SCOTT SNYDER
Scott Snyder, yeah, we know: Batman, Swamp Thing. Great stuff. His work on Batman brought him 2013 IGN People’s Choice accolades because you love him, and a Harvey Award for best writer — again, Batman. So, yeah, is something he’s good at a reason to land him on a list for the best writers of 2013? Well, yeah. But ignore that.
In 2013, Synder brought us The Wake and Superman: Unchained. Both are brilliant.
He gets it. Snyder’s Superman is one that always makes the moral choice. It isn’t the popular choice. But it is what is just.
So when we are introduced to Wraith, the United States secret weapon to dominate the 20th and 21st centuries, we see what Superman can be and what he has been – a soldier, a tool for policy, and an idea that what a government wants is what is right.
Wraith doesn’t hold back. He tells Superman that he will kill him because Superman is not just operating above the law but above all government. So, when Gen. Lane calls Superman a coward in Unchained #3, his charged words fall short. We know that Superman is anything but a coward and that Lane’s Machine, Wraith and the equation is cowardly. But Ascension is just the opposite side of the same coin. It’s just villains attacking villains, and Superman is the only thing that will be able to stop both of them from annihilating everything.
The Wake rips from Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, obscure theories of human evolution and the very real danger of climate change, throws it into a blender and pours out hashtag: awesome sauce.
The brilliance of the story is that the mystery is nothing that any of the characters in the present can solve. They’re dead. The conflict will be meted out in the future, but the mystery of man’s origins lies in the very distant past.
– Matt McGrath / GHG