Comic Books

Scott Snyder is taking comics to ‘Dark Spaces’

Snyder, alongside IDW head Mark Doyle, discuss the intense ‘Dark Spaces’ comics venture.

July 6, 2023

Scott Snyder has already carved himself a place in the grand comics pantheon.

Whether it’s his excellent run on Batman or the truly groundbreaking Dark Nights: Metal/Dark Nights: Death Metal events, Snyder has injected ample drama and cosmic magic into the modern canon. It’s that work that led him to his deal with ComiXology, where he’s told genre-bounding tales that help re-contextualize the scope of storytelling in this medium.

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But even comics royalty can get a little bored sometimes.

“I love DC, and I’m sure I’ll go back and do more superhero stuff sometime in the near future,” said Snyder during a recent Zoom call. “But every year, I really fought for a carve-out for a creator-owned series amidst my exclusive contract. I would get it and then I never used it. We did it one year with Wytches.”

Coming out of that, Snyder said that he wanted to do books of various genres, which explains the ComiXology line. But he also mentioned a desire to “just try things I’ve never tried before.”

Well, how about a run as a comics showrunner?

That’s effectively Snyder’s role as he helps oversee the Dark Spaces series line at IDW. Snyder, alongside artist Hayden Sherman and colorist Ronda Pattison, launched the opening salvo with Dark Spaces: Wildfire, an action flick-caper about a group of female firefighters and a life-changing opportunity amid a historic blaze. It’s a book born not only out of Snyder’s creative wanderings, but a deep-seated connection in comics.

“Mark is one of my oldest friends and best friends,” said Snyder of IDW’s co-publisher, Mark Doyle, who also participated in the call. “He’s somebody who’s been a real mentor in the business from the go. He’s the one that championed American Vampire and helped me break in in the first place. And so we have a lot of the same priorities.”

And those aforementioned priorities? It’s ultimately about giving back.

“I’m always inspired by [Doyle’s] passion for finding new voices and bringing in new talent,” said Snyder. “And I’ve tried to do the same — through DC and my workshops and initiatives at Best Jacket. I’m always trying to support up-and-coming people in different ways throughout the industry.”

Scott Snyder wants to take comics to some 'Dark Spaces'

An exclusive Dark Spaces promo by Hayden Sherman. Courtesy of IDW.

Doyle, too, believes that supporting the next generation has always been a vital part of his own comics work, which also includes editing runs at DC’s Black Label and Vertigo imprints.

“We’ve done a lot of books together [with Snyder] and we’ve been really fortunate to do a lot of different amazing things,” said Doyle. “But one of the things that has always been important to both of us is holding the door open for other talent and seeing what else is out there and asking people to come in. But then they have to stand on their own two feet, right? And just really pitch us an amazing idea and a concept. So that’s been really fun — using this as a platform and that Scott can be the megaphone to talk to the industry and fans alike and say, ‘Hey, these people are really great. You should check them out, too.'”

On the one hand, Snyder wants to pay forward the same kindness and commitment that he experienced when first entering the industry at-large.

“If we’re being really honest, there’s certainly some people that I looked up to in comics and were not particularly great when you came in, and seeing that sometimes really set an example of how you don’t want to be,” said Snyder. “But more often, I had people in the industry who I’d looked forward to meeting, like Grant Morrison or Brian Azzarello; people that wound up being incredibly welcoming and set a real bar for how you want it to be. And also how things should work.”

At the same time, though, there are clearly some business interests at play here. Snyder knows what it’s like to be a creator, and he enjoys the incentives offered by IDW’s Originals line.

“Once [Doyle] became the head of creator-owned originals at IDW, I really wanted to be a part and help him champion this space that he was creating,” said Snyder. “Not only because I thought would be really creatively vibrant, but also had a really interesting ancillary rights deal and paid a nice pay trade. Things like Skybound or other places where the ancillary rights are really theirs, and then they give you a percentage of the profits — all those deals are wonderful. There’s no knocking one or the other, but I thought it was great to create a space that sort of was in the middle and had different aspects than I had seen before.”

Doyle, meanwhile, recognizes that IDW isn’t often discussed alongside other “indies” like Image, Vault, and BOOM!. The Originals line (and perhaps Dark Spaces specifically) could be a chance to change that conversation.

“I started as the editorial director overseeing all of Originals, but now I’ve stepped into this new role as the co-publisher,” said Doyle. “And that’s certainly my long-term goal: getting people to think about IDW Originals in the same conversation that they would other publishers for sure.”

