Batman writer Scott Snyder would drop everything to adapt American Vampire for the screen

Over a 15-year span at DC Comics, Scott Snyder has become one of the most influential modern voices in Batman lore. He co-created the chilling multiversal antagonist known as the Batman Who Laughs, reconceived elements of the Dark Knight’s beginnings in Absolute Batman, and — together with Greg Capullo — introduced the secretive cabal called the Court of Owls, a creation that has since surfaced in the video game Gotham Knights, animated television like Harley Quinn, and speculation about The Batman 2. Yet the project Snyder says he’d drop everything for is the horror saga American Vampire, which he launched with artist Rafael Albuquerque in 2010 and which earned multiple Eisner Awards.

“I’ve told my agent over and over I would drop everything to work on that,” Snyder told Polygon in a Zoom interview. “I love the book so much that it’s a world I want to play in in multiple media. It’s my favorite. You’re not supposed to pick favorites because it’s like children, but American Vampire will always be my favorite.”

American Vampire threads tales across American history, beginning with outlaw Skinner Sweet in the waning days of the frontier. After being slain by a European vampire, Sweet resurrects as a distinct strain of vampire — one that is not repelled by sunlight or wooden stakes but is harmed by gold. Rather than mesmerize or take flight, this breed injects a paralytic venom via fangs and claws, and its vulnerabilities and strengths are rooted in a very American mythos.

“I have an amazing partner in Raphael,” Snyder explains. “We had this idea that [Skinner would] have this kind of rattlesnake quality where the jaw unhinges entirely. Everyone has a weakness that’s kind of indigenous to their area. Gold felt like greed and capitalism metaphorically, but literally the search for gold was so prevalent at that time that the idea that gold or gold dust would be the American vampire’s weakness felt good.”

The initial spark for American Vampire came to Snyder in a New York board-game shop, where a miniature of a zombified Confederate soldier captured his imagination. He considered opening the series during the Revolutionary War but ultimately chose to begin at the close of the frontier — a period that fit the tale of a character resisting confinement and the growing power of wealth and influence.

“Westerns are such a primary American genre,” Snyder said. “It felt like a really good place for this kind of investigation of what makes us admirable and what also makes us really despicable throughout the course of the last couple hundred years.”

When Snyder first sold the series to DC Vertigo, the publisher asked if he could secure a blurb from an established author. He contacted Stephen King — who had previously selected two of Snyder’s short stories for the 2007 edition of The Best American Short Stories — and King became so captivated he wrote five comics for the series’ opening arc, marking his own comics debut.

“Unfortunately, I’d already sold it for very little money. If I had known Stephen King would write the first part of the first issue, I could have tried to get more,” Snyder says. “To see someone at his level still get that excited and that immersed in something was incredibly inspiring. He was unbelievably kind.”

Skinner Sweet’s infection expands beyond himself to figures such as zealous Pinkerton agent James Book and aspiring 1920s actress Pearl Jones. Across the run, Book and Sweet’s relationship oscillates between rivalry and a brotherlike bond, while Pearl — modeled in part on Snyder’s wife — serves as the series’ moral compass, representing the nobler impulses of the nation.

“Pearl [embodies] this belief that we’re in it together and that the purpose of the experiment is collective, and it’s about us trying to embrace each other and make each other better, knowing that we probably will never live up to our principles, but chasing those principles,” Snyder says.

The narrative hops through eras — touching on World War II, the construction of the Hoover Dam, and even a greaser-era vampire hunter — and after a five-year pause Snyder and Albuquerque reunited in 2020 to complete the primary storyline with an installment largely set in 1976.

“I think there’s a fascination right now with the ‘70s in that it felt like a moment of dissolution and skepticism, when a lot of idealism from the ‘60s crashed and there was a feeling of solipsism,” Snyder says. “A lot of the things that we thought made us exceptional were pretty badly damaged with Nixon and Watergate and Vietnam. I think that feeling of entropy, and that this experiment might break apart, has echoes in really big ways right now.”

Returning to American Vampire allowed Snyder and Albuquerque a creative refuge from the high-stakes scrutiny that comes with working on a flagship property like Batman.

“When you’re on a book like Batman, everybody knows the character,” Snyder says. “Everybody has opinions. A lot of people know it better than you and tell you, you got this wrong. But when you’re making your own series that’s built out of everything you love, nobody knows it better than you.”

Snyder has expressed a desire to revisit the series with a contemporary arc following Pearl and the vampire-hunting order known as the Vassals of the Morning Star, confronting a menace tied to the historical mystery of the Roanoke colony disappearance.

“I love that idea that there’s this whole kind of epic war that’s gone on between the Vassals and the vampires and all of it has been unknown and that there are these unsung heroes of history,” Snyder says. “Ultimately when you look at this moment in particular, the thing that’s inspiring about it to me is people are fighting knowing that you very well might not see the outcome you want, but you’re part of a longer story and the most important thing is to do the right thing, whether anyone sees it or not.”

Working on American Vampire sharpened the horror instincts Snyder later brought to Batman and informed his perspective on the Dark Knight’s relentless mission.

“The way I like to write [Batman] isn’t necessarily about winning,” Snyder says. “It’s about getting up every day and fighting knowing that tomorrow something worse will probably come at you. Winning isn’t the point. Fighting is the point.”

Source: Polygon