York Comic Con in their traditional formats.
“I hope — for the communal aspect and the physical space of the comic store — this is a temporary disruption,” Snyder said. “I think that it’s time for us to really respect, love and dive into the direct market by making sure that the books we put out are strong enough that retailers have a really easy time selling them, and that we’re not glutting stores with too much product, or we’re trying to sell them a million variant covers or those things. I think we need better practices with them that give them better, more measured product, and at the same time I think we need to look at digital as something that isn’t in competition with print but is a great testing ground for new talent, new ideas, new characters because it’s lower risk.”
He added: “I think there are a lot of challenges, but internally there’s also a lot of excitement about ways that every aspect of the industry can thrive if we stop thinking of it as a kind of thing at odds with itself and instead realize that all these different pieces of it can work in tandem like a machine or like one living organism. The life blood is there. The fact that comics are selling as well as they are right now — given this year, and that places like DC are having a banner year, and Image is really coming back strong — it proves the demand and the desire and the readership is there in droves. It’s just a matter of making sure that you don’t ignore the signs that I think this moment made obvious, which are we need to make our books better and stronger for retailers, and we also need to look at these other avenues of distribution and other avenues of creativity. … I think it’s a terrifying time, but it’s an exciting time. And I’m hopeful about comics coming out of this whole thing stronger and more nimble and evolving into something that really is more modern and able to look forward in a way that’s exciting for all of us.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Nocterra, by Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel, is currently crowdsourcing through Kickstarter. Click here for more information on the campaign.