From issue #1 of Dark Spaces: Wildfire. Courtesy of IDW.

But, like all industry-leading publishers already know, you don’t get anywhere without meaningful, well-told stories.

“Maggie Howell, who oversees all of Originals now, she and I had a very ‘If you build it, they will come’ mentality when putting this line together,” said Doyle. “And that’s definitely the best way to put it. I think that for me, it all comes down to one word: quality. I always want to put out a quality book that once they read more and more and more of, they’d say, ‘You know what? Every time I read one of those, it’s just the highest quality it can be. The story’s great. The art’s great. The paper stock is great. It’s always quality.'”

All of this, then, leads to some especially important questions about how these concepts coalesce around Dark Spaces. For one, what is Dark Spaces specifically? If it’s also a compelling business model and a place for people to find Snyder-approved books, what else makes it truly novel?

“What we came up with was this idea of telling really dark, really emotional and psychologically compelling stories with absolutely no supernatural elements,” said Snyder. “Most of the books that I’ve done elsewhere have some genre elements that take them beyond the physical world, whether it’s sci-fi, speculative science fiction, or horror. This was really going to be tight, psychological dramas set in the real world.”

Snyder added, “For me, it’s been a long time since I’ve done these real lockbox psychological dramas between characters. And that’s the fun thing about encouraging the people that come in to just tell the stories they want to tell as long as they’re a little bit risky for them. ”

So, then, are we dealing with a kind of Twilight Zone-esque world of the strange and surreal?

“It’s not a shared universe, but I think there’s thematic threads for sure,” said Doyle. He added that while Snyder is clearly avoiding some supernatural elements, “some of the other stories do have those elements. But even when they are supernatural, I think one of the things that we liked about all the stories that we’ve been picking is that they’re so character-driven and grounded. Even when something does sort of veer into the fantastic or the supernatural, it’s always coming from character.”

It’s maybe best to look at it like a kind of boutique record label. Snyder plays the role of curator, saying, ‘If you trust my taste, if you trust what I’ve done, I vouch for this 100%.’ He’s also involved in a very specific way with each of these projects.

“That’s a perfect comparison,” said Snyder. “The only thing I’d say is that I do get pretty involved with Mark in regards to the initial pitches and the writers. Just in terms of getting to know them and see what they’re about and what their priorities are in terms of the story they want to tell. I love getting in there — not being involved in terms of steering a story or a book. Just getting to know them and saying, ‘Listen, is there anything that I can do to help?’ Or, ‘These are the things I love about the book.'”

He further highlighted Dark Spaces: Hollywood Special, another new title from Jeremy Lambert and Claire Roe that’s due out August 16.

“Similarly in Hollywood Special, it’s got this intense, kind of 1940s feel, and then all of a sudden it has this very modern horror to it as well, and I love those things,” said Snyder.

Courtesy of IDW.

The record label analogy works, but Doyle also had something to say when I’d compared Dark Spaces to prestige television. (I also compared a recent issue to Sharp Objects, FYI.)

“I think craft is an excellent word,” said Doyle. “And I can tell you having worked with everyone on these books that craft matters to them all. They’re also at a point in their careers, too, where they’re interested in refining that craft and building that craft. They’ve enjoyed working with each other so much and got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and so they hone that craft and now they’re taking it to the next level, too. That was one of the ideas with Dark Spaces as well — yes, tell these stories, but then what are the next stories? And who are the people who you’re excited about and following tomorrow and down the road.”

His ultimate goal, Snyder added, wasn’t just to help tout great books but to “create relationships and connections that are sustainable in comics.” Especially because now is a weird and wild time in the already boundless frontiers that is comics.

“I think one of the reasons that it’s really fun to do this now is because it’s an exciting and kind of terrifying moment all across comics,” said Snyder. “You know, it’s really volatile. There’s all kinds of changes happening on a tectonic level, but there’s also a lot of opportunity that wasn’t there before. I think a lot more has been sort of atomized. The industry is a lot more atomized, where you can make your own path and there’s different pitfalls than before, but also different opportunities. So for us being able to create a port and be like, ‘Hey, this is one place and this is why we think this stuff works and it’s really fun,’ in that regard it feels good.”

