Hi there. I'm a writer and so I tend to be a bit wordy. As this is my introductory blog, this will be a little longer than most I'll add from now on. Sorry about that. I'll generally try to keep these short after this one.
My name is Scott Snyder, but if you're familiar with comic books already, you need to know that I'm not THAT Scott Snyder. I haven't written for Batman, or anything else for that matter. I'm new to the comic book world. Maybe I'll change my name to a pseudonym, or maybe I'll just start using my middle initial or something. But for now, just know that the Spiritman writer and the Batman writer are two different people.
Spiritman, I guess you could say, is my creation. But I don't really see it that way. When I was a teen, I loved superheroes. (I still do. Spidey's my main guy.) But I also knew that even though they had special abilities, they were still just fallible, messed up, imperfect people who needed God as much as the rest of us. What if there was a superhero that honored God in all that he did? This, combined with the armor of God in Ephesians, was the seed that began Spiritman. When I was fifteen, he was more of a guy in tights who fought wild super-villainish type of characters. He was a "SHAZAM-ish" type of character in that he was a young boy who became this spiritual warrior when needed.
I met Mr. Everett Paul Burris in Junior High. He liked my idea for Spiritman and had a few ideas of his own for different characters and separate stories. I was a writer, he was an artist, it made for a beautiful comic book match. We and some friends started to work on this comic and other comics back then but could never get anything off the ground.
Then we went our separate ways after high school, keeping in touch here and there. I forgot about Spiritman. Or rather, I set the character aside as a high school dream that didn't happen and most likely now wouldn't. And then, lo and behold, Paul (I've always called him by his middle name) calls me up out of the blue and says that he's been inspired to begin Spiritman again. He asked me if I'd write the stories. I jumped at the chance, so here I am.
I've gotta tell you, it feels weird. Even though I'm technically the creator, it doesn't feel like my baby, and that's a good thing. It keeps me humble. I would never have done this if Paul hadn't called me up and asked me to be involved, so in my mind, Paul's the main force behind this particular effort and I'm tagging in whenever he needs me. But beyond that, I know that God's the source of all of it. I met a movie director a few years back who told me something that has stuck with me ever since. He said, "Never forget, you're only the pen. God is the hand at work. You're His instrument." And so I like this feeling that I'm not really the guy in charge, because in truth I'm not. My promise to you, the reader, is that I will do my best not to write, but rather to dictate what I feel He's laying on my heart. That's difficult to do and I know I won't always succeed, but I'll try.
And I think it's cool to see that the character of Spiritman has changed as I've changed. Life experiences, growth in wisdom and in biblical studies, all sorts of things have adjusted who I am, and thus who Spiritman will be on the page. He is now a spiritual being standing side-by-side with his physical counterpart rather than replacing him. Super-villains have been replaced by more realistic bad guys creating real-world problems. The kids and others in the story deal with their own fears and insecurities as much or more than any villainous threat. And in all of it, the spiritual realm takes center stage much more often than before. Spiritman is a wiser, more experienced character with less of a superhero's bravado and more of a soldier's serious demeanor. I believe this is a good thing, but I'll see like the rest of you how this character turns out.
It already amazes me how much God has worked in my life to get me here. For several years, I've been writing plays; not novels, not critical reviews, not biographies, but plays. For those of you who don't know, there is absolutely NO market for full length theatrical plays with a solidly Christian theme. The theatrical world doesn't want them, and churches only want 5-minute skits and kids stuff. So why did God lay it on my heart to write them? I believe in part it was because of what I'm doing now. A play, like a comic, for a writer, is dialogue intensive. Vivid description of the action is useless because it will be revealed to the viewer through something other than language. In a play, the set decorates and the actors perform. In a comic, the artist reveals. So, in some ways, I've been practicing to write this comic for a long time.
I'm waiting to see, just like the rest of you, what the artist who formed the universe is going to do through this. It's cool, isn't it?
Scott (Hope that wasn't too long.)
Thoughts from Scott A. Snyder and Everett Paul Burris, the creators of Spiritman Comics. Read our comic book at www.spiritmancomics.com.
