Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire have rapidly become some of the top names in comics. Snyder is best known for his Batman work, and his exploration of horror comics with American Vampire and Wytches, while Lemire has done everything from the tender future-set coming of age comic Sweet Tooth to turning a ’90s anti-hero into a modern musing on the cost of violence with Bloodshot. They’ve been friends for years, though, and now with A.D. After Death are teaming up for the first time on a collaborative book. (They previously worked together less directly on a storyline in which the Snyder-penned Swamp Thing crossed over with the Lemiere-scripted Animal Man.)
A.D. After Death follows Jonah, a man who in some ways has been waiting to die in a world where death has been eradicated. The book is a mix of illustrated prose as Jonah remembers his childhood and comics as Jonah explores the far-flung future, where only a few mountain cities remain while the rest is a miasma of death. We talked to Snyder and Lemire about finding the time to collaborate, the fear of death, and what you get when life stretches ever onward.
So how’d this all start, collaboration-wise? How’d you even find the time?
Scott Snyder: This started with a story I told Jeff a few years ago. I wanted to do about a cure for death. It’d involve a guy who’d never really found his place in life, because he had this crippling fear of death, and then he got a golden ticket. He’s invited into this mysterious test trial, and the second part takes place 800 years in the future, a totally different landscape. Jeff encouraged me to expand it. We’ve been friends a long time, and it just grew and grew, and we structured it around the idea of doing a full book. Jeff encouraged me to do part prose, part comics, and the final product is something I couldn’t be prouder of.
What made you hit on the concept of exploring a world where death has been conquered?
Snyder: I think for me, just the prospect of escaping the fear of how fast everything goes and the gravity of all of it, it’s been a huge driving force for Batman and Wytches. A lot of the book depends much on the sense of things grinding to a halt. An observation from the man who invents the cure is that humanity is in its old age, and when you’re old, you’re aware of how fragile you are. Life is precious. So you can be myopic or choose to be brave. With current events, it seems to be in the air that sense of either we’ll go through a transformative moment, or we’ll retreat to our separate territories. That’s one of the big underpinnings of the story.
How much of the science did you look into?
Snyder: I looked at a lot of it! I read a book on immortality, and tried to read a bunch of articles. My wife helped me translate; she’s a doctor, so anything remotely scientific I lean on her for. She was great on being a guide to some of the heavier genetic material with gene editing and young blood. In some ways it feels like we’re very close. There’s all sorts of regenerative capabilities out there, but none of them have been applicable to us. Yet. But it seems so close to our grasp, and what a leap it would be between a generation of people who would extend life and the billions who came before, this tremendous separation. The research only made it seem even more tangible.
Jeff Lemire: For me, this was a joy. I didn’t have to be the writer this time! [Laughs.] I just had to worry about what went on the page, but I didn’t have to the research.
That the book is fully painted is a fascinating choice. What drove that decision?
Lemire: My work has been heading that way. When I started doing comics my work was black and white stuff, because I didn’t have a grasp of colors. Vertigo teamed me up with Jose [Villarubia] on Sweet Tooth. When I started Trillium, I wanted to try new things. I have friends like Matt Kindt, who watercolored his own work on Mind MGMT. I love doing it. It’s a whole other step to the artwork you can control. That was something I had kind of committed in my head to watercolor my own work. This is the first project I’ve gotten to start fresh with that.
The mix of media here, between novel, illuminated manuscript, and illustrated novel, is fascinating. How’d you work out what to do where?
Lemire: I think there’s a natural break where stuff happening in the present would be the comics, and anything looking back on his past lent itself to prose. That’s an oversimplification, that was how the story broke itself up.
Snyder: Visually, all credit to Jeff and Steve Wands, our letterer, he was a big part of the process and blending these formats into one part of the whole.
It’s unusual that we hear about letterers being fundamental to a book. It’s often an overlooked job in comics.
Snyder: Both of us worked with him on multiple projects. He always brings this sense of lettering that’s expensive and emotive. He did things here I didn’t think of, bending the letters to evoke the right feeling.
Lemire: Steve has been the letterer I’ve been working with on all my stuff for a number of years, starting with The Underwater Welder. He’s done so much in so little time, this is a great opportunity to him to add visually to each page. It’s really cool, and really vital to what we’re doing. Good letterers are always the last link in production, he’s really good at being cool about that, and delivering above and beyond.
You’re both very busy with superhero books right now in addition to your own indie books. How do you both juggle these schedules?
Snyder: For me, it’s difficult at times, to be totally honest. I didn’t want to go back until I got this under my belt. Jeff was great in encouraging me to get back into prose again, I’ve been writing mostly comics for the last ten years, before that it was all prose. It gives you that kind strange authorship, that I don’t have from just doing comics. Balancing that aspect with Batman I think just used totally different muscles. When it comes to indie stuff, I need to separate it by a week. AD took me two-week chunks. I had to create the setting and make it not be corny and tense. It got me extremely excited also about different formats. It was inspiring on the page, and got me thinking about all the different things I wanted to try, doing prose-heavy stuff, more visual stuff. It makes you want to push further outside your comfort.
Lemire: Scott and I have different way of working. That prose aspect takes a lot out of him, it’s super time-intensive. For me, I’ve always been able to balance one project that I’m drawing with multiple projects I’m writing. I like to nail down the balance between these things. But it was challenging because I’ve only ever drawn stuff I’ve written myself and readjusting the way I think. But it was freeing because I could focus solely on making the book look as good as I can. It just seems to be how I work best is when I have a lot of stuff! [Laughs.]
So, this book practically asks the question, what would you do if death were cured?
Snyder: I think the funny thing about it is the story goes back and forth if it’s a wondrous thing or terrifying. It all depends on the context. When I was younger, the fantasy of living forever meant living multiple lives. But having kids, and being happy with them, what terrifies me is how little time you get with them, how fast it all moves. The cure of death is so intensely alluring, but as you get older, you worry about losing the people around you. It’s changed a lot, the things I’m most afraid of and what I want most from the cure. I could write the book in ten years and have a different story.
Lemire: The logical part of your brain can say “Oh, that would be a terrible thing. It would be a mistake to do it.” If you were given that chance tomorrow, the vast majority of people would take it. It’s hard to answer honestly.
Snyder: We’d do it together.
Lemire: That’d be a dealbreaker, I’d rather die. [Laughs.]
Snyder: “What do you want to do today in the year one million?”
Lemire: I just don’t want to talk to Batman again! [Laughs.]
A.D. After Death is in stores and available digitally today.