DC’s Rogues are returning in a new Black Label series which will focus on older versions of the Flash villains going on one last heist. Led by Captain Cold, the Rogues will temporarily unretire and band together under Leonard Snart to plan a heist in Gorilla City. However, they quickly discovering going back to their roots as criminals comes with a plethora of problems.
Rogues by Joshua Williamson, Leomacs, Matheus Lopes, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou is an upcoming four-issue series starring a down-on-his-luck Captain Cold facing life after villainy. The series makes use of DC’s Black Label rating as a bloody, profanity-filled affair that brings the lovable (but deadly) villains back together after they’ve been out of the game for ten years. We spoke to Williamson about the series, what readers can expect, and Captain Cold’s insane plan to rob Gorilla Grodd in Gorilla City.
Why was the Black Label imprint the perfect spot for this book?
Joshua Williamson: I think it was just the freedom. I couldn’t do a book like this [otherwise]. I’d have to look at it again, but if I took Rogues #1 and just took the first 22 pages, we don’t get very far. I think we barely get to Lisa by then. I wouldn’t have been able to do that anywhere else.
And with some of the more mature themes that we’re exploring, I don’t think I would have been able to explore in the mainline DCU. I think with Black Label, they just let you tell a more complicated story, and tell it in a different kind of way than I’d be able to do in the main line.
What was it like collaborating with Leomacs and Mateus Lopes?
Joshua Williamson: It’s really nice when you’re working with somebody, and everything is immediately clicking and [you’re] having a really great communication. We’re all on the chain together; we’re all talking to each other together. Whenever anything comes up, we’re bouncing ideas around together.
It got to a point with them, where I actually started talking with them less, because I knew they were gonna nail it every time. I’m gonna confide something with you all: I can definitely be a control freak. And with this book, the way they were working, it allowed me to not be a control freak. I was able to be like, “Okay, I’m gonna let go of this a bit and let them run.” And then they just did really great work on it every time.
Every page that would come in, I would just be like, “This is perfect. Great.” There were little things that I would notice they would do, and I would just be like, “Oh, that’s great.” The colors and the letters – Hassan [Otsmane-Elhaou] did the letters – everything that was coming in coming in was really good.
Would you call Leonard Snart a sympathetic character?
Joshua Williamson: I feel like that’s a complicated question.
I think in some ways, it’s the idea of being stuck in a job. I’ve definitely had jobs that I haven’t liked, and I felt like it goes beyond that idea of just feeling stuck. I grew up with a lot of economic anxiety, and I still have it in a lot of ways, and I feel that’s how a lot of characters are in this. There’s a bit of class stuff and things, involving the idea that because they’re criminals, there’s not much they can do. And so much of what starts appealing to them is that economic anxiety.
At some point, you are going to feel sympathy for him. But he changes a bit toward the end of this issue, where he’s willing to go the distance and willing to go too far to get what he wants.
I think gradually over [the series], you’re going to feel sympathy for him, and then you’re going to hate him. And then you’re going to feel sympathy for him again, and then you’re going to really hate him. That’s how I feel this book is gonna go, where it’s going to be this balancing act between you having moments of, “I actually understand what he’s going through and am feeling the pressures that he’s feeling.” And there’s gonna be times you’re going to be like, “Oh, man. Fuck that guy.”There’s one page in particular, I think, where people will just be super pissed at him. It’s an issue 3. So, we’ll get there. I think there’ll be back and forth, and then by the end, I think you’ll feel sympathy for him again.
What was it like working on this darker book compared to working on The Flash?
Joshua Williamson: Before I was on Flash, way back early in my career, I was writing all of these all-ages books. I would do all these books for Image that were a lot more all-ageish. It was a weird time in my career, because I had done kids’ books. I think, at that moment, I was making things that I thought people wanted from me versus what I wanted to do. I wasn’t really getting work – I had a moment where I wasn’t doing anything.
I’d done a bunch of all-ages and some custom publishing, and I started realizing, “Those aren’t the books that I would want to buy.” Like, “I know what I want to buy. I’m a Vertigo person.” A Vertigo, Image, Brubaker and Phillips type; those are the things that I will always buy. And so I started writing that. I started writing for myself, and that’s where Nailbiter and Birthright and Ghosted came from, and some other books started coming from. And I kind of tweaked my writing a bit when it came to Flash.
I think Flash was a different experience, because of how much I love that character and how much I know that character like the back of my hand. My original pitch for Flash was actually a little bit darker; it was a bit more of a crime book. Then when I pitched it the second time, I started talking more and more about Godspeed and more about the speed force storm.
I started switching back to a different style, but I didn’t feel like I was writing YA. I felt like I was doing a mix of the two: I was doing a bit of what I thought a Flash book needed to be at that time, plus a little bit of darkness every once in a while. I don’t even like calling it “dark.” I don’t know if that’s the right word to explain it, but it was a different type of book.
I did that for five years, and definitely by the time that I was done, I was like, “I’m ready to go back to a different kind of book.” And that’s why when this came up, it was like, “I can really show this other side of me.”
I had this conversation with Marie Javins when she was becoming Editor-in-chief, and we were talking about my future at DC and the different projects I was going to do. This was after after Rogues been greenlit and Robin been greenlit, and she basically was like, “You have to do something that’s unexpected. You can’t just do Flash again.” And I was like, “That’s exactly right. I don’t want to just dive into another book where I’m just doing bright superheroes right off the gate. I want to do something different.”
