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Batman’s greatest enemy isn’t the Joker, it’s Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+. While those streaming giants might not be robbing Gotham National Bank, the changing entertainment landscape has forced comic book writers to rethink how they tell stories. Scott Snyder, the writer behind the mega-hit Absolute Batman, has given a lot of thought to what makes comics special, and how streaming services are antithetical to the medium.

“I realized that we’re the only format that makes you wait a month and pay for every single episode,” Scott Snyder says during a recent appearance on AIPT Comics Podcast. “Every single issue, you’ve got to pay essentially the price of a third of a streaming platform for a month. So that’s like three comics. You can get thousands of stories for the price of three comics. We have to deliver. You have to embrace some of the things that make our medium extra fun.”

Snyder clarifies that streaming services aren’t bad, and he’s enjoyed his fair share of them. However, as much as he loves streaming, he feels it’s become somewhat of an enemy to the comic book industry.

“So many of us are immersed in streaming all the time, and streaming to me is actually like the enemy of comics. I love streaming, don’t’ get me wrong, and I have plenty of shows that I love that are streaming.”

“It’s a completely different medium because ultimately the way it works is that you’ve already bought the whole season through your subscription. There’s no urgency to move from one episode to the next, so their priorities can be creating a long, immersive, slow-burn sort of cumulative almost novelistic kind of structure to a series. And they have recaps at the beginning.”

“All these things that sort of undercut the things that make our medium fun. I actually find it to be antithetical to the way we should write.”

An animated Absolute Batman television series is currently in development, and while no network has been announced yet, it will likely end up on one streaming platform or another. With Snyder serving as executive producer for the series, it will be interesting to see how he marries comic book storytelling with the television format.

Here's an update to date guide on the Absolute Batman release schedule.