There’s really no denying the impact that Dark Spaces has had so early on in its development as this sprawling comics organism. Snyder had plenty of kind words about Che Grayson, who, alongside Kelsey Ramsay and Pattison, has been putting out Dark Spaces: Good Deeds, about a mother and daughter moving to a small Florida town with a bloody history.

“Like, I love that Good Deeds, for example, is a book that is, like Mark said, extremely-character driven,” said Snyder.” It’s really dramatic, and then it has things happening that are really unsettling and also sort of surprise you on the page.” Snyder added that he’s forged quite the relationship with Grayson, and their work together has emphasized all the best, most collaborative bits of this “project.”

At the same time, however, he had even more praise for Sherman, with whom he worked on Wildfire, championing the young artist as someone who “I’d be surprised if you don’t see their name in a bunch of art award categories. It’s only a matter of time.” Even before they worked together, however, Sherman and Snyder had something of a connection, which sort of speaks to the larger themes of collaboration and community-building across Dark Spaces.

“I was aware of Hayden from some of their work with Sean Lewis. My parents have this cabin in [Matamoras] Pennsylvania that they’ve had since I was like five,” said Snyder. “And it’s near a comic store called Haven for Heroes [in nearby Port Jervis, New York]. The guy who runs the store, his nephew is Sean Lewis, the writer who works with Hayden. So I had met him and I had found all this stuff with Hayden before, and I didn’t even realize. And then when Mark showed me Hayden, I was like, ‘Wait, I know them!’

From issue #1 of Dark Spaces: Good Deeds. Courtesy of IDW.

Again, it’s not just about lifting up daring new names (although it most certainly is). For Snyder, a collaboration with Sherman was a chance to do something new and also understand the nature of these dynamic partnerships in general.

“Hayden is somebody whose style is wildly different than anybody I’ve worked with before — in the best way,” said Snyder. “So forming a new relationship and saying, ‘How do you like to work? Let’s try something different. Here’s the bones of the story. What do you think? How do you wanna build the characters?’ I really try to get in there and make something organic. And I think that’s the methodology of a lot of the people involved in the whole line: just make something that feels uniquely them and their partner. And I’ve got to say, working with Hayden has been one of the real joys of the last couple of years.”

To some extent, Snyder sees that he and both Grayson and Sherman share some “creative DNA,” adding, “there’s some aspects, not necessarily cosmetic, but that they have some interests that wind up on the page that I think are echoes of things that I love too. Like, American history.” However, it’s about a larger connection: one based around a purer love for storytelling and the power it can hold over a person.

“But I think more importantly, the thing that unites them is that they’re really passionate about the story that they’re telling,” said Snyder. “They don’t come with a card deck of stories, saying, ‘Which one of these is the most commercial?’ It’s very much like, ‘This is the thing that I want to say because this topic really interests me and I feel that it has some corollary in the world right now. I think it’s important.’ And so they come with a sensibility and a drive to tell this story. That’s really the biggest priority, you know? That they have something that they really want to say and that this story is very much uniquely them and their partner and that they want to bring something into the world they think matters.”

At the end of the day, that drive to do something new is often what gets you the things that matter most.

“These people are unafraid to go places that are daring and sometimes unsettling and difficult to get to the truth about things in different ways,” said Snyder. “Whether you’re talking about emotional truths, or whether you’re talking about truths about history that we don’t look at, they’re daring books. That’s what I love about them and that the people making them really care about them.”

From issue #1 of Dark Spaces: Wildfire. Courtesy of IDW.

And Dark Spaces is only getting started in this whole campaign. Snyder and Sherman are reuniting for another as-yet-unannounced book. It’s bound to be even darker than Wildfire.

“I haven’t decided,” said Snyder of that book’s ending. “Like, it could end one of two ways. I’m going to let Hayden decide. One is super dark and one’s, like, pretty dark.”

Not that everything about Dark Spaces could always be so bleak and depressive.

“It’s an excuse to tell a story that’s dark; it’s called Dark Spaces,” said Snyder. “Maybe one we’ll do a happy romance.”

But no matter the genre, the collaborators attached, or anything else involved with this “universe” of storytelling, Snyder is ready to follow this thing wherever it may go. That includes even this living legend further playing a vital supporting role.

“I’d go as big as they were willing to let it go,” Snyder said. “There were a bunch of pitches that I thought were great that they brought, but we only had so much bandwidth. It’s an honor to be part of anybody’s story that’s coming into comics, even in a small way — it’s a thrill.”