That was really where my head was; I just didn’t want to do the same thing. I could have written another book that was just a straight-up DC superhero book, or I could do things that were a little bit – again, I don’t like to use the word “dark.” But if you look at how Damian is in Robin and the kind of book that is, it is not like Flash at all. Same thing with Rogues; it was just not like Flash at all. It let me get back to that mindset that I was in when I was doing the other creator-owned books.
What brings Leonard Snart back to a life of crime 10 years later?
Joshua Williamson: I think the tipping point is him being laughed at. I know that sounds so silly, but I feel like he grew up in an abusive household, and he really saw his father as this loser who had given up. When he’s at work, it’s this system of being disrespected. I think the moment he’s at work, and he realizes he’s getting a promotion, I think in his brain he actually accepts it for the first time. For the first time, he accepts this is his life, this is his role, and this is the path that he’s going to be on. Like, he’s done it.
And I think the moment he realizes that he essentially settled – that he’s settling into this role that is not him – when he hears them laughing at him, it just breaks him. On the drive back where he sees the mural being destroyed, all these things start clicking. But I honestly think it’s as simple as that. It was probably more about the realization that he had accepted that role; that changes him.
It sounds so silly to be like, “He had made peace with this life that he was going to lead, where he was just going to be – in his eyes – a loser.” But the idea that he had finally accepted that this was his life? I think that’s when he realized he had gone too far. It was like, “No, no, no, no. I gotta unlock this and go back and be who I was before. I have one more shot to do it, and I’m going to take it.”
That leads to the next question. Each villain finds themselves in a different place in life. How can Snart possibly get them to go for one last score?
Joshua Williamson: Well, I think they all need money. That’s really what it is: they all need money. Except for Mick; I don’t think Mick needs the money.
I think for Trickster – I think Trickster has money – we kind of talk about this in this issue, and then we talk about it in 2 a bit more; that he has money. But I think Trickster has the same realization that this is either going to run out, or now he’s the joke. I think that’s the kind of thing that Trickster realizes: now he’s the joke.But I think they all have doubts. This happens throughout the first two issues. You can see a little bit in issue 1 that they all have their doubts when they’re presented with the plan, and then they all have their doubts when they go to break Mirror Master out of the prison rehab. Then in 2, there’s two more scenes where they’re just like, “We cannot do this.” And Snart is just like, “What else are you gonna do? What is the next step for you?” Are you just gonna go back to those lives where you were unhappy? Or are you going to move forward with me?”
He’s very manipulative – particularly in [issue 2] – about manipulating them into following his lead. Because at the end of the day… It sucks to get into this stuff about him and them as a family but, like I said before, he grew up in this abusive home where his dad was abusive to him and his sister. And his whole thing is like, “Well, I’m not going to be like my dad. I’m not going to be like my dad.” But he is, and the idea is that he is so manipulative to his family.
The Rogues are his family, but he’s incredibly manipulative with them, and he still pushes them into areas where they’re not comfortable. He pushes them into doing things in the name of family. It’s so constantly in the name of family, but it’s really about him just getting what he wants and him using them. And that’s a theme that we explore over the series.
How insane is Leonard Snart’s plan?
Joshua Williamson: Oh, it’s nuts.
I think at first, you’re just like, “Well, it’s just Gorilla Grodd. All they gotta do is steal gold from Gorilla Grodd in Gorilla City, right? That’ll be fine. That’s not a big deal.” In issue 2, you start to see that it’s actually much crazier than you think. Because you actually get to see Grodd, you get to see what Gorilla City is really like, and you get to see what’s been going on with him in those 10 years. And it is not going to be an easy trip.
For them, they’re heist masters, but they’re also a little bit on the smash-and-grab. It also plays into some of the stuff with them, where they’re all very smart but don’t use their intelligence in ways that [are useful]. I had this a little bit in Flash, where Barry was always really disappointed in Snart. He’s always like, “You’re so smart in what you could do… But instead, you choose to do this?” We play with some of that here, where all of them are really smart, and they’re just going to go and try to rip off Grodd.
They had this whole plan on how they’re going to do it, how they’re going to get in, and how they’re going to get out. But there’s this quote – and I actually had this quote in the – where Mike Tyson is like, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” And that is how this book is in a lot of ways. They all have a plan on what they’re going to do until they get punched in the face. Getting punched in the face by Grodd is rough.
Do you think it was cathartic for Leonard Snart to break bad again?
Joshua Williamson: Yeah, of course. He loves it. He loves to present himself as this badass. I mean, if you go back and look at the stuff that Geoff [Johns] was doing with him, he enjoys being this person. So, for him to have not been that person for so long, trying to walk the line? The moment he got to be who he was before – I know he really enjoys it.
But there’s a bit of an act to it. You’ll see this in issue 2, that he’s still putting on a front. He’s still putting on this front of who he used to be versus who he is now. I don’t want to say he’s past his prime, but you’ve seen when somebody is older and they just want to go back to the way they were, and that’s not easy. That’s a part of his story too, and we explore that a bit in 2 and 3. Some of how he’s acting in the second half of issue 1 is still a front. He’s trying really hard to be who he was before.
Thanks so much to Joshua Williamson for talking to us about the new series. Rogues from DC Comics arrives in comic book stores on March 22, 2022.