CBR got an interview with “Batman” writer Scott Snyder on his plans for bringing back The Clown Prince into the New 52 universe. Joker has been out of the picture since the beginning of the DC reboot, and now the most infamous of Bat-villains is making a comeback. The arc begins in October (surprise, surprise) with issue #13 of “Batman”, and it is titled “Death Of The Family”. Up until now all that has been known of Joker in the new DCU is that his face has been cut off (as seen in issue #1 of “Detective Comics”). The buzz is big for this arc, fans cannot wait for the villain to return, and CBR got the down low on Snyder’s plans. Check out pieces of the interview below.

Snyder told the website, “For this story, we really wanted this to be Joker at his most unleashed and vengeful; this Joker has an axe to grind and a point to prove. He’s gone away for a year for a very deliberate reason. During that year, he sort of set all of his traps and sharpened his knives and he’s ready to come back to Gotham and make his point to Batman and the Batman family. He has a very strong mission in mind and he’s very passionate about what he wants to prove to Batman this time around, and it’s really twisted and dark and unpleasant.”

He continued about the story, “There’s a very specific theme that’s really my take on his psychology, where he has a very firm belief about his role for Batman and his role in Gotham and it has a kind of mythology that’s twisted and on its own that I’m really excited to explore, with a lot of symbolism as well, that he’s sort of built in his mind. It has a very rich and twisted and fun kind of design, the way he thinks in this one. There are a lot of themes, visual themes and also conceptual themes, that are going to run through the whole story. My favorite Joker stories, from “The Killing Joke” to “Arkham Asylum,” really get inside his head and his thinking and make him all the scarier for it and have those kinds of echoing, totemic elements. Visual things that come back over and over because he clings to them, and he subjects people to the terrifying visions of things that come back over and over. This really is my love letter to the Joker. That way, we can give him the biggest, baddest, craziest story we could.

Also, the shape of the story itself is going to run five to six months. It’s going to be in features and backups in “Batman” so it’s really, really big. Part of the idea was, I was thinking to myself about six to seven months ago when I started working on it, there really hasn’t been a giant Joker story in “Batman” in the comics of Batman in a really long time. If I asked you right now, what was the last big Joker story?”

When asked about the cover to issue #13, Snyder said, “Joker had his face removed for a reason, and the way he’s re-approaching the family has a lot to do with the way he looks. Right there in the image, he has that face over his face and he’s sort of dressing up to go out and do terrible things. In that way, I think the new look of the Joker — I know there are people out there saying, “Oh no, how are you going to deal with him, he doesn’t have a face?” — don’t worry about it. He’s going to look really scary! [Laughs] We have a very particular look in mind for him for this storyline. It’s straight up horror movie-frightening. It’s going to be iconic in its own right, but also play with the core iconic imagery of Joker. We’re not trying to redesign the Joker; we’re playing with the pieces that were there from the beginning of the New 52 with “Detective” and build you a Joker that is completely based on all the stuff we love about him at his core. But now that he’s back for the first time in a long time and he’s working, he has a slightly different look and his face will play a very big part in that. How he looks from the neck up will be one of the best parts of the entire series.”

Check out the full interview here.