Scott Snyder sizes up his creator-owned empire (and teases a return to superheroes)

With a growing number of titles across five different publishers as part of his creator-owned publishing imprint Best Jackett Press, Scott Snyder is a very busy man. From an impressive line of comic book series initially published digitally through Comixology, including the Eisner Award-winning Barnstormers with co-creator Tula Lotay, to curating his own family of titles with IDW Publishing under the Dark Spaces banner, Snyder is covering a breadth of genres while maintaining his knack for engaging, tightly crafted storytelling. And on top of it all, Snyder is among the founding creators of the new publishing company DSTLRY, reuniting with former Comixology executives Chip Mosher and David Steinberger in a new venture for digital and print comics.

Apart from launching DSTLRY and expanding the Best Jacket Press line, there are have been changes to the comic book landscape in recent years that have affected everyone in the industry, including Snyder. Comixology saw widespread restructuring through its parent company Amazon less than a year after Snyder launched a line of Comixology Originals, starting with 2021’s We Have Demons with co-creator and longtime co-creator Greg Capullo. Meanwhile, ever since leaving DC Comics on amicable terms to focus on creator-owned work upon the completion of the crossover event Dark Nights: Death Metal in January 2021, there have been rumblings if and when Synder would return to licensed comic book work.

With all this going on, Popverse reached out to Snyder to talk about working for a variety of publishers and the types of stories he’s telling through Best Jackett Press, reflects on the changes to Comixology and the decision to help launch DSTLRY, and teases a possible return to the world of licensed superheroes in the near future.

Popverse: You launched Best Jackett Press with titles like Nocterra and We Have Demons, books that are right in your creative wheelhouse. Now, you’re branching into different genres, with titles like Barnstormers, and presentation, like Book of Evil using prose. Was it always the intention to experiment more after the first year of Best Jackett books?

Scott Snyder: Yeah, 100%. When I pitched the whole plan of Best Jackett to the co-creators, to our editor Will Dennis, and to Comixology, the idea was to do a Year One that was almost the kind of books that would expect from me and my co-creators but for our first time doing creator-owned books together. It would be a book where you’d be like 'That’s a book that I think Greg Capullo and Scott or Francis Manapul and Scott or Francesco Francavilla and Scott would do.'

It was to show that these were going to be really fun and strong books, and then, the second do things you wouldn’t expect, to work with people